Chapter 424: Saintess Of The Argent Flame [II]

She had been Cassian’s beloved Saintess but over the last four weeks, Cassian had not visited her cell a single time.

The Hero had become the celebrated Champion of the kingdom.

Whenever he charged into battle, he fought with reckless psychotic disregard for his own safety because he knew that no matter how many times his limbs were shredded or his core was infected with demon rot, the kingdom would simply drag his broken body down to Aurelia’s cell, force her to absorb the agony, and send him back out to glory while she screamed in the dark.

’Was it a mistake...?’ Aurelia’s heart tore in two. ’Was it a mistake to love him? Was it a mistake to save his life?’

The overwhelming agony of the rot eating her core, combined with the suffocating despair of betrayal, completely broke her spirit.

Aurelia raised her trembling hands to her own throat.

She dug her thumbs into her windpipe, using all her physical strength to crush her own airway, desperate to end the perpetual torment.

FWOOSH!

The Argent Flame flared instinctively within her chest.

A searing, blinding blast of silver fire violently rejected her suicide attempt, scorching her hands and sending a violent shockwave of purifying agony through her meridians.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Aurelia threw her head back, screaming at the top of her lungs as tears of starlight burned against her cheeks, the guards in the corridor wincing slightly at the muffled shrieks before ignoring them entirely.

Another month passed in agonizing torture.

Thanks to the perpetual, non-stop sacrifices of the imprisoned Saintess beneath the earth, humanity’s grand army was completely restored to full, terrifying combat readiness.

The rot had been completely purged from thousands of elite soldiers.

At the dawn of the final offensive, the gates of the Meolion Grand Citadel swung wide.

Thousands of pristine silver-armored paladins charged across the plains on armored warhorses, their banners fluttering in the wind as they rode to confront the vanguard of the Demon Lord.

Leading the charge at the apex of the formation was Cassian.

The Otherworldly Hero wore magnificent gold-plated divine plate armor, his holy broadsword crackling with starlight.

A wicked grin was plastered across his face, his eyes blazing with ecstasy as his warhorse leaped over the defensive trenches.

"FOLLOW ME!"

He felt invincible... Cassian felt like a god among mortals.

Riding directly to his right was Sir Robert... a veteran paladin captain whose entire upper torso had been completely reconstructed by Aurelia’s Argent Flame just two days prior.

"CHARGE!" Robert roared, lowering his heavy mythril lance. "FOR THE KINGDOM! FOR THE HERO!"

The paladin slammed his horse directly into the front line of the demonic horde, impaling a towering abyssal berserker through the chest with a ferocious war cry.

Deep beneath the royal citadel, locked in her pitch-black stone cell, Aurelia sat trembling on the floor.

Her long platinum hair was matted with grime, her milky-white eyes hollow and vacant, looking more like an emaciated corpse than a living human being.

’It hurts...’ Aurelia thought, her consciousness drifting in and out of the cold dark. ’My chest burns... my veins feel like molten lead... Please, God... if there is any mercy in the heavens... just let my heart stop beating...’

Suddenly, a strange terrifying sensation gripped the base of her neck.

It was not the slow burning ache of the Demon Rot. It was a cold, sharp, razor-thin line of phantom pressure wrapping around her throat like a garrote wire.

On the distant battlefield, the dying abyssal berserker let out a monstrous roar.

With its final ounce of strength, the demon swung a massive obsidian cleaver in a blinding horizontal arc.

SHING!

Sir Robert’s mythril neck guard was completely sheared through.

The paladin captain’s head was cleanly severed from his shoulders, spinning wildly through the bloody air before crashing into the mud with a fountain of bright arterial blood erupting from his decapitated neck.

And in that exact second...

There was a final terrible rule governing the secondary phase of the Argent Flame that the corrupt High Council and the Otherworldly Hero had deliberately concealed from Aurelia.

The soul-link was not a temporary bridge. As long as the mirrored scars remained etched upon the Saintess’s soul, the resonance between the vessel and the saved soldier remained complete.

Inside the quiet dark dungeon cell, Aurelia’s vacant golden eyes suddenly widened in paralyzed shock.

’Ah...’ Aurelia’s final thought echoed in the freezing darkness. ’...I am dying.’

SCHLICK!

A clean violent line of bright crimson light flashed around Aurelia’s slender throat.

In a fraction of a millisecond, the physical decapitation mirrored itself with flawless reality.

Aurelia’s head was violently ripped from her shoulders, spinning gracefully through the air of the prison cell in a spray of bright arterial blood, before slamming heavily against the iron bars of the dungeon window as her headless body collapsed limply onto the freezing stone.

