BOOM.

A shockwave ripped through the city as Elias and Lirael crashed through a crumbling building, debris exploding outward in jagged chunks. Glass shattered. Steel beams screeched. The force of impact sent tremors rolling through the streets.

But Elias was fast. Too fast.

He twisted mid-air, eyes sharp, body controlled—then SNAP. A blur of motion. A perfect tornado kick cracked against Lirael’s jaw, snapping her head sideways. No hesitation. No wasted movement.

The moment his foot touched the ground, he raised a hand. The air rippled. A hundred jagged spears of negation materialized, hovering in formation, each one trembling with violent, unmaking energy. They pulsed against reality itself, distorting the space around them like glass under pressure.

Elias exhaled slowly. His voice was calm. Measured. Unshaken.

“I’d rather not kill you. My employer would hate that.”

Lirael, still mid-air, rolled her shoulders, wiping a smear of blood from her lip. And then—she smiled. Not a smirk. Not a sneer. A genuine, entertained grin, like a predator toying with its prey.

“Oh? You’d rather I just go quietly, then? Let you drag me to whatever fool thinks they can keep me in a cage?”

Her voice was lilting, almost teasing. A single step forward—then she vanished.

A blur. A streak of motion.

Elias’ eyes narrowed. Tch. Fast.

He swung his hand. The shards sang through the air. Ninety-five needles of voided existence screamed toward her at impossible speed, each one sharp enough to pierce flesh, erase matter, and rip apart the fabric of reality itself.

They should have hit.

But they didn’t.

Lirael weaved through the storm of death with effortless grace, the shards missing her by mere inches, slicing through her afterimage instead. The ground behind her wasn’t shattered or destroyed—it was simply… gone. Buildings, pavement, even the air itself, devoured into nothingness.

But she didn’t falter. Didn’t hesitate.

She raised a hand, fingers curling as a pulse of black and violet energy crackled to life around her palm. The temperature plummeted. The space around her warped. And in the next breath—

CRACK-THOOM!

A searing bolt of dark matter-infused lightning erupted from her fingertips, carving a path of sheer devastation toward Elias.

Elias barely had time to react. A sharp sidestep. A hair’s breadth away from annihilation. The attack didn’t just scorch the ground—it broke the very laws of physics.

Buildings buckled. Gravity inverted.

Entire city blocks lifted into the sky, twisting and folding as if reality itself had been rewritten in an instant.

Elias’ breath hitched. “What the—?!”

Lirael twirled a lock of hair around her finger, eyes gleaming with mischief. “Pretty cool, isn’t it? I call it Dark Matter Lightning Manipulation. One of many new tricks I picked up after Amanda gave me that sweet, sweet 900x boost.”

A giggle. A tilt of the head.

“Oh, she’s such a dear, wouldn’t you say~?”

Elias clenched his fists. His jaw tightened. His heartbeat pounded against his ribs.

Amanda.

The little girl who trusted him. The little girl whose power was never meant to be a weapon—not for her, not for anyone.

His teeth sank into his lip, sharp enough to draw blood.

“How… dare you speak about Amanda like that.”

Lirael hummed, unconcerned, as if he were nothing more than an amusing little pet snapping at its owner. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. I don’t plan on killing her, you know.”

She lifted a single finger.

“No, no, no—Amanda isn’t a weapon. She’s a seed. The perfect catalyst to reshape reality into a world of absolute despair. A world where hope is nothing but a distant, fading memory. Where suffering is eternal, unbroken, ever-feeding… Until she becomes something greater.”

Elias’ vision blurred at the edges. Not from pain. Not from exhaustion. But from rage.

Lirael continued, her voice almost reverent. “You think she’s just a girl, don’t you? But she’s so much more. With her power, I’ll weave sorrow into the very bones of this world—an endless cycle of despair. And you? You’re just a nuisance getting in the way.”

Elias inhaled sharply.

Enough.

His hands ignited.

Blinding, golden-red flames roared to life, swirling violently, the heat distorting the air around him. His stance tightened. His pulse steadied.

No more hesitation. No more holding back.

“I hate the way you talk about that little girl.”

He thrust both hands forward—

FWOOOOSH!

A massive column of fire shot forth, tearing through the sky like a solar flare. The very earth trembled beneath its wrath.

But Lirael was already in motion.

She kicked off the air itself, rocketing upward, her arms outstretched. A dark grin curled across her lips as the void twisted around her, swallowing light, devouring heat.

She snapped her fingers.

And the air shattered.

Arrows of dark matter manifested around her, each one pulsing with gravitational distortions strong enough to pull buildings into their orbit. They wobbled, then locked onto Elias.

Lirael exhaled, smiling sweetly. “Prepare to die, darling~.”

Lirael unleashed the storm.

