The voice cut through the battlefield like a blade through flesh.

  "WHO DARES DEFILE THE MOTHER?"

  The ground shook. Not from explosions or magic, but from something old stirring beneath.

  Every cultist stopped fighting. Every spawn froze mid-attack. Even the soldiers paused, their weapons still raised, their eyes turning toward the source of the voice.

  In the deepest part of the crater, where the ritual chamber used to be, the earth cracked open.

  Stone split. Glass shattered. From the fissure rose a coffin.

  It was ancient. Black wood so old it had petrified into something harder than steel. Symbols covered every surface, carved so deep they looked like wounds. The lid was sealed with chains that glowed with eldritch light.

  The chains began to break.

  One. Two. Three. Each snapping with a sound like bones cracking.

  The lid fell away.

  And from inside, something crawled.

  It moved wrong. Too many joints. Too many angles. The spine bent in ways that made the soldiers look away, their minds refusing to process what they were seeing.

  The Black Pope of the Thousandfold Gospel emerged from his tomb.

  His skin was pale as parchment, cracked and yellowed with age. Black veins swelled beneath the surface, pulsing with something that was not quite blood. A torn mitre was fused to his skull, bone growths having welded the holy crown directly to his cranium over centuries of stillness.

  His torso was gaunt, ribs visible through translucent skin. And from beneath those ribs, something breathed. Something moved. Something that had been growing inside him for longer than most of the soldiers had been alive.

  But it was his lower body that made even hardened veterans step back.

  He had no legs.

  Instead, a dragging mass of vestigial limbs and coiling flesh extended from his waist. Dozens of half-formed appendages, some with fingers, some with claws, some with nothing but raw muscle. They writhed independently, pulling him forward across the glass with wet scraping sounds.

  His shadow split into multiple shapes as he moved. Seven shadows from one body, each one moving differently.

  When he spoke, the air filled with the smell of wet soil and old blood.

  "ALL childrens!" His voice carried across the battlefield with unnatural clarity. "THE BLACK POPE HAS RISEN!"

  "POPE!" All Cultists screamed in unison, dropping to their knees. "THE POPE! THE POPE HAS AWAKENED!"

  Tears streamed down their faces. Some were sobbing with joy. Others were trembling with religious ecstasy.

  "We are saved!" one cultist cried. "The Mother's voice has come!"

  "The Black Pope will deliver us!" another screamed. "Praise the Thousandfold Gospel!"

  The soldiers watched in horror as the cultists prostrated themselves before the crawling horror.

  "What the fuck is that?" someone whispered.

  "Mythical rank," Axel said quietly, his voice tight. "Another Mythical rank. How many did they have?"

  The Black Pope dragged himself forward, his vestigial limbs leaving trails in the blood-soaked ground. He surveyed the battlefield with eyes that had seen centuries pass.

  "My children," he said softly. "My faithful flock. You have been tested. You have been broken."

  His gaze swept across the cultists, taking in their wounds, their numbers.

  "But you have not abandoned Her. And so I rise to deliver Her judgment."

  He raised one withered hand toward the soldiers.

  "Papal Decree," he intoned, his voice taking on a resonant quality that made reality itself shiver. "ALL FAITH MUST ENDURE!"

  The Edict manifested.

  Every cultist felt it. Their wounds stopped hurting. Their fear evaporated. Their exhaustion vanished. They stood up, eyes blazing with renewed fanaticism, their bodies moving with strength that shouldn't have been possible.

  "We are blessed!" they screamed. "The Pope has granted us endurance! FOR THE MOTHER!"

  They charged back into battle with suicidal fervor, attacking soldiers with bare hands when their weapons were gone, biting when their hands were severed, crawling forward even when their legs were broken.

  "They're not stopping!" a soldier screamed. "I shot him five times and he's still coming!"

  "Aim for the heads!" Daniel commanded. "They can still die! Just keep shooting!"

  But the cultists were overwhelming. The Papal Decree made them effectively immune to pain and fear. Every injury was ignored. Every wound was endured.

  The soldier count dropped. 285. 270. 255.

  "We're being pushed back!" someone yelled.

