Peter was cutting through the dark spawns relentlessly as we pushed into the old capital's plaza.

  "Eerie…" Jane murmured beside me, eyes scanning the edges of the path.

  She wasn't wrong.

  The plaza was a wreck — crumbling stone arches jutting up like broken teeth, cobblestones slick with age, scorch marks and deep gouges carved into the ground from past raids that clearly hadn't gone well. Every step echoed. The miasma was thicker here, and the dark spawns moving through it were stronger for it.

  Then a Darkness Incarnate dropped in front of us.

  It was massive. Amorphous — a writhing, shifting mass of shadow with no fixed form, looming over us like something that had crawled out of a nightmare and hadn't quite decided what shape to settle into.

  It kicked Peter into the side of a building.

  "Argh—!" He hit the wall, slid down, and ended up on one knee clutching his ribs.

  "Stop being dramatic. It's just a scratch," Jane said.

  He made a face like someone had stepped on something he cared about. I flicked my fingers and sent a pulse of white light over him. His fatigue cleared instantly.

  The spawns closed in around us from every direction. Peter got back up — jaw set, that stubborn look on his face — and Jane moved, fast and fluid, weaving between attacks with the kind of footwork that shouldn't look that elegant in the middle of a fight.

  "There's no end to this!" Peter shouted.

  There wasn't. We were getting hit from all sides and they weren't slowing down.

  "Looks like I have to actually do something," I muttered.

  [Holy Nova.]

  The light detonated outward from me in a single brilliant wave — searing, blinding, the kind of brightness that had no business existing in the middle of a dark ruin at night. The spawns screamed and disintegrated on contact. Every twisted form in range came apart like smoke, and the plaza went quiet.

  I looked at the two of them.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "I didn't bring you here to perform like that."

  They both looked away. Peter's jaw tightened. Jane found something very interesting to look at on the ground.

  I sighed and turned to survey the area. My eyes lit gold as a magic circle inscribed itself across the cobblestones.

  "I should've just done this from the start."

  [Sanctuary.]

  The barrier pulsed outward. The miasma retreated. For a moment the plaza actually felt like it could breathe.

  [A new quest has been created!]

  Investigate the origin of the miasma and defeat the dark spawns.

  "Even the gods don't know where it's coming from?!" I said. "It's obviously not from this world."

  [As we've said — its origins predate the Old Empire itself.]

  I kept moving toward the royal palace. It loomed at the far end of the plaza, dark and heavy against the sky.

  "What are you still doing?"

  I turned around. My two companions were still on the ground, panting.

  "I have no time for deadweight." I said it flatly, then immediately felt mildly bad about it. I was joking. Mostly.

  If this novel were a game, the old capital would be endgame content — locked behind the main story, meant for the final stretch. I quickened my pace. They scrambled to follow.

  "The history of the old capital is long gone," I said as we entered the inner districts, where the miasma pressed in heavier. "No records survive to explain its downfall. Just stories about how great it used to be."

  Then a shadow fell over everything.

  Massive. Wrong-shaped. I looked up.

  "There he is — the Darkness Incarnate."

  It was a Lovecraftian nightmare. Body twisting at angles that bodies weren't supposed to twist. Eyes glowing with the specific malice of something that had been waiting here for a very long time.

  With my current divinity, this should have been easy.

  But—

  "Good timing."

  A throne materialized behind me out of nowhere.

  I stared at it.

  Why did that just—

  "God, why did it actually appear?! I was just thinking about that skill — Maple's, Throne of Heavens—"

  [Your Unique Skill: 'Blessing of the Magic God: Hecatia' allows you to materialize imagined constructs.]

  That's not a [Great Sage] from that one series, right?!

  [I'm trying my best, you—]

  Yeah, okay, got it. Shut up.

  I sat down on the throne anyway. It was already there.

  "Okay, you two." I looked at Peter and Jane. "This is training material. Defeat that thing."

  The Darkness Incarnate roared. The miasma billowed outward like a dark curtain unfurling.

  "Lady — we can't fight that—" Peter started.

  The creature lunged. Fist aimed directly at me.

  Peter stepped in front of it.

  He deflected the blow with his sword — barely — and stumbled back from the impact, but caught himself before he went down.

  The Darkness Incarnate shifted its attention to Jane. She ducked, used a crumbling wall for cover, came out the other side moving. Peter swung again and took a powerful kick for his trouble, flying back into the rubble.

  "Haiz…" I watched the chaos. "You two never learn, do you?"

  But neither of them looked actually hurt.

  "My skill doesn't let anyone take damage within my range," I said, mostly to myself. "It redirects to me instead."

  Angelic wings spread from my back. A halo appeared above my head, glowing steadily in the dim.

  I crossed one leg over the other on the throne.

  Okay. Let's see how they handle this.