It had been a costly mistake, whenever Ajax thought back on it, because both of them had changed so much. The true death blade had broken free from his old confines, becoming something Ajax could never have imagined—far removed from the man who had raised him. Now, Azael only wore the outline of a human form. His gaunt frame was encased in ramshackle armor made of chaotic bone and tattered, moldy fabric, seemingly ready to fall apart at any moment. The air around him was acrid, suffused with a stench that made it hard to breathe. He was ruined, yet perversely exalted in an unholy way—crippled, yet stronger than he had ever been.

The old encounter between them—the first clash between father and son, which felt like a lifetime ago—now meant little. Back then, survival had been all that mattered as the galaxies burned around them. Either one could have emerged victorious. Now, though, the parameters had changed. Azael's strength had grown grotesquely, his body pulsating with chaotic energy. Whenever he moved, reality bent and recoiled around him, as if the natural order itself rebelled against his presence. His massive blade reflected the hell realm beyond it—an infinite abyss of darkness and nightmarish screams.

And what did Ajax have to set against that? The old skill with a blade, yes, a fine blade. But it wasn’t enough.

He had his hatred, though. That was new. On their now-destroyed homeworld, their exchanges had been tinged with regret—disappointment at what the other had become. But now, his hatred was as infinite as the void. Too many had died for it to be anything else—his friends, his ties, all swallowed up by the monster before him, all dead because of Azael.

Ajax had that. He had his rage, as deep as the core of the world, fueling every strike and swipe of his blade. He had the sharp edge of vengeance, driving him to find the weak spot that could wound this horrific amalgam of human and chaos, keeping him going even against the impossible.

From the vessel hovering over the sea of chaos creatures, Ajax stared at Azael. Below, the creatures swarmed like an overwhelming tide toward the wall. Azael’s gaze was fixed on him. “He sends you to finish what he couldn’t?” his former father asked.

Ajax noticed something different. Azael no longer held the authority of chaos in his voice. His robes were as tattered as they appeared, his hand bruised beneath the bone armor, and his eyes—once fierce—were now a dull brown, with only the faintest trace of chaotic power.

The siphoning had worked. Whatever Moyo’s plan was, it was stripping them both of the chaotic energy that had fueled them for so long, leaving only their battle-hardened bodies—honed over countless years. It would have to be enough. There was no other choice.

Ajax leapt from the vessel as it banked away, retreating to the safety of the walls. The forces of chaos ignored it, their focus entirely on the wall and what lay beyond it.

Azael’s eyes shifted to Ajax’s sword, and he chuckled. “A brand new toy, I see,” he said softly.

Ajax gave the blade a practiced swing. “Cuts well enough to sever existences, or so I’m told,” he replied with a shrug.

“It’s not too late to join me, you know,” Azael said.

Ajax laughed, sharp and bitter. “Look at you!” he barked. “You’re everything I would never want in a father. A disgrace. An abomination.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “A failure.”

Azael’s face darkened. “Then come. Let us be rid of each other,” he snarled.

And they charged at one another.

They crashed together, the impact cracking the stone beneath their feet as they braced against the force. The reaper sword clashed with the chaos blade, unleashing an explosion of mingled energies. Both fighters pushed against each other, testing strength and poise, feeling the harmonics of their weapons, each gauging what it meant for the other's power.

Ajax was the first to fall back. They exchanged more blows—faster, heavier, relentless. All around them, the roar of broader combat echoed from the base of the walls to the uppermost parts—a cacophony of screams and explosions impossible to ignore. Their strikes accelerated rapidly, the blows becoming sharper and more precise.

Azael had sped up, his once-ponderous movements replaced by a phase-shifting, daemonic velocity. The whistling arcs of his blade hissed with otherworldly voices, wounding the very air as Ajax dodged its lethal edge. When the chaos-forged steel struck, it was bone-shattering, a collision of dimensions as much as a clash of weapons.

"I expected you to dance," the avatar of chaos grunted, hammering Ajax back. "Lost your footing, and your judgment?"

Ajax was already breathing heavily. The battle was as hard as he had expected—perhaps harder. He had no illusions. He had fought death blades before, but this was different. His own blade worked rapidly, its edge blurring as it moved faster than thought. The chaos blade met it in bursts of intent and flaming sparks, crackling with the malevolent whispers of its half-formed daemonic choir.

