The plague curled like tendrils from a grave, clinging to the air, lacing the battlefield with death that pulsed like a second heartbeat. Aelius no longer stood at the edge of his domain. The line had vanished beneath his heel the moment Nehzhar dared speak her name—Levy. That was when the restraint burned away. Now, all that remained was motion.
Aelius came forward fast, body moving like sinew animated by something older than rage. The rot followed. It didn't trail—it chased. He flung his hand forward as he closed the distance, and from his palm surged a cloud that hissed with decay.
"Plague Gods: Larval Torrent."
The spell erupted in a violent burst—sickly translucent larvae, screaming as they spiraled through the air, each writhing body hunting mana, sight, and sensation. They didn't aim—they sought. Nehzhar's grin flattened, not out of fear, but sheer disgust.
"Magic Gods: Eclipse Cleft."
His reply came with a lazy backhanded sweep, black magic bursting out like he was slicing open the sky. The wave crushed the parasites into collapsing singularity, pressing their forms into themselves until they burst into ash. It bloomed in the air like the world's foulest flower.
Aelius was already on him—no chant, no build-up. He came in raw and silent, one arm curled to strike like a hammer. A hook drove low—precise, practiced, lethal in intent but not impact.
Nehzhar didn't dodge.
He let it hit.
The impact rippled with rot—but Nehzhar flinched. But his grin returned, cocky and cruel.
"Magic Gods: Nailstorm Wreath."
The moment Aelius touched him, his shoulder detonated in a ring of blackthorns, each tip humming with crushing density. They struck point-blank. Aelius was thrown back, his cloak flayed open, the flesh of his arm peeled into ribbons.
He rolled and came up again. His flesh already crawling back into place, reluctant but inevitable, like something that didn't know it should stop.
But he was breathing harder.
Slower.
His stance was tighter. Defensive.
Nehzhar noticed.
"Still not using your pretty toy?" he called, circling now, casual, half-taunting. "What's the law say about mortals wielding those things again? You need a badge, or a blood pact? Or just a death wish?"
Aelius didn't answer.
He raised both hands instead—another invocation. His movements were stiff now, slower than before, every joint a battlefield of its own.
"Plague Gods: Cadaver Bloom."
The field beneath Nehzhar cracked like eggshells.
From below, corpses bloomed. Twisted roots of spine and tendon, hands made of bone and torn cloth, screeching as they reached up to drag him down. They didn't belong to any known corpse—they were constructs of memory and mold. Death imagined.
"Magic Gods: Raveling Pyre."
Nehzhar's palm dropped with theatrical disdain.
Fire rippled upward—flames that consumed space, not just air. The bloom was gone in an instant, vaporized, erased like chalk. Aelius flinched at the heat.
But he kept moving.
Still fighting.
Still holding.
He charged again, one shoulder twisted, left leg dragging. The rot wept behind him, boiling spores and bitter smoke. Nehzhar rolled his eyes but met him anyway—faster, stronger, cleaner.
Their fists collided. Aelius's knuckles split. Nehzhar's barely bruised.
They broke.
Struck again.
Aelius low—an undead lunge. Nehzhar high—divine punishment wrapped in flair. Each impact cracked the air. Cracked bone. Cracked resolve.
Aelius staggered first. His chest caved where Nehzhar landed a blow. His breath rasped. But his hands still moved.
"Plague Gods: Withering Veil."
Spores burst from his cloak in a haze of burning mist, carving the oxygen out of the air. Nehzhar coughed once, then held his breath, laughing anyway.
"Still trying? I respect it. Stupid, but respectable."
He flicked his fingers.
"Magic Gods: Rift Needles."
Black javelins of compressed gravity spat from the sky—one grazing Aelius's shoulder, another tearing across his side. He grunted but kept upright, arms trembling, legs wide.
His mask had begun to split at the edges.
He was bleeding from the gut. His bones showed in his arm. And still, he circled Nehzhar like a wolf that hadn't noticed it was missing a lung.
He wasn't winning.
But he wasn't falling either.
Every spell Nehzhar threw had to be dodged. Every blow he landed still forced a step back. Every laugh Nehzhar let out came with a flicker of tension beneath it.
He was beginning to realize—
Aelius wasn't fighting to win.
He was fighting not to lose.
And somehow, that was worse.
Because losing meant dying, and dying meant Fairy Tail fell.
It made him slower—but it made him relentless.
