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The flames claimed her forearm first. What remained was a blackened, calcified husk that crumbled into the salt wind like burnt parchment. At first, there was no pain—only the haunting silence of a body failing to comprehend its own ruin.
Holy Maiden zetalylia stared at the stump of her arm, unable to grasp the reality of her own destruction.
Below, the ocean was stained with the bruised purples of twilight. A nightmare rose from the depths—a monster wreathed in hellfire, its eyes locked onto her. It had first crawled from the surf on four twisted limbs, earning it the name Beast-Devil. The armies of the Kingdom of Ezaris had met it with steel and shot, but their mundane weapons could not so much as scratch its hide.
It was during this onset of despair that zetalylia, a daughter of nobility, received her Apostleship—the Divine Revelation.
Power awakened within her: Psychokinesis, the ability to command the physical world with a thought, and Clairvoyance, a sensory pulse that mapped every vibration of the battlefield. When word of her gifts reached the Holy See, the Hierarch Zakner himself bestowed upon her the kingdom’s greatest relics: the four Relic Blades of Aztla.
“This is the will of the heavens,” Zakner had whispered, his fingers trembling as he clasped her hands. “Only you can deliver Ezaris… no, the world itself.”
She had believed him. She hadn’t seen the cowardice lurking behind his eyes—the primal fear of a man staring into an abyss he couldn’t control.
zetalylia had no such doubts. The dogma of her beloved Goddess Aztla did not permit a powerless justice. She believed her suffering, her strength, and her very life were meant for this moment: to slay the Beast-Devil later christened Geatnig.
Taking to the sky via Psychokinesis, she stood as a lone bulwark before the coastal city.
Guided by her Clairvoyance, she danced through a storm of claws and fangs. When the beast spat torrents of fire, she manipulated the very atmosphere to deflect the heat. Her four Relic Blades blurred through the air, commanded by her mind, carving shallow but persistent wounds into Geatnig’s flesh.
I can win, she thought. If I keep the pressure, it will fall.
That certainty shattered in an instant.
At point-blank range, Geatnig unleashed a concentrated burst of thermal energy—a white-hot pillar exceeding a thousand degrees. It moved faster than her mind could react. Before her Aether could form a shield, the fire engulfed her right side. Her arm from the elbow down was incinerated instantly, reduced to carbon.
The psychological shock was a physical blow, yet she forced her mind back into the fray. As long as I have the Aether, a Holy Maiden can fight without limbs.
She doubled down on her assault, weaving through the fire and the flailing limbs of the titan. As she fought, she saw it: a gap. While Geatnig’s skull was armored in impenetrable bone-spikes, the soft tissue of its throat was vulnerable. The beast knew it, too, using its massive forelegs to guard its neck.
“There you are,” she hissed.
zetalylia spiraled through the air at high velocity, closing the distance in a heartbeat. She threw one blade at the beast’s eyes as a feint. As Geatnig reared back to swat it away, she slipped the remaining three blades into the opening.
The steel slid home, burying itself to the hilt in the beast’s throat.
A scream tore through the sky, a sound that shredded the air itself. Geatnig’s eyes glowed a murderous crimson. The blow was critical, but the beast did not falter. Ignoring the geyser of black blood erupting from its neck, it lunged.
“No… it can still move?”
Caught off guard, zetalylia couldn’t retreat. Geatnig’s massive fingers, thick as ancient tree trunks, clamped around her legs and her remaining left arm.
The pressure was absolute. Before she could use her Psychokinesis to repel the grip from within, her bones were pulverized into a sickening pulp.
“Agh… AHHHHHHHH!!!”
The agony was a tidal wave, drowning her thoughts. Regret for her recklessness didn’t even have time to form. Before her blurred vision, Geatnig unhinged its massive jaw. Deep within its gullet, a new sun was forming—the glow of a final, lethal incineration.
So, this is where it ends.
A strange, detached calm settled over her. She looked at her situation as if she were a ghost already. If she took that fire head-on, she would be vaporized. And even if she survived the blast, could she live with these shattered remains? Her limbs felt like dead weight—cold, distant, and useless.
If I can’t feel them, I don’t need them.
In the heartbeat before the fire erupted, zetalylia commanded her Relic Blades. She didn’t strike the beast. She struck herself.
With a brutal, surgical precision, she severed her own trapped left arm and both legs.
Now a mere torso, she used the last of her Psychokinesis to dive under the jet of flame rather than away from it. She plummeted directly into the cavernous wound in the beast’s throat. With every ounce of her remaining soul, she drove the blades deeper, carving, twisting, and shredding until the monster’s neck was held together by nothing but tattered skin.
The titan’s great body finally buckled. It fell backward, a mountain of meat crashing into the dark sea.
zetalylia fell with it, her Aether completely spent.
Guided by Aztla, justice is done.
She had fulfilled her mission. With a small, flickering sense of triumph in her chest, the Holy Maiden closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
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