"You’re already defeated," Ajax said breathily. "You’ve become what you once despised."

Azael snorted. "Some hatreds were never worth pursuing."

"Tell yourself that, if it helps."

Their speed increased further, blows becoming denser than any mortal could have matched. They smashed into a forgotten building, the walls crumbling into dust as they crashed through. Ajax’s ill-fitting armor, taken hastily from the Titan forces, took its first transverse slash, the aether-infused metal tearing from shoulder to waist. Blood followed the strike, splattering the ground.

They were alone now, fighting on a level no other being, not even ascenders, could match. Simply witnessing their combat would invite madness. Both kept tight control over their true natures, masking themselves in the trappings of mortality. But when they unleashed their full power, the result was devastating—difficult to even comprehend, let alone interfere with.

"Time has been cruel, Ajax," Azael said calmly, cracking Ajax back yet again, smacking him across the face. "You’re not what you were."

"I am what I’ve always been," Ajax snarled, countering with a series of precise strikes, raking plague-censers free from their chains.

"Weak."

"Loyal."

"Same thing."

They barreled into another building, hammering each other so fiercely that the entire structure collapsed as if crushed by an unseen force. They swirled and dueled through the falling rubble, then out into the open air, completely absorbed in their private war. The rest of the planet—the rest of existence—seemed to fade away, shamed by the sheer volume of brutality unleashed on its surface.

But the violence only escalated. Azael nearly took Ajax’s head off with a vicious diagonal swipe, his chaos blade carving a three-foot-deep trench into the ground. When he pulled the blade free, it tore up clumps of earth. Ajax pushed through the assault, landing a spiteful cut on Azael’s thigh, stripping the bone armor clean from his flesh and drawing first blood, before being hammered back.

Azael made no sound of pain, though the chaos aspect began to leak from the wound.

By then, they were out in the open, slashing and striking across the landscape. Above them, a storm of aether and chaos raged, green lightning snapping down as if summoned by their duel. Every inch of ground was fought over, the battle between the archailect’s forces and chaos reaching its zenith. Thousands of duels across the battlefield seemed to converge in this single, brutal contest.

"This isn’t about revenge, for me," Azael rasped, his voice contained. "You’re just in the way now. You understand that?"

Ajax laughed through bloody teeth, spitting out fragments. "Not how I see it, Father," he hissed. "I’m here for you. Nothing else."

Azael backhanded him, cracking a savage blow into Ajax’s throat, then followed with a two-handed down-thrust of his chaos blade. "Indulgent. But then, you always were." Another strike across Ajax’s face, making him stagger.

"I lived my life as I saw fit," Ajax snarled, parrying the blows with expert precision. "You might have tried the same."

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Reaper flashed toward Azael’s neck, but was swatted aside.

"I lived my life before you were even conceived."

Ajax held his ground, muscles screaming as he drove his blade in dazzling arcs. Sweat poured down his burning skin, mingling with blood. "Not sure your dead clan would agree."

That unleashed the flood. Azael roared, his chaos aspect flaring as his mighty arms swung in furious, devastating arcs. He hammered Ajax across the battlefield, wreathing him in chaos energy that was steadily being siphoned, smashing his bone gauntlets across Ajax’s face with bone-shattering force.

To endure that onslaught, to avoid being broken into a thousand pieces, took every scrap of skill and tenacity Ajax had left. He was fighting beyond anything he had ever achieved, scraping the limits of what was possible. And still, he was battered, bruised, driven across the land like a child being beaten by his father. His head rang with the blows, his vision clouded with blood, his skull rattling with every strike.

His right arm was fractured, his cheek shattered. The chaos blade swung around him like wheeling stars, crackling with vicious power, always aiming for his head as he nimbly dodged.

"You know nothing," Azael snarled, rearing up again, his tattered robe whipping about as the storm howled around him. "Nothing of sacrifice, nothing of denial. You were the spoiled child, whining for love." Azael's eyes flared with a maddened black glow, his twisted face consumed by true rage. He was elemental, apocalyptic, phenomenal. The tempest shrieked, amplifying every killer strike, tearing up the ground beneath them and blasting debris across Ajax’s retreating form.

"You were shown the nature of the supreme beings, their hypocrisy, and you turned away," Azael raged, slamming the chaos blade down, nearly shattering Ajax’s trailing leg. "I embraced it. I embraced the pain. I looked those deceivers in the eye."

