Jack watched from behind his veil.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to kill North himself. The Lands Herald seemed perfectly capable of doing the work for him.

  And besides, once North was dead, once the Herald was beaten down into something manageable, Jack would simply descend and end this tournament.

  As the rightful winner.

  The thought pleased him, though not as much as it should have. It was a bit disheartening—his connection with Qui Tensigon had faltered at the worst possible moment. The silence where that presence once thrummed unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Whatever could make a Supreme Head back off had to be powerful.

  He exhaled slowly.

  Though it wasn’t so bad. They had already gone over the plan—every movement, every contingency etched into memory. And he could still feel the power humming from the page in his pocket.

  If all else failed, he could still use it.

  He would rather not, though.

  As the protagonist, it wouldn’t sit right—winning by means that felt like surrender. Victory should be taken with skill. With presence. With ——

  His thought was cut off.

  Jack steadied himself midair, boots skidding against invisible Ryun platforms as he caught his balance.

  His blue-yellow eyes burned brighter.

  The blade that had nearly taken his head rested on Ozzy’s shoulder.

  Weapons flared into existence around Jack—halberds, spears, chained sickles, floating in a rotating orbit. Each hummed with layered authority.

  “Don’t think this’ll be easy,” Jack snapped, aura rising in jagged pulses. “I’m the protagonist backed by a Supreme Being. You and your stupid god should just move out the way.”

  Ozzy didn’t react.

  Just smiled faintly beneath his blindfold.

  Jack raised his hands.

  Armor flowed over him like scripture.

  Bronze plates locked across his chest and shoulders, angular and ornate, edged in black. Infernal runes ignited across the surface, glowing like living calligraphy. Dark, mechanical wings unfolded from his back—segmented, bladed feathers stretching outward in a halo-like spread. Above his head, a thin luminous ring flickered into existence, rotating slowly like a divine crown.

  Heat rolled off him in waves.

  “You don’t take me seriously? That’s fine,” Jack said coldly. “Next rival character scratched off the list!”

  Ozzy only stared.

  “Nothing left to say? This is the end of the line! You might as well say your piece or forever hold it!”

  Silence.

  Then—

  “To waste words on a puppy with teeth,” Ozzy said quietly, “isn’t worth it.”

  His blade lifted.

  Around him, Reapers cloaked in black appeared, each wielding elongated blades that shimmered.

  Jack felt it then.

  Pressure.

  “What I think of you and how you feel are irrelevant,” Ozzy continued, tilting his blade downward. “You are simply an object in the way.”

  The Reapers angled their weapons toward Jack in perfect synchronization.

  “And I’ve been instructed to cut you down.”

  Jack’s smile faltered for half a second.

  Then it sharpened.

  “Fine.”

  The weapons orbiting him began spinning faster.

  Infernal runes crawled brighter across his armor.

  “If I survive it… I own it,” Jack murmured, activating his Origin-Class.

  The air warped.

  Mirrorborne Instinct primed.

  Dimensional Echo Authority engaged.

  “Let’s see what happens when the ‘object’ reflects the executioner.”

  “Oh this isn’t an execution! I’m just expressing how much I love you!”

  The first Reaper moved.

  ———

  North and the Land’s Herald—Ashantiana—collided again.

  She moved first this time.

  A jagged hook of condensed black Sryun curved into existence and tore into his ribs. The impact folded him slightly—just enough for her to follow up. A concentrated blast of death Sryun detonated point-blank into his face.

  The world flashed black.

  He was launched backward, body skidding across shattered earth before cratering into the ground in a violent eruption of debris.

  Ashantiana didn’t pause.

  She lunged through the dust cloud, skeletal limbs elongating as her black essence reknit mid-motion, eyes blazing with hatred.

  North rolled to one knee just in time.

  He pivoted—

  Red-black Ryun flared around his leg.

  His kick slammed into her midsection with explosive force, halting her charge and bending her backward.

  He didn’t stop there.

  Lightning coiled around his fist—he drove a vicious uppercut into her jaw.

  Red-black lightning erupted upward as Ashantiana was launched into the sky like a missile.

  North shot after her.

  Midair, he caught her by the ankles.

