Deus Necros

Chapter 824: Choice

She stared at Ludwig with wide, furious eyes, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her thorned metal vines writhing around her like a nest of barbed serpents. The rage on her face was no longer just about the fight. It was about the insult of seeing him stand there with a power she believed should have been denied to everyone who came after her.

"You don’t deserve that," she snarled.

Ludwig tilted Durandal slightly, the sword resting low in his grip as if he had not just declared something that bent the air around them. "Probably not."

That answer broke whatever restraint Gallows had left.

She came at him with all of it. The thorned vines behind her handslashing outward in wide intersecting arcs, cutting through the air with enough force to carve deep gouges into the chamber floor and pillars. One vine came from above, another from the side, two more slithered low across the ground to hook his ankles, it was not a clean assault anymore. It was rage given too many edges, and every part of it wanted to tear him apart for standing there calmly.

Ludwig moved through it without hurry.

Durandal tapped the first vine aside, then slid along the edge of the second, redirecting it just enough that it passed his coat without touching flesh. He stepped over another vine, leaned away from another, and turned his wrist so the flat of his blade caught a third lash before it could reach his shoulder. The sound of metal striking steel filled the chamber in rapid bursts, but Ludwig’s expression never changed. Gallows was fast. She was vicious. She was experienced enough that most fighters would have been diced apart simply trying to understand which attack was real.

Yet she was angry now.

Too angry.

Every movement announced itself through spite. Every feint became a demand to be acknowledged. Every strike wanted to punish him, not kill him efficiently. Ludwig had seen that kind of rage before, had carried enough of it himself to recognize how useful and stupid it could become. Wrath gave strength, yes, but Pride gave distance, and right now distance was all he needed. Gallows wanted him to react like prey. Ludwig instead looked at her as if she were exhausting herself for his convenience.

Redd watched from the side, breathing heavily, claws flexing against the floor as his body finished closing wounds Gallows had carved into him. His face had shifted back toward something closer to wolf than reptile, but his red fur remained longer and darker than before, his frame still shaped by the violence that had forced him to regenerate again and again. The ghostly figure at his shoulder flickered faintly, her attention fixed on Gallows with the same hatred that burned in him. Redd wanted back in. Every part of him wanted it. But Ludwig had stepped between him and the former Apostle, and even through the fury, Redd understood the difference in momentum.

Kaiser did not watch the fight for long.

The moment Ludwig began holding Gallows in place, Kaiser moved toward the floating sphere. He stayed just outside the glowing blood lines, his sharp eyes moving across the inscriptions while his fingers hovered over the rotating wards without touching them. To anyone else, he looked like a young nobleman examining a complicated lock. Ludwig knew better. Kaiser was reading the structure of the ritual in layers, peeling apart the holy wards from the blood script, the blood script from the hidden conduits, and the conduits from the purpose buried beneath all of it.

Gallows noticed him only after Ludwig swatted another vine aside and gave her enough space to see past him.

"No," she hissed, trying to break away.

Ludwig stepped into her path before she took a full step. "Pay attention."

She screamed and threw two new chakrams at his face.

Durandal lifted once, catching both rings in a crossing motion and sending them spinning away into the wall hard enough to bury themselves halfway into stone. Gallows immediately dragged them back with a twist of her wrists, but Ludwig was already there. He caught one of the thorned vines mid-lash, fingers closing around the barbed metal with enough force to stop it dead. The thorns bit into his palm, drawing blood, but the injury was shallow and beneath his concern. He yanked the vine forward, pulling Gallows off balance for half a step, then released it before she could use the connection to slice deeper.

That was the rhythm he forced upon her.

She attacked. He denied. She tried to reach Kaiser. He moved into the way. She tried to bait him into overcommitting. He refused to care enough. The longer it went, the more frantic she became, and the more she hated the fact that Ludwig was using her rage as a leash.

