CHAPTER 10: HOLY DIVER
The ancient parchment ripped like brittle skin beneath Elizabeth’s grip, its edges curling as it disintegrated in her hands. The sound echoed through the vault—a final, irreversible act.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then, laughter.
Low, cold, utterly unimpressed.
Eriel Ravenholm didn’t flinch. He didn’t reach for the scraps of the ruined contract. He simply watched her with a look of deep amusement, shaking his head.
“You foolish child.”
Elizabeth’s breath hitched. Something was wrong.
Eriel took a slow step forward, the air tightening around them, pressing inward, suffocating.
“Did you truly believe the ritual was bound to parchment?” His voice was velvet, cruel in its patience. “That a few faded words could contain the will of the Ravenholms?”
The vault shuddered. The torches dimmed.
Eriel’s shadow stretched unnaturally, spilling across the stone floor like an ink spill spreading from an open wound.
He smiled. “The power of the contract belongs to me.”
Victor grabbed Elizabeth’s wrist, his grip firm. “Elizabeth, run.”
Too late.
Eriel raised a single hand.
And then—
The world collapsed.
A pressure unlike anything before slammed into Elizabeth’s body. It struck with the force of a mountain, bending reality itself, forcing her to her knees as if gravity had multiplied a thousandfold.
Her limbs refused to move.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Her skull burned. Her very mind was being crushed.
“Holy Diver.”
The words left Eriel’s lips in a whisper. A name, a command, a sentence.
His eyes glowed a terrible gold, and the power of the Warp roared to life around him. Unlike the others, unlike any psychic she had ever faced, his connection was absolute.
This was not some mere ability.
He was rewriting reality itself.
Elizabeth could not resist.
Her arms wrenched behind her back of their own accord, her spine arched, her vision swam with static. The harder she fought, the more the power constricted.
Eriel tilted his head. “I can make you do anything.”
His voice was serene.
“I can force your body to stand.”
Elizabeth was yanked upward like a marionette.
“I can make you dance.”
Her feet twitched, struggling against invisible strings.
“I could make you cut out your own tongue.”
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A spectral force seized her jaw, pulling it open, her fingers jerking toward her mouth.
She let out a strangled gasp.
Victor snarled and lunged at Eriel, sword flashing—
—only to be stopped mid-air.
Victor froze in place. His own body refused to obey. His blade hovered mere inches from Eriel’s throat, trembling, unable to move forward.
Eriel regarded him with casual amusement.
“Even you, Victor?” He sighed. “You should have known better.”
Victor’s muscles spasmed, his own strength utterly meaningless. His own mind was not his own.
Holy Diver.
An ability that did not control minds. Did not influence thought.
It rewrote action itself.
Eriel was a god at this moment.
And they were his playthings.
Eriel barely lifted a finger.
The air snapped.
Melancholy Man—a towering, spectral force of sorrow and judgment—lunged at Eriel, its shadowy hands stretching toward him with a silent wail.
It never reached him.
Eriel turned his gaze toward it, and with a mere flick of his wrist, the entity unraveled.
A deafening, wretched screech filled the chamber as Holy Diver took hold.
Melancholy Man’s form fractured, its essence shredding apart like smoke caught in a hurricane. Its limbs twisted violently, its hollow face split open in a soundless scream as its very existence was torn into nothingness.
Eve and Evie let out strangled gasps, their bond to the creature snapping like a frayed thread.
Eriel exhaled, almost bored. “Pathetic.” His golden eyes shifted, settling on Eve. “Perhaps I should rip you apart next.”
Eve’s breath hitched, her body seizing under his gaze.
She couldn’t move.
She could already feel it—her muscles tensing against an unseen force.
Eriel raised his hand.
The world lurched.
Eve let out a strangled sound as something inside her began to twist, as if her very bones were being turned against her.
But then—
A blur of motion.
A single cry.
“EVE—!”
Evie threw herself forward.
She moved without thinking, without hesitation.
Her body intercepted the invisible force meant for her twin—
—and she took the full impact.
The room shook.
Evie’s back arched violently, her body convulsing. She choked, her mouth opening in a silent scream. Her veins bulged black, her eyes rolling back as the force ripped through her.
And then—
She was gone.
Her body snapped like a brittle twig.
Her form crumpled.
She hit the ground without a sound.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Eve’s mind blanked.
Her breath stopped.
The moment stretched—warped—became something unreal.
Evie wasn’t moving.
Her twin. Her sister.
Her other half.
No.
Her chest rose weakly.
A faint, shuddering breath.
And then—nothing.
Eve screamed.
It tore from her throat, a raw, guttural, soul-shattering wail of pure, unfiltered grief.
Her hands trembled as she reached for Evie’s face, cradling it, fingers shaking, feeling her warmth slipping away.
“No, no, no—EVIE!”
But Evie was gone.
The connection—the tether they had shared since birth—had snapped.
And with it, so had Eve.
Something inside her broke.
She shook her twin, her hands tightening.
She didn’t care about the war.
She didn’t care about the Ravenholms.
She didn’t care about anything.
Melancholy Man—what remained of it—let out a fractured, dying wail.
Its very essence was unraveling, crumbling as its bond to Evie was severed.
Eve sobbed, shaking her head. “No, no, don’t go, please—”
But the entity was fading, its form dissipating into the dark.
Just like Evie.
Gone.
Forever.