The severed head of Aurelia El Mimonte slammed against the heavy iron bars of the high dungeon window with a sickening wet crunch, leaving a thick smear of dark arterial blood against the cold metal before rolling onto the damp stone floor.

Her vocal cords had no lungs to drive them, yet the raw agony tearing through her consciousness forced an impossible blood-curdling shriek from her severed lips.

"AAAAAAAGGGHHH—!"

The sound was a hollow, gargling scream of torment, spraying fine mists of red across the flagstones as her wide golden-amber eyes bulged in horror.

In the torchlit corridor outside, the sudden violent commotion brought the young novice guard running.

His iron-plated boots clattered frantically against the spiral stone steps, his hand clutching the hilt of his broadsword as he reached the cell gate.

"What happened?! Saintess?!"

The guard gripped the iron bars, peering into the gloom and his breath instantly caught in his throat. His face drained of all color with his stomach violently heaving.

Lying in the center of the cell was Aurelia’s limp, headless body, crimson blood pumping from her open neck in dying spurts.

And two yards away, sitting upright against the wall, her severed head was staring directly at him, screaming in agony.

"Gods above..." the guard whispered, his voice trembling with vomit-inducing terror. "Her head... someone breached the dungeon! She’s been murdered—"

VUUUUUM.

Before the guard could fumble for his keys, a brilliant incandescent glow erupted from the hollow stump of her neck.

It was not normal divine mana. It was the Argent Flame.

Wisps of searing pure white-silver fire leaked from her exposed flesh, hissing as they vaporized the pooling blood on the stones.

Like living undulating tendrils of liquid silver, the flames whipped across the damp floor, wrapping tightly around her severed head.

With terrifying precision, the tendrils lifted the dislocated head into the air, dragging it slowly back toward the bleeding torso.

Aurelia’s screams intensified, rising in pitch until her vocal cords shredded.

Every single microscopic nerve ending, every severed tendon, every severed artery and fractured vertebra began to stitch itself back together across the blazing bridge of silver fire.

It was not a painless miracle... it was an excruciating reconstruction where she felt every microscopic fiber of her flesh burning, knitting, and fusing back into place under unimaginable heat.

CRACK-CRACK-SNAP!

Her cervical spine re-aligned with a series of wet hollow pops.

The silver fire sealed the seam across her neck, leaving behind a raised burning crimson scar that pulsed with fresh agony.

Aurelia collapsed onto her hands and knees, gasping and retching as thick strings of saliva and blood dripped from her trembling lips.

"Help me..." she sobbed, clawing at the stone floor, her fingernails splintering against the rock. "Please... please, make it stop... I can’t... I can’t bear this..."

The young guard outside shook violently, his key rattling against the heavy iron lock.

"Hold on! I’m opening the gate! I’ll call the high clerics—"

WHOOSH!

A heavy gauntleted hand clamped down hard on the novice guard’s shoulder as a veteran royal inquisitor stood behind him, his cold shadowed eyes staring through the iron bars at the sobbing Saintess with chilling apathy.

"Step away from the gate, recruit," the veteran commanded in a flat, uncaring monotone.

"B-But sir! Her head was cut off! She’s being torn apart in there!" the young guard cried, desperately pointing a trembling finger. "We have to stop whatever curse is doing this!"

"Silence," the inquisitor snapped, pulling the boy back with brutal force and shoving him against the stone wall. "This is her designated purpose... The First Vanguard has engaged the demonic horde on the northern plains. This is part of the job. She is fulfilling her duty to the Crown."

"Her duty?!"

BANG!

The inquisitor slammed the heavy outer iron grate shut, locking the entire corridor in suffocating darkness and shutting off all access to the inner cell.

Inside the pitch-black dungeon, Aurelia sat alone, shivering violently.

Her ragged blood-soaked breath rattled in her chest as the silence of the underground fortress settled around her.

’Is it over...?’ she thought, her mind swimming in a haze of blinding shock. ’Did the battle end...? Please... please let it be over...’

SCHLICK! SCHLICK!

Two simultaneous razor-thin lines of invisible force sheared through the air. Without warning, both of Aurelia’s arms were violently severed at the wrists.

"GAAAAAH!"

Her hands flew through the air, tumbling end-over-end before slamming against the reinforced glass of the high dungeon window, leaving twin bloody handprints against the pane before dropping into the dirt.

On the distant battlefield, two royal spearmen had just had their hands severed by an abyssal bladed demon and beneath the earth, the Saintess paid their blood-debt in full.

