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The cloaked man rolled onto his side and forced his palm against the shattered pavement. His fingers slipped in dust and blood. He tried to push himself up, but his legs gave out instantly. His knees folded and he dropped flat onto his back. The impact knocked the air from his lungs and a dull thud echoed across the broken street. Fine gray dust burst up around his shoulders and settled into his hood. He dragged his heels against the ground, boots scraping in short, frantic motions as if friction alone could force strength back into them.
"What…?" His voice came out thin and strained. He twisted onto one elbow and tried again. His thighs shook violently. The muscles simply refused to respond. "Why can't I stand…? What… what is this…?"
His hands slid across the cracked stone, fingers digging into loose gravel until his nails bent. He coughed hard. Thick, dark blood splattered across his chest and chin. He wiped at it with the back of his hand and only smeared it further.
He twisted his head toward Megalodon, panic breaking through the mask of control he usually wore.
"What did you—" He coughed again, a wet choke tearing through his throat. "—do to me?!"
A few meters away, Megalodon stood planted behind Oblivion. Both of his upper arms were hooked under Oblivion's shoulders, locking his arms outward and backward. His third arm wrapped tightly across Oblivion's chest, forearm pressed under the collarbone, bracing directly against the spine.
Oblivion thrashed anyway. His boots dragged jagged lines through the rubble. His heels dug in and slipped. His breathing came in harsh bursts through clenched teeth. Each exhale turned into a broken snarl as he tried to wrench free. His hands clawed backward, scraping against Megalodon's forearms, but the grip did not shift even a centimeter.
Black Mentis stood a short distance away. His left arm hung at an unnatural angle, the elbow bent inward in a way it never should have. The joint twitched in small, involuntary spasms. Blood ran steadily from the fracture, sliding down his wrist and dripping one heavy drop at a time onto the cracked asphalt.
He spread his arms anyway.
"Fine." He swallowed. His jaw tightened so hard the muscles along his cheeks flexed visibly. "I'll do it then."
He pulled air into his lungs slowly, forcing it past the sharp pain in his ribs. His chest rose unevenly. Something shifted under his skin with a faint grinding sensation, but he did not stop.
"O lux divina caelestis, descende super daemonem tenebrarum!"
His shoulders trembled. Sweat ran down his temples and mixed with blood at his collar.
"Inimice omnis sancti— te in oblivionem deleo!"
The air around him tightened. Dust lifted from the ground in thin streams. Small stones rolled toward his boots, tapping lightly against each other. The pavement beneath him vibrated with a low hum that traveled outward in widening circles.
Megalodon's eyes narrowed. His pupils contracted sharply.
"This spell…?" His lips parted slightly. Blood clung to his teeth, but a slow smile formed anyway. "This is my chance."
His third arm tightened subtly around Oblivion's chest as if bracing for impact.
"To show him the truth. The re-do can wait for another time."
Mentis continued, forcing each word out through pain.
"Per aeternam Dei vim— existentiam tuam in aeternum erado! Forma tua in nihilum dissolvat— numquam reditura!"
The veins along his neck stood out. His fingers spread wide despite the blood slicking his palm.
White flames erupted from his outstretched hand.
They did not flicker like ordinary fire. They surged forward in a thick wave, swallowing the street in front of him. Smoke vanished on contact. Rubble dissolved as if erased. The air itself seemed to recoil.
The cloaked man reacted instantly. He thrust his palm forward and formed a dense sphere of black-purple energy. The surface rippled violently as he hurled it straight into the advancing blaze.
The sphere touched the white flames.
It vanished.
There was no explosion. No struggle. It simply ceased to exist.
The white surge continued without slowing.
It struck Megalodon first.
For a split second his body glitched. His outline fractured into jagged segments. Sections of his torso shifted half an inch out of alignment before snapping back. His skin flickered between solid and transparent as if multiple versions of him were trying to occupy the same space.
