No sooner had breaths settled in the square of "Ocasia" than the features of the sky changed once more. The purple hue left by Alaric began to recede before a sickly green advance, a color resembling the rotting of bodies mixed with ancient swamp magic. Merlock had realized that a direct confrontation with Alaric's "Void" was spiritual suicide, so he decided to strike the city at its very veins; the "Plague of Shadows" began to seep through the underground water channels and the very breaths of air.
The "Army of the Forgotten Ones" felt the danger first. Their stone-like skin, which had withstood the light of angels, began to peel away, revealing pulsating green veins of venom beneath. The soldiers fell one after another, not dead, but transformed into creatures stripped of will, whispering incomprehensible words in Merlock's ancient tongue.
Elianor stood at the heart of this collapse, trying to protect Alaric's statue, which had begun to regain its human suppleness very slowly. Alaric's face had started to free itself from the black metal, but his eyes remained closed, his body trapped in that gray area between the living and the inanimate.
"Azrael!" Elianor shouted towards the mask-maker, who was desperately trying to cover the soldiers' noses with pieces of cloth soaked in purification magic. "This plague is not ordinary magic; it is 'Soul Drain.' Merlock is draining the life from the city to feed his crumbling body!"
Azrael replied, trembling with terror:
"He is weaving his threads around Alaric's mind through us! Every time his soldiers suffer, the king's certainty tears apart inside. Elianor, if Alaric does not wake up now, Ocasia will turn into a green cemetery, and he will be the king atop a rubble of corpses!"
At that moment, Alaric's statue shook violently. A painful, human rattle emanated from his chest, and his eyes suddenly opened. They were not normal eyes; they were a fathomless night in which particles of emerald light, gifted to him by Elianor, swam. His stone hand moved slowly and grasped the hilt of his sword, "Soul's Dusk," embedded in the ground.
"Merlock..." Alaric uttered, his voice emerging like the muffled roar of thunder underground. "The stench of your rot is choking what remains of my humanity."
Alaric tried to stand, but the illusory green chains woven by Merlock pulled him down. The plague began to climb his body as well, trying to desecrate the "Core of the Void." Alaric saw his soldiers turning into monsters, and saw Elianor fighting the green breaths with her blue scarf, which was beginning to lose its color.
Alaric realized that his power as a "Void" could destroy armies, but it could not heal souls. To purify the city of Merlock's plague, he had to offer something he had never offered before: a "sacrifice of purifying blood."
He turned to Elianor and looked at her with a farewell gaze she could not comprehend in that moment. Alaric uttered a whisper heard only by the pulse of her heart:
"Elianor.. Light killed them with certainty, and darkness kills them with corruption. For them to live, the Void must mix with Truth. Your dagger.. plunge it into the center of the mark on my chest."
Elianor froze in place. "What are you saying? Alaric, this will kill you!"
Alaric screamed as he wrestled with the green magic that began to cover his face:
"Do it! My blood now is not human blood; it is the 'Essence of Ash.' If it mixes with your emerald magic in my heart, it will explode into a purification that will erase Merlock's trace forever. No time for debate.. do it for them, for me!"
With tears streaming like a waterfall, Elianor raised the Dagger of Truth. Her hand trembled so much that the dagger nearly fell from her grasp. She approached the king, who was looking at her with a strange peace. She placed her hand over his heart, feeling the heat of the core and the cold of death.
"I loved you as a human, and I will follow you as ash," Elianor whispered, then plunged the dagger into the center of the mark.
An indescribable light exploded; a mixture of pitch-black and bright emerald green. A purifying wave erupted from Alaric's chest, sweeping through all of "Ocasia," turning the green mist into white ash that fell like snow. The monsters returned to being human, and the plague dispersed as if it had never been.
But in the center of the square, Alaric fell to his knees, purple blood gushing from his wound. The plague was gone, but the king's life seeped away with every drop of blood, while in the distance, Merlock screamed in terror as he saw his threads cut by the hand of the victim who had chosen to be the sacrifice.
The clamor in the city subsided, but the price was a piece of Alaric's soul, who fell unconscious in Elianor's lap, as particles of white ash covered their bodies, announcing a victory that smelled of farewell.