The silence that followed the explosion was worse than the roar.
Trizha knelt in the debris, her fingers hovering inches away from Nomoro's ruined face.
She had only shared a handful of conversations with him—brief, cryptic exchanges that had left her with a mountain of unanswered questions.
Now, those answers felt like they were drifting away into the night sky, unreachable.
She had grown to like him.
It was a quiet, sudden thing; a spark of affection born from the simple fact that he had looked at her not as a woman, but as a person worth saving.
And now, he lay there, his life force seeping into the concrete in a steady, rhythmic pulse that grew slower with every passing second.
Trizha slowly stood up, her legs feeling like lead.
She gripped the iron pipe so hard her knuckles turned white, but her hands were shaking too violently to be effective.
She shook her head in a desperate, frantic denial.
He can't be dead. He was going to tell me… he was going to explain why his name sounded so familiar.
"You know, character development in the middle of a slaughter... it's truly a troublesome thing."
The voice was like a bucket of ice water. Trizha spun around, her eyes red and blurred with tears.
Zackier Morkator stood just a few feet away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets and a chilling, clinical boredom etched into his handsome face.
"You bastard..." Trizha spat, her voice thick with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Zackier scoffed, leaning forward slightly to invade her space. "He could have been saved, you know. Or not. That outcome depended entirely on you leaving this rooftop the moment he gave you the chance. But instead, you chose to have a 'moment.' You chose to evolve in the middle of a crisis. That is the height of stupidity. It's common sense: you run, you call for help, and you survive. You don't waste precious seconds on trivial bullshit like character growth."
He looked at her tear-stained face and her pathetic iron pipe, and he let out a short, sharp laugh.
He found her grief—and her rage—to be nothing more than a punchline.
He lifted his arm again, pointing a single, elegant finger at her forehead.
The air began to warp once more as he started to amalgamate ten distinct, stockpiled emotions, weaving them into a new, pulsing sphere of light.
"What does this make you, I wonder?" Zackier mused, his eyes dancing with a sick delight. "Your twenty-third death? Hmmm. I have to admit, in this particular 'Unending,' you've been the most fascinating. You're so... realistic. But all good stories must eventually be edited. Goodbye, Trizha."
A wide, ecstatic grin split his face as the energy reached its breaking point.
Trizha's heart hammered a final, terrified rhythm against her ribs.
She closed her eyes tight, bracing for an unacceptable, meaningless death.
But the explosion never came.
The hum of the energy suddenly stuttered and died.
Zackier's grin vanished, replaced by a look of sharp caution and dawning confusion.
Behind Trizha, something was moving.
A body, broken and scorched, began to rise.
It was a slow, agonizing process—the sound of grinding bone and tearing fabric echoing in the stillness.
It was Nomoro.
The constant flow of blood from his wounds didn't just stop; it began to pull back.
He stepped forward, his boots crunching on the debris.
His fists were clenched so tight the skin over his knuckles began to split.
As he lifted his head, the breeze caught his hair, whipping it back to reveal his face.
The ruin was gone.
The shattered bone and shredded flesh were knitting themselves back together like a mirror being pieced together in reverse.
His eyes snapped open—wide, suddenly violet, and burning with a glare that promised a reckoning.
Zackier's eyes nearly bulged.
He dashed backward, creating a few meters of distance as he stared at the boy who had just cheated the grave.
"Regeneration? Still alive? A 'power'?!" Zackier whispered, a shiver of genuine anticipation racing down his spine. "Now, this is a first!"
Zackier's grip tightened on his knife, his bloodlust beginning to hum in time with the wind.
He took one predatory step forward, his eyes locked on the "masterpiece" unfolding before him.
Nomoro stood firmly on the crumbled roof, his body crouched low in a combat-ready stance.
A violet aura, both sinister in its darkness and oddly gentle in its flow, began to erupt from his skin.
"Not in my three hundred years of hunting you two down across several Unendings has this happened!" Zackier shouted, his voice reaching a pitch of manic excitement. "Usually, you're nothing but a miserable gag, crying yourself to death! But today... today you've brought something different to the fight?"
He spread his arms wide, welcoming the chaos. "Are you telling me that my presence alone has forced Fate to hand you this power so early? You have me curiously surprised, Tarosono!"
Nomoro didn't answer.
He focused deep within the void of his own identity.
…and answered himself.
「The power to prevent. The power to defend. Yield me your strength and allow me to borrow it all in one fell swoop. In order to grant me the permission… to fight a fight never for me.」
And so, his entire right arm began to transform, the skin darkening and hardening into a jagged, obsidian-like armor that crept up to his shoulder and across half of his face.
Purple flames flickered at the seams of the armor, licking at the air.
A singular, wicked horn erupted from the top of his head, and a dark, skeletal mask fused over the right side of his face.
His left eye remained human, but his right eye—visible through the mask—glowed with a piercing, demonic violet.
"Prophelity: Hybroth Hell."
Trizha stood frozen, the iron pipe forgotten in her hand.
The man standing before her wasn't the boy she knew from class.
He was something ancient.
Something terrifying.
Zackier's laughter died down into a low, appreciative hum. "Ah. So the rumors are true. You are a demon. That certainly explains the hatred the world feels for you. People always fear what they can't control—whether it's what you did, or simply what you are."
Zackier began to circle Nomoro, his knife held in a deadly, practiced grip.
"But you're no different from me, really," Zackier continued, his own aura beginning to flare with a suffocating, sinister light. "I kill, I ruin, I leave a wake of despair wherever I walk. I am a demon wearing the face of charm, while you are a human wearing the face of agony."
He assumed a low stance, his eyes fixed on the violet glow of Nomoro's mask.
"We are two sides of the same coin, yet we couldn't be more different. So, let's settle this like civilised people and tell me…"
The air between them began to crackle and pop as their competing auras clashed, sending ripples of pressure across the rooftop.
Zackier's voice dropped to a chilling, final whisper.
"Which one of us here..."
Trizha felt the pressure and scrambled backward.
She realized the main exit was fused shut, and she began to scan the rooftop for any other way down—a fire escape, a maintenance hatch—anything.
She knew she had to leave, but she felt anchored by the sight of the two monsters.
Nomoro adjusted his stance, his armored feet cracking the concrete.
His determination was a physical force, a wall of iron between the girl and the devil.
"...Is the real Monster?!"