Minutes stretched inside the chamber, though Ludwig knew they could not afford many of them. Gallows’s regeneration repaired every cut he bothered to give her, but he was no longer trying to put her down yet. He was giving Kaiser time. That made the fight uglier for her than any wound. She understood it. She could see it. She was not even being treated as the central threat anymore, but as a violent obstacle to be occupied while someone smarter dismantled the room.

"You think he can stop it?" Gallows spat, her voice ragged with fury. "You think that corpse-wearing relic can undo what has already begun?"

Ludwig slipped beneath one vine, caught another against Durandal’s guard, and stepped close enough that she had to retreat from the sword’s point. "You’re talking again."

"I’ll tear your mouth off."

"You’ve tried."

She lunged, this time abandoning distance entirely. Her thorned vines folded inward as if to impale him from every side while both chakrams returned to her hands. Ludwig let the vines come close, then pivoted inside their angle. One barbed strand tore through the edge of his coat. Another grazed his cheek. He ignored both, caught the thickest vine with his left hand, and pulled hard enough to drag Gallows toward him.

She realized the danger too late.

Ludwig released the vine, shifted his grip, and caught her by the throat with the same hand. Gallows’s eyes widened as his fingers closed around her neck. She drove a chakram toward his elbow, but he smashed her down before it landed. Her back hit the floor with a brutal crack that split the stone beneath her, and whatever air her body still pretended to need was forced out in a choking gasp. The thorned vines spasmed around them, losing coordination for the first time since she had drawn them out of her flesh.

Ludwig held her there as if she weighed nothing, his hand around her throat, her body half lifted from the crater he had made in the floor. She clawed at his wrist, tried to cut him with the edge of a chakram, tried to force a vine through his ribs from behind, but each attempt came a fraction too slow, ruined by the impact and by the pressure of his grip.

"What do you mean?" Ludwig asked, turning his head toward Kaiser while Gallows struggled in his grasp.

Kaiser did not answer immediately. He had one hand raised near the sphere now, close enough that the holy wards shivered around his fingers. His expression had lost every trace of amusement. The blood lines feeding away from the core pulsed in time with the hymn above, and the realization on his face was not good.

"The ritual has already started," Kaiser said.

Ludwig’s grip tightened slightly around Gallows’s throat. "Explain."

"What they are doing upstairs is not separate from this chamber. The mass is fueling it. The prayers, the gathered faith, the Pope’s authority, the resonance of the sanctum, all of it has already been drawn into the sphere. This is not a dormant mechanism waiting for a final switch. It is active. The descent has begun."

Redd’s claws scraped against the floor. "The Demon King?"

"Yes," Kaiser said, looking up toward the ceiling as if he could see through the stone to the mass above. "There is no stopping the beginning now. Even if we ran into the main hall and killed everyone present, the initial call has already gone out. The structure has enough momentum to continue without them."

Gallows laughed through the pressure on her throat, the sound broken but vicious. "You were late. I told you it was a waste of time."

For one heartbeat, Ludwig considered the simplest answer.

Death Point.

Rewind.

Return before entering the Sacrosanctum, before speaking to Titania, before wasting minutes on Gallows, before the mass reached the point of no return. The thought was there, sharp and tempting. He had already used death to undo disaster once. He could do it again.

But the lantern at his side was still trembling with the souls trapped beneath the church, and Titania remained sealed from her gods. If he rewound blindly without understanding what the ritual had already revealed, he might lose information he needed. Worse, he still did not know how the Tower’s interference, Necros’s anger, and the future he had escaped from all tied together. A rewind was not a cure for ignorance. Sometimes it only let a man repeat the same mistake with more confidence.

Kaiser’s voice cut through the thought. "But you have a choice to make."

Ludwig looked at him. "What choice?"

Kaiser lowered his hand and pointed toward the glowing blood lines spreading from the sphere. "There are several primary channels, but three matter to us immediately. I can sever one of them before the chamber reacts. Only one. After that, the formation will lock down and anything else will require force we do not currently have time to apply."