  "Hold the line!" Axel roared, his Dominion of Wrath flaring. "Don't let them—"

  A figure landed in the center of the battlefield with enough force to crater the ground.

  Twenty tentacles spread like a crown of surgical horror. Each one held an instrument of absolute terror. And in the largest tentacle, a chainsaw roared with mechanical fury.

  VRZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

  Nox stood up slowly, his transformed body towering over cultists and soldiers alike. Where his head should have been was a writhing mass of appendages, each one tipped with a circular mouth full of teeth.

  The white porcelain mask was embedded in his chest now, glowing with dark light.

  "Who," the Black Pope said slowly, his ancient eyes narrowing, "are you?"

  Nox's voice came from everywhere and nowhere, distorted and inhuman.

  "The man who bang your mom last night."

  He moved.

  Faster than anything Mythical rank should move. The tentacles lashed out, twenty surgical instruments cutting through space with precision that defied physics.

  The first cultist didn't even see it coming. A scalpel that existed in multiple dimensions carved through his body, separating him into pieces that fell in different directions. The wound didn't bleed. It couldn't. The flesh was too confused about which dimension it was supposed to exist in.

  The second cultist tried to run. A tentacle wrapped around his throat and lifted him into the air. The circular mouth opened, and hundreds of needle-thin tongues pierced his skull, threading through his brain in microseconds. He stopped screaming. Stopped moving. Became a puppet.

  Nox threw the corpse into three more cultists, the impact crushing bones.

  "STOP HIM!" the Black Pope commanded. "ALL CHILDREN! BRING DOWN THE BLASPHEMER!"

  Fifty cultists swarmed toward Nox.

  He didn't retreat.

  CPR's roar intensified. VRZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

  The chainsaw swung in a wide arc.

  Irreversible Laceration.

  The blade connected with the first cultist's arm. The limb fell. But it wasn't just cut—it was severed from the concept of healing itself. The wound didn't close. Didn't scab. Didn't even try to regenerate. It just bled, eternally, until the cultist collapsed from blood loss seconds later.

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  The other cultists saw it and hesitated.

  That hesitation was fatal.

  Nox's tentacles struck again. Scalpels. Forceps. Needles. Each instrument found a target. Each strike was surgical, precise, designed to disable rather than kill outright.

  Because dead cultists couldn't suffer.

  "AHHHHHH!" A cultist screamed as a tentacle injected him with Awakening Anesthesia. His body went numb, paralyzed, but his mind remained perfectly aware as another tentacle began reconstructing his internal organs in creative new arrangements.

  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!" another cultist shrieked as needles threaded through his nervous system, rewiring pain receptors to fire constantly.

  "MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE!" A third cultist begged as his wounds were sealed but left partially open, skin grafted in ways that guaranteed eternal discomfort.

  The soldiers watched in stunned silence.

  "Is he... torturing them?" Kai whispered.

  "No," Axel said quietly. "He's operating on them. Without anesthesia. Without consent. While they're still fighting."

  "That's worse!" Ash said, his face pale.

  "Much worse," Jack agreed.

  But they couldn't look away.

  Nox moved through the cultists like a plague. His tentacles were everywhere at once, cutting, injecting, reconstructing. CPR's roar was constant, the chainsaw's blade finding flesh, leaving wounds that would never heal.

  And through it all, his voice echoed across the battlefield.

  "You wanted the Mother's blessing? Let me show you what REAL biological modification looks like!"

  A tentacle grabbed a cultist by the spine and lifted. Nox's palm-mouth opened, and hundreds of tongues invaded the cultist's body, threading through organs, rewiring systems. When he released the cultist, the man fell to the ground convulsing, his body trying to figure out why his stomach was now producing stomach acid at ten times normal rate.

  "THIS IS MEDICINE!" Nox roared. "THIS IS SURGERY! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DOCTOR STOPS BEING NICE!"

  The Black Pope watched with narrowed eyes.

  "Impressive," he admitted. "But futile."

  He raised both hands.

  "Papal Decree: ALL FLESH MUST MULTIPLY!"

  The Edict changed.

  Every wound on every cultist began to sprout. Tumorous growths emerged from cuts, expanding rapidly, forming crude weapons of bone and claw. The spawn that remained doubled in size, their bodies swelling grotesquely.