  She thrashed, black Sryun crawling up his arms, trying to corrode flesh and soul alike.

  He gritted his teeth and flooded his body with counter-lightning.

  “Stay. Down!”

  He spun once—twice—

  Each rotation accelerating, electrocuting her violently as arcs of red-black energy cracked across the sky.

  Then he released.

  He hurled her downward.

  Ashantiana smashed back into the ground with apocalyptic force.

  The shockwave rippled outward in a massive ring, flattening remaining structures and scattering soldiers who hadn’t fled fast enough.

  North landed hard, boots digging into fractured stone.

  He breathed heavily.

  Chest rising and falling.

  Red veins along his neck pulsing erratically.

  “This thing is ridiculously strong,” he muttered under his breath.

  In the crater, Ashantiana’s black essence churned.

  Reforming.

  Again.

  It felt familiar.

  The rhythm of her strikes.

  The way she read him half a second before he moved.

  Across the crater, Ashantiana felt it too.

  Recognition.

  They collided again.

  Stone fractured under their feet as fists and claws met mid-charge. Red-black lightning clashed against voided Sryun in a violent spray of sparks.

  Ashantiana’s eyes narrowed.

  She conjured three jagged spears in her palms—black shafts wrapped in writhing Sryun. Around each spear orbited clusters of condensed Sryun pebbles, spinning like shrapnel moons.

  Thunk—thunk—thunk.

  She fired.

  The spears launched buckshot-style, splitting apart mid-flight into chaotic trajectories.

  North ducked into a roll, narrowly avoiding the primary shafts as they punched through the earth behind him—

  But the pebbles didn’t stop.

  They curved.

  Threads of Sryun connected them invisibly, guiding their path.

  Zip—zip—zip.

  They pierced his arm.

  His thigh.

  His shoulder.

  Each impact felt like a venomous hook embedding into muscle and nerve.

  He growled through clenched teeth as the Sryun threads tried to root themselves deeper—trying to bind him.

  His blood reacted instantly.

  It surged outward in a violent wave, crimson tendrils snapping around the invading threads. His own Sryun-infused blood intercepted the remaining pebbles midair, dissolving them before they could complete the connection.

  He staggered once.

  Shuddered.

  “Okay,” he muttered, shaking his arm out as red veins pulsed brighter. “That was scary. She almost scorpion-snagged me.”

  Ashantiana tilted her head slightly.

  They definitely met before.

  Somewhere.

  Somewhen.

  North blinked.

  “…Why does that feel like déjà vu?” he muttered.

  The air between them thickened.

  Neither of them broke eye contact.

  Recognition sharpened.

  Then she smiled.

  And lunged again.

  North wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and looked up.

  Red lightning began to crawl over his skin.

  “Oh shit,” he breathed, grin widening. “You’re Sand Joan of Arc!”

  His aura exploded outward.

  Red veins pulsed brighter beneath his skin as lightning spidered across his arms and chest. Behind him, phantom red eyes opened one by one in the air. Sigils rotating and watching. The ground cracked beneath his feet as Ryun exploded violently around him.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “I’ve been waiting for this rematch!” he shouted, lightning surging down his arm and detonating outward in a brutal wave that blasted Ashantiana back through fractured stone.

  “I was already gonna kill you for Caroline! But now you just doubled down on your fate! Stupid bitch!”

  Ashantiana rose from the rubble slowly.

  Assessing.

  Yes.

  That beast.

  The one who had worn her people’s clothes like a trophy.

  The one who had slipped through her fingers last time.

  She had searched for him afterward.

  Raged when she couldn’t find him.

  And now—

  He stood before her.

  Beyond him, she saw them.

  Cawren. The fiery Outlander who had killed her father.

  Destiny. Vari’s Jujisn. The one who was saved from her by the Outlander with the ball.

  Her lips parted in a low, humorless laugh as she spread her arms wide.

  The look in their eyes.

  Hatred.

  Anger.

  She was an obstacle.

  An object to pass.

  Vari’s Jujisn had once even pitied her.

  Pitied.

  Her laughter grew sharper.

  Memories surged.

  Selcentra.

  Her sister’s smile beneath Dorferan’s banners.

  Her mother’s steady hands.

  Her father’s command over the battlements.

