The dust of Xeran's ruin still hung in the air when silence returned to the field.
Raga stood unmoving, the fires coating his body dying off one by one until they were only faint embers drifting into the void. The ground beneath him was molten, the sky cracked and pulsing red. He didn't breathe. He didn't need to. The battlefield was a graveyard of gods.
But something was wrong.
That silence… it wasn't peace. It was waiting.
Then a faint touch.
A hand tapped his shoulder, slow, deliberate. Another slid gently to the back of his neck, cold as the void itself.
A voice spoke close enough for breath to graze his skin.
"Impressive," it said. "You destroyed Xeran like nothing."
Raga turned instantly. His body moved faster than sound.
Nothing there.
The air was still, dead still.
Then the ground rippled, as if something was crawling through the fabric of the world itself.
Raga froze.
A head emerged from his stomach.
No wound, no blood, just the grotesque calm of something that shouldn't exist. The face smiled up at him, eyes hollow as if carved from the abyss.
"You are death," the voice murmured. "The one thing no one can defeat. Death is inevitable… but I am void. Death cannot kill a void. I am non-living. You cannot kill what was never alive."
The words echoed inside him, bouncing between bone and shadow. Raga's body reacted before his mind did. His fist clenched. His Enso flared, swirling into black fire.
"Get. Out."
His fist came down like thunder but the head was gone. The air bent where it had been.
Then a mouth opened on the crown of his head.
"You must be wondering how I do this," the voice whispered, echoing from inside his skull. "This isn't even my power. This is what I am. The vessel you inhabit… it carries void in every part of him. His heart. His mind. His soul. They are hollow."
The voice lowered, almost intimate.
"And everything hollow belongs to me."
Raga's veins began to glow, black-red lines crawling up his neck. The symbols of death pulsed along his shoulders.
"Show yourself," he growled, voice deep as a collapsing world.
The Elder rose.
He didn't walk out of the ground. He materialized, his form built from the space between atoms. His body was thin, translucent, and the air itself bent away from him.
He had no scent, no shadow, no warmth. Only stillness.
Raga struck first.
The air cracked from the force.
The Elder caught the blow with a single hand.
The shockwave vaporized the sand around them. The mountain wall in the distance split apart, yet the Elder didn't move. Not even a breath.
"I told you," he said quietly. "I am non-living. You cannot break what does not exist. When you strike, the void reflects it. You bear your own punishment twentyfold."
Raga's expression didn't change. His voice was soft, dangerous.
"Then I'll fill the void with your ashes."
The Elder's smile flickered. "Talk is comfort for the dying."
He vanished.
And then the world broke open.
Before Raga could blink, the Elder's arms were already locked around his torso.
He was flung, thrown like nothing, his body smashing through the broken landscape. Each impact collapsed a ridge, carved a valley. When he hit the ground, the shockwave lifted the dust into a storm.
He rose immediately, unhurt, eyes sharp. But his instincts screamed.
He looked around.
No sound.
No movement.
Then that whisper again.
"Void Step."
Raga looked down and there it was.
The head again. The same hollow grin pushing out from his stomach.
Raga swung down, but another hand burst from his ribs and caught his fist mid-swing.
A third arm appeared, dragging something long and thin out of Raga's side, its surface rippling like liquid shadow.
A scythe.
Pulled from his own body.
The blade hummed, vibrating with an unnatural resonance. It slashed toward his neck.
Raga caught it. Sparks erupted.
"All parts of you have void," the Elder said calmly.
Another arm burst out. Another scythe.
It sliced across Raga's back, deep and wet, sending him down to one knee. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Raga looked up, smiling faintly. His teeth glowed in the dark.
"I've never bled before," he said. "You should be proud."
The Elder stepped fully into sight, body forming in full this time. His feet touched the ground without sound. His eyes were the color of nothing.
"It might hurt," he said, "but it will not kill you if you stay in control. Let the Enso-born take over. It will be easier for you both."
Raga's voice was molten iron. "As long as I am in control, you have no chance."
A hand ripped out of the ground beside him, dragging a blade with it. The scythe sliced across his shoulder, sparks exploding from the contact. Raga turned but the hand was gone.
He turned forward and the Elder was already there, the scythe at his throat.
Raga's hand rose and caught the blade mid-swing.
"Hell's Gate: Adnate," he said.
Nothing.
The Elder leaned close. "Erasure," he whispered. "I erase actions I have witnessed, and they cease to exist. I saw you fight Xeran. I saw your flames, your gates. You'll have to bring me something new, Mr. Death."
He swung the scythe. Raga moved, blocking, dodging, but each strike was faster than the last.
The Elder's words never stopped. "The great demon of death, flinching. How poetic. They feared you. I do not."
Raga's silence grew heavier with each breath.
Then he vanished.
When he appeared again, his hand was around the Elder's neck.
"You speak too much."
He slammed down, but the Elder evaporated into mist and reappeared above him. "You have a thing for necks, don't you?"
Raga's voice was now divine. "Erasure won't work on me."
The Elder smirked. "Won't it?"
"Fool," Raga said. His thumb touched the ground. "You think you know death?"
He whispered the words like a curse.
"Inferno: Solace of Oblivion."
The world ignited.
The destroyed land was destroyed again.
Flame erupted from every point of existence, sky, soil, air, even from inside Raga's body. The horizon burned red, and light itself began to crumble.
The Elder staggered. His form warped and glitched like static.
Raga's voice thundered, "You hide in emptiness. I burned the emptiness itself."
He clapped his palms together.
"Hell's Gate: Apocalypse."
The ground cracked open, and the air turned black. From the void crawled demons, hundreds of them, their bodies vast, armored, their faces hidden in shadow. Their mere presence bent gravity.
They surrounded the Elder, forming a circle.
He tried to slip back into Raga's body but there was nothing left inside him to inhabit.
The emptiness was gone.
Raga's eyes gleamed. "Now you will learn pain."
The demons charged.
The Elder's scythe sliced through the dark. One demon caught it barehanded. Another seized his neck and drove him into the ground. The sound of the impact rolled like thunder. Then came the rest. Dozens of demons pounding him in sync, blow after blow. Each hit left an explosion of light and shadow. The earth cratered.
And for the first time, the Void Elder screamed.
Raga's grin widened. "Scream for me."
Then everything stopped.
"Erasure: Dim Existence."
The light bent inward. The Elder vanished from the demons' grasp.
Then he moved. Faster than perception. His scythe carved across the field, touching demon after demon.
No blood.
No sound.
They were simply gone.
He stood alone again, chest heaving. His voice, low and final.
"Now… for the grand finale. I will erase the Demon of Death."
The scythe rose.
But before it fell the world rippled.
Gravitas.
The Elder froze mid-swing. The very air crushed him in place, as if the world itself had decided he couldn't move.
Rei stood across the field, glowing faintly, eyes steady.
He was breathing hard, half-conscious, but present. "You talk too much," he said quietly.
Far behind him, half-buried in dust, the Blade of Resolve hummed. Rei vanished then reappeared beside it. His hand closed around the hilt.
He threw it.
The blade screamed through the air, a streak of white and gold.
It struck the Elder's side. The impact tore space apart.
Before the echo faded, Rei appeared in front of him, fist drawn back.
"Mimicry Pulse."
He struck.
The blow silenced the world.
The Elder's chest collapsed inward, the reflected force multiplying again and again, a chain reaction of destruction.
The impact cracked the horizon itself.
For the first time, the Void cracked.
Rei's eyes glowed gold. "You absorb nothing from me."
And then the world fell silent.
The dust hung in midair. The void trembled.
Somewhere in that silence, death smiled.