A cry tore from Aled’s throat as Belamus’s Shining Lance punched clean through his abdomen. The spell hit its mark before he could fully raise a barrier; he was a split-second too slow. It wasn’t fatal, not to someone like Aled, but it was enough to stagger him. He clutched his side and immediately began to cast healing magic, the wound closing before their eyes. But Belamus could feel that this was no longer a battle of dominance. It was a struggle to survive.
He allowed himself the briefest thought of victory, and then he saw it.
A thread, thin as a strand of silk, impossibly fast, shot from Aled’s fingers toward Navasha’s forehead. It wasn’t a spell Belamus recognized. It wasn’t Magic Thread. It was something else entirely. Something unfamiliar. Something hidden.
Navasha didn’t react. She didn’t see it.
Of course, she didn’t.
Belamus’s eyes narrowed. The thread was cloaked, camouflaged by magical distortion, invisible to ordinary sight. But his vision, honed by years of combat and the ability to pierce through illusion, caught the shimmer.
Belamus had been moments away from casting a magical barrier to block the oncoming thread when a sudden realization stopped him cold. His instincts screamed that this wasn’t an ordinary attack, and if he treated it like one, he’d lose. Abandoning the barrier mid-chant, he turned sharply and shouted, “Navasha! Down!”
She didn’t ask why. There was no time. And more importantly, she trusted him. Without hesitation, she dropped to the ground. A heartbeat later, a thin thread zipped past the space where her head had been, slicing the air with eerie precision. It missed her completely. Aled, calm as ever, wordlessly withdrew the thread.
Belamus’s mind raced. That thread… it wasn’t meant to wound. It was a vessel, a needle pulling a soul through invisible seams. A spell of possession. And one that no ordinary barrier could hope to stop. Unlike physical or elemental magic, this kind of sorcery bypassed the body to aim straight for the soul. Blocking it would take more than brute force.
Aled was too calculating to waste time on bluff or misdirection. If he’d chosen to act now, it meant he believed he could win without risk. Belamus remembered the stories, tales of Aled taking over the bodies of others, slipping inside them like a second skin. It wasn’t a common spell; it was in the domain of special-class magic, sorcery so rare and dangerous that most mages never encountered it in their lifetime.
Even worse, if Aled succeeded in possessing Navasha, Belamus’s own sense of morality would paralyze him. He wouldn’t strike unless he was certain he could kill Aled without harming her. Aled had likely banked on that hesitation.
The thread lashed out again. Same speed. Same angle. Again, it targeted Navasha’s forehead, the likely point of entry. It has to hit there for the possession to work, Belamus concluded, already barking another command to keep her low.
Just as the threat was averted a second time, another voice rang out. “Belamus! Behind you!”
He spun, a fraction of a second too slow. A Black Golem stood directly behind him, its massive stone fist already swinging downward in a crushing arc. Belamus threw himself backward, just managing to evade the blow. His focus on Aled’s spell had left him vulnerable; he’d let the summoned creature slip from his awareness.
There was no time to recover. Another wave of magic surged behind him. Aled had cast Big Hand, which conjured an enormous stone fist, this one barreling toward Belamus with devastating force. He snapped up a magical barrier, but even as it formed, another flared to life beside it: Medello, moving in sync, had cast her own shield to reinforce Belamus’s defense.
Aled’s assault had been overwhelming in power, with each blow heavy enough to crush lesser mages, but Belamus and Medello’s layered barriers held fast. Only one shattered under the force of the attack, leaving Belamus unharmed behind the second layer of defense. It was a narrow save, but a save nonetheless.
In that fleeting opening, Navasha moved like a shadow. She slipped around to Aled’s blind side, blade drawn and aimed straight for his neck. A clean kill, if it landed. Aled twisted at the last moment, steel meeting steel as he intercepted the strike with his sword. Their blades clashed with a flash of sparks, and in that breath of space between them, Aled raised his hand.
The thread spell again. This time, from point-blank range, aimed directly at her forehead. But Navasha had learned. After two close calls, she didn’t need Belamus to shout a warning. Her instincts flared with cold alarm, and before Aled could release the spell, she dropped low, evading it by a hair’s breadth.
“What?!” Aled snapped, his eyes wide with shock as his spell missed its mark.
Aled’s composure cracked. He hadn’t expected her to move—not this fast, not without prompting. His voice wavered with disbelief.
Now! Finish him!
Belamus didn’t hesitate. Aled couldn’t be left alive, not if they wanted this to end for good. If they failed to kill him outright, he would recover. That thread wasn’t just a tool; it was a strategy, a pattern. He’d keep coming until someone stopped him permanently.
Gathering power at his fingertips, Belamus unleashed Shining Lance, a radiant spear of light honed for lethal precision. The spell shot across the battlefield, gleaming like a fallen star, and struck Aled square in the head. There was no time for him to scream. No time to react. His body went rigid, then toppled forward without ceremony, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been severed.
In an instant, Aled’s corpse shimmered and dissolved into a single, gleaming magic stone. Of all those Belamus had seen, this was the most flawless: pure, radiant, and ominously beautiful.
With their summoner gone, the Black Golems disintegrated one by one, crumbling into dust. The battlefield fell into silence.
The fight was over. Victory belonged to Belamus and his companions.
It’s over… We won.
Belamus stepped forward and picked up the magic stone. He stared at it, his expression unreadable, tight with the weight of memory, tinged with something that might’ve been regret. No one could deny what Aled had become: a villain, through and through. Ruthless. Corrupted. But there was also no denying the truth of their past. Aled had once been his student.
A brilliant student. A prodigy in magic.
Could things have been different? Could Belamus have corrected the twisted path Aled had taken? Could he have brought him back before it was too late?
These thoughts coiled through his mind like smoke, impossible to catch, impossible to dispel. And beneath them all, a single, gnawing truth remained.
There’s no point in dwelling on the past. Belamus drew a long breath, forcing his thoughts to settle. What matters now is that we’ve eliminated a major threat. That alone is worth acknowledging.
He shifted gears with practiced ease. A long life had taught him when to grieve and when to move forward.
“Yesss! We did it!” Navasha threw both fists into the air, skipping with childlike glee.
Belamus allowed himself a small smile. “If you hadn’t ducked when you did, things might have ended very differently. That was quick thinking.”
“Yeah, well… something felt seriously off,” she said, still catching her breath. “Like danger was crawling down the back of my neck. I figured, so that’s what Belamus kept yelling about. My instincts just kicked in, I guess.”
It hadn’t been logic or foresight. Just something primal, like a sixth sense flaring at the last possible moment.