Chapter 28: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Break

Chapter 28: The Boy Who Wouldn't Break

A scream cut through the thick silence.

It came from the far wing of the ruined facility, sharp and sudden. Volundr froze mid-step, Senjutsu flaring wide.

Stone crumbled. Holy wards cracked like glass. The tension in the air ruptured as a chorus of shouts, spells, and war cries shattered what little peace had lingered in the dark.

"Ambush," Claudius growled, drawing his greatsword with a ring of steel. Lirien muttered a curse, already forming a barrier of shimmering blue light around the rescued children.

Volundr's spear was in his hand before he consciously thought to summon it.

"Defensive formation," he commanded.

"Lirien, maintain the shield. Claudius, left flank. I'll take the advance."

The first attackers burst into the corridor like wolves loosed from a cage. Ragged figures, half in priest robes and half in black ops gear, faces shadowed by hatred and divine madness.

Their weapons glowed with corrupted holy light—blades, maces, and glyph-wrapped guns meant to purge devils.

And among them, worse: failed test subjects.

Bodies too twisted to be called human. Limbs grown into weapons, mouths that chanted broken hymns, eyes that cried blood. They were tools now, stripped of mind and mercy.

Volundr met them head-on.

Ash and Flame

His spear moved like lightning wrapped in silk. The first attacker—a zealot wielding dual daggers inscribed with false blessings—lunged, only to be impaled mid-air and slammed into the wall.

A ripple of force exploded from the strike, hurling back two more enemies.

Claudius roared, cleaving a mutated exorcist from shoulder to waist. Lirien fired twin bolts of condensed starlight, blinding a cluster of foes trying to flank them from the rubble.

Amid the chaos, Volundr watched. Calculated. Adapted.

The corridor was narrow—a killbox by design. But now, it served him. He flowed through enemies like water through a broken dam, deflecting holy strikes, sweeping legs, disabling with clean precision.

He didn't kill unless he had to. But mercy had limits.

"They were sent to erase the evidence," he said through clenched teeth. "Even the broken. Even the innocent."

And then, from the side chamber, another scream—smaller, younger.

Caelum's Spark

Caelum had refused to hide.

Even as Lirien urged the children behind her barrier, even as blood dripped from the gash on his side, he stood between a limping boy and the door. His breath came in gasps. One eye swollen shut. But his stance was unwavering.

He wasn't supposed to fight. He barely had strength left.

But when the malformed exorcist with glowing chains burst into the room, Caelum didn't flinch.

His body moved on instinct.

The broken sword hilt he still clutched flared. A spark of something deep within him ignited—not magic, not learned technique, but something raw and wild. Light. Unrefined. Unstable.

It burst from his hands like a pulse, a flare of holy energy untamed by training. It wasn't sharp or focused.

But it was enough.

The chain-wielding exorcist recoiled as if struck by a burning wind. His robes caught flame. He screamed and fell.

Caelum stood in the smoke, panting, the glow fading from his hands.

Behind him, the smaller boy whimpered.

"You're okay now," Caelum said softly. "They won't touch you. Not while I'm breathing."

The Turning Tide

Volundr reached them seconds later.

The enemies near Caelum were already down—either burned or unconscious. But more were coming.

Volundr swept into the chamber, his presence a cold wind of death and promise. A spear thrust pinned a corrupted knight to the wall. A roundhouse kick shattered another's warded shield.

He paused only a moment to look at Caelum.

The boy's arms trembled. His knees threatened to buckle. But his eyes—violet and burning—met Volundr's with defiance, not fear.

Volundr knelt beside him.

"You protected someone who couldn't fight," he said.

Caelum nodded.

"That makes you more than a survivor."

Another wave of attackers approached. Volundr stood and stepped forward.

His next movements were not defensive. They were final.

He became a storm.

Storm Without Mercy

Volundr's Limitless Aura expanded with lethal intent.

Every strike carried layered technique—divine disarming, energy siphoning, nerve point collapse.

His spear spun like the axis of a hurricane. The exorcists broke and fled. The test subjects—those still clinging to life—collapsed as Volundr used his aura to sever the energy chains enslaving them.

Claudius arrived at his side, bloody but uninjured. "Perimeter secure."

"Lirien?"

"Stable. Shield intact. Three wounded children. No deaths."

Volundr exhaled.

The silence after battle was always louder than the chaos.

He turned back to Caelum.

The boy had finally sunk to one knee, but he hadn't passed out. He was still awake. Still watching.

Volundr offered a hand.

Caelum took it.

Aftermath

In the hours that followed, the ruins were sealed by Volundr's wards. Survivors were stabilized. The dead were given proper rites—even the fallen enemies.

But Volundr kept coming back to one moment:

That spark.

Caelum had no training. No polish. But what he did have was will. Instinct. The soul of a protector.

Volundr watched him sleep in the field tent they'd set up inside the facility's old chapel. Lirien had cleaned and bandaged him. He would heal.

But his eyes...

He's more than just a survivor, Volundr thought. He's a spark that refused to go out. Even buried in darkness. Even soaked in blood. He stood.

The thought stayed with him long into the night.

And in his journal, beneath the mission notes, he wrote a single line:

"The boy who wouldn't break."