Black demonic lightning crackled across Arthur Pendelton’s collarbone with a sickening, sizzling sound.
The twenty-nine-year-old paladin clutched his chest with both hands, gasping for breath as dark veins of necrotic curse-energy crawled up his neck toward his jaw. The iron execution pillar behind him shuddered as the dark-runic matrix resonated with the blood-talisman stamped on High Inquisitor Vael’s chest.
Arthur’s knees buckled under the immense agony, his knuckles scraping against the frozen slush of the dais.
A suffocating, sulfurous stench of charred blood filled the freezing mountain air, making the nearest worshippers cough and gag.
Sister Clara rushed to Arthur’s side, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks as she held up her brass cross. “Arthur! Hold on! Please hold on! Do not let the darkness extinguish your light! You fought for our children; now let heaven fight for you!”
Across the dais, Vael shrieked with manic, bloodthirsty glee.
“Die, righteous fool!” Vael screamed, his clawed fingers digging into his open robes. “No mortal elixir can heal an origin-core destroyed by sacred sacrifice! You gave your sacred life-force to save worthless peasant children! Now watch your heart rot while the entire northern valley freezes into eternal ice!”
Dr. Gu Qinghe knelt beside Arthur, pressing three glowing silver needles into the paladin’s chest meridians.
