Chapter 44: Power of The Sun’s Grace

The creature lunged before I could properly recover.

Its claws swept toward my chest with enough force to tear through the wooden door behind me, and I threw myself sideways, feeling the wind of the attack brush against my coat.

The revolver nearly slipped from my hand when I landed, but I caught myself against the wall and immediately raised it again.

The monster had already turned.

Bang!

I fired once. The gunshot thundered through the corridor, but the creature merely jerked its head to the side as the bullet tore into its shoulder. Black, viscous fluid leaked from the wound, yet it continued forward as though pain was nothing more than an inconvenience.

My eyes flicked toward Sera who wasn’t retreating but rather looking at the monster dead in the eye.

She reached into the air beside her and closed her fingers around something that hadn’t been there a moment ago. A whistle rested between them, small and plain enough that I almost wondered whether I had imagined it.

Sera brought it to her lips and blew. The sound itself wasn’t particularly loud, but something changed immediately afterward.

Light began spilling into the corridor from every direction. At first I thought the windows had somehow been opened, but the curtains hadn’t moved, and when I looked toward the nearest one, there was still nothing outside but the darkness of the night.

The radiance wasn’t entering the house. It was simply appearing inside it.

Warm golden sunlight spread across the walls, the floor, the ceiling, slipping beneath furniture and filling every corner where the darkness had gathered. For an instant, the manor looked as though morning had arrived several hours too early.

The monster stopped as a thin curl of smoke rose from its shoulder.

Its entire body began to sizzle.

It recoiled with a shriek and clawed at the floor, but the sunlight followed it wherever it went. Flesh blackened beneath the radiance, smoke poured from its back, and the creature threw itself toward the staircase in a desperate attempt to escape.

There was nowhere for it to hide. The light had swallowed the corridor completely, and every step it took only seemed to make the burning worse. I watched it stagger beneath the impossible sunlight, and for several seconds I simply stood there, trying to understand what I was looking at.

Sera had used her gift, Sun’s Grace.

The thought barely finished forming before the monster suddenly twisted around and charged straight toward her.

My hand moved on instinct.

I could summon the Breathing Fire Glove.

The answer came to me immediately. I knew exactly what would happen if I did. The glove would appear, the flames would answer my will, and this thing would probably be dead before it could take another step.

But so would my secret.

The System was one of the few things in this world that I could never allow anyone to understand, and summoning one of its items in front of Sera would be more suspicious than anything I could possibly explain afterward.

I didn’t know how much she had already noticed about me. I didn’t know whether she had ever wondered why certain things seemed to happen around me that shouldn’t have been possible. I wasn’t going to give her another piece of the puzzle.

So I watched...

The creature crossed the remaining distance in a blur, its claws stretching toward Sera.

She lowered the whistle as it vanished and a sword appeared in its place.

The blade was plain, without ornament or decoration, but the moment Sera’s fingers closed around its hilt, something ignited along its length.

Flames poured from the steel, bright and strangely pure, wrapping around the sword in twisting coils. They weren’t ordinary flames. There was something almost sacred about them, something that made the hair on my arms rise despite the heat.

The fire gathered near the blade’s edge and took on a vague shape, long and serpentine, like a dragon formed from nothing but raging divine flame.

The creature reached her.

Sera stepped forward instead of back.

Her sword drove into its abdomen.

The impact was almost quiet.

The monster froze.

For a brief moment, neither of them moved. The creature’s tentacles hung beside Sera’s shoulders while the sword remained buried deep inside its body. Then the flames moved.

They traveled from the blade into the creature.

Its body convulsed.

Sera twisted the sword.

Pa!

The monster exploded.

Thousands of fragments flew across the corridor, but none of them reached us.

The divine fire spread through every piece before they could fall, consuming them in midair until the room was filled with tiny sparks that drifted downward like burning dust. Then even those disappeared, leaving only a few black marks across the floor and walls.

The sunlight vanished with them.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

I could hear my own breathing.

Then came the unmistakable creak of a door.

Mr. Rowan stepped out, looking as though he had been dragged directly from sleep. His hair was disheveled, his shirt only half-buttoned, and his expression carried the mild irritation of a man who had been awakened by an unusually loud noise. That expression lasted approximately two seconds.

His eyes traveled across the corridor.

The shattered furniture.

The damaged wall.

The blackened floor.

The lingering smell of something burned.

Then he looked at Sera and me.

His face went completely pale.

He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to.

Several more doors opened behind him, and the servants began emerging from their rooms, some still fastening their clothes, others holding lamps as they tried to understand what had happened.

Confused questions quickly filled the corridor, but they died down one after another when everyone finally saw the state of the house. Somewhere behind them, footsteps hurried across the floor, and Mother appeared.

The moment she saw us, her expression changed.

"Edmund."

She rushed forward and pulled me into her arms before I could even answer. A second later, Sera was pulled into the embrace as well, Mother holding both of us tightly while her eyes searched our faces and clothes for injuries.

"Are you hurt?"

"I’m fine, Mother."

"You’re certain?"

I nodded.

She looked at Sera.

Sera gave a quiet nod as well.

Mother exhaled shakily and held us for another moment before finally letting go. Around us, the servants were whispering among themselves, but none of them seemed particularly interested in approaching the remains of whatever had attacked us.

Father arrived soon afterward.

He stopped at the end of the corridor, and for once, he didn’t immediately speak. His gaze moved over the room with the slow precision of someone trying to understand a situation that refused to make sense. He looked at the destroyed furniture, then the scorched walls, and finally at the empty space where the monster had been.

His expression hardened.

"Mr. Rowan."

The butler immediately straightened.

"Yes, my lord."

"Contact the Twilight Order."

Mr. Rowan’s eyes widened slightly.

Father continued before he could respond.

"If they cannot be reached, contact the Church. Tell them there was an attack inside the manor and that the creature was destroyed before they arrived."

"At once, my lord."