Driven by suppressed fear, anger, and disgust, Luciel spouted ludicrous words he would have never found himself uttering. It shook the core of his emotions so deeply that even the flame paused, briefly stunned into silence.
The monster also froze in place and tilted its grotesque head, as if trying to parse the sudden outburst from this bleeding child. Its twin abysses slowly locked onto Luciel's muted gray eyes.
Luciel answered back with a glare that could cut steel.
For a moment, the ruined auditorium held its breath. Boy and beast, measuring each other across splintered wood and forgotten memories.
Luciel never let go of the intensity. His posture stood tall against the supernatural, and his heart steeled into unbreakable diamond. The boy who had flinched at every false memory had disappeared, replaced by a cold front.
Scarlet light surrounded him, not gentle warmth but heavenly judgment. It didn't just coat his skin. He became one with the flame. Its heat became his skin, like armor forged from conviction and fury.
Yet, that damned half-mask still clung to the creature's face like wet paper, a mockery of the lives lost. It made Luciel's stomach turn. He didn't know what the Hollow saw when it looked at him—maybe the boy who once cried over a broken doll, or the one who stopped crying altogether.
Whatever it saw, it seemed to hate the answer.
The creature shot forward with a warped rhythm, one side faster than the other. The damage must've accumulated even as its wounds slowly regenerated.
'Good. There's my chance.'
Luciel's mind clicked into combat clarity. He knew chipping away at its skin wasn't sustainable. This thing could twist memories, voices, and appearances at will. And even without those tricks, its superior physicality meant a prolonged battle would only end one way—damn sure not in his favor.
Though the flame could restore his flesh whenever needed, mental fatigue wasn't something it could wash away. And that healing process felt like hell. He wanted to avoid that searing torture unless absolutely necessary.
'Time for a gamble, then.'
What did they often say? High risk, high reward? Luciel needed to be this bold if he wanted to take down this abomination.
He immediately noticed the weight shift from its uneven gait and stepped into the gap against instinct, closing distance before the limbs could correct themselves.
The dagger whistled as it surged, hitting the upper forelimb where bone met twisted cartilage. Luciel drove the flame to maximum heat. Rage, desperation, pain—everything that defined his existence was poured into that first strike. He didn't care if it burned his hand, as long as it could cut through.
The flame answered. It roared through the joint, branding the dagger in liquid fire, and seared it off entirely. The limb detached with a thick snap and collapsed to the floor.
One down.
Luciel succeeded, but he had no time to think. He stepped over the severed limb and marched toward the Hollow.
"You're always so mean, Luciel..."
Its wail tried to crawl under his skin, coated with poison honey and manufactured nostalgia. But the spell was broken now. It was all noise to him. A memory that had never happened.
Blood had coalesced around the hilt. The grip was slippery, but Luciel readjusted without thinking. Muscle memory from a thousand desperate fights in the Outlands.
The next limb came from the right. Luciel had half-expected this and ducked under the swipe. He rode the momentum forward and slashed across the elbow before the joint could bend.
The blade met resistance, but the flame carved deeper, slipping between the sweet spot at the joint until it was sliced clean off.
'Four more to go.'
The pattern was clear now. Large frame meant committed swings. Committed swings meant exposed limbs. Luciel just needed to exploit that gap between the arcs.
Positioning was everything. Once that was solved, dodging became child's play.
But the real test was the rear limbs. They dragged behind the creature like malformed roots, harder to reach but crucial for its stability. To get at them, Luciel would have to do something extremely stupid.
He'd have to go under the thing.
He had added a few chips to the pot. Now's the time to go all in.
Luciel didn't give himself time to reconsider. He gathered momentum and moved under the creature's enormous frame, sprinting across a field of living shadow like a madman.
The creature's bulk loomed above Luciel, a ceiling of rot and bone that could crush him in an instant. That'd turn him into a nice red pancake.
Not the ending he wanted.
'But not if I outrun it.'
Luciel ran like his life depended on it. Literally. Each footstep echoed in the hollow space beneath its torso.
One.
Two.
Three.
He counted his heartbeats as the shadow beneath him grew darker. Invisible pressure built in the air, already beginning to force his body against the floorboards.
'Move, move, MOVE—'
Flame wreathed around Luciel's legs as he pushed through, each step flashing an explosion of speed and precision.
The creature was too slow, too massive. It only lurched forward and swayed, trying to track the human torch buzzing underneath it. But its bulk worked against it. The rear limbs dragged uselessly, messy and uncoordinated, like a child who never learned how to walk.
Luciel rolled out from beneath just as it began to collapse, pivoting behind it in one fluid motion. The beast tried to swirl its massive frame, but physics was a cruel mistress. The rear limbs staggered out of sync, and the joints were locked in an awkward angle.
Luciel's eyes sparked. A wide stride cut across the entire auditorium.
'Thank you.'
Flame painted his dagger in scarlet as he carved a perfect arc through purple mist. Steel cracked through the joint, fire snapped upward in a clean burst, and both merged into breaking thunder.
The rear limb came off clean.
The towering abomination careened sideways, crashing down like a felled tree. It used the remaining leg to scurry across the floor, rotten bone screeching against the surface.
The psychological assault gradually vanished, only to be replaced by miserable whispers and false cries.
"Please... Luciel. I'm scared..." it whimpered, cycling through broken voices and faces it never owned. Each plea was more hollow than the last, like a broken jukebox grinding through its final notes.
"Without your pathetic tricks," Luciel said, advancing through a field of discarded limbs, "you're just a pile of meat that forgot how to die."
He knew wrathful words could not extinguish his burning emotions right now or bring back the dead, but anything, however small, counted—even if it was only meant for him.
Luciel plodded through cracked planks and reached the final leg. With a ragged breath, he knelt and pinned it beneath his knee. The creature's body trembled as corrupted blood hissed against divine flame.
Without a word, Luciel raised the dagger. Flame cracked along the edge like liquid starlight.
One slash to cut down. A brush stroke hung against the air, its line striking mist to vapor, reducing bone to ash.
The creature's body plunged completely, shattering the floorboards beneath its weight. It could not move nor cry. The two remaining limbs stayed silent after witnessing their siblings' demise, only twitching in haphazard spasms to mourn the loss.
'Let's take those to the afterlife too.'
Luciel moved methodically to the Hollow's side, his eyes silent and boundless under the moon's gaze. He cut deep into the next limb, but the blade clung to tough sinew. The bone here was denser, more durable than he thought.
So Luciel dug in, let weight and will do the work, and cleaved the limb in two.
The last arm tried to pull away, its talons scraping hectically against wood in a final, desperate gesture.
Luciel approached and struck once more, and it came off without resistance.
The abomination was now truly powerless. Just a torso and head left, it drew a shaky breath among the scattered remains of its former monstrosity. It could only struggle helplessly as its limbs got carved away one after another.
"How sad," Luciel muttered in ridicule. He could no longer feel any lasting emotion even as it still wore her skin, her voice, her memory.
The burning rage had faded without goodbyes. Numbness soon took over. The flame died down with him, though he could feel its essence still brimming with judgment and grace. No matter the circumstances, Luciel could only step forward and face the hardest truth that lay upon him.
For what seemed like an eternity, the world paused, only to be resumed again with a heavy, resilient step.