Each spell Aelius cast wasn't a scream—it was a whisper of refusal. Each block wasn't perfect—it was deliberate, designed to bleed as little as possible, to keep his rot alive just a few moments longer. Each step backward, away from Nehzhar's onslaught, wasn't retreat.
It was conservation.
And Nehzhar saw it. Felt it. Felt the difference between a man desperate to win and a man who had accepted that death was coming—but he'd drag you into the grave with him, teeth first if that's what it took.
"Plague Gods: Wretched Roots," Aelius hissed, and the ground erupted beneath Nehzhar's feet—twisting roots of black ichor snapping upward, trying to wrap his legs, trying to slow him.
Nehzhar leapt over them—barely—landing in a three-point crouch and skidding to the side. His teeth clenched.
He wasn't laughing now.
"You're not playing fair, Aelius," he spat. "You're not even trying to win this like a mage."
He straightened. His fists clenched. Smoke—real smoke, shadow-born and twitching with divine nerve—poured from his knuckles.
"Magic Gods: Hollow Entombment!"
A cage of swirling void magic erupted around Aelius like a storm snapping shut—an obsidian cube, twisting and bending gravity inward, light warping at the corners like reality was choking on itself.
Aelius didn't dodge.
Didn't flinch.
He stepped into it.
The cube collapsed like a lung imploding—
—and detonated.
The shockwave tore across the battlefield, soil flipping like overturned graves, trees reduced to wet splinters.
When the dust cleared, Aelius stood hunched in the center, breathing hard, plague-slick smoke weeping from his ribs and one arm hanging useless at his side.
But he was still standing.
He raised his eyes again, rot pooling at his feet.
And Nehzhar saw it.
That same look.
Not defiance. Not rage. Not arrogance.
Resolve.
A quiet, stubborn, suicidal kind of resolve that looked at death and whispered: Fine. But I'm taking you with me.
"...You just don't break, do you," Nehzhar muttered, brushing ash off his arm. "You're like... a cockroach. But with more trauma."
He rolled his neck.
"Alright, Aelius. You win. You're worth killing properly."
He flexed his fingers, and for the first time, his feet settled.
His stance widened.
No more bouncing. No more spinning like a clown on fire.
Stillness.
True, practiced, calm. As if he'd decided to begin the fight now.
"Magic Gods: Black Star Burial."
The words came like thunder through his chest.
A dome of dark above. Threads of shadow below. All of it spiraling inward like a noose made from falling stars.
Aelius planted both feet—and inhaled.
Deep.
Then:
"Plague Gods: Blightward Heart."
His entire domain responded.
Rot howled. The plague pulsed from him like a heartbeat, like the breath of a dead world, lashing out against the falling starlight in a cyclone of corruption and boiling spores.
The battlefield didn't shatter.
It dissolved.
Ash, bone, rot, magic—no longer two sides, but a maelstrom.
Two forces not made to survive one another.
A clash not of champions—but of curses pretending to be men.
The first impact didn't register. Not really. Nehzhar felt the collision in the magic first—a sick twist in the core of his gut like the air had turned rancid inside his lungs. Then came the real strike.
Blightward Heart wasn't flashy. It wasn't even fast.
It just was.
The rot swelled like a tidal current, not a spell but a reaction—a bloom of plague-slick atmosphere bending toward him, clinging to his limbs like mold to bread. Every shadow curled into his bones. Every breath dragged the corruption deeper.
Nehzhar tried to retreat. Too late.
A shriek of pressure slammed against his ribs— his left side erupted in a geyser of blood and ruin as plague burrowed into his shadow armor, and melted through his spells like fat under fire. His shoulder hit the dirt first, his boots carving a long, messy line across the battlefield.
The dome of Black Star Burial stuttered—warped—cracked open like a spiderweb glass bowl.
His body stopped skidding with a jolt. He groaned and rolled onto his back, panting steam into the decay-thick air.
Smoke curled from his abdomen. One side of his jacket had dissolved entirely, blackened skin beneath it steaming like acid had bathed it. The plague wasn't just rot—it was memory, it lingered. Where it struck, it stayed.
Nehzhar sat up, coughing violently.
He spit. Something green and wet hit the ground. He stared at it, blinked twice, and wiped his mouth on his forearm.
"Okay," he muttered. "Alright. So that's what that spell feels like. Great."
A silence. Then a tiny wheeze of a laugh.
"Gods above, your regen is such absolute bullshit."
He looked up at Aelius, still standing in the heart of the rot like a phantom carved from grave smoke and determination. Those eyes behind the mask flickered—steady, unreadable.
"You've been stabbed, burned, had both arms blown out at least once, hit with four direct spells from me... and you're still walking."
