I pulled myself together for what would most likely be the last time, and I flung my tattered arms forward, my fingers fused to the hilt by dried blood and sheer, jagged spite.
The crystalline crack of bone breaking, and turning to dust echoed in my ears.
Above me, the creature's chest began to heave. It wasn't a gasp for air; it was a laugh.
The sound was a mechanical grinding, like iron teeth gnashing together in the dark. It vibrated in the marrow of my teeth, a frequency so foul it made my gums ache. It was a voice that sounded like it had been dragged through a mile of jagged gravel before reaching the air—a sound that belonged to a throat already filled with its own black blood.
"Although my life comes to an end here," the Demon King hissed, the words dripping with a sickening, wet mirth, "so does yours, Vanguard."
He leaned in, his shadow swallowing the little light I had left.
"Tell me... do you truly believe that once the light leaves our eyes, there will be anything left to fight for? You have won a graveyard. You are the king of nothing."
He lifted his arms, as if to wave me away.
I knew better.
He was preparing one last attack.
Although it was impossible for him to survive in the state he was, he didn't intend to give me the satisfaction of watching him die first.
I tried to lift my sword, feeling my bones cracking and crumbling.
I forced energy into them to no avail.
The ball of black mana in his hand had grown to about the size of a head, all he would be able to muster now.
I filled in the rest of my arm with mana, a crude prosthetic of light that hummed with a violent, unstable frequency.
I didn't have any way of surviving this, but in my final act, I would guarantee he didn't get to witness my death either.
I dashed. It wasn't a movement of muscle, but a violent expulsion of remaining mana. My legs, no longer supported by solid bone, buckled and tore, trailing behind me like tattered ribbons in the wind. It was a one-way trip—the final displacement of a dying mass.
I thrust my blade directly into the heart of his black sun.
The steel didn't pierce; it was consumed. My sword, already a jagged ruin, began to vibrate with a violent, terminal frequency as the black mana began to eat its way toward my hands.
I didn't pull away. I didn't pray.
I looked into the Demon King's eyes and released my grip on the hilt, my fingers curling into a final, trembling gesture of contempt.
"Fuck you... bastard," I wheezed. The words were less a sentence and more the sound of a lung collapsing.
For the first time, the Demon King's regal composure shattered. His face contorted, his lips peeling back in a snarl of genuine, petty rage. He opened his mouth to scream a final curse, to deny me my victory—
But the world ran out of time.
The black sun collapsed. The light of my prosthetic arm flared. And then, there was only a blinding, absolute white.