  Her soldiers—laughing, training, having honor.

  The Kingdom of Dorferan.

  The lands that had bled under bored gods.

  The people of Curtenail who had suffered under the Fortune Holder spectacle.

  Their pain had been entertainment.

  Their deaths, stepping stones.

  Forgotten.

  Reduced to narrative fuel.

  It wasn’t fair.

  She rejected it.

  Her black Sryun flared violently around her, cracking the air like a dying star. The cries of the damned fueling her.

  “I am not your stepping stone,” she hissed.

  “I am not your pity.”

  The sky dimmed as death Sryun pooled around her feet like liquid.

  “I am a curse.”

  Her eyes burned with intensity.

  “And I will be the cursed end you all deserve.”

  She vanished.

  Reappearing in front of North with a scream that split the battlefield in two.

  North barely had time to widen his eyes before a hand closed around his throat.

  The world flipped.

  She slammed him forward like a weapon.

  North’s body crashed straight into Cawren mid-flight. The impact detonated in a burst of red and black lightning as the two men tore through a building and out the other side.

  Ashantiana didn’t stop.

  She dragged North by the collar and swung him again—using his electrified body like a living mace. Cawren blocked once, twice—but on the third rotation she altered the angle and smashed North into him from above, driving them both into the ground in a spiraling crater.

  North snarled and tried to retaliate mid-spin, but she twisted his arm and redirected his lightning into Cawren’s flank instead.

  “HEY—!” North barked, half-choking.

  She discarded him.

  Literally.

  Ashantiana flung North like debris across the battlefield.

  He skidded through rubble and rolled to a knee, blood sizzling where death Sryun still clung to him.

  Cawren lunged at her immediately.

  Fire roared around him, infernal script blazing brighter as he swung in controlled fury.

  Ashantiana caught his wrist.

  Crushed.

  She rotated inside his guard and drove a knee into his ribs, then pivoted—grabbing his arm and flipping him overhead.

  Instead of letting him fall—

  She kept hold.

  And used him.

  Cawren became the next projectile.

  She swung him like a war hammer and hurled him straight toward Destiny.

  Destiny’s golden wings flared as she raised her blade to deflect—

  Too late.

  Cawren slammed into her midair. Both of them crashed into a half-standing tower, shattering its upper levels in an explosion of debris and dust.

  Ashantiana was already there.

  She seized Cawren by the back of his armor and smashed him into Destiny again—using his body to break her guard.

  Then she threw him aside as well.

  Cawren tumbled across the ground, armor cracked, aura flickering.

  Ashantiana turned fully toward Destiny.

  Now it was personal.

  Destiny rose through the debris, golden Ryun flaring brighter.

  Ashantiana didn’t let her stabilize.

  She closed the distance instantly and drove a fist into Destiny’s abdomen.

  The impact folded her.

  A second strike caught her jaw.

  A third shattered her guard completely.

  Ashantiana rained blows down in brutal succession—each punch layered with death Sryun that detonated on contact. Golden aura fractured and sparked as Destiny was driven backward out the collapsing tower.

  She grabbed Destiny by the throat and hurled her into the ground.

  The crater rippled outward.

  Before Destiny could rise—

  Ashantiana was on top of her.

  Fists descending.

  One after another.

  No theatrics.

  No mercy.

  Just raw, furious violence.

  Above them, red lightning flickered.

  North hit Ashantiana like a meteor.

  Red-black lightning exploded outward as he drove into Ashantiana’s side, fists moving in a blur—each strike detonating on impact. Barrages of anger fueled Ryun, hammered into her ribs, shoulders, and jaw. Shockwaves rippled through the ruined district.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  Ashantiana laughed.

  It was a horrid, splintering sound.

  Her hand shot forward—

  And punched straight through the storm of lightning.

  Her fist collided with his chest, forcing the air from his lungs. But North’s sigil eyes flared brighter.

  Space warped.

  The distance between his fist and her arm collapsed to zero.

  He drove his hand through her forearm—

  Through bone, through black Sryun—

  And out her back in a violent burst of red lightning.

  Ashantiana’s laughter stuttered for half a second.

  North twisted, ripping free, then pivoted midair and delivered a savage lightning-infused kick to her exposed flank.