  Even the cultists Nox had modified began to change, their reconstructed organs growing uncontrollably.

  "You cannot win," the Black Pope said calmly. "I am the voice of the Mother. I am doctrine made flesh. And you are—"

  CPR's blade caught his throat.

  Nox had closed the distance in an instant, moving faster than the Pope could react. The chainsaw pressed against withered skin, the teeth spinning, ready to cut.

  "You talk too much," Nox said.

  The Black Pope smiled. "Do you think this frightens me? I have lived for three centuries. I have seen the Mother's true face. I have no fear of—"

  Nox pulled the chainsaw back and swung.

  Not at the Pope's throat.

  At the mass of vestigial limbs below his waist.

  The blade connected. Irreversible Laceration.

  Ten of the Pope's lower appendages fell away, severed completely. And they didn't regenerate. Couldn't regenerate. The wounds were permanent.

  The Black Pope's eyes went wide.

  "What... what have you done?"

  "I'm a surgeon," Nox said coldly. "I know exactly where to cut."

  He swung again. More appendages fell. The Pope tried to crawl backward, but Nox was faster. The tentacles wrapped around the remaining limbs, holding him in place.

  "NO! UNHAND ME! I AM THE POPE! I AM—"

  "You're a patient," Nox interrupted. "And you need treatment."

  CPR descended toward the Pope's chest, toward the thing breathing beneath his ribs.

  "CHILDREN!" the Pope screamed. "SAVE YOUR PONTIFF! SACRIFICE YOURSELVES TO—"

  The ground exploded.

  Not from below.

  From within.

  Wilhelm burst from the earth twenty meters away, but he was no longer human.

  His body had fused with something. The fragment of Shub-Niggurath that had been hidden in the deepest part of the sanctum. Black flesh covered his torso, pulsing with bioluminescent veins. His legs had become digitigrade, ending in cloven hooves. Horns sprouted from his skull, massive curved things that resembled a ram's.

  But his face was still partially human. Enough to be recognizable. Enough to see the madness in his eyes.

  "FORGIVE ME, MOTHER!" Wilhelm screamed. "FORGIVE THIS UNWORTHY SHEPHERD!"

  His mouth opened impossibly wide.

  And he began to consume.

  The nearest cultists didn't even have time to scream. Wilhelm's jaw unhinged like a snake's, his throat expanding to swallow them whole. One. Two. Five. Ten.

  "WILHELM?!" A cultist shrieked. "WHAT ARE YOU—"

  Wilhelm's tongue wrapped around the cultist and pulled him in. The screaming stopped abruptly.

  "NO!" another cultist tried to run. "THE SHEPHERD HAS GONE MAD!"

  But Wilhelm was everywhere. His body stretched, elongated, reaching across the battlefield with impossible speed. Tentacles erupted from his back, each one ending in a mouth. They grabbed cultists by the dozens, pulling them toward his main maw.

  "POPE!" the cultists screamed, turning to their leader. "SAVE US! THE SHEPHERD IS—"

  Wilhelm's tentacle wrapped around the Black Pope.

  The ancient cultist looked up at Wilhelm with wide eyes. Not fear. Not anger.

  Joy.

  Pure, radiant joy.

  "BROTHER WILHELM!" the Pope cried out, tears streaming down his cracked face. "YOU HAVE BEEN BLESSED! THE MOTHER HAS CHOSEN YOU!"

  Wilhelm's tentacle pulled him closer.

  "I have failed Her," the Pope said, his voice filled with ecstasy. "I could not protect Her children. But you! You will succeed where I failed! Take my devotion! Take my faith! TAKE EVERYTHING!"

  Wilhelm's mouth opened.

  "YES!" the Pope screamed as he was pulled toward the maw. "YES! I WILL JOIN THE MOTHER! I WILL BECOME ONE WITH HER FLESH! THIS IS SALVATION! THIS IS—"

  Wilhelm swallowed the Black Pope whole.

  The remaining cultists screamed. Some tried to fight. Others tried to flee. But Wilhelm consumed them all, his body growing larger with each one, his form swelling grotesquely.

  Four hundred and twenty cultists remaining became three hundred. Then two hundred. Then one hundred.