Nehzhar's smirk twitched.
"I can see the ribs through your stomach, Aelius. I can count them. Like piano keys."
Aelius didn't move.
"You've bled out three times. I know because I felt your heartbeat stutter." Nehzhar pushed himself up, slow, dragging breath through clenched teeth. "And somehow, that bile-fueled little healing core of yours just keeps kicking. You know most people have organs? You have fungus. Fungal necrotic stem cells or something. It's horrifying. It's disgusting."
He raised one arm, snapping smoke from his knuckles.
"It's also impressive. Gross. But impressive."
He pointed at Aelius with that same finger, flicking plague-spores out of the air like gnats.
"But it's still not enough."
And then he charged.
No flourish. No dramatic monologue. Not this time.
Nehzhar moved like the blade he always joked he wasn't—sharp, decisive, almost surgical in his precision now.
Aelius was waiting.
One step forward. Then two.
They collided.
Nehzhar's blade slashed low, ducked under Aelius's elbow, then flipped the strike into a reverse uppercut aimed at his exposed ribs.
Aelius twisted just enough to soften the blow, but not enough to avoid it. Steel kissed bone. Flesh split. Plague mist bled out like pus bursting from a deep wound.
He didn't cry out.
He grabbed Nehzhar's wrist with his half-regrown hand and dug his fingers in.
"Plague Gods: Bloom."
The spores didn't explode.
They nested.
They slithered into Nehzhar's skin like tiny, laughing seeds, threading under his veins, biting into his nerves.
Nehzhar staggered backward with a barked curse, stumbling into the churned mud, yanking his jacket off as the spell burned under his skin.
"I hate that one," he snapped. "It's always that one. Every damn time."
Aelius was advancing.
No smugness. No celebration.
He was bleeding from at least five places, limping slightly, one arm still useless, sludge bleeding from his jaw and back.
But he kept coming.
And Nehzhar felt it.
Not power. Not pressure.
Promise.
He grinned through the blood on his teeth.
"You think I'm impressed yet?" he shouted, flicking ash from his hair, eyes wide and wild. "You think this is enough to stop me from butchering your little family tree?"
"Show me more, Aelius!" he roared. "Show me why they trust you with their lives! Prove it!"
Aelius moved like a man made of knives and regrets—cutting, cutting, always cutting—but every step now came with weight. Every motion dragged behind it the rot of his failing strength. He struck low again, angled toward Nehzhar's legs, but the momentum wasn't there. It scraped off Nehzhar's blade like iron on iron—loud, sparking, useless.
Nehzhar caught the blow, twisted it aside with a laugh, then caught Aelius's forearm with his elbow, ramming it backward with bone-cracking force. Something in Aelius's shoulder gave a sick pop as the joint slipped halfway out of place.
"Man, you're starting to slow down." Nehzhar's grin didn't reach his eyes this time. "Kinda heartbreaking, really."
Aelius staggered but didn't fall. He flicked his fingers outward, forcing breath between his teeth, the rot around him coiling once more into focus.
"Plague Gods: Wither Mark."
A pulse of decay burst from his palm—gray-green, razor-thin, a line of rot aimed dead center at Nehzhar's chest.
Nehzhar caught it.
Ate it.
He didn't even flinch. His mouth opened wide like a great, cracked abyss—magic surged into it like water into a broken dam. His skin flushed, his muscles refilled with light and smoke. The tremor in his hands vanished.
He licked his lips and made a face like he'd just chewed on burnt copper. "Still gross," he muttered, "but efficient."
Aelius didn't reply. His breath came shallower now. His stance dipped lower. His feet dragged more than they stepped.
The rot around him flickered, thinner than before—his dominion straining at the edges, the domain bleeding back into the ether where it belonged. It wasn't gone, not yet—but it was dying.
And Nehzhar could feel it.
"You're out of tricks."
He moved faster this time, more than before, magic surging again in his limbs, replenished by the consumption. His boots cracked stone as he closed the gap.
"Out of spells."
A slash. A parry. A shoulder-check that knocked Aelius off his balance. Nehzhar didn't stop.
"Out of strength."
Another blade strike—this one caught Aelius across the stomach, shallow but precise. Blood sprayed—thick, dark, oily.
"And, judging by that noise your leg just made—" Nehzhar ducked low, swept Aelius's feet from under him with a spinning kick that sent him crashing to one knee, "—you're also almost out of limbs."
Aelius tried to rise. Nehzhar shoved him back down with a single palm to the mask.
