The magical circle that flashed over the red smear, which was all that remained of Jax, disappeared so quickly one could wonder if it was real to begin with. For those few who had the reaction time to actually notice it, they would realize they never saw magic like it. Idona was not the type of magic a mind confined to mortality could comprehend. It worked on the very basic laws of nature itself, the Pattern, to recreate something that once was, the way it was.

Perhaps it was better for no one to have seen it, for even demons and devils would scream woefully at the complexity of the woven magical principles and the speed of their execution.

It was only those who lived in an era of eternal peace that thought magic power was the answer to everything; One just had to throw the largest, most potent magic they could, and annihilate the opposition. But this was just wrong. Even those practitioners of such magic knew it was wrong, but the rules of the era allowed them to continue on in this way. In a formal duel, one was not allowed to engage before the duel starts, but preparing magic beforehand was absolutely allowed.

However, in the bygone eras, one such as Ain was not known for his magic power - no, compared to those heroes of that era, he would be considered weak. It was said that the Luminous Princess Astria could incinerate an entire continent with her magic, effortlessly. The Queen of the Fae, Lissandra, could control and twist even the souls of the Absolute Dominions - a class of Divinity so terrifying that mortal minds had no choice but to quit and go mad at the sight of them.

However, out in the Planes, far from the Salvation of the Pillars of Creation, lurked existences that not even those heroes would dare confront in battle. There, far from the Light of Order, entire worlds would be razed as the Planar Domains waged battle against each other, stomping the authority of their domains across the Seas of Chaos. And there, in those battles, Ain found the meaning of his invincible, undying Sword.

He did not have the magic power to compete with those geniuses, but crushing an entire Realm... it was almost as simple as crushing a fly. Magic power, alone, wasn't everything. And yet, even so, the Calamity Lord defeated him in battle.

A wistful look appeared on Ain's expression as he looked towards the sky, in the direction of the Calamity Lord's Palace. That man's power was too unreasonable. His understanding of the Sword was deeper and more profound, the force of his magic was too overwhelming, and the speed with which he could realize his magic was just slightly faster than Ain's.

"Those were good days," Ain whispered. Even he was surprised by the wayward thought that escaped his control. The good days? But he understood - as a warrior, he would always seek a path towards Confrontation and Violence in a way that was untouched by moral considerations. It was the desire to challenge and overcome all obstacles, and it had nothing to do with life, death, good or evil.

Ain glanced down at Jax's prone form. "It is no use pretending to be dead," he said, tone cold and imperious.

"It wasn't me," Jax said, his eyes opening. Those eyes were filled with terror. Idona could erase death, but it could not erase the trauma of death. "I didn't give the order."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"We'll get to that later," Ain said. "Who gave you the Pit Fiend?"

Jax opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes widened in fear, slowly filling up with regretful tears.

"Hmph," Ain scoffed. In that brief moment, a feeling descended on the courtyard that could only be described as 'pitch black'. It had a sense of heaviness to it, like a dark fog clouding everything. Even thoughts would get lost in that 'pitch blackness'.

The demons that gathered in the courtyard to see what the commotion was about were blissfully far away enough to not be affected by this feeling that much. Some of them would suffer amnesia, others catatonia, but some of them would remember the feeling and what happened next. Jax was not that lucky. He stood in the center of that ominous, incomprehensible feeling and whatever spawned it.

The world broke. Reality shattered. Like a window, it just cracked along the line of Ain's sword, abyssal fissures of the deepest stygian color spiderwebbed outwards, forming a singularity. In the wake of Ain's sword, black ash trailed, glittering under the sun like stardust and twinkling out of existence like stars washed out by the dawn as they fell through the cracks in reality - the singularity. That ash was all that was left of Jax's body, ripped to shreds on the atomic level as the sword passed close to him - and who knows what would've happened if it passed through him.

"Let's try again," Ain said, relaxing his hand from the hilt of his sword. No one even saw him reach for it, draw it, or slash it. One moment he was there, the next one his hand was on the hilt and Jax's ashes disappeared with the collapsing singularity.

"Idona."

Jax appeared once more on the ground, as if he had always been there. This time, the magical circle disappeared before it even became visible. His eyes were wide open, completely white, pupils blown out. His jaw was slack and foam drooled from the corners of his mouth.

"Your mind broke?" Ain asked, heaving a painful sigh. "You were so arrogant towards me, so far above my station, and yet it took only one look at the Emptiness to lose your mind?"

Jax was unresponsive. His hair was visibly becoming lighter, turning grey, with every passing moment.

"Invera," Ain uttered, pointing a finger at Jax. Jax's body twisted grotesquely, his bones snapping audibly in a way that reverberated throughout the entire courtyard.

The sky darkened. Lightning rumbled in the distance.

Ain cast a glance at the sky and frowned. "This won't last long, Jax. I reversed your Eidolon. In your terms, I inverted your higher and lower soul. Your mind is no longer broken, but your body is."

Jax was silent. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Even with a purified mind, the madness still lingered. The Stigma of what he saw burned itself into his bones. The memory itself was toxic.

"Agon," Jax finally said. "He gave me the Pit Fiend."

Ain narrowed his eyes. "Agon? The Holocaust King Agon? He is still alive?"

Jax blinked. He could not move his body to nod or anything of the sort. His body was too broken. "Only His Legion... the Worldburners... call Him that. Are you... one of His?"

"No," Ain replied flatly, eyes narrowing to thin slits. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Jax whispered. A cough followed his whisper, followed by gurgling. Blood oozed out of his nostrils.

"Why did he give you the Pit Fiend?"

"I don't... know..."

"Who gave you the order to interfere with the Syndicate?" Ain asked.

"Sotan... the Tribune Dictator," Jax could barely speak at this point. Each word was accompanied by an expression of pure agony - almost as if he wished to return to madness.

"I see," Ain said. "That will be all, Jax."

A hopeful expression descended on Jax's features.

"Eklisa."

Space collapsed into itself, centered at Jax's chest. The courtyard tiles were instantaneously crushed, atomized and pulled into a vortex of nothingness, and the rest of terra firma followed. It happed in the span of less than a second, but the sound of static echoed for a long time thereafter. All that was left of Jax, and a large area of the courtyard he was on, was a perfectly smooth crater, as if it followed the contours of the lower half of a sphere.