Ken couldn't feel his legs.
They were numb, burning one moment and hollow the next, as if the nerves had been scraped out. Yet he stood somehow, his entire weight hanging on muscle memory and stubbornness rather than strength. His breathing was shattered, pulled through cracked ribs and a stomach that felt crushed from the inside, but the blood answered him. It always did.
The crimson around him rose like a living storm, drifting upward with the wind, forming into the shape of a massive serpent. It coiled above him, glowing in the dim light, its scales made of solidified blood so sharp they blurred into razors. Ken shoved his hand forward, and the serpent launched itself at the creature with a violent snap.
The creature didn't step back. It slid sideways, its motion like a glitch in reality, and slapped the serpent aside with one elongated arm. The hit detonated the serpent into a splash of crimson mist. Ken forced the pieces back together midair, the serpent reforming and diving again. Again the creature deflected it. Again Ken rebuilt it. Again the creature tore it apart.
Each clash sent shockwaves across the broken field, tearing trenches into the earth and scattering debris into the sky. Ken's vision blurred from the force each time it shattered. He held his stance by sheer will, body trembling as if ready to collapse at any second.
And between the chaos, one thought slipped through.
Is it worth it?
His heart twisted. He would die here. Not later. Not eventually. Now. He could feel death breathing down his neck, waiting for the moment he slipped. And backup wasn't coming. No alerts, no signatures, nothing. Just the creature. Him. And the endless, bleeding ground beneath them.
Would it be cowardly to run?
Just turn away?
Just leave?
He didn't have the answer.
He didn't even know if he deserved one.
But the creature wasn't going to let him think.
It smashed through the serpent one final time, shattering it into thousands of crimson shards—tiny droplets of his blood—falling like rain. Ken gasped, his knees buckling, but he didn't let those droplets hit the ground.
He caught them with his mind. Every droplet froze midair. Every droplet stretched into a line. Every line snapped together.
Blood chains. Hundreds of them. All at once, launching from every angle, wrapping around the creature's arms, legs, shoulders, ribs—everything they could latch onto. Ken clenched his teeth, forcing the chains to pull, his own muscles screaming as if he was dragging a mountain with his bare hands.
The creature didn't stop. It walked through the resistance, each step cracking the ground beneath its feet, the chains tightening until they snapped one by one. Ken kept remaking them, forcing more and more out of the air, out of his skin, out of the earth, anything he had left. His vision doubled. His heart thudded unevenly. He couldn't hold it. Not like this.
The creature ripped forward.
Ken raised his sickle just in time. The first blow crashed into the blade, sending a shockwave through his arm so violent his shoulder nearly dislocated. He staggered back only for the second blow to already be there, a silent, brutal strike aimed at his chest.
Ken didn't block with the sickle this time. He countered.
Scarlet Reap.
His blade carved a screaming arc of red, slicing through the creature's second arm. The limb tore off in a burst of shadowy static, the edges fraying like paper burning too slowly. Ken stumbled backward, boots digging into the crumbling earth, trying to gather enough strength to move again.
The creature raised its remaining arm.
Ken tried to lift his sickle—tried—but the world spun too hard, and his arm barely moved.
The blow never landed.
A figure ripped through the air between them, so fast the pressure alone bent the surrounding space. The arrival cracked the ground, split the wind, and forced the creature to pause for the first time since it appeared.
The figure stood there, blocking the creature's path, back facing Ken, presence swallowing the battlefield whole.
Ken blinked, barely conscious.
Someone else had finally stepped in.
The man snapped his fingers.
A sound like glass shattering inward ripped through the field, and a few hundred meters behind the creature a black wound tore open in the air. An abyssal rift spiraled outward, a devouring pull dragging stones, dirt, stray blood, and even the light itself toward the hollow core. The pressure distorted the air, turning the landscape into melting lines.
For the first time since its arrival,
the creature hesitated.
Its claws scraped the ground as it leaned forward, resisting the pull. Its eyeless sockets twitched, then widened, as if the rift was something it didn't want to understand.
It took a single step back.
The newcomer turned to Ken. His voice was calm, flat, unshaken by the chaos swirling around him.
"Can you still fight?"
Ken stared at him through a haze of pain. He didn't need to answer. Standing up was enough.
Lucian Swiftblade. The leader of Devil's Fangs. The second strongest group in the Hero Association.
Ken forced himself upright. His legs trembled like loosened wires, but he stood. Lucian nodded once, then turned back as the creature finally shattered the pull of the abyssal rift, snapping the air with a lurch that cracked the ground.
It stepped forward.
Lucian vanished.
He reappeared behind the creature, bending space like fabric around him. Dimensional blades—thin, translucent slivers of warped reality—orbited him in perfect silence, slicing everything they touched into fragments. They spiraled around him as he dashed forward, cutting across the creature's back in clean geometric lines.
The creature's flesh didn't bleed. It folded inward, then reformed, as if reality itself had to catch up.
Ken sprinted in next, blood gathering along his arms, coiling into a spear. He charged it with enough force to tear through reinforced steel—but the creature twisted with inhuman speed and redirected its body around the strike. The spear pierced empty air.
Ken stumbled—Lucian's blades flew past him—nearly slicing Ken's shoulder.
The creature lunged. Lucian flicked his fingers. Space warped in front of him, turning into a jagged shield of refracted dimensions. The creature's hand slammed into it, bending the barrier inward. The shield cracked like ice. The creature pushed harder, distorting the air so violently Ken felt his bones vibrate.
