The Extra's Rise - Chapter 829

829: Infernal Armis (4) 829: Infernal Armis (4) The flight to the crater felt like moving through a waking nightmare.

Distances stretched, angles bent, and my senses kept flagging contradictions as the air itself warped around the Infernal Armis.

“Stay close,” I called to Cecilia, Rachel, Seraphina, Rose, and Reika as we flew toward the white-hot pillar marking the impact.

“The closer we get, the worse the physics behave.” Rachel widened her Purelight around us-a clean, stabilizing glow that shaved off the worst of the distortion.

Sweat stood at her brow.

“I can feel it,” she said through steady breaths.

“Something immense just finished changing.” We crested the last ridge and the world fell away into a broken bowl.

Fields had become fused glass and torn stone.

At the center: the Infernal Armis-dark, motionless, and patient-twisting space like heat haze that wasn’t heat at all.

But the figure beside it froze me cold.

“Gideon,” I said, the name a blade of memory.

He was no longer the boy I had crushed four years ago.

The change was not simple augmentation; it was redesign.

He stood taller, denser, every line of him rebuilt to carry power that should have shattered a human frame.

Hair dark with a metallic cast.

Eyes burning from within, as if the light sat behind them and pushed outward.

Armor clung to him like crystallized ruin: plates black as starless night, vein-lit with molten glow that pulsed like a second heartbeat.

The etched lines on each plate crawled if you stared too long, refusing to hold one meaning.

The Armis hadn’t only chosen him; it had finished him.

In his hands gleamed an axe that made Vorgath’s look ceremonial.

Twice the size, its edge wrapped in not-fire, not-shadow that sliced the air into hairline tears the world sealed reluctantly.

“Arthur Nightingale,” Gideon called, voice carrying cleanly across the crater.

“Four years ago you showed me what weakness is.” We landed on the rim.

My five fanned into their familiar positions: Rachel and Cecilia close, Seraphina and Reika flanking, Rose just behind for angles and reach.

Nyxthar hummed in my grip.

“Gideon,” I asked, “what have you done?” His laugh was quiet and wrong.

“What was necessary.

My father’s death proved ordinary strength could never touch you.

I accepted an offer and became something you can’t afford to understand.” I opened Soul Vision-and almost shut it again.

The Armis’s signature braided through him, yes, but so did something older, elegant, and lethal.

Luna recoiled along our link.

‘Arthur,’ her thought cut crisp, ‘he has the Heavenly Demon’s Body aspect.

Not an overlay-rewritten fundamentals.’ Weight dropped through my chest.

The Heavenly Demon is one of the few whose power brushes demigod.

If Gideon had taken even a fragment… “You feel it,” he said, watching my face.

Satisfaction edged his voice.

“I’m no longer a shadow standing in another man’s light.

I am the Second Calamity.

I will make the world as I wish.” “The Body aspect,” I said, thinking fast.

“That’s how you’re holding Mythical output without coming apart.

Your flesh was rebuilt to carry it.” He nodded once, almost pleased.

“Every cell runs a better law.” Cecilia’s eyes narrowed, reading him.

“His signature doesn’t fit any frame,” she said.

“It isn’t just stronger-it’s… sideways.” “Because he’s stopped playing by those frames,” I answered.

“Calamities don’t fit systems.

They write them.” Rachel set her jaw, weighing him without flinching.

People call her Saintess because her healings look like miracles, not because a temple crowned her.

“We’ll need more than timing,” she said.

“We need leverage.” She lifted both hands and the Purelight sharpened into a point.

“Aurelius,” she called-not a prayer, a summons to a partner-“I need you.” Heat bloomed.

A fountain of golden flame rose, turned, and poured down beside her.

From it stepped a phoenix lord-tall as a warhorse’s eye, wings broad enough to roof a hall, feathers of living fire that remembered they were light first.

His presence did not sermonize; it aligned.

“My keeper calls,” Aurelius said, voice making the crater ring, “and I answer.

Something here has forgotten how to be.” Where Gideon’s influence pushed ruin-the idea of things ending-mixed with miasma and the Armis’s reality-tilt, Aurelius’s radiance pushed back.

Not erasing, but carving islands where the rules held.

