The air at the peak of the Citadel was thin, smelling of ozone and old blood.
High Inquisitor Malakor stood by the great arched window, his silver mask reflecting the purple lightning of the storm he had created. He didn't turn around when the heavy iron doors were torn from their hinges.
"The ghost of Eldervale," Malakor murmured, his voice still a melodic, terrifying vibration. "I felt my Sentinels blink out. I felt my Cardinal's cowardice. You've found a way to hide from the Wave, boy. A clever trick. But a hole in reality is still just a hole. It has no substance."
Malakor turned, his purple Tier 5 [Void-Origin] aura erupting like a supernova. The floor liquefied into shadows, and tendrils of dark matter lashed out like whips, ready to flay the skin from Alhen's bones.
"Show me your Nullification again," Malakor sneered, raising his hand to crush Alhen's heart with gravity. "Show me how you—"
Alhen didn't activate it.
He stood perfectly still. The purple gravity slammed into him, but his body—forged in the heart of a volcano for three years—didn't buckle. His muscles, dense as lead and hard as diamond, simply absorbed the shock.
[Internal Static]
Alhen kept his Nullification pulled tight inside his skin, protecting his organs but leaving the world around him "active." He didn't want to erase Malakor's power yet. He wanted Malakor to feel every ounce of his own failure.
Alhen moved.
It wasn't a "Ghost-Step." It was a Sonic Boom.
Without the weight of Mana, Alhen's raw physical speed broke the sound barrier. He appeared in front of Malakor before the Inquisitor could blink.
CRUNCH.
Alhen's fist, devoid of any glow, smashed into the center of the silver mask. The enchanted metal shattered like cheap porcelain. Malakor was sent hurtling backward, his Tier 5 [Void-Shield] flickering in shock because it hadn't sensed a "Magical" attack to deflect.
"You... you didn't use the Void?" Malakor gasped, blood leaking from his nose, his true face—pale and scarred—finally revealed. "How can a human move like that without Essence?"
"Three years," Alhen said, his voice a low, guttural growl. He walked toward Malakor, his heavy boots cracking the obsidian floor. "Three years of carrying thousand-pound iron slabs up a volcano. Three years of my skin being burned and frozen until I couldn't feel anything but the weight of my own hate."
Malakor screamed in rage, unleashing a [Black Hole Singularity] between them. The spell began to tear the room apart, sucking the furniture and the stones into its center.
Alhen didn't draw his sword. He walked into the singularity.
His physical density was so immense, his "Body-Forging" so absolute, that the gravity couldn't pull his cells apart. He reached into the center of the black hole with a bare hand and literally crushed the magical focal point with his grip.
Pop.
The spell died.
Alhen grabbed Malakor by the throat. This wasn't a quick death. He slammed the High Inquisitor into the stone wall, then pulled him back and slammed him into the floor.
THUD. CRACK. THUD.
"This is for the Valley of Bells," Alhen said, his eyes cold and dead. He drove a knee into Malakor's ribs, the sound of snapping bone echoing in the silent room.
"Ghh—Stop! I am an Origin Master!" Malakor tried to summon a [Void-Blade], but Alhen caught his wrist and slowly, methodically, began to squeeze.
Creeeeeak—SNAP.
The Inquisitor's radius and ulna disintegrated under the pressure of Alhen's Tier 5 physical strength. Malakor screamed, a raw, human sound that stripped away all his god-like pretenses.
"And this," Alhen whispered, grabbing Malakor's other arm, "is for the three years I spent thinking I was a ghost."
Alhen didn't use Nullification to end it. He used his hands. He systematically broke Malakor's limbs, one by one, with the cold precision of a butcher. He bypassed the Inquisitor's magical defenses by being "too physical" for them to track.
Malakor, the man who thought he was a tear in reality, was being reduced to a pile of broken meat by a boy with no soul.
"Kill... me..." Malakor wheezed, his eyes rolling back in his head, his purple aura now nothing more than a pathetic, flickering spark.
Alhen stood over him, his knuckles bruised and coated in the Inquisitor's blood. He finally reached for his black-iron slab.
"No," Alhen said, his white hair shadowed by the moon. "Death is a release. And I'm not done with the silence yet."
He raised the heavy iron slab, but he didn't aim for the head. He aimed for Malakor's Mana-Veins. With a series of brutal, rhythmic strikes, Alhen used his brute strength to physically "sever" the connections in Malakor's body.
The High Inquisitor of the North was still alive, but he would never feel the Wave again. He was now exactly what he had tried to make Alhen: a hollowed-out husk.
Alhen turned his back on the whimpering remains of his enemy. He walked toward the window and looked out at the Great Azure in the distance.
The revenge was complete. But as Alhen looked at his blood-stained hands, he realized that while he had destroyed the darkness, the "Stillness" inside him was only getting louder.
"The King is dead," Alhen whispered to the wind. "Long live the Void."