The dark matter arrows howled through the air, warping reality itself in their wake. Each one carried the weight of a collapsed star, their sheer density twisting the space around them like a vortex of shattered gravity. Buildings groaned, debris was sucked inward, and the battlefield itself bent beneath their force.

But she wasn’t done.

With a flick of her wrist, the structures she had torn from the earth—massive steel towers, shattered concrete, entire city blocks—plummeted.

A tidal wave of destruction came crashing down.

The weight of countless tons bore down on Elias, a force that should have reduced any normal human to dust. The sky itself seemed to darken as the ruins fell.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

And yet.

He did not kneel.

Elias moved.

His body tensed—power surged through him, something ancient, something beyond human comprehension. His irises burned with an unnatural glow, the mark of something far worse than any mortal force.

The Eldritch answered his call.

He thrust his hand forward.

A crack in reality. A pulse of something wrong.

FWOOOOM.

A beam of raw eldritch energy erupted from his palm, its presence anathema to the world itself. Point-blank.

Lirael barely had time to react before the blast slammed into her gut.

A shockwave tore through the battlefield.

Her body launched backward, hurtling through the air like a comet, carving a deep trench into the ground as she skidded to a halt. Dust and debris swirled around her, the earth itself trembling from the impact.

And yet—

She was already standing.

Already smiling.

She rolled her neck, cracked her knuckles, and dusted herself off as if she had merely tripped. A glint of amusement sparked in her violet eyes.

“Impressive.” A breath. A smirk. “But I’ve seen better.”

Then—

A single, thunderous stomp.

CRACK!

The ground exploded beneath her foot, a shockwave of raw force splitting the battlefield apart. Jagged earth spikes burst forth, tearing through the ground, lancing toward Elias at blinding speed.

A moving wall of death.

Elias didn’t flinch.

WHOOSH—BOOM!

Fire roared to life in his palms—not just flames, but something more. The fire burned too bright, too deep, eldritch power coiling within it like a living thing.

With a flick of his wrist—

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Explosions ripped through the battlefield as searing blasts of fire tore apart the incoming spikes, turning them to smoldering rubble mid-air.

But there were too many.

Three still remained, rocketing toward him.

Elias exhaled.

The ground beneath him shifted.

With a single, precise gesture, the very earth bent to his will—his own stone spikes erupted from below, colliding mid-air with the incoming attack.

CRACK!

The remaining projectiles shattered on impact, dust and rock raining down in a harmless cascade.

Elias: “You’ll have to try harder than that to hurt me. A witch like you should know that simple tricks don’t work on someone who walks with the occult.”

Lirael smirked, her silver eyes gleaming with amusement. “I suppose you have a point… but try dodging this~”

FWIP.

Elias turned, his sharp gaze locking onto the incoming barrage—dozens of dark matter arrows, streaking toward him at supersonic speeds, the very air around them warping under their gravitational force.

He didn’t flinch.

WHOOSH!

A translucent barrier of eldritch energy crackled into existence around him, the arcane glyphs pulsating with an eerie, unnatural glow. The arrows slammed into the shield, detonating on impact with an unnatural, high-pitched shriek.

BOOM! A shockwave blasted outward, kicking up dust and debris, reducing the already fractured street into a cratered wasteland.

But when the dust settled—Lirael was gone.

Elias’ eyes narrowed. His fingers twitched. Veil Perception—activate.

The world around him flickered.

Time stretched. Reality bent.

The threads of existence unraveled before his sight, peeling away illusions, falsehoods, and veiled movements. He saw it—a streak of black and grey energy cutting through the ruins like a phantom.

Lirael.

She flicked her wrist.

10,000 undead erupted from the shadows.

They rose in an instant—wretched abominations clad in tattered armor, their hollow sockets glowing with a ghostly, hungry light. The ground beneath them cracked and decayed, their very presence tainting the battlefield with rot and despair.

Lirael’s voice was a whisper, yet it echoed through the desolation. “That should slow you down.”

Elias exhaled.

“No.”

SCHING!

With a single sweeping arc of his hand, a crescent of eldritch energy roared forward, slicing through the horde like a divine executioner’s blade.

The undead didn’t just fall. They ceased.

Their forms unraveled, their existence erased, as the wave of raw eldritch force tore through the battlefield, carving a path of nothingness through the already ruined cityscape.

But Elias wasn’t done.

In a single, fluid motion, he crouched, pressing a glyph against his chest. The mark of wind burned into his skin, crackling with unseen forces.

FWOOSH!

His body vanished, propelled forward at breakneck speed, the force of his acceleration ripping the air apart. But speed wasn’t enough—he bent space itself.

The distance between him and Lirael collapsed.

One moment—she was ahead. The next—he was behind her.