The storm of energies swirled overhead. Explosions in the distance lit the sky, creating constellations of power across the walls. Beyond, visible only to them, the Inner Palace burned—too far now for any salvation. Unholy voices howled in the superheated winds, mocking, crowing, delighting.

"And you ran," Azael spat. "Always running, always too far away to matter, principles you didn’t even understand." His blade swung again—unstoppably fast, critically heavy—driving over Ajax’s desperate block, striking with armor-shattering force and sending him skidding to his knees. More blows rained down, iron-hard, exploding with soul-consuming chaos, smashing Ajax lower and lower until he was on his back, prone, vulnerable, ready for slaughter.

"No running now."

Ajax's head snapped back, blood streaming down his neck. For a brief moment, he glimpsed the burning sky above—the clouds swirling around the monstrous serpent form hidden within them—before Azael’s towering profile blocked it out.

"It ends," Azael said, his face contorted with rage. "Here."

Ajax chuckled painfully, his skull shattered, his breath labored. "See... I’m laughing now, Father," he rasped, the thick blood gurgling in his throat. "You should start to worry."

********************

He should have been dead. It should have ended long ago, with Ajax nothing more than a smear of torn skin and armor fragments on the ground. Yet, impossibly, he was still alive, still fighting.

His arms were likely broken, his ribcage shattered, his body torn apart—but his sword still blazed with power, and he kept coming back, again and again.

It was almost painful to watch. Azael’s pride and joy lay on his knees, blood trailing from every part of his body, entire sections of flesh torn and flapping as he staggered. How much blood could he have left? And still, through all the punishment, Ajax kept talking—hurling petty jibes and insults even as Azael rained blows down on him, driving him deep into the ground.

"Take off the damned bone mask. I want to see your expression when I kill you."

"Your stench is worse than an unwashed baby’s, and it was putrid even back then."

And the one that cut deepest, despite its simplicity: "I should have left you where they threw you. I should have fought Araman myself."

It was childish, beneath them both. Azael was beyond anger now, feeling only contemptuous weariness. Greater things beckoned. This brawl shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t still be happening. Power still surged through him like raw fire, chaos aspect animating every gesture, and his armies still held their ground against the faltering ascenders. But this—the refusal of Ajax to simply die—was infuriating.

Azael surged back into the fight. Two strides, building momentum, then a brutal slash of his chaos blade that tore Ajax’s left arm clean from his body, sending him arcing high before crashing back down. Somehow, Ajax kept hold of his blade as Azael loomed over him, slamming a heel into his exposed midriff. Ajax twisted away just in time, only to take a vicious kick to the face, breaking both nose and cheekbone. Half-blind, Ajax lashed out, wrenching the chaos blade from Azael’s grip and sending it clattering away.

Azael dropped to the ground, fists flying in a flurry, pounding Ajax’s throat, chest, and ruined face. Each punch splattered the ground with more blood, tearing apart the remains of what had once been his son.

Ajax never stopped fighting, but it was pitiful now.

He caught one of Azael’s fists, only for the other to plunge into his stomach, bursting something inside. Ajax tried to rise, but Azael cast him down, fracturing his spine. They were both roaring now—Azael in frustration, Ajax in undiluted agony.

They had been reduced to this: brawling across barren ground, gouging and tearing at each other, trying to rip themselves apart with their bare hands.

Panting hard, Azael finally stopped. Exhaustion rippled up his arms, his vision flickering. Something mortal still remained within him, something capable of fatigue. He stood up painfully, eyeing the mess of Ajax’s broken body.

Somehow, Ajax still breathed. His face, once proud, was now a swamp of gore, yet he still sucked in air, bubbling with blood. Azael limped over to retrieve his blade, preparing to end this grotesque spectacle.

"I thought you’d dance," Azael said, mystified. "You just… took it. Did you lose your mind?"

Ajax coughed, sending more bloody spurts across the ground. His shattered arm still clutched the hilt of his blade. Slowly, Azael realized the sound was bitter laughter.

"I… absorbed," Ajax rasped. "The… pain."

Azael halted. "What do you mean?"

"You gave up," Ajax slurred, blood dripping from his lips. "I didn’t."

Then he grinned—his split lips and flayed cheeks twisting into genuine, spiteful pleasure. "My endurance… is superior."

