Chapter 40: The Hymn
Veritus turned toward Cole moments later.
He didn’t rush him. He didn’t lunge. He just turned, slow and sure. Those goat eyes locked on Cole, and the grin that spread across Devin’s ruined face was all teeth and hunger.
Laughter cut through the air.
“Wizard! I am glad you survived! You may watch me kill your fellow humans.”
The words were wrong on the tongue, even translated. Cole could feel it in his stomach, that same twisting sensation the rift had given him. The same hostile pressure. Only now it was wearing a man’s shape and smiling at him.
Around them, Hawthorne’s fighters hesitated.
They had just watched friends die in seconds. They saw bullets do nothing, blades do nothing, and still they had to decide whether to keep stepping forward anyway.
Veritus gave them the reminder.
Casually, he backhanded a warrior away from him, sending the poor fool flying against a wall. His body let out a sickening, crunching sound.
The man hit, slid down, and didn’t move again.
A sound escaped someone near the gate, half gasp, half sob. Cole didn’t look to see who. He didn’t need to. The grief was everywhere, thick as smoke.
Veritus’s claws flexed.
Blood dripped from them, slow and steady, and it wasn’t even his blood.
Cole gritted his teeth.
His hands wanted to shake. His chest wanted to burn. Part of him wanted to charge, to scream, to do something stupid just to stop the scene in front of him.
He didn’t.
He’d already learned what stupid got you. It got you broken ribs and a collapsing building.
Cole took a breath.
He knew now how to beat the demon.
He was going to do it the way Veritus had done everything since the rift. With rules and loopholes.
Cole’s eyes fixed on Veritus.
Not the grinning face that still carried hints of Devin’s features, warped into something that wasn’t a man anymore.
Cole focused on the magic.
He could see it now, because Veritus wasn’t bothering to hide it. Why would he. He’d come to Hawthorne to harvest bodies. He’d come to gloat. He’d come to show Cole what it meant to be helpless.
Sickly, green-black runes pulsed beneath the demon’s skin, etched across that twisted chest and up the throat.
Cole’s authority stat pressed in the back of his mind, tight and urgent.
Veritus took a step toward the gate again, eyes flicking to the cluster of people behind it.
A few fighters moved to intercept out of instinct.
Veritus’s claws lifted.
Cole didn’t give him the chance to carve another one apart.
“Edict: Null Hymn.”
The words left Cole’s mouth calm, almost gentle.
The melody, as always, spoke of forgotten places, of legends lost in the annals of the world. It sought to add to that forgotten knowledge, to erase, to forget.
It was quiet. The world tilting slightly.
Cole felt it take hold.
This time, his spell did work.
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Because Cole wasn’t technically targeting Veritus.
No.
Cole was targeting the pact.
The thing beneath the demon’s skin. The thread that made Devin’s body move like a puppet. The agreement that let a tier-five monster wear a human face and step into Cole’s world as if it belonged there.
The runes flickered.
For a heartbeat they held, resisting.
Then the hymn sank into them.
And began to erase.
Veritus paused.
The possessed body jerked.
A full-body convulsion. The goat eyes flickered. Muscles in the shoulders spasmed. The claws opened and closed without reason.
One of Hawthorne’s fighters stared, wide-eyed, realizing something had changed.
Cole kept the Crozier steady.
He didn’t blink.
For a moment, the demon paused.
Then he roared as magic was neatly erased from him.
Runes began to vanish. They snapped out in chunks, lines breaking, symbols collapsing into meaningless smears, then into nothing at all.
The air around Veritus shuddered.
The green-black glow dimmed, brightened, dimmed again.
“How?!” Veritus roared, the rage in the words warping the air.
The voice didn’t even sound like it was coming from one mouth anymore. It layered on itself, as if the demon was too big to fit into the shape it wore and the sound kept leaking out of the cracks.
Cole strode forward.
He didn’t run. He didn’t rush. He walked toward Veritus through ash and blood.
Hawthorne’s fighters fell back without being told. They didn’t understand the spell, but they understood the shift. They understood that Cole had finally found something that mattered.
This time it was his turn to gloat.
