The six remaining Sins scattered outward into the void, forming a loose crimson ring around Rehan — and this time, the Scarlet King did not stay back to watch.
"Pride," the King barked, "hold formation. The rest of you — with me."
Pride's crowned silhouette said nothing, simply raised one hand, and the void around Rehan seemed to thicken, gravity bending subtly toward some unseen center — a passive pressure meant to slow him down without ever needing to strike.
Wrath came first, its mirror-body splitting into a dozen screaming reflections of Rehan's own rage, each one lunging from a different angle. Envy's green flame lashed out in jealous, grasping tendrils, trying to bind his limbs. Gluttony opened a maw wide enough to swallow starlight itself, hungry to devour the very aura pouring off Rehan's skin.
And in the middle of it all, the Scarlet King moved.
His glaive came down in a crimson arc aimed squarely at Rehan's exposed back while the Sins had his attention divided — a coward's strike, but an effective one. It connected.
CRACK.
Rehan's aura screamed as the blade bit through his guard and opened a long, smoking gash across his shoulder blade, black-gold blood spraying into the vacuum in slow, frozen beads.
"There," the King snarled, twisting the glaive deeper before wrenching it free. "You forget — I am not merely a general standing behind my court, boy. I am the court. Every Sin you kill, I feel the wound too. And every wound I deal, they feel the strength."
As if to prove it, the six Sins surged with a fresh, visible burst of crimson power, their forms solidifying, sharpening — feeding off the King's successful strike like a shared circulatory system.
Rehan staggered forward half a step, his golden-emerald aura flickering violently at the wound, then — slowly, deliberately — steadied.
"So that's the game," he said, glancing at the blood freezing along his shoulder. "You hit me, they get stronger. I kill them, you get weaker. We're both bleeding from the same wound now."
"Then choose carefully," the King said, already retreating back into the ring of Sins, glaive dripping, "which of us you'd rather kill first."
Wrath's mirrors screamed again, closing in from every side. Gluttony's maw yawned wider, straining to inhale the golden flame pouring off Rehan's body. Envy's tendrils tightened around his ankles like jealous chains.
Rehan exhaled once, slow and controlled, watching his own blood drift past his face in weightless crimson beads.
"Fine," he said quietly. "One at a time, or all at once — it ends the same way."
His aura ignited fully, burning away Envy's tendrils in an instant, and he drove forward directly into the heart of the ring — straight toward Gluttony's open maw, fist already crackling with enough condensed sovereign-authority to end it in a single blow.
"Let's see how hungry you really are."