B2C12 Salem

The very ground beneath us began to shake.

It was slow at first, but it was Pyrrha's choked cough that made me notice the black mist which first crept across the floor, but then washed over it like a shallow stream. Some of it covered the others. They struggled to breathe when it did. I was saved, still on my knee with Crocea Mors held before me, but even I could feel the chilling touch of it through my greaves. It was the same black mist that appeared each time Grimm spawned – and it all came from the doorway and cracks in the walls around us. It looked to be from outside. The miasma coalesced in her open palm. It swirled there, grouping in and on top of itself, but never once changing in size. It was a like hungry ball of black ink that consumed all that touched it, somehow growing even darker. From start to finish, the process took less than a minute, and I heard the others gasp for breath.

"Is that it?" Merlot asked. "Is that…?"

"The power of all the Grimm on this mountain," Salem said. She looked down on the slowly spinning orb with an almost fond expression. "My power, in a sense, but mine is absolute and this is but a taste. It all returns to me in time."