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With his soul pressed into it, the iron branches skewered the reaper dozens of times, shredding its soul in the blink of an eye.

Hector didn't get the opportunity to even process what he had just done, however.

Right as his own killing blow was struck, a flock of crows crashed into him, tearing his armor apart and tearing through his body like paper. He barely sensed the flock's form at the last moment, convulsing and scattering.

He tumbled through open air again, having lost all sense of direction again. He reached out with the Scarf to get his bearings, only to sense that he was heading straight toward some kind of gargantuan wall.

Wait, no.

That was the ground, wasn't it? Because he was falling. And it was far too late do anything about it now.

Everything went black as he hit solid earth.

Chapter Two Hundred Forty-Nine: 'O, inciting tribulation...'

Hector awoke with a start, jolting upright and taking a moment to blink away the disorientation in his vision.

'Easy there,' came Garovel's echoing voice. 'I decided to wake you up a bit early, just because there's a lot of people who want to talk to you. So take it slow. It'll probably take you a full week to recover completely.'

Hector tried to think. Recover from what? Agh, his head was pounding. Everything was, actually. "What happened?" he mumbled.

'Don't remember?'

"I remember a battle... er, in the sky...?"

'Yeah, and you hit the ground like a ton of bricks. Killed you real good. Big splat. Blood everywhere. Even your brain didn't survive, so I had to regenerate you from scratch.'

It was coming back to him.

He was in his own bed, he suddenly realized. "We're back at Warrenhold already? How long was I out?"

'A full day.'

"Agh..."