"Oh no no no, we're not done. You don't get to fall down and make it noble. I haven't seen it yet."
He leaned close, the grin twisting sharper.
"You haven't impressed me."
Behind Aelius, the rot shivered. Fewer spores. The air was clearer. His spells—tiring.
Aelius looked up, breath heaving behind his mask. He lifted a hand—tried to form a seal—his fingers trembled.
Nehzhar stepped on his wrist.
"Don't bother. You're tapped. You got nothing left. And I've still got your stupid guild to burn."
He crouched, face inches from Aelius's.
"Don't get me wrong. You've done great. Really. Lot of drama. Very poetic. The whole 'I won't fall' thing was cool. And the mask is still terrifying. But you know what's cooler than trying?"
He leaned in.
"Winning."
He stood again, slowly.
"I'll give you one more shot. One. Blow me away, corpse-boy. Because if you don't, I'm gonna do it. And Levy's at the bottom. You know what that means?"
He raised his arms, letting the last of Aelius's spell-rot drip from his fingertips like ink. "It means she gets to watch."
Aelius didn't speak.
He simply pushed himself to his feet again, unsteady, ribs broken, magic waning, vision blurry.
But standing.
Still standing.
The world sagged beneath the weight of the glyph.
Aelius's lips moved slowly, breath shallow, eyes dulled and steady as the rot thickened behind him like smoke forming a spine.
"Warp Gods: Plague—Apparition."
Magic cracked like bone.
Space didn't rupture—it yielded. Softly, like old flesh. Like the veil between worlds had grown too thin from the pressure of something pressing through. The air went rancid. The rot pulsed once and swelled—like lungs dragging in a final breath before a scream.
And then something stepped forward.
A mass. A grotesque, hulking form of bloat and breathless joy. Towering, skin sloughing off in strips, belly distended like a pregnant god rotting from the inside. Horns—stubby, like snapped bones—curled from a head too small for the body. One hand dragged a cleaver of rusted iron and half-grown teeth—wide enough to gut a carriage in a single swing.
It did not snarl.
It laughed.
Bright and happy. Like a child's first laugh—if that child had never stopped dying.
Nehzhar's foot slid back. His shoulders tensed.
For the first time, he didn't speak.
Not a joke. Not a threat. Not a single damn word.
His eyes widened. Mouth slightly parted. The black aura around him fluttered for half a heartbeat.
And then he snapped out of it.
"Absolutely not." His voice shook with something sharp. Not fear. Not awe. Disbelief. "You're not supposed to have that."
The grotesque form raised its cleaver. No ceremony. No chant. Just that horrible, gleeful laughter echoing like a hymn.
Aelius didn't move. His eyes stayed fixed. The rot behind him surged. And the weapon fell.
"Magic Godslayer: Abyssal Guard!"
Nehzhar's voice cracked as he hurled his remaining hand forward, shadows whirling into a thick curtain of coiling pitch—but it folded. The cleaver cleaved through, catching the barrier—and then Nehzhar—with a single, thunderous crack.
The dome shattered. A limb flew.
Nehzhar screamed as he hit the ground, crashing like a meteor, shoulder torn into red ruin, black ichor burning at the edge of the wound. His arm—gone. Cauterized by rot, pulsing with lingering echoes of corrupted plague.
The beast laughed again—higher, louder, a cruel shriek of delighted satisfaction—and as if its role had been played, it dissolved, crumbling back into spores, then nothing at all.
But its presence remained. Its taint.
Aelius lowered his hand.
Nehzhar stirred. Slowly. Painfully. He pushed up to a crouch, hair soaked to his face, breath rattling in his throat. The wound spewed steam.
"I don't know how you did that," he said softly, a note of unsteady amusement returning to his voice, "but that wasn't a spell. That was something worse. Something borrowed."
He coughed hard, nearly laughing as he did—blood flinging from his mouth.
"You're just full of surprises tonight, aren't you?"
He rose, shaking, sparks of Magic Godslayer energy curling around his fingers.
"But next time you borrow something like that, you better make sure it doesn't come asking for rent."
He snapped his fingers, the sound still faintly trembling.
"Because I am not cleaning up, that."
Nehzhar stood fully, shakily—his shadow magic bleeding from the socket where his arm had been severed, trailing tendrils like ink in water, each twitch a tremor of unspoken pain. His grin was back, but this time it was wrong. Crooked. Off-balance. Forced around clenched teeth.
He let out a low whistle, then laughed—short and brittle.
"Well damn, Aelius."
