The Twice-blessed Paladin

The chamber erupts into chaos.

The Veilborn Cultists move first, their forms shifting unnaturally as they surge forward with impossible speed.

Aldric barely has time to push the woman behind him before the first attack comes.

A clawed hand slashes for his throat.

He twists, narrowly avoiding the strike, bringing his greatsword in a horizontal arc.

Steel meets flesh.

But instead of the clean, decisive cut he expects, the cultist's body bends unnaturally, contorting away from the blade like liquid.

Aldric's momentum carries his strike through empty air.

Then the creature lunges again.

It moves too fast. Too fluid.

He barely has time to raise his armored forearm, blocking the claws as they scrape against the steel, leaving behind trails of black ichor.

Another cultist comes from behind.

Aldric drops low, twisting into a brutal backward swing.

This time, he does not aim for flesh.

He takes the legs.

The cultist collapses, hissing in something that is not pain, but frustration.

The others keep coming.

Aldric grits his teeth and surges forward.

The cultists fight as if unbound by the rules of mortal bodies.

They twist at unnatural angles.

Their limbs snap and reform mid-motion.

Some grow additional arms mid-strike, the flesh splitting open to reveal more claws, more weapons.

Aldric fights with precision, calculated movements—but these things do not die like men.

He cleaves one in half, only to watch as its torso writhes, dragging itself forward with its remaining limbs.

He decapitates another, but the body keeps moving, grasping blindly for him even as its head collapses.

"They are not living. They are something else."

Aldric adjusts.

He switches from clean swordplay to brutality.

One cultist lunges for him—Aldric lets it get close, then slams his armored elbow into its face.

The skull cracks inward, and the body convulses violently before falling still.

"Blunt force. They cannot regenerate what is completely shattered."

He turns the battle.

He drives a boot into a cultist's chest, slamming it against the wall.

Another tries to flank him—he grabs it by the throat and crushes it with his gauntleted grip.

They keep coming.

But he does not stop.

Aldric moves like a storm of iron and blood, but something inside him begins to stir.

Each time he strikes down a cultist, his holy blessing pulses.

Golden light briefly flares along his blade, burning through the unnatural flesh.

But then—something else pulses with it.

A shadow. A crackling, dark force that runs through his bones like fire.

When he impales the next cultist, his blade does not just pierce—it drains.

The cultist shudders violently, its black ichor turning to dust, its body shriveling into a hollow husk.

Aldric staggers back, gripping his sword.

"That was not just holy magic."

"That was something else."

The remaining cultists hesitate.

They sense it, too.

Something in Aldric does not belong to their world.

But neither does it belong to theirs.

A moment of silence.

Then the Veilborn Priest steps forward.

The priest is different from the others.

It does not rush him.

It does not move unnaturally.

It simply walks forward, slowly, deliberately.

Aldric grips his sword, ready for another battle.

But the priest does not attack.

Instead, it speaks.

And when it does, its voice is two voices—one deep, guttural, and one a whisper on the edges of hearing.

"You are no ordinary knight," the priest says.

Aldric says nothing.

The priest smiles.

It tilts its head slightly, as if listening to something unseen.

Then it whispers, "He sees you now."

Aldric's vision distorts.

For just a moment—just an instant—the world shifts.

The torches flicker violently, casting impossible shadows.

The room stretches, warps, becoming something else.

A presence presses against his mind, vast and unknowable.

And then—

A voice.

Not the priest's.

Something greater.

Something from beyond.

A voice that should not exist in the mortal realm.

It speaks one word.

"Aldric."

The room snaps back into reality.

Aldric staggers, gripping his blade, his breathing sharp and uneven.

The priest watches, its black eyes filled with amusement.

"You felt Him, didn't you?"

Aldric lifts his sword.

The priest chuckles.

"You do not yet understand your place in this world, Twice-Blessed. But you will."

Aldric's eyes narrow.

"You talk too much."

The priest laughs.

Then it raises its hands.

The walls tremble.

The remaining cultists rise again.