  The blast detonated point-blank.

  She was hurled away, smashing through a skeletal tower and flipping through the air before stabilizing herself mid-rotation.

  She ignored the pain.

  Void essence sealed the wound as she righted herself—

  And golden arrays ignited around her.

  Destiny reappeared above, blade raised.

  Intricate Ryun circles spun outward from her hands, locking into formation around Ashantiana’s body.

  They fired.

  Golden beams lanced inward from multiple angles, pinning her in place.

  A split second later—

  A massive wave of heat tore through the sky.

  Infernal script flared.

  Cawren descended from above, palm outstretched, fire condensing into a blazing column.

  The heat blast crashed down onto Ashantiana’s restrained form in a roaring explosion.

  Flames swallowed her silhouette.

  Smoke erupted outward.

  Cawren hovered in the air above the inferno, armor cracked but grin intact, despite the beating she had just handed him.

  “Let’s run that back,” he muttered.

  Below, North wiped blood from his lip and stepped forward through the settling smoke.

  The smoke cleared—

  And they attacked in a frenzy.

  North surged first, lightning detonating around him in savage arcs. Red-black bolts cracking against Ashantiana’s guard as he forced her backward.

  Cawren followed a second later.

  Infernal script flared across his armor as fire erupted from his palms. Pillars of searing flame crashed into Ashantiana’s flanks, forcing her to pivot between red lightning and white-hot inferno.

  Destiny stayed higher.

  Golden arrays formed in layered patterns behind her, rotating sigils aligning like celestial machinery. Instead of brute force, she cut angles—beams that severed Sryun tendrils mid-formation, shields that redirected shockwaves, precision strikes that targeted weak joints North and Cawren exposed.

  For the first time—

  Ashantiana began to get pushed.

  She countered with violent bursts of Sryun, death-charged crescents tearing outward in sweeping arcs.

  North didn’t dodge the first one.

  He tanked it.

  Lightning wrapped around him like a living shield as he punched straight through the blast and drove a hook into her ribs.

  Cawren stepped into the second.

  Inferno roared around him, flames clashing with black Sryun in an unstable collision. The impact scorched his armor—but he held.

  He smiled.

  Ria’s “reward” had not been empty.

  His body resisted the corrosion far better than it should have. The death energy slid off him instead of rooting in.

  Worth it.

  North launched a vertical lightning strike that split the battlefield.

  Cawren had to veer aside to avoid getting clipped.

  Ashantiana exploited the split-second opening, claws flashing toward Cawren—

  Only for golden arrays to snap shut around her wrist.

  Destiny’s voice rang out above them.

  “Left side!”

  North pivoted immediately.

  Cawren twisted with him.

  Inferno and lightning collided simultaneously into Ashantiana’s exposed flank.

  The explosion rippled outward.

  North and Cawren weren’t cooperating so much as competing—but the pressure forced Ashantiana into constant reaction. When she focused on North’s brutal lightning rushes, Cawren’s infernos struck her blind side. When she tried to counter Cawren directly, North warped space and punched through her guard.

  Destiny remained the anchor.

  Every time Sryun flared too wide, she severed it.

  Every time one of them overextended, she corrected the angle.

  They were doing damage now.

  Real damage.

  Black essence peeled away under layered assault.

  Ashantiana lashed out with a sweeping wave of death Sryun that forced all three of them apart.

  North was the first back in.

  He warped space again, reappearing above her shoulder and driving a red-black lightning elbow downward. Ashantiana caught his forearm mid-strike and twisted—using his momentum to sling him directly into Cawren.

  Cawren didn’t dodge.

  He punched.

  Flames detonated outward as his fist collided with North’s lightning-coated body. The impact launched North sideways in a spiral of crackling red energy.

  “Personal space,” Cawren muttered, already turning back toward Ashantiana.

  Destiny descended in a burst of gold.

  A lattice of rotating arrays formed beneath Ashantiana’s feet, detonating upward in piercing beams. Ashantiana hissed as they cut through her lower torso—

  Only for Cawren to suddenly appear in front of Destiny.

  Infernal script ignited across his arms.

  He swung.

  A blazing arc of fire tore toward her.