His one remaining hand pressed to the scorched stump, and he winced as black sparks flickered across it—magic beginning the slow, agonizing attempt to seal the wound.
"You've impressed me," he said, voice tight, almost reverent. "Congratulations."
A beat.
"Too much."
He raised his head—and for a second, something ancient looked back through his eyes. Not mockery. Not fury.
A kind of admiration, maybe. Or kinship.
Then he stepped forward, and that look vanished, replaced with a colder, crueler clarity.
"I'll spare your guild."
His voice dropped. Flat. Icy.
"Not because of mercy. You've bought their lives with that thing you summoned. With that... act. You earned it."
The wind shifted. The plague stirred at Aelius's back, but he remained silent.
Nehzhar's fingers twitched, and the magic around them snapped taut like pulled sinew.
"But you," he said, gaze narrowing, "you still have to die."
No laughter now. No joy.
Just anger.
"I can't let you walk away with that kind of power. You think you're a martyr, or a monster, or maybe both—but what you are, Aelius Morvain, is a problem. And I kill problems."
He shifted his stance. The air around him darkened, shadows spiraling in slow, deliberate orbits. The grin returned—but thinner, ghost-like.
A sharp snap of his neck, cracking tension from his spine.
"Final act. Curtain call. Show me if you're a one-hit wonder—" he flicked black blood from his mouth, "—or the goddamn main event."
A sharp snap of his neck, cracking the tension from his spine. Then the ground cracked beneath his feet as he surged forward.
Aelius's breath rasped behind the mask, fogging the rim of the metal as he stumbled back, sluggish now, magic bleeding out of him like sand through cracked fingers. His body had long since stopped screaming from pain—now it simply twitched, burned, and waited to fail.
He reached out, and an all too familiar flask appeared in his hand. It pulsed faintly in his hand, a pocket of plagueborne essence potent enough to flood his veins with vitality, to refresh his magic.
But the moment he began to lift it, the air screamed.
"Ah ah ah—nope, can't have that!"
Nehzhar was there before the flask had even cleared Aelius's palm.
With a flick of his fingers, a lance of shadow lashed forward—"Magic Gods: Ruin Spiral!"—and struck the flask dead-on. The reinforced alchemical steel crumpled mid-air like wet paper. The thing exploded into a cloud of sickly smoke and shattered boneglass, spiraling away into the rot-choked wind.
Aelius's eyes snapped up, wide, desperate—but the moment of panic was brief. He said nothing. Just squared his stance again, fingers now empty, and braced for what was coming.
Nehzhar hit the ground, skidding, hand trailing black fire, laughing.
"Too slow, too slow! C'mon, man—I'm missing an arm and I'm still dancing circles around you!"
He didn't even stop moving. One foot pivoted, dragging a semicircle of scorched ash behind him, and then he surged again, blade raised in his remaining hand.
Aelius ducked the first blow but caught the second, flat-edge, but still enough to slam him into the ground with bone-jarring force. His knees buckled. He coughed blood. But his eyes never left Nehzhar.
"Still not giving up?" Nehzhar barked, amusement laced with heat. "You're out of gas. No flask. No blade. No summons left. What, you gonna blink at me menacingly until I keel over?"
Aelius moved.
Not fast.
Not strong.
But with the grinding certainty of something that would not stop. A body already dead, driven by will alone.
The rot around them thickened—his domain shrieking in protest—but it couldn't close fast enough. Not before Nehzhar was back on him, carving another sweeping line of shadow into the earth, forcing Aelius to retreat another step, and another.
"Not gonna lie," Nehzhar muttered under his breath, sweat mixing with soot across his temple, "You're starting to creep me out. You're basically just a sack of rotting bones and bad ideas at this point. But damn if you don't keep standing."
He dashed in again, this time angling lower—trying to carve through what remained of Aelius's defenses before he could try anything clever. Aelius raised his arm to block—half-regrown, riddled with stitch-scar tissue and rot—but it was just enough.
Barely.
Nezhzar's blade tore through muscle again, but Aelius twisted with the blow, used the momentum to drive forward, not retreating this time.
It was slow. Sloppy. Suicidal.
But it made Nehzhar flinch.
"You don't get to scare me," Nehzhar growled under his breath, backing off with a curse, shoulder rising protectively toward his damaged side. "Not you. Not after everything."
Another spell began to curl around his fingertips—heavy, thick, blacker than before.
"And now you're really gonna die, Aelius."
He drew a circle with his hand, like closing the curtain.
"Let's see you walk through this."