Breath came easier.

Gideon regarded him with interest.

“A phoenix lord.

Good.

This will be fun.” He raised the axe and the Armis answered like a name being spoken.

The crater dimmed at the edges, brightened at the heart.

What flowed through him wasn’t just mana, but something nearer to the lines under mana-the instructions that tell it how.

The axe drank, and the halo around its blade thickened.

“You killed my father,” he said, calm as a thesis.

“You broke what I was born to continue.

Now you will learn what it costs to be my lesson.” Aurelius widened his stance in the air.

A sheet of gold-white flame fell, clean and exact.

“This ground will not belong to endings while we stand,” he said-and the claim held, because he made it hold.

Rachel’s glow tightened around us.

“Arthur, he’s almost settled.

We can’t let him test everything he can do.” Seraphina’s voice stayed even.

“He still thinks like Gideon Ironmaw.

Anger and pride can be used.” Rose didn’t look away from the numbers.

“We’ll need perfect coordination.” Reika nodded.

“We’ll read him as he moves.

We’ve done it before.” I let their steadiness straighten mine.

Gideon had become a force, but forces still have edges.

If we cut at the right time, we could bend what he learned first.

“Together,” I said.

Nyxthar sang a thin, eager note.

Aurelius flared in answer.

Gideon smiled and let his domain settle.

Black-edged power-mana loaded with ruin and destruction, laced with miasma-poured off him in waves that thickened the air.

The Armis pressed its will into the soil.

Distance felt untrustworthy; balance shifted by degrees.

“Welcome,” Gideon said, satisfaction open, “to a place that obeys me.” The bowl darkened.

Horizon drew closer.

Aurelius’s light held pockets where the world stayed itself.

“Hold those,” I said to Rachel.

“Already,” she said.

Gideon tipped the axe, tracing a line the air did not forgive.

“Come,” he invited.

“Let’s measure legend.” We didn’t wait.

Rose broke space a handspan to the left, and we stepped, landing halfway down the inner slope.

Seraphina laced fine wards like frost between us and the blade’s path.

Reika’s focus pinned small tells.

Cecilia’s power coiled, ready to yank momentum off-kilter.

Rachel stacked a second skin around us that made pressure spikes slide.

Aurelius moved first to seize rhythm.

He sent a cataract of fire at Gideon-not a wall, a scalpel of light.

Gideon lifted the axe and the flame skidded off the impossible band hugging its edge.

“Localized negation,” Reika snapped.

“He isn’t canceling all fire-just a swath.” “Work around it,” I said, and went.

Grey threaded me, precise as a tuning fork.

I stepped into the pocket the negation band left and brought Nyxthar down along the seam where the axe’s rule cut and the world insisted on being whole.

The jolt up my arms wasn’t impact; it was the world complaining about arguments at that scale.

Gideon’s eyes sharpened.

Then he moved, and for three beats the crater held only motion.

He was fast the way decisions are fast when there’s nothing left to consider.

The axe chewed space.

The domain leaned up a degree.

I met his blows because there was no honest alternative.

Cecilia’s tether snapped and turned a killing sweep into a gouge of glass.

Seraphina’s ward caught a fragment and redirected it into air.

Rachel canceled a pressure spike that would have turned bone to pulp.

Rose carved lanes where there were none a blink before we needed them.

Reika said “down,” and the axe shaved a ruinous slice where my head had been.

Aurelius circled, hunting leverage.

Where the negation band wasn’t, his light punched clean holes in the miasma-laden field and left bright scars along the armor.

He wasn’t posturing; he was making room to breathe.

Gideon laughed again, delighted.

“Yes,” he said.

“This is the test I wanted.” He overreached once-new power outpacing new caution.

I slid into that wake and raked Nyxthar along a plate seam.

The cut was shallow.

It was enough to prove we could.

Blood welled, dark and quick, before sealing.

Gideon’s grin narrowed.

“You can still make me bleed,” he said.

“Good.” He changed the map.

The domain tightened; gravity leaned; up tilted.

Steps meant for flat ground landed on a slope.

Jumps came up short.

It didn’t look like much.

It didn’t have to be.

That’s how you drown experts-move the shore while they’re swimming.