  The soldiers watched in horror as Wilhelm devoured his own followers.

  "What the fuck is happening?" someone whispered.

  "He's..." Axel couldn't finish the sentence.

  "Evolving," Daniel said quietly. "Using them as fuel. He's going to transform into something worse."

  Wilhelm's body had grown to the size of a small building now. His human features were disappearing, replaced by something purely monstrous. The horns had multiplied, covering his head like a crown. His torso had split open, revealing dozens of smaller mouths inside.

  And still he consumed.

  Fifty cultists left. Twenty. Ten.

  The last cultist, a young woman, fell to her knees.

  "Please," she begged. "Please, Wilhelm. We served faithfully. We believed. We—"

  Wilhelm's tentacle wrapped around her gently. Almost lovingly.

  Then pulled her in.

  The battlefield fell silent.

  Every cultist was gone. Consumed. Converted into fuel for Wilhelm's transformation.

  His body began to convulse. To collapse inward. Black flesh wrapped around him like a cocoon, sealing him completely. The cocoon pulsed with internal light, veins of bioluminescence spreading across its surface.

  "NOW!" Axel screamed. "WHILE HE'S TRANSFORMING! HIT THAT COCOON WITH EVERYTHING!"

  Five hundred weapons opened fire.

  Bullets tore into the cocoon. Grenades exploded against its surface. Magic spells hammered into it from every angle. Steven's ice. Daniel's explosives. Every soldier with a weapon or a skill threw everything they had.

  The cocoon didn't break.

  It didn't even crack.

  The bullets bounced off. The explosions dissipated. The magic fizzled against its surface like water on hot stone.

  "It's not working!" someone yelled.

  "Keep firing!" Axel commanded. "Don't stop!"

  But even as he said it, he knew it was useless.

  The cocoon began to swell.

  Larger. Larger. The black flesh expanding, growing, pulsing with power that made the air itself feel heavy.

  Then it burst.

  Wilhelm crawled out.

  And he was no longer Wilhelm.

  His body had grown to massive proportions, easily ten meters tall. His form was a twisted amalgamation of man and goat, fur covering most of his body in matted patches of black and brown. His legs were powerful, digitigrade, ending in hooves that cracked the glass beneath them with each step.

  His torso was humanoid but grotesquely muscular, every muscle defined to the point of obscenity. His arms were long, too long, reaching almost to his knees, ending in hands with six fingers each tipped with obsidian claws.

  But his head.A massive goat skull sat atop his shoulders, but it was not normal. The jaw was large, filled with many teeth. The eye sockets held seven eyes each, all of them red, all of them moving independently. The horns spiraled upward and backward, covered in carved runes that glowed with eldritch light.

  And from his back sprouted a dozen tentacles, each one ending in a different mouth. Some humanoid. Some goat-like. Some belonging to things that had no name.

  His shadow didn't follow him. It moved ahead, spreading across the ground like oil, carrying with it the smell of rotting vegetation and birth fluids.

  When he spoke, his voice was a chorus. Wilhelm's voice mixed with the Black Pope's. The Mother's whisper underneath it all.

  "I AM REBORN."

  The soldiers felt their hope drain away.

  All of them. Every single one. They looked at Wilhelm's new form and understood.

  They couldn't win.

  They couldn't even hurt him.

  They were going to die here.

  Axel felt his knees weaken. His Dominion of Wrath flickered, the rage giving way to despair.

  Steven's ice faltered, melting from his armor.

  Daniel's hands shook so badly he dropped his weapon.

  Kai, Ash, and Jack fell to the ground, unable to even stand.

  "We're finished," someone whispered.

  "We're all going to die," another said.

  Wilhelm took a step forward, and the ground cracked beneath his hoof.

  "ALL OF YOU," he said in his chorus voice. "WILL BECOME MY OFFERING. THE MOTHER WILL ACCEPT YOUR FLESH. YOUR BONES. YOUR SOULS. ALL WILL BE HER GARDEN."

  He raised one massive hand toward the soldiers.

  "AND YOUR DEATHS WILL BE THE SEED OF HER ARRIVAL."

  Then twenty tentacles wrapped around his arm and pulled.