The ground no longer supported anyone.
Not from lack of strength, but from absolute exhaustion. The earth had given way so many times under impossible impacts that it now seemed alive—soft, unstable, sinking beneath the weight of the scattered bodies. Every step sank a few centimeters, as if the world itself were tired of remaining solid.
Players everywhere.
Some intact.
Others reduced to unrecognizable remains.
Some were still moving.
Not because there was hope—
but because the body had not yet received the message that everything was over.
They crawled by instinct, leaving red trails across the cracked soil. Broken nails scraped against the ground, producing a low, rough sound—almost animal. Others simply stopped. From one second to the next. The body giving up before the mind.
The air was almost solid.
Every breath burned the lungs with the metallic stench of fresh blood, hot dust, and mana violently torn apart. There was something else as well. A heavy, ancient odor—sulfur mixed with rust and scorched flesh. A smell that belonged to no living world.
Ethan didn't need to search.
Abaddon was still walking among them.
The colossus advanced slowly, as if time itself had decided to follow him out of respect—or fear. Thick, irregular black plates overlapped to form an impossible body, like armor forged from the remains of dead eras. Deep fissures split that carapace, pulsing with a sickly crimson light—too alive to be energy, too dead to be blood.
Each pulse made the ground vibrate.
Not like a tremor…
but like a funeral bell ringing inside the world itself.
One of its wings was destroyed. The jagged stump still smoldered. Torn remnants hung from the creature's back—the colossal structure broken, burned, brutally severed. Where symmetry once existed, there was now only an uneven, smoking stump, exhaling dark vapor that smelled of ozone and cauterized flesh. Marcus had ripped it off by force.
They had already paid for that wing with the future of everyone there.
Where a face should have been, Abaddon carried many.
Faces emerged and sank into its black surface like memories trapped beneath skin. Some screamed without sound. Others wept something dark and viscous that flowed back into the creature. Eyes opened in impossible places, staring at everything at once.
None of them blinked.
Multiple arms extended from the central torso. Some thick, made to crush. Others long and flexible, ending in hands far too human—fingers slowly opening and closing, as if counting something only it understood.
Each step made the ground give way.
Not because it was too heavy.
But because it should not exist.
Players tried to flee.
Ethan had seen this before.
One of the arms descended over an entire group. There was no scream. Only a dry crack—bones breaking in perfect synchrony. When the limb rose again, there was nothing left that could be called human.
Ethan staggered.
His stomach twisted violently.
He turned away.
Marcus was on the ground.
Or what remained of him.
The right arm was gone. The shoulder had been crushed into a shapeless mass of flesh, bone, and twisted metal. The armor had collapsed inward, pressed so deeply it seemed fused with his body.
The blood flowed too fast.
Every time Marcus tried to draw breath, a horrible sound escaped his chest—a wet, deep grinding, like broken ribs shifting against one another. A low crack accompanied each breath, like dry branches snapping inside him.
Even so…
Marcus was still breathing.
Farther ahead—Jay.
His body lay motionless, stretched on the ground like an abandoned statue. The shield that had so many times stopped the impossible was now shattered into several pieces, embedded in the earth like improvised gravestones.
Jay had fallen exactly where he always stood.
In front.
Something crashed heavily beside Ethan.
The impact sent hot mud splashing.
Elenya.
Her body hit the ground and rolled once before stopping. Her eyes were open but empty—no focus, no response. The bow had been reduced to splinters scattered around her. Warm blood pooled beneath her body, mixing with the mud.
"No… no… no…" Ethan fell to his knees.
The sound of his own voice felt distant.
He reached out.
Stopped halfway.
He couldn't touch her.
Fear locked his fingers, as if touching her would make everything too final.
"Please…" His voice came out weak, broken. "Don't… don't do this to me…"
He tried to pull mana.
Nothing answered.
The emptiness in his chest hurt more than any wound.
Ahead, Sienna screamed.
Her voice no longer sounded human—torn, ripped violently from her throat. Summoning circles formed around her, failed, shattered in the air like breaking glass… yet wolves still emerged, howled one final time—and were torn apart seconds later.
She was covered in blood.
Not only her own.
Beside her—Kaelyn.
No weapons.
No shield.
No magic.
Only her fists.
Her hands were open, skin split to the bone. Even so, she charged forward. Each blow against Abaddon produced a dull, dry sound—like flesh striking sacred stone.
She was hurled into the ground.
The impact ripped the air from her lungs.
She stood.
Was crushed again.
Stood once more.
She planted her feet in the soil, muscles trembling as she seized one of the creature's arms with her bare hands. The force drove her into the ground up to her knees. Kaelyn spat blood, screamed in pain—
And did not let go.
Sienna turned.
"ETHAN!" she screamed. "TAKE ELENYA AND RUN!"
Ethan raised his face, eyes flooded with tears and horror.
"I can't leave you!" he screamed back. "I can't!"
Another impact shook everything.
Marcus moved.
A terrible sound escaped his chest—ribs grinding, something broken shifting inside.
"…Sienna…"
She turned instantly, rushing to him, dropping to her knees at his side.
"Don't talk…" she begged, cradling his face with trembling hands. "Don't talk… please…"
"I… needed to…" Blood bubbled at his lips. "Needed to say it… before dying."
"No!" She shook her head in desperation. "You're not going to die. Not now. Not here!"
He smiled.
A small smile. Painful.
"I love you."
The world seemed to lose all sound.
"I always have…" he continued. "And if you… live… that… is enough…"
Sienna pulled him against her body, as if she could keep the world from taking him.
"Stop…" she sobbed. "Stop talking…"
"Go…" he pleaded. "If you're alive… for me… that's enough…"
She closed her eyes.
Kissed him.
A kiss tasting of blood, earth, and farewell.
"I love you…" she whispered. "I always have."
She rested her forehead against his.
"And if you fall…" she said, her voice steady, "I will fall at your side."
Abaddon advanced.
Even wounded.
Even mutilated.
As if it meant nothing.
Ethan looked back to Elenya.
Her chest was still rising and falling.
Weak. Irregular.
She was alive.
But time was running out.
The world screamed at him to run.
But his legs would not move.
Because fleeing meant abandoning someone.
And staying meant dying there.
Ethan closed his eyes.
And in that instant, he knew:
Nothing they had lived before had prepared them for this.
And to understand how they reached the moment when even love bled…
it is necessary to return to long before this.