KamiKowa: That Time I Got Transmigrated With A Broken Goddess

Xavier's body moved before conscious thought could intervene. The sword missed him by inches—close enough that he felt the displaced air slice across his cheek like a frozen razor.

The impact obliterated the plaza.

Stone exploded. The obsidian blade carved a gaping crater where Xavier had been a heartbeat before. The shockwave buckled the plaza, rolling through the cobblestones like an earthquake and sending the last few standing survivors sprawling.

Xavier hit the fractured stone hard, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact as he rolled. Pain shot through his ribs, but he forced himself back to his feet, ironwinter dagger still clutched in his grip. His ears rang from the concussion, but through the white noise, he could hear Ashley cursing and Naomi shouting something he couldn't make out.

Xavier stared at the massive crater. One swing. Not an ability, not a charged attack—just a casual swing. That was enough force to gut a skyscraper. The message hammered itself into his brain: run.

The Bonemarch Knight straightened, withdrawing its sword from the ruined plaza. Those burning blue flames in its eye sockets studied the scattered survivors with what might have been amusement, if such a concept could exist in something so far removed from life.

Xavier's Input Buffer sat at 120/250, the pink energy crackling around his hands more intensely than before. The near-death experience had pushed his combat system into overdrive, but he knew it wouldn't be enough. Not against this.

The Knight raised its free hand, palm open toward the huddled survivors.

The blue flames in its helmet dimmed to barely visible embers, and Xavier felt something vast and alien brush against his mind. Not words—something deeper than language, more fundamental than communication. A concept pressed directly into his consciousness, bypassing every defense his psyche might have offered.

Unworthy.

The verdict echoed through the frozen air like a death bell.

Gareth froze first. The grizzled scout had been reaching for his fallen crossbow when his entire body went rigid, flesh crystallizing into pale ice in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Dalen followed. The caravan master who had guided them safely through so many dangers became a statue, his mouth open in a shout that would never come. Then Henrik, Marta, Jorik—one by one, the survivors Xavier had fought beside, shared meals with, learned to trust, simply stopped being alive.

The plaza became a gallery of the frozen dead.

Xavier stood amidst the carnage, his breathing coming in short, sharp gasps that misted in the cold. He was alive. His Essentia was a screaming, thrumming shield around him, the pink energy of his Input Buffer a desperate cage against an overwhelming psychic pressure. But the effort left him drained, his meter dropping to 5/250 as his power worked to maintain his very existence.

"No." Naomi's voice cracked. She stared at the frozen forms around them, her purple hair whipping across her face as she turned in a slow circle, taking in the magnitude of the slaughter. "No, no, no..."

Ashley wasn't standing.

She lay curled on the shattered stone, body wracked with convulsions as a broken, chaotic golden light flickered erratically across her skin.

Not the steady glow of her Guardian Covenant in action—this was something broken, chaotic, wrong. The fracture lines that usually appeared when she absorbed damage had spread across her entire body like a network of molten cracks, pulsing with unstable energy.

"Ashley!" Xavier dropped to his knees beside her, reaching out before stopping himself. The golden light around her was searing, hot enough that he could feel it through his gloves.

Her eyes had rolled back, showing only whites as her mouth opened in a soundless scream. It looked like feedback. Her Guardian Covenant, designed to absorb damage, was now absorbing… echoes.

He watched, horrified, as he realized her ability must have latched onto the caravan members, trying to shield them even as their souls were snuffed out. It was protecting ghosts, and the psychic backlash was tearing her apart.

"Make it stop," she whispered, her voice barely audible through chattering teeth. "Please, make it stop. I can feel them all dying, over and over..."

Xavier's hands hovered over her convulsing form. He was useless. Every instinct screamed at him to act, but his knowledge of Essentia began and ended with his own buffer system. This? This was a different language entirely.

The golden light was growing brighter, more unstable, and he could see her skin beginning to crack along the fracture lines like porcelain under stress.

"Naomi! Eyes on me!" he barked. "Snap out of it! We're not dead yet, so let's try not to make it easy for them!"

But Naomi was lost in her own hell. The statue she stared at had been a young woman, maybe seventeen, with purple hair similar to Naomi's current appearance. The girl's face was twisted in terror, one hand reaching toward something she would never touch.

"That could have been me," Naomi breathed. "That should have been me. Why am I alive?"

The Bonemarch Knight lowered its hand, the blue flames in its sockets flaring back to their previous intensity.

"The test was for the herd," it intoned, each word dropping like stones into still water. "Those without significant ability proved their inadequacy."

"Now," the Knight continued, tilting its massive head to study the three survivors with renewed interest, "the examination of the shepherds begins."

The remaining armored skeletons turned in perfect unison. Their glowing eye sockets fixed on Xavier, Ashley, and Naomi.

But Xavier barely noticed them. His attention was fixed on Ashley, whose convulsions were growing worse. The golden light was spreading beyond her skin now, creating a nimbus of unstable energy that made the air around her shimmer like heat haze.

"We need to get her out of here," he said, his voice hoarse. "Whatever's happening to her, she can't handle much more."

Naomi let out a sharp, broken laugh. "Go where, Xavier? To join the sculptures? He killed them with a thought! We're just the last pieces in his collection."

Xavier looked up at her, seeing the same desperation in her purple eyes that he felt clawing at his own chest. But beneath the fear, beneath the horror of what they'd witnessed, something else was building. Something that tasted like the Critica he'd achieved against the Thornbeasts—that golden fire that had made him feel unstoppable.

These people had died because he'd chosen to come here. Because he'd decided to investigate instead of taking the safe route. Their blood was on his hands.

But Ashley and Naomi were still alive. Still depending on him.

The Bonemarch Knight raised its sword again, the obsidian blade catching what little light remained in the frozen plaza. Around them, the armored skeletons began their advance.

Xavier stood slowly, his dagger feeling like a toy in his hand. His Input Buffer pulsed at 5/250, not nearly enough for what was coming. But as he looked at Ashley writhing in agony and Naomi trembling with shock, he felt that familiar fire beginning to build in his chest.

"You'll pay for this. I'm gonna fucking kill you."

The Knight's head tilted slightly, and Xavier could have sworn he heard something like approval in its next words.

"Excellent. Show me what manner of star you truly are, little king."