She hovered—half light, half ruin.
Mara, the long-sleeping goddess, now stood revealed before them. Her beauty was that of a statue sculpted by nightmares: divine and corpse-like, radiant and hollow. Her skin cracked further with every breath, spilling threads of red light that scorched the ground beneath her feet.
Khoryv rose first, coughing blood, yet eyes still fierce.
"Everyone—stand! She's not whole yet!"
Lybid groaned, pulling herself up from a nest of broken roots. Her fingers clutched the Staff of Verdance, its glow now flickering as though sensing the terror before them. Around her, Kyi struggled to help Yurko, whose side had been pierced by a shard of rock. Maksym rolled to his feet, one of his sacred knives snapped, the other gripped tight in bleeding hands.
Mara tilted her head.
Then… she spoke.
Not in words.
Not in any language.
She spoke with silence—a silence that cracked bark and made rivers ripple backward. Bones shook. Light dimmed. A silence so absolute it screamed into every soul present.
Kyi fell to his knees, clutching his head. Visions clawed into him—his mother drowning again, begging for someone to save her. Then Yurko, standing beside him, twisted and screaming in flame. A thousand fates—all ending.
Lybid slammed the staff into the ground.
"Rod, grant us protection!" she cried in Old Slavonic. A ring of green light flared outward, pushing back Mara's silent scream.
Khoryv charged again.
"Before she regains her strength! Push her back!"
The group responded.
Kyi rose, his hand blazing with holy light, his other guiding a surge of divine water that coiled upward like a serpent. Maksym, bleeding and breathing heavy, darted in and out with brutal strikes. Lybid summoned living roots that twisted into a wall around Mara's form, slowing her movement. Even Yurko, though wounded, fired bolt after bolt from the wolf's saddle, riding in sharp arcs.
Each blow was met with power. Cracks spread across Mara's skin—but her smile remained, broken and serene.
Back at the cave's entrance, Methodius and Shchek ran to it.
"She's rising faster than expected," he muttered, clenching the glowing cross and bible tighter.
Shchek followed nearby, covered in ash and blood of the monsters.
"WE NEED TO GET HER OUT OF THE CAVE!" Khoryv screamed.
Back in the battlefield, Lybid leapt forward.
She screamed words that had not been spoken in a thousand years—chants passed to her in dreams. She stuck the Staff into the ground.
Mara looked below her feet, a faint smile curled.
Beneath her, the ground trembled.
A gigantic tree trunk surged up into the sky, breaking through the rocks, ceiling and sweeping away everything in its path.