Aurelia fell forward, her bleeding wristless stumps striking the stone floor.

The pain was an all-consuming fire that blinded her senses, making her thrash and writhe in the pooling crimson.

"HELP ME! CASSIAN! CASSIAN, PLEASE!" she screamed into the dark, calling out for the man who had promised to protect her beneath the stars.

No one answered, it was only the sizzle of the Argent Flame roared in response.

The silver fire burst from the open stumps of her forearms, extending outward like blazing white claws to seize her severed hands.

The flames dragged the limbs back, violently fusing the bones, mending the torn flesh, and welding the severed nerves back together in another wave of screaming ungodly agony.

The fire subsided.

Aurelia lay facedown on the freezing stone, her body convulsing in involuntary spasms. Her throat was raw, her tears completely dried into crusty salt tracks across her cheeks.

’Cassian... where are you...?’

Silence returned to the dungeon. For ten agonizing seconds, nothing moved.

Aurelia slowly pushed her trembling upper body off the floor with her newly fused hands. She let out a long shuddering gasp, daring to believe the nightmare had finally passed.

PRICK.

A tiny microscopic sensation touched the exact apex of her skull. It felt like nothing more than the gentle tap of a needle.

Aurelia’s golden eyes widened in instinctual dread as she slowly tilted her chin upward toward the ceiling.

SHIIIIING—!

A colossal vertical cleavage of conceptual force tore straight down through the center of her reality.

In less than a fraction of a second, Aurelia’s body was vertically bisected from the crown of her head, down through her nose, her neck, her sternum, and her pelvis.

SPLAT!

The two symmetrical halves of her body fell in opposite directions, collapsing heavily against the stone floor.

Blood erupted in a massive catastrophic deluge, and her internal organs spilled across the damp flagstones in a steaming tangled mess of gore.

Her consciousness did not fade into the mercy of death.

Even split in two, her dying brain registered the apocalyptic torment as the Argent Flame roared to life once more.

The incandescent silver fire erupted from both halves of her split spine, coiling like radiant blazing serpents around her scattered organs, dragging the two halves of her butchered body back together in an eternal, inescapable loop of forced resurrection.

...Immortality.

That was the true horrific secret hidden within the secondary phase of the Argent Flame of Transmutation.

The soldiers of humanity marching upon the battlefield were effectively immortal.

They could charge recklessly into the jaws of demonic monstrosities, suffer decapitations, lose limbs, and endure fatal strikes... and their wounds would simply vanish, their lifelines defying death itself because the Saintess locked in the dungeon endured their deaths for them.

The Argent Flame would never allow the vessel to perish.

It made the Saintess immortal, chaining her soul to an unending cycle of slaughter, torture, and resurrection so that others could claim the glory of war.

Miles away, across the blood-soaked plains of the Meolion Kingdom, the thunderous clatter of armored hooves shook the earth.

Cassian galloped at the head of the royal cavalry, his white warhorse surging effortlessly over the mounds of demonic corpses.

Standing before him was one of the colossal Demon Kings of the Blight... a towering behemoth of jagged obsidian armor and abyssal horns.

"Die, pathetic mortal!" the Demon King roared, thrusting its massive claw forward.

A monumental blast of concentrated, toxic black rot erupted from the demon’s palm, surging across the air like a tidal wave of pure death, slamming directly into Cassian’s chest with apocalyptic force.

Cassian didn’t even raise his shield. Hell, he didn’t even bother attempting to dodge.

A wide smirk stretched across his handsome face as he let the demonic blight engulf him completely.

"Rot does not affect me!"

The attack tore at his flesh for barely half a second.

A flash of pain sparked across his skin and then, with a soft hiss, the black rot vanished into thin air, replaced by a radiant burst of harmless white fire that cleanly knit his armor and flesh back to perfection.

"For I am the Hero!"

Far beneath the citadel, Aurelia’s lungs burned into ash before regenerating and on the surface, Cassian felt nothing.

"Is that all you have, beast?" Cassian laughed maniacally.

With a blinding triumphant sweep of his holy broadsword, Cassian cleaved straight through the Demon King’s neck, sending the massive obsidian head flying into the mud in a fountain of black blood.

The surrounding human vanguard erupted into a deafening, thunderous roar of worship.

"ALL HAIL THE HERO!"

"THE INVINCIBLE CHAMPION!"

Cassian sat atop his warhorse, bathed in the dying demon’s blood, his eyes glowing with craziness as he looked up at the sky.

’I...’ Cassian thought, a psychotic grin spreading across his face as the cheers of thousands washed over him. ’I truly am the Invincible Hero.’