Chapter 40—Havenbane

The battle was chaos, a storm of stone, frost, and steel.

Lodor’s colossal form moved with a weight that bent the world, each motion a quake, each strike an avalanche. Raiden had seen battle before, had bled and nearly died before—but never had he faced something that felt so much like inevitability made flesh.

And yet his eyes never left the glint in the monster’s back. The blade. The missing piece.

“Cover me!” he shouted, voice ragged.

He broke into a sprint before the words had finished, legs screaming, wounds burning, but purpose driving him harder than fear. He leapt onto a protrusion of stone along Lodor’s thigh, scrambling upward like an insect climbing a cliff. His hands bled as jagged rock bit his palms.

He reached for the hilt.

The instant his fingers brushed the cold metal, the world convulsed.

A surge of corruption burst from the blade, black tendrils slamming into his chest. Raiden screamed as he was hurled backward, his body smashing into the roots below. His breath vanished in a single choking gasp.

“Raiden!” Randall’s voice cut through the ringing.

But Raiden staggered up, coughing blood, eyes blazing. “Again.”

He ran, leapt, climbed. Each foothold crumbled, each grip burned. Still he rose, higher, until the hilt loomed before him once more.

This time, he grasped it with both hands.

“Mine—” he growled through clenched teeth.

Lodor convulsed. The blade pulsed like a heart, black veins lashing outward. The force ripped Raiden from the stone and flung him like a ragdoll across the battlefield. He slammed into the dirt, his sword clattering away, ribs breaking under the impact.

Darkness tried to claim him, but he forced himself up on trembling knees.

“No…” His voice was a whisper, but his will roared. “Not yet.”

Then came Yuka.

She darted forward, eyes alight with a fire colder than any flame. Her twin blades sang, carving deep arcs of frost into Lodor’s legs, its flanks, its arms. Every strike left trails of frozen stone that cracked under the monster’s own weight.

“Yuka, wait—!” Lynda cried.

But Yuka did not wait. Did not hesitate. Her movements blurred, faster, fiercer, her twin-sword style pushed beyond its limits. She struck again and again, even as stone shards lacerated her skin, even as black vapor seared her lungs.

Lodor swung its colossal arm down to crush her. She spun inside the blow, blades flashing, cutting deep into its joints.

Something snapped. Her arm bent wrong, blood streaming, bone jutting through skin. She did not stop.

Her other blade struck, sparks cascading. Another crack. Her second arm broke under the strain, bones shattering, blades nearly falling from her ruined grip.

And still she fought, driving the colossus back step by step.

Her body screamed weakness, but her spirit blazed like the frost woman of Raiden’s visions—the pale warrior who danced in the storm.

With a final, defiant cry, Yuka drove both blades into Lodor’s knee.

The mountain roared. The earth quaked.

And Lodor dropped to one knee.

Raiden’s heart surged. This was the moment.

He forced his broken body forward, climbing once more. Every step was agony, but Yuka’s defiance burned behind him like a beacon. He would not waste her sacrifice.

The hilt loomed before him, ancient and nameless. He reached—again the corruption flared, striking into his veins. His vision blurred, the world spinning.

But this time, a voice cut through.

“Finally.”

It was not his voice. And yet—it was.

Memories flooded him. The storm. The battlefield. The Ten. The oath.

He remembered forging this blade. He remembered giving it a name. He remembered why.

His lips moved on their own. “Havenbane.”

The sword answered.

The corruption recoiled like smoke before wind. The hilt slid free into his grip as easily as plucking a feather from the air. Weightless, radiant, alive.

The storm inside him roared awake. Lightning crackled through his veins, his wounds forgotten, his breath steady as steel.

Below, Lodor’s crimson eyes widened—not in rage, but in recognition. It knew the weapon. It knew its bane.

The mountain turned, its roar no longer triumphant, but furious.

It had feared this moment for six thousand years.

Raiden stood upon its back, Havenbane in his grip, the storm at his call.

The true battle was about to begin.

The blade thrummed in his hand, alive with an energy that was both foreign and intimately his own.

Havenbane.

