After changing from its original husk form, The fog thickens as the prayer-lights gutter and go out, one by one. The sky above the petrified tree tears like paper—the wound is a smear of impossible black, edged with a pale, sickly moonlight. From that seam the Night condenses into a figure: plated silver catching no light, a cage-crown where a face should be, and between armor seams the black breath of the aspect leaking slow and hungry.

Heolstor steps forward. Each footfall is a small, slow; the floor at his passing blacken and steam. In his rightmost hand the Moonlight greatsword hangs low, its edge a dull crescent that drinks the weak glow from the broken sky. On the other right-arm another blade droops, rust and chip catching like teeth. In the left, a short reverse dagger is tilted, ready to bite behind defenses.

He halts two breaths away. The rune at his chest ripples once—an emblem lighting the ground in a lattice of night marks—and from those marks a handful of tiny rifts open, spitting slow motes that hang like moths. The Night strengthens, and with it Heolstor’s outline grows clearer, the silhouette of a lord assembled from trophies and shadow.

Without uttering a word, Heolstor inclines the cage of his helmet as if to regard the contender. The motion is almost courtly. The Moonlight blade hums. The air goes thin and cold.

Then, in a single movement, he draws — not to greet, but to begin. The greatsword cleaves a line through the fog; the strike is announcement and sentence. The Night answers with a hush like a held breath, waiting for the first scarlet drop of failure beneath its shadow.