Michael possesses the Curse known as Marked by Death, a rare ability that grants its wielder limited control over the very concept of death.
Those who bear this Curse can manifest its power in different ways depending on the individual. The current applications of the curse that Michael uses allow him to "Die." And to "Kill."
While dead, his body loses its physical presence. Weapons, attacks, and solid matter pass harmlessly through him as though he were a ghost. His appearance also changes, his skin becoming unnaturally pale while his eyes take on a deep crimson hue, serving as the only visible indication that he has crossed the Veil.
However, this state comes at a cost. Because he no longer belongs to the world of the living, Michael is equally incapable of interacting with it. He can not strike an opponent, grasp an object, or affect his surroundings until he returns to life.
Michael overcomes this limitation by switching between life and death with precise timing. He can remain intangible until the exact instant an attack should land before returning to the living world, allowing his blows to bypass conventional defenses and making his fighting style exceptionally difficult to predict.
Despite its versatility, the ability carries a terrifying drawback. The longer Michael remains dead, the greater the chance that the Veil separating life and death will close behind him. Should that happen, he would lose the ability to return, becoming permanently trapped among the dead.
Where "Die" is directed inward, "Kill" is directed outward.
Rather than sending himself across the Veil, Michael forces another target to cross it instead. This target may be a living being, an object, or even a specific portion of either.
Anything Michael "kills" is not destroyed. Instead, it is rendered "dead" in relation to the physical world, causing it to lose its tangible existence. A killed object can no longer interact with the living until its connection to death ends.
The curse spread through the ground like invisible poison, moving beneath Isaiah before he had time to understand what Michael was doing.
Then the earth died.
Isaiah's legs dropped straight through the ground, sinking until the soil reached his thighs. A moment later, Michael released the effect and the earth returned to the living world, solidifying tightly around him.
Isaiah's eyes widened. He pulled upward once, then harder, but his legs did not move. The ground held him like a vice.
Michael gave him no time to think.
He closed the distance instantly, dagger flashing through a relentless sequence of attacks. A horizontal slash cut toward Isaiah's throat, followed immediately by a vertical strike, a reverse-grip thrust, then a backhand slash aimed across his face.
Isaiah's upper body blurred as he twisted, leaned and weaved around each attack. With both legs trapped, he had lost one of his greatest advantages: movement.
Worse, blocking Michael was almost more dangerous than dodging him.
If Isaiah raised an arm or weapon to intercept the dagger, Michael could simply kill the blade for an instant, allowing it to pass harmlessly through the defence before returning it to the living world on the other side.
Isaiah would practically impale himself by trying to block.
So he relied entirely on evasion.
Steel whistled past his throat. Another slash cut close enough to shave strands of white hair from his head, and a thrust toward his eye missed by only a few centimetres.
His breathing grew heavier.
"This is bad, I knew he could turn intangible but i didn't know he could apply it to other targets." Isaiah thought
But it could only would get worse from there, at the corner of his eye. Isaiah saw something descending from the Sky
It was big, humongous even.
The figure almost covered up the sun in from Isaiah's point of view
As it came closer, Isaiah knew all too well who it was
"It can't be, I killed you...." Isaiah muttered
Igor almost 2 times his previous size had descended swinging down his Warhammer Tecton with all his might
Igor had activated his Gift which allowed him to increase his size, muscle mass and overall strength by almost double
Isaiah who was still evading could do nothing, Michael wasn't giving him the chance to break free and in the end, he could do nothing but brace for impact
Tecton came down with all of Igor's weight behind it.
The impact drove Isaiah deeper into the earth. The ground collapsed beneath him, then erupted outward in a violent ring of dirt and shattered stone. Small trees twenty feet away were torn from their roots, and a dense wave of loose soil rolled across the clearing as the shockwave passed.
For several seconds, the crater remained hidden beneath a churning cloud of dust.
When it finally began to clear, Isaiah was still alive.
He lay at the bottom of the crater with both arms raised above his head, his palms pressed flat against the face of the warhammer. Every muscle in his shoulders and arms strained as he held Tecton only inches from his skull. Igor leaned over the handle, forcing his doubled mass and monstrous strength down upon him, but the hammer refused to descend any farther.
A wide grin spread across Igor's face. "Am I too heavy?"
Despite the pressure bearing down on him, Isaiah smiled.
"Light as a feather."
Igor's grin faltered.
The impact had done more than carve a crater into the clearing. It had shattered the section of earth Michael had used to imprison Isaiah. He could feel the packed soil around his thighs breaking apart, its grip no longer firm enough to hold him.
Michael had taken some time to recover from the use of "kill" and that all Isaiah needed
His legs were finally free.
Now he only needed to get Tecton off him.
Isaiah shifted one hand from the hammer's face and planted his palm against its side. With a sharp twist of his torso, he redirected the pressure rather than trying to overpower it. Tecton slipped past his head and buried itself deep in the fractured ground beside him.
The sudden loss of resistance dragged Igor forward. His enormous body lurched off balance as both hands remained locked around the handle.
Isaiah tore one leg free, then the other. Gravel sprayed across the crater as he rolled beneath Igor's arm and escaped from under the hammer. He pushed himself upright, blood running down the side of his face, and had barely managed to steady his breathing when a metallic hum reached his ears.
His eyes widened.
The first ring struck him in the ribs.
Before he could turn, the second crashed into his shoulder. The third curved around from behind and slammed into his spine, launching him across the clearing. Isaiah struck the ground hard and rolled through the dirt before digging one hand into the soil to stop himself.