  Destiny’s eyes widened as she twisted midair, barely avoiding the brunt of it. The heat grazed her side, tearing through her sleeve and scorching skin.

  Ashantiana took advantage of the distraction.

  She surged forward and drove a Sryun-infused knee into Cawren’s ribs. The impact cracked armor and sent him skidding across the sky.

  Before Destiny could reposition, Ashantiana grabbed her by the wrist and slammed her into the ground hard enough to crater the stone.

  North reappeared above them.

  Lightning speared downward like a divine execution.

  Cawren had to roll aside to avoid getting clipped by the descending bolt.

  Ashantiana released Destiny and intercepted North mid-fall, their fists colliding in a shockwave that split the air.

  Destiny rose again, golden aura flaring brighter.

  She flung a series of razor-thin Ryun discs toward Ashantiana’s back—

  Cawren had to duck one of them as it skimmed dangerously close to his shoulder.

  North grinned wildly.

  Ashantiana punched North in the jaw.

  Hard.

  The crack echoed.

  Then she pivoted and backhanded Cawren across the face, sending him spinning.

  She turned to Destiny—

  But Destiny was already there.

  Blade glowing.

  She carved a golden sigil across Ashantiana’s chest that detonated a split second later.

  Ashantiana staggered.

  North and Cawren both lunged simultaneously—

  And collided midair as Ashantiana vanished between them.

  Just overlapping attacks, dodges, counterstrikes.

  A near free-for-all orbiting a single center of fury.

  Cawren’s smile faded.

  Infernal script ignited fully across his armor, lines of living flame racing over his shoulders and into the air around him. He rose higher, yellow aura with black spots spreading wide as heat began to compress between his hands.

  It folded inward.

  Condensed.

  A sphere formed—dense, white-hot at the core, wrapped in rotating rings of scarlet script. The air around it warped violently, ash turning to vapor before touching its surface.

  [Malefic Tyrant: Cinderfall Cataclysm.]

  He thrust it forward.

  It descended like judgment.

  North saw it coming and moved instantly.

  Red-black lightning exploded around him as he slammed into Ashantiana from behind. He drove her into the ground and warped space around her limbs, stretching the distance between movement and action.

  She struggled.

  Black Sryun flared, trying to corrode the lightning bindings—but North planted his knee into her spine and forced more current through her body.

  “Stay down!”

  Lightning wrapped her like chains.

  Above them, Destiny floated with unnatural stillness.

  Her hands moved in deliberate, fluid gestures—sigils forming between her fingers, golden threads weaving into layers behind her. A massive radiant array unfolded, each ring locking into the next like celestial currents.

  Light gathered.

  Pure.

  Focused.

  Ashantiana felt it.

  For the first time—

  Fear.

  Her essence trembled.

  Her black Sryun flickered unevenly as the lightning pinned her and the firestorm descended.

  Cawren’s Cinderfall struck first.

  The condensed inferno crashed into her restrained form, engulfing both her and North in a column of apocalyptic heat.

  North roared but held.

  Red lightning surged harder. Before he jumped off her.

  Then—

  Destiny released.

  A beam of absolute gold descended from the array behind her.

  It pierced through the inferno like a spear of heaven.

  Light burned through Ashantiana’s chest, through the fire, through the lightning.

  Her scream tore across the battlefield.

  Her essence began to wither.

  Black Sryun peeled away in violent strips, disintegrating under layered assault.

  Anger fueled lightning.

  Malefic Inferno.

  Divine light.

  All three converged.

  Ashantiana reached outward—toward memory, toward hatred, toward Selcentra—

  But the beam burned deeper.

  Her body fractured into shards of void.

  The crater smoldered.

  Ash.

  Light.

  Silence.

  Then—

  “No.”

  A whisper.

  The molten center of the blast shifted.

  “No.”

  A tremor rolled through the ground.

  “No no no no no no no—”

  The light fractured.

  “NO!”

  Ashantiana erupted upward.

  Black essence exploded outward like a collapsing star reversing itself. It wasn’t just Sryun flowing out.

  It was grief.

  It was sorrow given mass.

  It flooded the battlefield in an expanding wave.

  Every person felt it.