“You told me how. The pact you made, remember?” Cole’s voice stayed level. “See, your stats might be higher, but I think the pact’s strength is governed by Devin, not you. It was a gamble, and if I’d been wrong, well, we’d be screwed.”
Cole smiled.
The smile didn’t feel good on his face. It felt like forcing himself to be sharp because if he wasn’t sharp, people died.
“But I’m not wrong.”
Veritus quivered.
He was fighting to maintain connection, and Cole could see it now in the way the demon’s movements stuttered. In the way the claws twitched. In the way that grin kept trying to return, then slipped, then returned again.
His eyes flickered.
The runes on his skin continued to vanish, symbol by symbol, the hymn eating them clean.
“You think you’re clever.” Veritus spat. “You think you’ve won.”
The demon’s chest hitched, and Cole saw something almost human flash through Devin’s features for half a second. Pain. Confusion. The host straining against the rider, even if he didn’t know what was happening.
Veritus’s gaze snapped back to Cole, hatred blazing.
“You haven’t. You’ve made an enemy, wizard. Remember this.”
Cole didn’t respond.
Because he did remember.
He remembered small skeletons piled around a rift like trash.
He remembered Caleb’s smile, soft and steady, right before he stepped onto runes that were never meant to touch a human soul.
If Veritus wanted to be an enemy, fine.
Cole was done bargaining with monsters.
The last of the runes vanished.
It happened in a blink.
One moment the demon’s skin still held a faint glow of pact magic, a thread anchoring him to the world. The next, it was gone, wiped clean.
Veritus’s body shuddered violently.
He tried to step forward.
His legs didn’t move right.
He lifted a claw.
It trembled, then dropped.
The body fell to the ground.
It hit the pavement hard, shoulders first, horns scraping stone. Dust puffed up around it. The impact sounded heavy. Human-heavy.
For a second there was nothing.
Cole stood over him, Crozier in hand, watching.
Then a breath was sucked in.
A harsh, ragged inhale.
“What?” Devin asked, his voice full of pain.
His eyes were wide. Human again, at least in expression, even if the body was ruined. He looked around as if trying to make sense of the ash, the bodies, the gate, the fighters staring in horror.
Cole didn’t offer mercy.
The gang leader was still a criminal that deserved what was coming. He’d trafficked children. He’d fed demons. He’d built a little kingdom out of fear and blood. Even if Veritus had used him, even if the demon had been the hand on the knife, Devin had still picked the knife up.
Cole raised his staff.
“Black Halo Lance.”
Seraphic dark light ended it.
It came from the shadows on the ground, from the edge of the wall, from the ash itself, and it struck clean.
Devin’s body went still.
For a moment, no one moved.
The battle noise faded into small sounds. A sob. A cough. Someone whispering a name. Someone else praying under their breath, loud enough for God.
Then a notification appeared in Cole’s vision.
War Deed Recorded: Slaying a possessed foe. Extra experience granted. Skill specialization reward.
Black Halo Lance-Seraphic Shadow Manipulation: Black Halo Lance evolves. You can shape shadows into weapons and bindings, and strike from multiple shadows at once.
Cole stared at the words.
It should’ve felt like victory.
A reward. A step forward. Proof that the System was watching. Proof that the world still had rules and those rules could be bent.
Instead, it sat there in his vision.
He dismissed it with a blink.
It was a victory.
It didn’t feel like it.
Cole looked at the bodies outside the gate.
They were men and women he’d seen in meetings. People who’d stood on the palisade during waves. People who’d listened while he spoke calmly about training and patrols and survival. People who’d tried.
Now they were still.
Some were sprawled wrong. Some had eyes open, staring at nothing. One lay near the wall where Veritus had thrown him, the crunch Cole had heard written into the angle of his spine.
Dr. Alina Park was on her knees near someone, hands hovering, face wet. She looked up when she sensed Cole, and for a second their eyes met.
There was nothing to say.
No excuse. No comfort. No line that fixed it.
Cole’s fingers curled inward, becoming fists.
He took a breath.
The cost was too high.
Yet, the world didn’t care.
