The emerald-gold mist settled across the battlefield, leaving behind a silence so dense it felt suffocating.
Where Zerarth had stood just moments before, only a faint dusting of pale, scorched ash remained. The second Twin Demon—Kaelthar—stood frozen, his six crimson eyes trembling in violent, uncomprehending disbelief. The massive bone-cleaver in his grip shook so hard the serrated edge hummed against the dead air.
"Zerarth...?" Kaelthar whispered, his monstrous voice cracking.
There was no trace. No soul fragment. Not even a lingering wisp of demonic ether. His twin, with whom he had slaughtered civilizations across centuries, had been erased in a single, careless strike.
"GRAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
A blood-curdling roar tore from Kaelthar's throat, shattering the surrounding rock formations into dust. The air around him turned boiling purple as jagged bone spikes erupted from his back, shoulders, and arms. His muscular bulk expanded exponentially, drunk on pure, feral madness.
"You butchered my brother with a parlor trick!" Kaelthar screamed, his hatred locking entirely onto Rehan. "I will crack your skull open and drink every drop of your divine marrow!"
Rehan didn't even shift his stance. His eyes remained calm, infinite, and untroubled.
"Your brother chose to reap mortal lives without remorse," Rehan said softly, his voice devoid of mockery, carrying only the cold certainty of an executioner. "The harvest simply returned to him."
"Die, brat!"
"Abyssal Berserk: Calamity Rend!"
Kaelthar vaulted forward, tearing the earth apart beneath his talons. The bone-cleaver blazed with venomous purple rot, descending like a guillotine aimed to cleave Rehan from crown to hip.
CLANGGGGGG!
A deafening metallic explosion echoed across the plains.
Kaelthar's blade didn't hit Rehan.
Intercepting the strike mid-air was Zahir. His heavy broadsword, now burning with pure, purified azure flames thanks to Rehan's divine healing, held the massive cleaver in an immovable lock. Zahir's eyes burned with renewed fire, a feral grin tugging at the corner of his lips.
"Looking past your opponent?" Zahir grunted, his muscles flexing under his newly healed skin. "Your brother couldn't put me down, and neither will you, beast!"
"Vanguard Rebound: Mountain Crusher!"
With a ferocious heave, Zahir deflected the bone-cleaver skyward, stepped inside Kaelthar's guard, and slammed his steel-plated shoulder directly into the demon's sternum, forcing the massive brute stumbling backward across the plains.
"Zahir! Take the beast!" Rehan called out, his hand resting on the dual hilts at his waist. "Leave the shadow to me."
"Consider it done!" Zahir yelled back, his azure aura flaring like a raging wildfire as he lunged after the enraged Kaelthar, locking the demon in a brutal, earth-shattering clash of raw steel and bone.
The Gaze of the Monarchs
Rehan slowly turned his attention to the sky.
Hovering thirty feet in the air, Lord Ghost Demon looked down. The initial shock on his shadowy face had vanished, replaced by an expression of cold, dangerous intrigue. His crimson eyes swept over Rehan's regenerated left arm, the subtle emerald-black mantle drifting behind him, and the two sheathed blades humming at his hips.
"Morgath failed," Lord Ghost Demon remarked, his voice layered with hundreds of spectral murmurs. "Not only did he fall, but he surrendered the ancient Death God's legacy to a mortal child. How utterly pathetic."
"Morgath didn't fail," Rehan replied, stepping onto the empty air, walking upward on invisible sovereign stairs until he stood level with the demon monarch. "He was freed. The illusion you wove around his heart burned to ash the moment he saw the truth."
Lord Ghost Demon let out a low, chilling laugh that vibrated through the clouds.
"Freed? You speak of freedom as if it holds meaning before eternity. Morath was a tool. Morgath was an instrument. And you, boy... you are merely a thief playing dress-up in divine robes."
The shadow monarch raised both arms, and the sky turned pitch-black.
"Ghost Monarch Art: Nether Void Cataclysm!"
The atmosphere screamed. Thousands of colossal, spectral serpents forged from pure violet void-fire erupted from the clouds, descending upon Rehan in an inescapable vortex of absolute destruction. The space around Rehan collapsed inward, crushing light, sound, and matter into a singular singularity.
Rehan did not flinch.
His right hand and his phantom left hand gripped the hilts of the Twin Death Swords.
SHING—!
The blades slid from their scabbards.
The air froze. A terrifying synthesis of Zenith Sovereign Gold and Death God Emerald detonated around Rehan's silhouette, instantly neutralizing the spatial collapse.
"Twin Sovereign Art: Dual Horizon Cleave!"
Rehan blurred into two sweeping arcs of celestial jade and molten gold.
SHRRRRK—KABOOOM!
The descending vortex of spectral serpents was severed cleanly in half. The twin energy crescents cut straight through the dimensional storm, flying directly toward Lord Ghost Demon with enough velocity to slice the sky in two.
Lord Ghost Demon's pupils contracted. For the first time in centuries, the sovereign of the Nether felt the sharp, freezing sting of genuine mortality scraping against his skin.
He phase-shifted through four layers of space to dodge, yet the trailing edge of Rehan's blade still clipped his shadowy robe, setting the dark ether alight with inextinguishable emerald flames.
The demon lord rematerialized fifty meters away, snuffing out the flames with a hiss of dark lightning. His face twisted into a terrifying, unhinged sneer.
"Very well, Rehan," Lord Ghost Demon whispered, the seven deadly sin seals on his chest beginning to thrum with ominous crimson light.
"Let us see if a mortal god can survive the true monarch of the Nether!"