  Not as pain—

  As weight.

  As loss.

  As memory.

  Soldiers dropped mid-stride, crushed to their knees by invisible force. A few hundred were flattened outright, their bodies driven into the stone as if gravity itself had turned hostile.

  Destiny was ripped from the sky.

  Her golden aura flickered violently as she slammed into the ground.

  North staggered, lightning faltering as the pressure pressed down on his spine.

  Cawren’s flames guttered, script dimming as he was forced lower.

  The Sryun didn’t spread randomly.

  It spiraled.

  A massive rotating wave formed around Ashantiana, coiling upward like a black hurricane. The air thickened until breathing felt like inhaling tar.

  Crisper choked in her cockpit, hands trembling on the controls as black mist seeped through the seams.

  Jamal dropped to one knee, clutching his throat.

  S?urtinaui’s silver hair whipped violently as she tried to rise—only to collapse again.

  Tabia’s teal-and-white aura flickered under the crushing pressure.

  Even Caelus—

  Fell to one knee as sorrow pressed against his chest like a physical force.

  Ashantiana rose at the center.

  Her body no longer cleanly defined.

  Black essence poured from her like a broken dam.

  Her voice cracked the sky.

  “They will not be forgotten.”

  The Sryun intensified.

  Civen coughed blood.

  The black wave of sorrow hit even her.

  Her soldiers threw up layered wards around her position—Ryun barriers overlapping in frantic desperation—but the pressure still bled through. She gripped the edge of a broken pillar, emerald scales dimming as her tail coiled tight.

  “This… wasn’t part of the script…” she rasped.

  Across the battlefield, Ashantiana was no longer merely the Land’s Herald.

  She was changing.

  The spiraling Sryun compressed inward around her body instead of outward. The chaotic storm began refining itself—condensing.

  Her outline sharpened.

  A void becoming something sculpted.

  Something intentional.

  Black essence hardened into a sleek, obsidian form—smooth, reflective, almost lacquered like ink. Curved horns rose from her head, arching upward like twin crescents. From her back unfurled jagged, blade-like wings formed of splintered shadow.

  In her hand—

  A scythe manifested.

  Its blade curved wide and cruel, dripping dark Sryun like tar.

  Her arms extended slightly from her sides as if embracing the weight of the battlefield’s despair.

  She did not scream now.

  She did not rage.

  She hovered.

  The sorrow wave intensified.

  Every person present felt it—not as pressure anymore, but as inevitability.

  Ashantiana’s voice echoed without her mouth moving.

  “As long as I have purpose… I will move forward.”

  The spiraling Sryun condensed into a halo-like cyclone behind her, rotating slowly like a black sun.

  Crisper’s jet alarms blared uselessly.

  Jamal coughed blood onto shattered stone.

  Tabia’s healing Ryun flickered weakly.

  Even Cawren’s infernal script dimmed under the oppressive gravity.

  North tried to stand—

  And felt his knees refuse to move.

  Above the battlefield, gods watching from hidden realms shifted uneasily.

  Ashantiana’s new form radiated something purer than rage.

  Conviction.

  “You turned my world into entertainment,” her voice whispered through every mind at once.

  “So… let this tournament end uneventfully.”

  Her scythe lifted.

  And the sky darkened further.

  The spiral of Sryun tightened.

  The Lands Herald was gone.

  In her place stood something distilled.

  Refined.

  The Malefic Herald of Endings had awakened.

  She lowered her arms slowly, and the pressure shifted from crushing to suffocating—like the final page of a book turning whether you wished it or not.

  North forced himself upright, lightning flickering weakly around him. His sigil eyes narrowed, trying to read what she had become.

  Destiny’s golden aura flared in stubborn defiance, though her knees trembled.

  Cawren’s infernal script reignited—but more cautiously now.

  Across the battlefield, every clash stilled.

  Crisper’s jet engines sputtered.

  Ozzy paused mid-step, blade angled downward as his blindfold turned toward the epicenter.

  Even Civen’s breath hitched as she watched the transformation complete.

  The Malefic Herald’s voice spread through the field like ink through water.

  “The time has come… I will now end this worthless tale.”

  Her scythe traced a slow arc through the air.

  The motion created silence.