A/N: darker chapter Morpheus is truly a sick individual
—
The Valkyrie struggled as Morpheus dragged her into the depths of the pyramid, he used secret tunnels to avoid most of the army that stood ready in their ambush points.
He did have to pass some of the army but he did not linger for their questions. Morpheus marched on into the depths where the complex formation stood that fueled the shield surrounding the pyramid.
"You know the spell I used to grab you is quite precious you should be honored really. It takes many expensive materials and hours stitching the runes into my robe." Morpheus said blandly
The valkyrie grunted as she tried to twist from his grasp.
***
The sky was falling.
Or at least, that's what it felt like.
Corporal Lina Voss had long since stopped wiping the sweat from her face—it only made the ash smear worse. Her eyes stung from the sand and smoke, and the copper taste of blood was thick in the back of her throat, whether from her own wounds or the bodies piled around her, she didn't know.
The shield above them pulsed, once bright and majestic, now flickering like an old lantern gasping for oil. Where it had once glimmered with a golden hue, it now dulled at the edges, faint blue cracks spreading like spiderwebs across its surface. Each crack drew eyes. Every pulse brought silence, even if just for a heartbeat. Everyone could feel it.
The end was coming.
But no one stopped fighting.
"Left flank—tighten it! They're pushing through!" Sergeant Keryn shouted over the roar of battle, voice raw from hours of barking orders. She wielded a long halberd transfigured from a single strand of obsidian sand, the edge biting through demonic hide like it was wet paper. Her armor was scorched along one arm and missing a shoulder plate, revealing oozing burns beneath.
Private Juno slammed his shield into a horned brute barreling toward their line, barely absorbing the blow. The impact cracked his wrist, but he didn't scream. He couldn't. His lungs were too busy gasping for what little air wasn't choked with fire. He twisted the edge of his shield and drove the sharpened rim up into the creature's throat. It died gurgling.
Behind him, a group of young transfigurists knelt in a circle, hands buried wrist-deep in the sand. Their lips moved in near-perfect unison as they whispered to the desert. Blades, stakes, and hooks burst up from the ground ahead of them like skeletal trees, impaling whatever enemies wandered too close. But the magic was draining faster than it could replenish. Each transfiguration left them paler. One girl collapsed mid-incantation, her eyes rolling back, blood trickling from her nose.
"We need cover fire!" someone shouted.
A soldier from Faris's company hurled a clay jar marked with glowing runes into the air. It exploded mid-flight, showering the battlefield with dozens of glass needles, each humming with residual magic. A demon shrieked as the glass pierced its eyes and detonated with tiny bursts of blue flame.
"Hold the line!" Keryn roared again. "We don't fall until that shield does!"
No one answered, but they obeyed.
Above, the shield flickered again, this time for longer. The hum it gave off, once steady and strong, now wavered like a wounded animal's whimper. And when it dimmed, everyone noticed.
The Valkyries noticed too.
From high in the sky, a new wave of them swooped in tighter, faster, pressing the edge of the shield with lances and magic-blades. The dome groaned under the weight of their fury. Cracks spread further. The flickering grew.
"Back line is holding!" someone shouted. "Goblins are keeping them pinned down!"
But even that was beginning to falter. A cluster of explosions from the far rear signaled a breach. Goblin war cries filled the air—shrill, manic, but slowly being drowned out by the deeper howls of whatever had found them.
"We need a fallback point!" shouted Lieutenant Orlan. His left leg was gone below the knee, tourniquet wrapped in a desperate twist of bandages. "Someone get the casters out of the kill zone now!"
Two healers rushed forward, ducking arrows and flying debris. One dragged Orlan by his underarms, the other threw up a barrier just in time to deflect a molten axe hurled from a demon's claw. The barrier shattered on impact, but it was enough.
They pulled him behind the third trench line, no more than a series of uneven ridges carved into the sand, dotted with splintered planks and bloodied tools. There was no safety left, only places where you hadn't died yet.
Lina Voss crouched behind a fallen cart, gripping a dagger she had pulled from the sand minutes earlier. It was dull now. Everything was. Her ears rang constantly. Somewhere nearby, someone was sobbing. Somewhere else, someone was praying.
She peeked out, saw a Valkyrie hovering just outside the shield, watching judging. Then the shield dimmed again. The Valkyrie's blade began to glow.
"Brace!" she screamed.
The blade struck the dome and shattered a piece of it like glass. The chunk fell in silence, tumbling through the air before slamming into the sand with the weight of a god's hammer.
A hole had formed. Just small. Just enough.
A handful of winged horrors flew in, screaming.
Arrows flew up to meet them. Bolts of magic, too. One Valkyrie exploded mid-air, feathers and blood raining like gore-colored snow. The others landed.
