Hiluas moved first.
He didn't leap, didn't breathe, didn't so much as tighten a muscle. One moment he stood beneath the pale shimmer of the anomaly sky, the next he was simply gone—a ripple in the cold, a ghost abandoning form. His obsidian blades carved a narrow path through space, aimed straight at Kresor's throat, heart, and spine as if tracing a divine execution pattern.
No roar. No warning. Just professional murder. Kresor's body responded before thought caught up. His heel slid half an inch. A pivot—fractured, imperfect, instinctive. Umbra Karas snapped up to intercept the descending slash. Metal never rang; instead, the sound of impact was swallowed whole, replaced by the suffocating silence of the Void drinking a scream that never reached the air.
Hiluas staggered back two deliberate steps. Kresor did not move at all. Hiluas's eyes narrowed, the smallest twitch of disbelief leaking into his otherwise neutral expression. Not fear. Not admiration. Just recalculation.
"Unnatural speed," he said quietly. "And unstable projection." The words weren't meant for Kresor—they were for himself, a professional making mental notes before tightening the noose. Kresor barely heard him.
The void inside him pulsed, a monstrous heartbeat cracking against his ribs. Dodge. Slow. Predictable. Counter. Faster. The internal voice grated along razor edges of instinct, blending with Kresor's frantic breaths. It felt like something inside him was operating separate from his will, steering his limbs like borrowed tools.
Then the pain hit. A lance of silver tore free from under his ribs—sharp, invasive, blinding. The Purity lodged deep within him rebelled, erupting through cracks in the black armor. The light forced its way out, burning, rejecting the void wrapped around his bones. Kresor shuddered.A cough tore through him—dark blood spat onto the frozen ground, instantly turning to vapor.
His counterattack came too late.
Hiluas seized that half-heartbeat. He flicked his wrist, and silver traps—thin lines of Purity strung like threads of moonlight—shot outward. They wrapped the air around Kresor, tightening into a glowing web meant to bind, suffocate, and ultimately snap his bones.
Norphis flinched. "That black energy… it's ripping him apart. And the silver—look at it. It's fighting back." Beside him, Clauiy surged forward, panic splintering her voice. "Kresor!" She didn't get far.
A barrier erupted between her and the battlefield—a dome of dense Purity energy collapsing from above like an invisible hammer. The ground hissed where it landed, leaving a perfect circle scorched into the earth.
Clauiy slammed against it, palms burning. "What—? No! Let me through! That thing is keeping us out!" Norphis swallowed hard, stepping back as the realization dawned on him. "We crossed the anomaly's threshold without knowing it… We're stuck inside the observation perimeter. We can't interfere. We can only watch."
The silver traps began to tighten. Kresor's bones creaked. Inside him, the void churned like a starving beast. The blackness is too tight… the world is ice and agony… The agony pulsed again, stronger. Something inside him was breaking.
The battlefield dissolved into a distant reflection—one of many holographic projections floated above the polished obsidian table. The High Council Chamber of the Order of Grace was silent.
The President of the Academy stood alone before the three Supreme Councilors, sweat beading along his temples. The chamber's towering pillars glowed with shifting scripture lines, each illuminating the tension filling the hall.
"Supreme Councilors," he began, voice taut, "the Executioner has engaged. But the anomaly's power signature… it is rising at an exponential rate. The internal resistance—"
SC1 cut in, voice sharp enough to flay skin. "The boy was always a failed experiment. The Veil lineage should have been erased entirely. We sent Hiluas to finish what should never have begun. Spare us your anxiety. Report cleanly."
The President bowed his head, throat tight. "The signature is Unholy in nature… ancient. It consumes Purity on contact. Hiluas is being forced to defend instead of eliminate. The entire quadrant is destabilizing as a result."
A dismissive scoff echoed from SC2. "An Executioner forced onto the back foot by a child. Hightower's corruption spreads like rot. This proves we should have purged the bloodline decades ago."
SC3 leaned forward, fingers steepled, eyes cold. "If Hiluas cannot finish the task, he must retreat immediately. That level of darkness cannot be allowed to exit the anomaly alive."
A long silence. Then: "Prepare Purification Protocol 7," SC3 said. "If the situation worsens, we will wipe that entire sector. Kill the anomaly."
The President stiffened, shock breaking through his discipline. "But Protocol 7 will erase half the northern—" "Kill. The. Anomaly," SC1 repeated. The chamber lights dimmed in unison. The order was final.
Back in the anomaly,
The anomaly pulsed like a living wound in the world—veins of silver lashing outward, tightening with every heartbeat. The traps closed around Kresor with mechanical precision, each shimmering thread coiling like a predator's spine.
The pressure hit him first. Not pain—pressure. As though invisible hands were trying to crush him back into the shape of something weaker. His ribs groaned under the constricting light. The armor around his torso splintered with small, brittle snaps. His breath stuttered through clenched teeth, shallow and ragged, scraping the inside of his throat like gravel.
Then the voice inside him stirred. Desperate. Break their faith. Void Mandate. Scolrious's whisper slid across his nerves like a cold blade—icy, structured, absolute. It didn't shout. It didn't command loudly. It simply was, and that alone pushed through his faltering mind like gravity.
Kresor didn't make a choice. The choice made him. His legs buckled forward. His lungs seized. His fingers clawed at the trap—not to escape, but because his body needed something to hold onto before it fractured.