That was what Ajax believed. Not that he had sacrificed everything to win, but that Azael had been weak.

The dam of Azael’s fury broke. He hefted the chaos blade, angling its point toward Ajax’s chest, thinking of nothing but spearing his son through the heart.

And so, he missed the sudden burst of speed, the flicker of Ajax’s blade, the rapid push from the ground and the upthrust of Reaper.

The sword penetrated deep beneath Azael’s bone armor, biting into his flesh, sending a flare of pain through his torso. The chaos blade missed its mark as Azael jerked back, blood spilling from the wound. To his shock, Ajax was already climbing back to his feet, still bleeding, still broken, but coming toward him.

Azael staggered, suddenly drained. He charged again, trusting in his strength, but his body—ravaged by the earlier fight—was slow, his muscles screaming.

And then Ajax began to dance. It wasn’t graceful—he was too damaged for that—but it was that same slippery movement, that mesmerizing ability to be in one place, only to be a hand’s width away from a blow. He slipped under Azael’s guard, slicing another piece of him away.

"When we do this in training," Ajax growled, his voice no longer laughing, but deadly serious, "we call it arum. The edge."

Azael swung clumsily and missed. Ajax’s blade struck again, carving deep into his trailing arm.

The change was mesmerizing. Ajax was on the brink of death, but he moved faster, his physiology working to keep him alive, to keep him fighting.

Azael snarled, forcing his blade harder, even as his muscles screamed and his mind reeled from the realization. He should have seen through this. He should never have allowed himself to be goaded.

Their blades clashed again, a snarling explosion of chaos energy. Both fighters reeled from the impact, barely keeping their feet.

And then Ajax came back quicker, his shattered ankles somehow propelling him across the ground faster than Azael could react. When Reaper clanged against the chaos blade again, the blood sprayed freely—but it wasn’t just Ajax’s this time.

Azael smashed Ajax away, sending him tumbling. But Ajax came right back, lurching from his injuries as though drunk, his devastated face etched with agony, but still fighting through the damage. It was as if some malevolent spirit drove him forward, pushing his ravaged body toward the absolution it craved.

The sword spun faster, blurring across Azael’s double vision, becoming harder to stop. They traded earth-shattering blows, tearing more of themselves apart. Their cloaks were in tatters, their armor destroyed, leaving their raw, broken bodies exposed—a bloody canvas of skin-stripped muscle. All pretense had been scoured away, revealing the primal truth: they were nothing more than savage weapons, blades honed to a lethal edge.

Azael was still the greater of the two. He was stronger, more steeped in preternatural power. But now, all he felt was doubt, shaken by the relentless fury of someone he had always seen as flighty, self-regarding, and unreliable. All he could see now was a son who wanted him dead—who would sacrifice anything, fight past all physical limits, destroy his own body, heart, and soul for the sake of the oaths he had made to those he loved.

"If you know what I did," Azael cried, fighting through the cold fog of indecision, "then you know the truth, son—I can no longer die."

It was as if a signal had been given. Ajax’s bloodied head lifted, his matted hair hanging in clumps. "Oh, I know that," he murmured, with the most perfect contempt he had ever mustered. "But I can."

Then he leapt. His broken legs still propelled him, his fractured arms still held his blade, his blood-filled lungs and perforated heart gave him just enough power. He closed the distance. Had he been in his prime, the move might have been impossible to counter, but now he was barely more than a corpse held together by sheer will. Azael’s chaos blade caught him under the shoulder, impaling him deep.

But it didn’t stop him.

Ajax had foreseen the parry, planned for it. He kept going, dragging himself up the length of the blade, even as it jutted out of his ruptured back. His reaper sword was now tight against Azael’s neck.

For an instant, their faces were right against each other—both cadaverous, drained of blood and life, reduced to masks of pure vengeance. All majesty was gone, scraped away across the blood-soaked ground, leaving only the desire, the violence, and the raw mechanics of hatred.

It took only a second. Azael’s eyes went wide, realizing too late that he couldn’t pull his son away in time. Ajax’s eyes narrowed.

"And that’s the difference," Ajax spat.

He snapped his blade across, severing Azael’s neck in a spray of black bile. Then he collapsed into the chaotic explosion that briefly made the landing stage the brightest object on the planet—second only to the burning presence of the titan himself.