Then it was steel on steel, screams on screams.
One soldier a boy named Lerrik, no older than seventeen thrust his conjured spear forward with a pulse of magic into the gut of a white-winged angel. It turned its head toward him, seemingly unaffected, and slit his throat with a blade that sang as it passed through flesh. He fell without sound.
Another trench exploded as a fireball landed dead center. Limbs flew. Ash followed.
Still, they fought.
Still, the shield flickered.
More cracks.
More silence.
And then then came the horn. Low and deep and ancient. It shook the bones of the world. Everything stilled for one breath, maybe two.
The horizon rumbled.
From the north, a new shadow approached large, slow, devastating. No one knew what it was yet. But they knew one thing.
The shield wouldn't survive it.
Keryn spit blood and raised her halberd again. "Everyone back!" she roared. "We fall to the inner circle now!"
***
At the same time
The chamber beneath the pyramid stank of old blood and older magic.
There were no torches. No flames. Only the dull crimson glow of the sigils carved into the stone, pulsing like a heartbeat beneath the sand. The air was thick—too thick. It clung to the lungs like wet ash.
Morpheus moved with purpose, silent as shadow, the limp body of the red-haired Valkyrie draped across his shoulders like a trophy. Her broken wings dragged behind them, leaving streaks of silver-feathered ruin across the obsidian floor.
She stirred.
He didn't care.
He threw her unceremonious, brutal into the center of the formation, a circle of jagged runes and sharp lines etched so deep into the stone they seemed to bleed. Her body hit the ground with a sickening thud. One wing twisted under her. She coughed, gasped, then whimpered.
Morpheus didn't speak.
He walked around the circle once, barefoot. His boots had been burned away by the entrance wards. His skin was cracked and bleeding in places, but he didn't flinch. Every step he took pressed a little deeper into the earth—every movement a whisper to something older than language.
He opened his mouth.
And he began to chant.
It wasn't Latin. It wasn't Sumerian. It was older than that. A raw sound, the kind that didn't just echo it scraped. The walls trembled. The floor began to hum. The runes lit up with a hellish white-gold fire, reacting to his voice like they had been waiting… waiting for this.
The Valkyrie twitched.
Her eyes flew open wild, bloodshot. She tried to rise, but the circle took her. Her limbs jerked back into place, fingers splayed against the edge of the glyphs. Her mouth opened to scream, but nothing came out yet. Just the sound of the runes burning into her flesh.
Morpheus kept chanting.
He knelt, pulled something from beneath his robe a jagged obsidian dagger, slick with oil. He didn't hesitate. He carved a thin, perfect line down the center of her stomach. Not too deep. Just enough to open.
That's when the screaming started.
It was not pain.
It was violation.
Magic spilled out of her like light vomiting from a wound. Her eyes went full white. Her mouth stretched open far too wide, like her soul was clawing to escape through her teeth. The line across her stomach began to glow, and the circle drank it.
The chamber vibrated now—dust falling from the ceiling, sigils crawling across the floor as if they were alive. Morpheus stood again, pacing the circle, whispering syllables that were more pressure than sound.
The Valkyrie screamed again—louder.
The light from her wound blasted upward, straight into the apex of the chamber. A focused beam, like a spotlight from her gut, piercing the darkness.
Morpheus kept chanting.
His eyes were bloodshot. His lips were cracked and bleeding. But he didn't stop.
The light began to pulse—pulse—with each beat of her fading heart. The circle around her roared with power, its outer glyphs spreading wider, spiderwebbing up the walls, filling the entire room with spirals of white-hot light.
Her body arched. Her voice broke into inhuman shrieks, a sound that scraped the stone like claws on bone. Her hands were trembling, clawing at the air now, fingers broken from the force of the convulsions.
Still, Morpheus chanted.
And then—
BOOM.
The light from her stomach exploded outward, filling the entire ritual circle with a dome of energy that climbed up through the pyramid itself—through the winding staircases, through the hollow veins of ancient stone—and surged upward toward the surface.
The beam struck the top of the pyramid, and outside, the shield—once flickering, nearly dead—snapped back into existence with a burning pulse of fresh magic.
But Morpheus didn't see that.
He only saw her.
Still screaming. Still glowing.
Still dying in the center of the circle, her soul slowly torn apart to feed something greater.
Morpheus stepped back.
Breathing heavy.
Eyes hollow.
And whispered the last word of the ritual like a curse.
"…Anchor."
The circle sealed. The screaming stopped.
And the shield pulsed stronger.
***
Captain Bjorn yelled, "BACK TO THE FRONT LINES WHO TOLD YOU TO BREAK FORMATION!"
the soldiers moved and Keryn sucked in a breath of rotten air, steeled her nerves and moved back to the front lines.