As the name echoed through him, the world fractured. Visions no longer clawed at the edge of his mind—they poured into him. Battlefields of old bled into the forest around him, the screams of ancient warriors interlacing with the cries of his friends. Firestorms lit the sky. Frost danced across a thousand blades. A stag of lightning bellowed, its antlers splitting mountains. And above them all, the storm—his storm—churned and raged, answering to no one but him.

The past and present fused.

Raiden inhaled. The air itself bent to his breath. Lightning crawled across his arm, wreathing Havenbane in sparks that spat against the stone. Wind whipped around him, lifting his hair, tugging his cloak until he seemed no longer bound to earth at all. His stance shifted without thought—right hand forward, blade angled low, feet braced not like the student he had been, but the warrior he was.

The Legendaire of Wind.

“Finally,” whispered that same voice within him. But this time, Raiden knew—it was his own voice, echoing across lifetimes.

Lodor bellowed, a sound like mountains tearing apart. Its massive hand swept back to crush him.

Raiden did not retreat. He leapt.

The wind bore him upward in a surge, lightning coiling around his limbs. He blurred past the descending arm, Havenbane carving a clean arc along stone flesh. The strike did not chip or crack—it unmade. Corruption screamed as the blade tore through the Animus’ mana sequence, unraveling it at its root. Lodor’s roar turned from fury to pain.

Below, his friends saw it all.

Grenald, battered and bloodied, raised his sword, channeling raw mana into a second weapon—a long sword of pure ice that shimmered like crystal. With a cry, he hurled both into Lodor’s flank, piercing stone deep.

Rad planted his shield, braced against the quake of falling debris, then charged. His spear slammed into the Animus’ knee, forcing its weight down inch by inch.

Weldin raised his arms, runes flaring. Frost erupted from the earth, freezing one of Lodor’s colossal legs in place, shards of ice spearing upward to hold it there. He thrust his hands forward, conjuring javelins of ice that hammered into the creature’s chest, buying Raiden precious moments.

Behind them, Randall’s arrows blazed with Liana’s fire runes, striking the cracks Grenald had opened. Tadari darted between the colossus’ feet, carving precise lines across the tendons of stone. Lynda whispered wards that shimmered across their skin, a silver net deflecting rubble and corruption alike.

And Yuka—dragged to safety by Grenald’s grip—watched, bloodied arms limp, her eyes burning with stubborn pride as Raiden rose where she could not.

The storm grew.

Raiden dove and struck again, Havenbane singing as it tore through corruption. Each slash was accompanied by a gale, each thrust by a burst of lightning. He did not move as a boy anymore, but as a tempest given flesh. The battlefield bent to him, as though the forest itself remembered who he was.

Lodor roared, its molten eyes burning hotter. It swung both arms, tearing the ground apart, trees shattering like kindling. Raiden landed lightly upon its forearm, running up the length of stone, wind bearing him against gravity’s pull. He leapt high into the night sky.

Lightning arced from his body, six great torrents stretching outward like talons. For an instant, it was as though the battlefield of old had returned—the same cry of the eagle, the same storm that had once changed the course of history.

His friends held Lodor in place. Grenald’s ice sword split deeper. Weldin’s frost locked its leg. Rad’s spear dug into its knee. Arrows rained fire. Wards glowed bright.

Raiden raised Havenbane high.

The storm howled with him.

He descended.

The blade struck true, carving down Lodor’s centerline from crown to core. Not a cut of steel, but a banishment. Havenbane ripped through corruption, tearing apart the mana sequence that bound the Animus to this world.

Stone split like parchment. Crimson eyes flared once, then dimmed.

The roar died into a shuddering groan.

And the mountain fell.

Fragments of rock cascaded to the earth, shaking the forest floor. Black mist poured from the wound, twisting and writhing before unraveling into nothing. The air cleared, the corruption fleeing before Havenbane’s presence.

When the dust settled, there was no towering Animus, no mountain of wrath—only broken stone scattered across the battlefield, and the faint hiss of wind curling around Raiden’s blade.

Raiden landed lightly amid the ruins, Havenbane steady in his hand. Lightning still licked his skin, but his eyes were clear, his breath steady.

The Great Animus of the Mountain was no more.

And the herald of storms had returned.