Then the impact detonated across his frame.
Flesh tore away in smoking strips. Veins lit from within, glowing bright through charred muscle like molten threads. The force hurled him backward. His feet left the ground and he skipped across broken concrete, carving a deep trench through debris. Shattered asphalt and stone burst upward around him.
He laughed. The sound rattled out through damaged lungs, wet and distorted.
"Perfect…" Blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth. Half his torso was missing for a moment, ribs exposed and glowing from within. The empty space glitched, filled, then tore again before stabilizing. Muscle began knitting itself back together in uneven pulses. "This works in my favor. My path might've changed… but my goal stays the same."
The cloaked man tried to phase.
His body blurred. His outline split into overlapping silhouettes. Sections of him became translucent, as if scattered between layers of reality. One shoulder became faint and translucent. His torso flickered as though displaced slightly behind the world.
The white flames curved.
They followed him anyway.
They wrapped around his distorted form and tightened. The fire crawled across every split image at once.
His scream tore out of him raw and uncontrolled.
"No— NO!! How did it connect?! I scattered pieces of myself across other worlds, even parallel dimensions! This shouldn't be possible even for the false king himself. Let alone YOU!"
He staggered back, half his arm phasing through a collapsed wall before snapping solid again as the flames followed and burned through both surfaces.
Beside him, Oblivion roared.
The white fire reached him next. It sank into his skin as though searching beneath it. His flesh blackened and split open. Shadow poured out from his back in thick streams, twisting into shapes that tried to take form. The flames consumed them instantly. The shadows liquefied and dripped to the ground before evaporating.
"AARGH— damn it!! Get… get it OFF—!!"
Megalodon, still half burned and half restored, watched closely.
"They're in pain…?" His eyes narrowed, focusing despite sections of his face still rebuilding. "Then this means… they must be in the process of fusing with high-ranking demons."
A low vibration rolled through the ruined city.
"How interesting."
The blast expanded outward.
The asphalt beneath Mentis's feet softened and sagged. Cracks spread through the street in branching lines. Windows across nearby buildings exploded outward in rapid succession. Glass filled the air in glittering clouds before raining down.
Support beams inside the nearest tower snapped one by one. The structure leaned at an unnatural angle, groaned under its own weight, and finally folded inward. Floors collapsed on top of each other in a deafening cascade.
The shockwave continued down the street, ripping apart everything still standing.
And Mentis remained in place, arm extended, body shaking, fire pouring from his hand.
Black Mentis finally collapsed.
His knees gave out without warning. His body pitched forward and he hit the ground face first. The impact crushed the air from his lungs in a harsh grunt. Dust puffed around his head and stuck to the blood and sweat coating his skin. For a second he did not move at all.
Then his body rolled onto its back slowly, almost involuntarily. His chest heaved in uneven pulls. Each breath scraped through him like broken glass. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth and pooled in the hollow of his neck before sliding down into the dirt beneath him.
His fingers twitched at his sides. They tried to curl into fists but lacked the strength to close fully.
"I—I can't move… this is bad."
His voice was hoarse and thin. He swallowed and it hurt.
"But I have to finish this."
His jaw tightened. A tremor ran through his face as he forced his eyes open wider.
"If I don't…"
His voice dropped to a whisper that barely carried past his own ears.
"...Earth is doomed."
His gaze shifted, struggling to focus. Oblivion and the cloaked man writhed in the white flames several meters away. Their bodies were no longer stable shapes. Flesh blistered and split apart in layers. Entire sections of them vanished as they attempted to phase or scatter, only to be dragged back into the blaze. Limbs reformed halfway and burned again before fully taking shape.
The cloaked man's hood had burned away. Skin beneath it was raw and cracked, parts of his skull briefly visible before flame consumed them again. Oblivion's torso was blackened and split open, ribs exposed and glowing faintly from residual energy that could not regenerate.
There was no healing.