Her instincts flared. Too late.

Elias launched himself into the air, twisting mid-flip—

CRACK!

A devastating heel kick crashed into Lirael’s spine.

The force sent her slamming into the pavement, the concrete splitting apart as she skidded across the ruined street, tearing through debris, her dark robes billowing in the chaos.

Elias landed on her back, pinning her down.

A moment of silence.

Then—

Lirael chuckled.

Through the blood trickling down her lip, through the searing pain ripping through her body—she smiled.

“Impressive. But I’ve seen better.”

CRACK.

She slammed her heel into the ground.

RUMBLE.

The entire battlefield lurched—massive spikes of jagged stone erupted from below, each one aimed directly at Elias with terrifying speed.

But Elias—he did not retreat.

His hands surged with fire, eldritch energy intertwining within the inferno.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

He fired multiple blazing bursts, each one laced with void-born entropy, incinerating the stone spears mid-air.

The ones he couldn’t destroy—

He bent them to his will.

The earth obeyed.

With a flick of his wrist, the remaining three spikes shifted—their trajectory forcefully altered, smashing into the ground at his feet.

Silence.

Dust and embers floated in the air between them. The battlefield lay in ruins—twisted, distorted, a shattered reflection of reality itself.

Elias stared down at Lirael, his icy blue eyes burning with an unfathomable, eldritch glow.

Lirael met his gaze.

Her smirk widened.

The real fight had just begun.

△▼△▼△▼△

Hikari and Lila stood on the precipice of something terribly wrong.

The ruined city stretched before them, twisted beyond recognition, a landscape caught between what was and what should have never been. The air hung thick with decay, the scent of old, forgotten places where light had long since died. The buildings flickered in and out of existence, trapped in an unnatural twilight between ruin and memory.

The domain pulsed.

It breathed.

The city was alive in a way it shouldn’t be.

Hikari exhaled sharply, pressing the heel of her palm against her forehead. Think. They didn’t have time to waste.

“Come on, Hikari. Think. How do we get through all of those undead?”

Lila stood beside her, arms crossed, brow furrowed. The dim, flickering streetlights cast long shadows over her face, making her look colder, more distant than usual. But Hikari knew better. She wasn’t just thinking about tactics—she was thinking about survival.

Lila’s voice was low, edged with frustration. “I don’t know. Even with all my abilities, there’s no way I could solo that entire horde. If we had Katsuki, he’d probably clear them out in ten seconds flat.”

Hikari let out a groan. “Well, he isn’t here. It’s up to us.”

Her gaze flicked toward the cathedral, the grotesque monolith of blackened bone and shattered glass at the heart of the domain. The structure loomed, its very presence wrong, as if it had been stitched into reality from some nightmare world.

Amanda was in there.

She had to be.

“We don’t have a choice,” Hikari continued. “We have to find a way through.”

Lila’s frown deepened, her silver eyes scanning the sea of monstrosities that awaited them.

The horde moved like a living tide—an amalgamation of shadow and bone, of twisted, half-formed things that should have never existed. The hooded specters whispered endlessly, their voices thick with sorrow and hunger. The skeletal wolf-like horrors prowled the perimeter, their silver eyes glowing with an unnatural, ravenous light. And then there were the arachnids—twisted humanoid torsos fused to insectile bodies, their mouths stretched into spirals of needle-like teeth.

And at the center of it all—the serpent.

The massive, coiling abomination writhed, its body never still, shifting between shadow and void, its very form uncertain. The runes carved into its body pulsed like a heartbeat, ancient, unnatural, alive. Its face was never the same twice—sometimes a gaping maw, sometimes a screaming void, sometimes—a human face. Twisted. Agonized. Suffering.

It turned toward them.

It saw them.

The domain shuddered as a guttural, inhuman sound rumbled from its throat—a sound that should not exist.

The weight of its presence crashed down on them, heavy, suffocating. Hikari felt it clawing at the edges of her mind, twisting at the seams of reality.

Beside her, Lila inhaled sharply. Fearless. Steady. But Hikari could feel the tension in her stance, the way her fingers twitched at her sides, itching for a blade, a spell, anything that could keep them from drowning in the overwhelming wrongness of this place.

And yet—

Despite the overwhelming odds, despite the sheer horror looming before them—

Lila whispered, “I’ll do it. For Amanda.”

A pause.

Then, quieter—almost too quiet to hear.

“For you, Hikari.”

The words sent a flicker of warmth through the cold, heavy air.

Hikari’s heart stilled for a moment, caught between battle and something far more fragile.

She didn’t look at Lila. Didn’t turn.

Instead—she grinned.

“Then let’s make this count.”

They both blushed.

And then, together—

They stepped forward.

Into hell.

----------------------------------------

TO BE CONTINUED…