“Three degrees left,” Reika reported.

“All movements.” “Adjusting,” Seraphina said, and her wards compensated before my feet did.

“Arthur,” Rachel warned, “I can push your margins for twenty seconds, then you pay for it.” “Give me ten,” I said.

“We’ll make it count.” She did.

The world went from tight to tight-but-possible.

I drove forward-not for a finishing blow, but for information: how his hips turned under weight, where the negation failed when he reached, which shoulder dragged under plate.

He offered three answers and demanded five.

I paid three and stole two.

Aurelius took the opening, slammed a column of light into Gideon’s off-hand, and knocked the axe a fraction low.

Cecilia’s red pull turned that fraction into an angle.

Seraphina stacked a ward to catch the counter.

Rose put my next step where ground needed to be.

Nyxthar bit again at a new seam-shallow, but real.

For a breath, we looked like we might outpace him.

He corrected, started moving like a principle, not a man.

The axe cut a rule and swung it like a blade.

The ground under my foot wasn’t there for a heartbeat.

Rachel hauled reality back under my ankle and kept me from falling into an absence that wouldn’t exist a moment later.

“Domain growth accelerating,” Rose said.

“He’s adapting.” “Then so do we,” I answered.

Gideon lifted the axe high.

Heat without heat shimmered; shadow without night thickened.

“Break,” he said, not as an order but as an offer, “and be improved.” “Pass,” I said, and we made ten small perfect choices instead of one big heroic mistake.

Seraphina etched canceling lines under his stance.

Reika called “left,” and I moved before the word finished.

Cecilia yanked momentum off the killing path.

Rachel spiked my reaction speed then eased it before the bill snapped bones.

Rose opened a window and closed it so a ruin-arc sliced where we had been, not where we were.

Aurelius burned two more meters of clean air into being and kept it.

The axe came down like a verdict.

Nyxthar met it like an appeal.

The world agreed to let us continue.

Gideon didn’t lose his smile.

He gained respect around the eyes.

“Better,” he said.

“Not enough.” “Give it a minute,” I said.

“We improve fast.” He surged.

The domain pulsed, breathing outward and back.

The ruin-laden mana pressed again, mixed with miasma until the air itself felt hostile.

Aurelius shed another sheet of light and barred the way.

For one held heartbeat, the crater contained two truths in balance: ending and mending, staring across a line Rachel and Aurelius drew and we refused to step behind.

“Arthur,” Rachel said tightly, “my push ends in five.” “Three’s enough,” I said-hoping I wasn’t lying.

“Two?” “Two,” she confirmed.

“Now,” I said.

We hit the hip seam again-not to cut deep, but to force a weight shift.

Cecilia pulled.

Seraphina flicked up.

Reika called the angle.

Aurelius pinned the negation band high with a hairline blade of light.

Rose set my foot where it needed to land.

Nyxthar slipped between rule and reality where the Armis hadn’t finished welding-and cut.

The line it left was narrow, bright, and real.

Gideon’s eyes flicked down, then up.

For the first time, not certainty-consideration.

“You learn,” he said quietly.

“So do you,” I said.

“Let’s race.” His smile answered bright and terrifying.

“Gladly.” Above us, the pillar pulsed slower, as if the artifact was content to watch its wielder find rhythm.

The air tasted of metal and rain that refused to fall.

The bowl held because Aurelius made it hold, because Rachel kept writing rightness faster than ruin could erase, because Seraphina’s lines made the blade behave, because Cecilia refused to let momentum belong to him alone, because Reika’s one-word calls kept arriving half a beat early, because Rose put ground under our feet when there wasn’t any left.

And because I refused to break first.

Gideon squared his shoulders.

The armor flexed.

The not-shadow deepened along the axe’s edge.

He drew a slow breath.

“Welcome,” he said again, quiet and sure, “to my domain.” “Welcome,” I answered, lifting Nyxthar until its point nicked the air into listening, “to our refusal.” The space around us continued to darken as his will bent the world toward ruin, and Aurelius’s light carved out the places where it did not.

Rachel’s Purelight held our bodies together where logic frayed.

My companions took their marks.

The final battle was about to begin.

The Second Calamity had awakened, and the world would never be the same.