And then— The Void Mandate detonated. The world didn't explode.It forgot itself. For one sickening instant, Kresor saw the silver traps not breaking… but ceasing to exist. They vanished without sound, without resistance, dissolving like wet ink wiped off glass.
Clauiy staggered back so hard she nearly fell, hands flying to her temples as if trying to hold her skull together. "That feeling—gods—It's like something just vanished. A piece of the world… gone." Her voice shook, breath trembling between syllables. Even the air around her tasted wrong—thin, hollow, as if eaten.
Hiluas didn't speak. He didn't gasp. He didn't recoil. But something sharp locked into place behind his eyes—a hunter's instinct, triggered by true danger. Professional alertness melted into wary calculation. His gaze snapped to one spot on Kresor's body: the Silver Scar pulsing faintly beneath the cracked armor, glowing like a wounded star trying—and failing—to stay whole.
Kresor sensed the shift before Hiluas even moved. A primal tightening in his chest. A flicker of cold up his spine. Kill him, the void hissed. Eliminate the threat. The command was full of hunger—old, patient hunger. It pressed against his thoughts, filling the hollow spaces left by panic.
But then— A softer memory cut through. His mother's hand. Her voice. A warmth he had spent years pretending no longer existed. I can't, Kresor thought. The words quivered inside him, fragile as embers in a storm. I can't be Him.
The hesitation was tiny. Barely a heartbeat. Hiluas only needed half. A shadow flicked forward. A glint of blade. A breath of cold air.
Then impact. Something sharp and merciless punched into Kresor's torso. His armor split like thin bark. Flesh tore underneath, hot and wet. A violent tremor shot through his spine, stealing the strength from his legs. Dark, decaying veins spidered out from the wound—writhing like roots eager to burrow deeper.
Air rushed out of him in a broken, guttural sound—too soft to be a scream, too raw to be anything else. Norphis's voice cracked when he spoke. "He saw it! The hesitation! Kresor's mind is fighting itself—his emotions are the only thing slowing that… thing… down!" Clauiy slammed both palms against the barrier, forehead pressed to the shimmering surface. Her breath fogged it with frantic heat.
"Kresor… please…" Her voice wavered between fury and terror.
Kresor's knee hit the ground. The impact sent a jolt of white-hot electricity up his thigh, but he barely felt it over the chaos blooming inside his ribs. The wound pulsed with a sick, throbbing rhythm—each beat a collision of blinding silver and suffocating black.
He tasted iron. He tasted smoke. He tasted something metallic and sour creeping up from the corruption spreading under his skin. His fingers curled into the shattered stone beneath him, the grit biting into his palms. His breath came in ragged gasps—uneven, sharp, as if the air itself was fighting him. Hiluas advanced with the steady calm of a man completing a task, not killing a boy. His blades glinted—a promise of ending, delivered without hate.
No cruelty. No hesitation. Only purpose. Kresor's vision warped at the edges, blurring into streaks of silver and black. His lungs tightened like bands of heated metal. His heartbeat hammered violently, then faltered, stumbling over itself.
The world tilted. Then—
Scolrious's voice carved itself through the haze. Accept the blend. You cannot win with light or dark alone. Consume the light. Use all of it. Now. The whisper crawled through Kresor's veins, cold and certain. It slid beneath the panic, beneath the pain, beneath the humanity still clinging to him. He swallowed hard. The motion sent a lance of agony tearing up his throat, but he forced it down.
I need to survive. Not spoken. Not thought clearly.
It lived inside him like a dying ember, desperate for oxygen. His hand trembled as he pushed against the ground. The stone burned his palm—too hot, too real—but he kept pressing, inch by inch. Rising. Not like a warrior.Not like a hero.
But like a corpse dragging itself back from its grave. His legs quivered, muscles screaming. His spine bent, trying to collapse under the weight of energy violent enough to tear him apart. Yet he stood.
Barely. His head snapped back as the pressure inside him reached a breaking point. The scream ripped out of him— pure, raw, animal agony. "CHAOS—PHOSIS!!!"
The world reacted first. Black armor exploded off his body like shattering glass, each fragment dissolving into whirling void. Silver light erupted from his torso in jagged rays—blinding, sharp enough to slice shadows apart.
Then the two forces collided. They braided. They fused. They became something alive and furious, a newborn star carved from instability itself.
The ground beneath him vaporized into a perfect circular crater. Air shrieked. Stone cracked open like dying bones. Reality trembled as if trying to recoil.
Hiluas froze. For the first time, the Executioner's composure broke—not physically, but in the stillness of his breath. His mask didn't crack, but something in his posture did. A ripple of pure, human fear crossed his eyes.
"Impossible…" The Nova surged again, doubling in size. Darkness and silver spiraled upward in a vortex that shredded the air. Hiluas stumbled back, boots scraping against fractured stone.
Then fear hardened into certainty. "It's unstable!" he barked, voice stripped of calm. "RETREAT!" Norphis grabbed Clauiy's wrist. Clauiy's breath hitched. The barrier flickered. The last thing they saw before the world turned black—was Kresor, screaming at the center of a spiraling maelstrom of void and silver, his body tearing itself apart as if both forces were fighting over who got to claim him.
Then came the sound. A metallic scream. Long. Piercing. Endless. Except it wasn't metal. It was reality breaking.
Fade to black.