Chapter 322: Origin vs Reavers

Black coats cut through the ruined plaza like blades. The Origin Clan moved as one body with many limbs, centuries of shared battle turning fourteen fighters plus Heron into a single killing machine. Crimson silk flared. Black dragonhide absorbed impact. The Origin Flame on each back burned brighter under the twin moons.

Korrath met them head-on.

His void-forged fist smashed into Mikael’s massive sword with a sound like mountains colliding. The Butcher King slid back three meters, boots carving trenches in the stone, but he did not fall. Before Korrath could follow through, Vel’s red lightning stitched across his armor in a hundred micro-strikes, forcing the Reaver to twist and shield his head. In that same breath Zane was already inside his guard, dual streams of blood and shadow coiling around Korrath’s arm and yanking hard enough to crack another plate.

Korrath roared and released a pulse of pure termination. The air itself tried to unmake everything in a ten-meter radius. Anita’s blood ribbons snapped into a layered dome an instant before the pulse hit. The dome shuddered, cracked, held. Roland reshaped the shattered stone beneath them into spikes that drove upward, forcing Korrath to leap. Heron was waiting in the air.

The Draugr’s spear met Korrath’s descending fist. Bone-pale arms absorbed the impact, then adapted. Heron’s stance shifted mid-collision, redirecting part of the force and driving the spear tip into a fresh crack in the armor. Black fluid sprayed. Korrath’s white fire flared in rage.

Selene fought on the opposite side of the plaza against a rotating wall of Origin members. Alessia’s shadows merged with Lucian’s domain until the two became indistinguishable, cutting Selene’s starlight blades off at every angle. When Selene erased a section of the ground, Silas copied the erasure for ten seconds and hurled a fragment of it back at her, forcing her to dissolve her own technique. Kira’s curse runes crawled across the air, twisting probability so that Selene’s cleanest strikes landed a finger’s width off target. Osric’s soul-forged chains lashed out like serpents, wrapping one of her arms and dragging her off-balance.

Selene answered with brutality of her own. Her starlight body split into multiple afterimages, each one swinging erasure blades. One afterimage caught Fenra across the ribs, silver-haired werewolf blood spraying. Another forced Serah to burn a thorn barrier that wilted under the conceptual cut. A third nearly took Riven’s head; the Last Human moved with perfect timing, the blade missing by the width of a hair, and answered with a precise strike that cracked the afterimage’s form.

Lucian held the center. His shadows formed a constantly shifting fortress, giving every Origin member solid footing while denying the Reavers clean lines of attack. When Korrath tried to smash through the line, Lucian’s Absolute Command—limited but still vicious—turned the blood already coating the plaza into a spinning storm that shredded the Reaver’s momentum.

Korrath and Selene refused to break.

They adapted. Korrath stopped trading single blows and began chaining termination pulses in rapid succession, each one smaller but timed to catch the Origin members resetting their stances. One pulse clipped Jax’s mechanical arm and sent the Clockwork Revenant skidding. Another forced Mira to open three miniature rifts just to vent the force before it erased her. Selene narrowed her erasure into thinner, faster lances that punched through blood barriers and shadow walls alike. One lance scored deep across Anita’s shoulder. Another burned a line across Zane’s side.

The Origin Clan answered with coordinated savagery.

Anita flooded the battlefield with controlled blood, turning every wound the Reavers inflicted into fuel for new constructs. Zane and Heron pressed Korrath in perfect alternating rhythm—Zane creating openings with precise dual-element strikes, Heron exploiting them with evolving power that grew sharper every exchange. The Draugr’s skin hardened further. His movements lost all wasted motion. When Korrath landed a heavy backhand that should have caved Heron’s chest, the Draugr took the hit, absorbed part of the kinetic force, and returned a spear thrust that drove deeper into the damaged armor than before.

Selene tried to erase Heron entirely. The technique washed over him and failed. Something in the Draugr’s anomalous nature simply refused to be unmade. Heron’s empty eyes locked on her, and for the first time a real grin split his grey face.

The fight became a meat grinder.

Mikael’s sword sheared a chunk of plating from Korrath’s shoulder. Vel’s lightning kept both Reavers from ever fully resetting. Daron called adjustments in a calm voice that cut through the chaos—"Left flank shift, Vel cover Anita, Heron take the opening"—and the entire line obeyed without hesitation. Centuries of fighting together turned every command into instant action.

Korrath’s white fire burned so hot the air warped. Selene’s starlight flickered with genuine strain. They were still standing. They were still pushing back. Every time the Origin Clan gained ground, the Reavers ripped it away with raw power and brutal counters. Lucian’s shadows bled at the edges. Several Origin members carried fresh, deep wounds. Heron’s continuous evolution was the only reason the line had not collapsed under the sheer destructive output of the two hunters.

Korrath drove both fists into the ground and heaved. A wave of collapsing reality tore outward. The Origin Clan stacked every defense they had—blood, shadow, bone, curse, rift, pure will. The wave broke against them, but the cost was visible. Armor cracked. Blood sprayed. Bodies skidded across broken stone.

Selene used the opening to launch a dense erasure spear straight at Lucian’s core. Alessia and Zane intercepted it together, the impact throwing both of them back. Lucian’s domain shuddered but held.

The Reavers still stood their ground.

They were bloodied. Their armor and form showed real damage. But they were not broken. Korrath’s grin returned through the pain, white fire leaking from deeper cracks. Selene’s black-void eyes narrowed with cold focus.

The Origin Clan reset their formation, coats torn, bodies marked, eyes locked on the two beings who refused to fall.

The plaza shook under the next collision as both sides slammed together again, neither willing to give a single meter.