The journey through the twisted, labyrinthine city was a blur of instinct and motion. Edward was no longer navigating with sight alone. He was following the vibrations of the battle, a beacon of desperate, familiar energy in the alien stillness of Y'ha-nthlei.

He moved with a speed and agility that was both terrifying and unnatural. He used his new abyssal limbs as grappling hooks, firing them out to latch onto high ledges and crumbling archways, swinging across bottomless chasms with the grace of a shadowy, multi-limbed ape.

He scuttled up sheer, vertical walls, his bladed tendrils finding purchase in the smallest cracks, his human limbs keeping him balanced. He was a terrifying, arachnid predator, perfectly adapted to the hostile, three-dimensional terrain of the sunken city.

He arrived at the plaza of the colossal tentacled horror not a moment too soon. He emerged onto a high, crumbling balcony—the same one his team had stood on earlier—and took in the scene of carnage below. It was a losing battle. The Unchained, now allied with the few surviving, shell-shocked Iron Vulture mercenaries, were fighting with the grim, desperate courage of cornered animals. But they were being overwhelmed.

The colossal tentacle, a creature of earth and mouths, was a force of nature. It had turned the plaza into a churning meat grinder. Its massive, primary limb would smash down, shattering stone and shields, while smaller, secondary tentacles would erupt from the ground, grabbing warriors and dragging them screaming into the earth.

He saw Fenris, a bloody, raging berserker, physically wrestling with one of the smaller tentacles, her adamantite gauntlets clamped around it, her muscles straining as she tried to keep its snapping mouths away from a downed Iron Vulture. He saw Selene and Kira, a fluid, dancing duo of death, weaving between the thrashing appendages, their blades a blur as they tried to sever the smaller limbs, a task akin to trying to chop down a forest with a pair of carving knives. He saw his people, his pack, about to be broken.

A cold, silent fury, purer and more focused than any rage he had ever felt, settled in his core. He did not shout a war cry. He did not announce his presence. He simply dropped.

He leaped from the high balcony, a four-hundred-pound predator of muscle, steel, and shadow, and landed in the center of the plaza with an earth-shaking impact that cracked the stone flags. He did not land on his feet. He landed on all fours, his human hands and feet and the bladed tips of his four new abyssal appendages all hitting the ground at once in a low, predatory crouch.

He raised his head, and for a moment, the entire battle seemed to freeze.

Friend and foe alike, human and monster, all stared at the creature that had just appeared in their midst. His appearance was a brutal, shocking violation of the natural order. His familiar, human form was twisted into a monstrous silhouette by the four, twitching, obsidian-bladed limbs that sprouted from his back. His eyes glowed with a cold, abyssal light, and his face was a mask of calm, lethal fury.

The moment of stunned silence was broken by the main tentacle, which registered him as a new, primary threat. It whipped through the air with the speed of a striking cobra, a colossal, fleshy club aimed at turning him into a red smear on the plaza floor.

Edward's fighting style had been reborn.

He met the attack not by dodging, but by moving under it. He scurried forward on his new limbs, his body low to the ground, a horrifying, arachnid predator. The tentacle smashed into the ground where he had been, shattering the stone, but he was already moving, closing the distance to the creature's main body.

He was a whirlwind of death. His Sovereign blades, Regret and Resolve, were in his hands, but they were no longer his only weapons. His entire body was a weapon. He used his sword and dagger in a seamless, horrifying symphony of violence with his four new blades. He would parry a lashing secondary tentacle with Regret, slice another to ribbons with Resolve, and in the same fluid motion, his two upper abyssal blades would stab forward, impaling a third, while his two lower blades would provide stability or lash out at another target.

He was a living vortex of steel and shadow, a six-bladed killing machine. He was not just fighting the creature; he was dismembering it with a brutal, terrifying efficiency. He moved with a speed and unpredictability that the colossal, slow-moving horror could not comprehend. He was everywhere at once, a scuttling, leaping nightmare that hacked and stabbed and tore at its fleshy hide.

The tide of the battle turned in an instant. The Unchained and the Iron Vultures, who had been on the verge of annihilation, now found themselves as spectators to a one-sided slaughter. They watched, their mouths agape, their minds struggling to reconcile the leader they knew with the monster who was now single-handedly saving them.

Sarah, who had been hiding behind a shattered pillar, her heart frozen with terror, peered out and saw him. She saw the familiar lines of his face, contorted in a mask of predatory focus. And she saw the grotesque, twitching, bladed limbs that had erupted from his back. She saw him scuttling across the ground like an insect, tearing a monster apart with a feral grace that was both magnificent and utterly horrifying. A wave of nausea and fear washed over her. The man who had saved her, the boy who had died for her, the anchor of her world… was gone. In his place was this… thing. This beautiful, terrible, monstrous savior. The look in her eyes was not one of gratitude. It was one of pure, unadulterated fear. And that look, seen across the chaotic battlefield, was a blow to Edward's soul more grievous than any physical wound.

He had become the very thing everyone had always accused him of being. He was the monster in the dark. And he had just terrified the one person in the universe he had been fighting to protect.

A deep, guttural roar of pain and fury, a sound that was not entirely human, tore from his throat. He channeled his anguish, his self-loathing, into his assault. His attacks became even more savage, more brutal. He leaped onto the creature's main trunk, his abyssal limbs digging in like pitons, and began to systematically hack it to pieces, black, oily ichor raining down on the plaza below.

The colossal tentacle, its body shredded and maimed, let out a final, gurgling shriek and collapsed, its smaller appendages writhing for a moment before going still. The battle was over.

Edward dropped from the creature's corpse, landing heavily on the stone floor. He stood in the sudden, ringing silence, surrounded by the carnage. His four shadow-blades were still poised for attack, dripping with the creature's black blood, twitching with a residual, predatory energy. He turned to face his guild, his chest heaving, his eyes still glowing with the cold, abyssal light.

His people, his pack, stared at him. Their faces were a mixture of awe, relief, and a deep, instinctual fear. They took a small, unconscious step back. Even Fenris, his most loyal and primal companion, hesitated, her eyes wide as she took in his new, monstrous form.

One of the younger Unchained members, a boy whose life Edward had just saved, swallowed hard, his hand trembling as he pointed a shaky finger at him.

"Are you… Edward?" the boy stammered, his voice a choked, terrified whisper. The question was not an accusation. It was a genuine, desperate plea for reassurance, the plea of a man hoping that the king he followed was still somewhere inside the monster that had just saved him.

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