Rand stepped out from between the trees with one arm extended. Three metallic rings floated around him in slow, lazy circles, as though the attack had required no effort at all.
Isaiah rose carefully, his gaze moving from Rand to Igor. For the first time since the fight began, genuine confusion entered his expression.
"I felt your jaw shatter when I hit you," he said, staring at Rand. Then he pointed toward Igor. "And you—I drove Babel through your heart."
Igor planted one enormous foot against Tecton and ripped the hammer free from the ground.
"Igor's heart is made of stone," he declared proudly. "Puny sword did nothing."
Rand looked at him for a long moment, then rolled his eyes.
Isaiah's stare hardened. "How are any of you still standing?"
"You're the top student," Rand said as one of the rings revolved around his wrist. "I'm pretty sure you can figure it out."
Isaiah said nothing at first. His eyes moved between them, taking in the absence of lasting wounds.
Understanding settled across his face.
"A healer," Isaiah murmured.
Rand's expression gave nothing away, but that alone was enough confirmation.
"I didn't know we had one yet."
"That just means I need to be more thorough this time"
Isaiah's gaze moved across the clearing, settling on each opponent in turn. Michael stood nearest with his dagger held low. Igor towered beside the crater, Tecton resting against one massive shoulder, while Rand's three rings revolved lazily around his outstretched hand.
Isaiah pointed at Michael. "One."
His finger shifted toward Igor, then Rand. "Two. Three."
He lowered his hand, but the calculation felt incomplete. There had been four of them at the beginning. Michael saw the realization enter Isaiah's eyes a moment before his head snapped toward the empty space behind him.
"Where is—"
Casper's fist crashed into his jaw.
The blow whipped Isaiah's head sideways. Before he could recover, Casper stepped forward and drove a second punch into his ribs. The impact landed harder than the first, folding another section of armor inward and forcing Isaiah back several steps.
Casper didn't relent
A left hook struck Isaiah's cheek. The third impact boomed through the clearing with enough force to scatter dust beneath their feet. Casper followed with a short punch to the chest, and the fourth strike erupted like a battering ram, tearing the remaining plate from Isaiah's torso.
Greed had begun to feed.
-------
Casper's Curse was called Greed.
It did not grant him immediate overwhelming strength, nor did it make every punch powerful from the beginning. Greed had to be fed. The first clean strike established a chain, and every successful punch that followed became stronger than the one before it. The Curse treated each impact as insufficient, consuming the damage already dealt and demanding that the next blow surpass it.
As long as Casper continued landing consecutive strikes, the force behind his punches kept increasing. The growth was not limitless, however. Greed could only increase its power until Casper's body reached the greatest amount of force it could withstand.
The sequence was also fragile. If Casper missed, if an opponent completely stopped one of his punches, or if too much time passed between strikes, the chain would break and the accumulated increase would disappear.
For that reason, Greed was most dangerous once Casper established his rhythm. Every landed punch made it harder for his opponent to recover, and every moment of hesitation brought him closer to the Curse's current peak.
At its highest point, Casper's punch carries the greatest force his body could safely produce, but maintaining that strength placed enormous strain on his muscles, bones, and joints.
A blow that represented everything Greed had accumulated throughout the sequence, gathered into one devastating impact.
The red glow of curse energy began to brighten around Casper's arm as he was ready to land one final punch
He swung with everything he had and the punch directly at Isaiah's face
The punch crossed the remaining distance faster than any strike before it and crashed directly into Isaiah's face.
Three thousandths of a second had not yet passed, and Casper had already landed thirteen blows.
The impact detonated across the clearing. The ground split beneath them, loose stone erupted into the air, and a violent shockwave bent the surrounding trees away from the point of contact.
Casper's arm remained fully extended, every fragment of strength Greed had accumulated emptied through his knuckles.
For a moment, no one moved.
Casper's breathing came in harsh, uneven bursts. His fist remained pressed against Isaiah's cheek as the dust cleared
Isaiah had not taken a single step backward.
The force had turned his head slightly, but nothing more. There was no blood beneath his nose, no swelling around his eye, and no fracture beneath Casper's knuckles. Slowly, Isaiah turned his face forward again and looked directly at him.
Casper's expression emptied.
"Ain't no fucking way...."
Isaiah's body had endured all twelve escalating strikes and and the final one without carrying so much as a bruise.
Behind them, Michael stared at the shattered pieces of white armor scattered across the ground. The sequence replayed in his mind: every punch had struck harder than the one before it.
Yet the body remained unharmed
Michael's fingers tightened around his dagger as the unease in his chest hardened into certainty. Something was fundamentally wrong.
Isaiah reached up, wrapped one hand around Casper's wrist, and calmly removed the fist from his face.
"So..." he said, his voice carrying through the sudden silence, "That's it?"
Greed existed to take. Every blow collected more than the last until Casper's body could hold no more.
And when Greed finally became full, it performed the one act completely contrary to its nature.
It gave everything back.
Casper called it The Act of Kindness.
There was not another student participating in the examination who could have taken the full force of an Act of Kindness directly and survived.
Unfortunately for Casper, he had chosen the one student in the academy whose body had been born take this kind of punishment. Long before Isaiah Salvatore ever awakened God's Eyes, the great being above had already shaped the Salvatore bloodline for the possibility. Every Salvatore entered the world with superhuman physique, their flesh, bones, organs and nervous system naturally capable of surviving the strain of God's Eyes should the Gift ever awaken within them.
Isaiah had awakened God's Eyes.
But he was born with the body capable of carrying them.
Godframe.