Noah felt the change move through his body like a wave.

The aching in his muscles didn’t disappear entirely, the heaviness in his limbs lightened.

His breathing steadied, and the strength that had been draining out of him through the fight started returning in a slow but steady flow.

His stamina was coming back.

He knew exactly who had done it.

’It was done by Lyria. thanks’

He didn’t look back to confirm it. He just took what she had given him and used it.

He kicked off the ground.

The distance between him and Marbas closed in seconds, Noah driving forward with everything the boost had returned to him, spear leveled and ice already forming along the shaft.

Marbas saw him coming.

His smile widened despite the blood and the damage and the missing arm. Despite all of it, that dangerous composure he had was still there on his face.

"You think you can kill me?" His voice was heavy, the exhaustion in it undeniable now.

"Dream on, boy." He was not bothered by Noah.

He raised his remaining arm to intercept.

And then stopped.

Not just slowed down, but it stopped completely, all at once, like something had reached inside him and simply removed his ability to move.

His eyes went glassy and unfocused, the outstretched arm frozen halfway through its motion.

He stood there rigid and unresponsive, staring at nothing.

Noah registered it in half a second and didn’t waste the other half asking questions.

He sent the command downward.

Ice erupted from the floor beneath Marbas’s feet, surging up around his ankles and calves and locking him in place.

A second layer of immobility over whatever had already taken hold of him.

Then Noah drove the spear forward.

The tip punched through Marbas’s chest with a wet, tearing sound that echoed across the chamber walls.

The daze state of the demon broke.

"ARRGGH—!!"

Marbas came back to himself in an instant. The scream ripping out of him as his eyes refocused and found Noah’s face directly in front of his own.

Blood welled up immediately around the spear shaft and ran down the blade in dark rivulets, dripping to the stone floor.

Noah didn’t pull back.

He twisted the spear.

Ice detonated from inside the wound. Sharp internal spikes bursting outward through the surrounding flesh with a sound that was considerably worse than the impact had been.

Marbas’s body shuddered violently against the restraints of the ice at his feet, another scream tearing out of him, raw and broken.

Noah held the spear in place and looked at him.

Across the chamber, people were moving.

Lyria had finished channeling the boost toward Noah. And immediately turned to the students around her. Moving between them with quick hands and calm efficiency. c

Checking pulses, helping people sit up, calling out to the ones who were still trying to find their footing.

Arisha was already on her feet.

Emma beside her, gauntlets still on, shaking the fog of the earlier fight out of her head with short sharp blinks.

Damien had gotten himself upright, one hand braced on his knee, sword still in his grip out of pure stubbornness.

On the far side of the chamber, Mary had disappeared from the main group and was moving along the stone wall in long quick strides.

Her hands pressing against the surface as she went, searching.

Noah pulled back slightly and looked at Marbas.

The demon was still standing. Barely... held upright as much by the ice around his legs as by anything in his own body.

His head had dropped forward. His breathing came in shallow, wet pulls. The blood from the wound was running freely now, pooling around the ice at his feet.

Then he coughed.

It was a broken voice. Filled with pain. Blood came with it, running down his chin and dripping from his jaw.

His inside were burning in pain at the same time the cold ice was there. Which he didn’t know whether it was soothing or pain or just intensifying it.

He raised his head slowly and looked up at Noah and smiled.

Marbas was not done yet. He still ha will to continue.

The smile he just show was the worst kind of smile.

The kind worn by someone who has already accepted something the other person hasn’t realized yet.

"You did it," he said, his voice barely above a rasp. "You are actually killing me."

Noah had seen this before.

The specific shape of this moment, someone dying with a smile on their face, telling you that you had won.

He had seen it. The man who had attacked inside the academy, controlling Patrick’s body, wearing that same expression at the end.

This gaves him same kind of feeling.

It had meant something then too. His grip on the spear tightened.

"But..." Marbas exhaled slowly, the smile not going anywhere. "You’re too late."

His words only made Noah more tense.

Noah’s eyes moved past him.

Toward the wall. Where the carved eye sitting enormous and dominant across the entire back surface of the chamber.

The one he had been not thinking too hard about since they arrived.

His stomach dropped.

’The ritual. The entire point of bringing everyone here was the ritual. To sacrifice us!!’ He thought with pale expression.

"Shittt—"

He grabbed the spear shaft and pulled.

Marbas moved as well.

Despite everything, the spear through his chest, the ice holding his legs, the blood loss.

He still moved. One arm came up and the hand closed around Noah’s wrist in a grip that had no business being as strong as it was.

The spear tore further inside him as he lurched forward. He didn’t seem to notice or care.

"You can’t run away," Marbas said quietly.

Then Mary’s voice rang from across the hall.

"EVERYONE!! THERE’S A DOOR OVER HERE!! COME NOW!!"

Noah’s head snapped toward the sound.

Mary, she was standing at the far wall, pressed against a section of stone that looked identical to every other section of stone around it.