Then the creature snapped its missing arm back into existence.
A ripple of insanity exploded outward. A sensation. The world bent. Ken's blood trembled. The air tasted like metal and ash.
And suddenly—
The battlefield split into three versions of itself, overlapping like transparent sheets. Lucian moved in one. Ken in another. The creature in all three.
Ken blinked, disoriented, his blood reacting too late. He swung, but his strike passed through the wrong layer, hitting nothing. The creature flickered between the layers—one leg in one reality, one in another—making its movements impossible to predict.
Lucian gritted his teeth as his dimensional blades slipped through the overlapping planes and missed the creature entirely.
They weren't fighting one enemy. They were fighting a being who existed unevenly.
The creature raised its hand. Ken felt something claw inside his skull—like fingers scraping memories, rearranging them. He staggered, vision bending sideways. Lucian tried to intervene, but his foot landed half-in, half-out of the wrong layer, causing him to slip, space muting his own movement.
The creature swung all three of its overlapping arms at once.
Ken dodged the first.
The second passed through the layers and clipped him across the ribs.
The third ripped through Lucian's barrier, blasting him back, rolling him across the dirt.
Ken spat blood. Lucian stood, brushing dust off his coat, expression cold.
The creature's overlapping illusions shivered, folding into one again. It crouched low, preparing to strike. Ken readied his chains. Lucian realigned his blades.
They moved at the same time—
and collided.
Ken's blood chains shot forward just as Lucian warped space, and the chains were pulled sideways, dragged off their trajectory, wrapping around broken stones instead of the creature. Ken yanked them back, but one chain accidentally cut across Lucian's path, forcing him to dodge mid-swing.
That half-second cost everything.
The creature appeared between them, its torso splitting open like a set of jaws—rows of jagged, fractal teeth made from compressed reality snapping outward.
Ken barely leapt aside. Lucian phased backward, sliding between two tilted slices of space.
The creature snapped its torso shut, then tilted its head, turning its hollow, clawed-out sockets towards them.
They were losing.
Even together.
Ken could barely feel anything below his waist now. Every nerve in his legs had turned into static, a dead hum he refused to listen to. The ground beneath him shook with every step the creature took, but he forced his body to move anyway. It wasn't strength—just pure instinct refusing to die.
Lucian didn't look much better. Space flickered unevenly around him, the distortion sputtering, like his ability was glitching. His left arm hung stiff; using dimensional compression at point-blank range had partially crushed his own tendons. There were limits even to him. They were crossing them.
The creature lunged again—its claws scything through the air—and the world warped just enough for the blow to miss Lucian by inches. He retaliated, slashing with a blade of folded reality, but the creature phased its torso—flickering into a half-existence—letting the blade pass through harmlessly. Then it reappeared and sent Ken flying with a backhand strike that rattled whole buildings behind him.
Ken coughed blood, but snapped his fingers, dragging every drop he'd spilled into a whip that lashed toward the creature's legs. It worked—partially. The whip coiled, tightening. But the creature bent its limb at an impossible angle, tearing out of it like it had no bones restricting it.
Lucian appeared above its head, blades orbiting like savage moons—
But the creature shrieked.
Not a sound. A pressure. A ripping vibration that cut through space itself.
Lucian's orbit shattered.
He dropped, slamming into the ground, coughing violently as the spatial distortion around him cracked like broken glass.
"Damn it—" he hissed, clutching his ribs. Something inside them had definitely collapsed.
Ken pushed himself up again, controlling the blood pooling under him, turning it into a cluster of sharp spears. He shot all of them at once, but the creature spun—its body elongating and twisting unnaturally—and every spear missed except one that grazed its thigh.
The ground suddenly darkened.
Shadows surged like a rising tide.
Ezra appeared first—melting upward from the creature's own shadow. His body flickered with black wisps as he wrapped the creature's legs in chains made purely of darkness.
Then the air vibrated.
A frequency rippled outward—sharp enough to sting Ken's teeth. Silas walked into view, hands raised, the entire battlefield trembling with invisible sound blades.
He clapped his palms together once,
And the sound burst outward like a concussive shockwave, hurling the creature backward.
Only for it to land on all fours, completely silent, completely unfazed…
Then its torso peeled open vertically like a cracked door, revealing spiraling runes lining its ribs. The runes pulsed, emitting a low oscillating drone that made Silas stumble, choking.
His sound control destabilized instantly.
Ezra's shadows flickered, weakening.
Something was whispering.
Not aloud—but inside their skulls. A scraping murmur, like fingernails on the mind.
Ken buckled.
Lucian gritted his teeth, forcing space to stabilize around him again, even as blood poured from his nose.
Then another figure arrived.
A tall, slim man in a long ash-colored coat. He moved calmly, as if immune to the madness ripping through the battlefield. His eyes were pale gray—almost empty—and he held his hands behind his back.
"Vale," Lucian growled. "Took you long enough."
The mind-walker gave a thin half-smile. "My apologies. It took time to fortify my psyche. This thing's mental field is… louder than expected."
Ken spat blood. "You can get into its head?"
"Eventually," Vale answered. "But I need to touch it directly."
Ezra cursed under his breath. "Well that's not happening unless we break that distortion it's creating."
The creature rose again, its cracked ribs glowing brighter, whispering intensifying—every syllable an attack on the mind.