Every time tissue tried to reform, the white fire crawled over it and reduced it to ash before it could complete the process.
Megalodon stood several meters away from them.
Or what remained of him did.
Large portions of his frame were missing. His right side was half stripped to bone. Fragments of his shoulder drifted away as gray ash before dissolving completely. His form still glitched at irregular intervals. Parts of his torso shifted slightly out of alignment, then snapped back. A rib flickered between solid and translucent before stabilizing again.
But nothing fully regenerated.
The white flames had reached him as well. The edges of his wounds did not knit closed. They smoldered instead.
"This will delay their evolution."
His voice was steady, though quieter now.
"A few years at least. Their fusion will take longer now."
Ash floated between them, carried by hot currents of air rising from the burning street. The city around them groaned under structural failure. Concrete cracked in slow spreading lines. Steel beams bent and snapped in the distance.
Megalodon's legs trembled once.
He forced himself upright.
Bone ground against bone as his spine straightened. A section of his lower abdomen flaked off and scattered into the wind. He looked down at it briefly, then back at Mentis.
He lifted one arm.
The movement was slower than before. Strips of charred muscle hung loosely from his forearm. Small fragments broke away and dissolved before they reached the ground.
The world seemed to mute.
Sound dulled as if pushed underwater.
Black Mentis felt it before he heard anything.
Megalodon's gaze locked onto him. His pupils were steady despite the damage eating away at his face.
"Black Mentis… continue what you haven't finished."
The words formed directly in his mind. They were not loud, but they were clear.
"I entrust everything to you."
Megalodon's body flickered again. A portion of his chest phased out of alignment and failed to fully return. The exposed bone beneath it began to crumble at the edges.
"Choose the right successor for my goal..."
A fragment of his jaw turned to ash mid sentence and scattered away.
"My… goal… is yours… now to follow."
His knees bent slightly, almost imperceptibly, as if the weight of his own body had increased.
"I'm linking… my memories to you."
The air around his head distorted faintly. Thin lines of pale light flickered from his temple toward Mentis like unstable threads.
"Use them… wisely."
Black Mentis's eyes widened.
His pupils dilated sharply as something pierced through his consciousness. Images did not arrive gently. They slammed into him in overlapping waves.
Cities he had never seen.
Battles that had not yet happened.
Versions of himself standing at crossroads that split into thousands of possible outcomes.
He saw Megalodon walking different paths. Some ended in ruin. Some in victory. Some are in complete erasure.
The weight of it pressed against his skull. Blood trickled from his nose and ran across his cheek into the dirt.
His fingers dug into the ground without him realizing. Dirt packed under his nails as his body reacted to the overload.
Around him, a faint aura flickered to life.
It was not bright. It was thin and unstable. It clung to his skin like a final reserve. It did not heal him. The broken arm remained broken. The blood did not reverse.
But the shaking in his muscles lessened just enough.
Enough to move.
Megalodon's form destabilized further.
The white flames crept higher along his torso. A large portion of his left shoulder collapsed into ash and scattered in the wind. His glitching became more frequent. His outline fractured into layered silhouettes that did not perfectly align anymore.
His eyes remained focused.
Black Mentis groaned.
He rolled onto his side first. The movement took effort. His ribs screamed in protest. He planted his right hand into the dirt and tried to push.
His arm shook violently. The broken left arm dragged uselessly across the ground.
He sucked in a ragged breath and forced his right knee under him. The ground beneath his palm cracked slightly from the pressure as he leaned into it.
His vision blurred again but he clenched his teeth and held.
The faint aura around him flickered, threatening to fade.
He forced himself up another inch.
The battlefield trembled again. A distant building finally gave way and collapsed in a heavy crash that rolled across the ruined district.
Oblivion and the cloaked man were still burning. Their movements had slowed, but the flames had not diminished.
Megalodon's body shed another layer of ash.
He did not look away from Mentis.
And the end was still coming.
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