The battlefield had already dissolved into madness smoke, blood, and the sickening sound of countless things deaths at once. The annular eclipse still loomed above, stretching its darker than dark light across the torn ground like open wounds.
Elior stood at the center of the chaos, his coat torn, eyes burning with the pale hue of his activated Face. His breathing was steady for the world collapsing around him.
Across the field, Xamin hovered a few feet off the ground, his coat fluttering unnaturally as hundreds of invisible calculations spiraled in glowing rings behind him.
Their gazes met. There was no place for hesitation, no words of mercy.
Only one of them was leaving this field alive.
Eliorade his firstove,
A sound like ripping fabric broke through the clamor as demonic, branch-like wings burst from his right shoulder, their tips sharp and jagged. They twitched once and the air tore open like a hole.
He vanished.
Then reappeared in front of Xamin, slamming one wing forward like a blade.
Xamin barely had time to cross his arms. The impact detonated, a quake of invisible force that tore the air apart. Space distorted and was impactful enough to destroy buildings far behind numerous legions and screamed as though crushed by gravity. Xamin skidded backward, boots digging in trenched in the sand, his expression turned grim but unshaken.
"My wings doesn't just attacks you, it attacks the surroundings too. You should've dodged instead of tanking it."
A small smirk tugged at Xamin's lip. "Noted."
He flicked his wrist.
Dozens of razor-thin strings shot out of his fingers, slicing the air with eerie precision. They weren't ordinary threads, they carried compressed blood, data, and cursed script. Elior swung his wings, cutting most of them midair, but a few reached him, grazing his side. Blood splashed out.
Xamin's hand twisted and his blood bombs ignited instantly, a red-white explosion that shattered the ground.
Elior was thrown backward, crash landing on bunch of Veras. His abdomen was bleeding freely. But the wound closed just as fast, skin stitching under black energy as he plucked a lily from the branch and ate it.
"Regeneration?" Xamin mused aloud, half-admiring, half-calculating. "Annoying."
Elior's eyes narrowed. His voice dropped like iron, "You talk too much, idiot. You are the ones spamming it most."
He lunged again. The wings folded once, then unfolded with a sonic crack, sending out a pulse that erased sound itself for half a heartbeat.
Xamin dodged, blinking into another position. His strings snapped forward again. This time, they formed a geometric web, sealing Elior's movement. Each string reacted to Elior's heartbeat.
Elior looked up, a hint of a grin on his blood-stained face. "Synchronizing with my life force, huh?"
Xamin replied coolly, "Predictable rhythm means predictable death."
The net went harder but Elior's right wing convulsed, rifting the very dimension between them. The strings began to crumble, burning from both ends as reality itself shredded. He stepped forward through the falling sparks, eyes glowing brighter.
The ground quaked under their clash. Demonic wing against mathematical precision, blood against void, two wills pressing until the air screamed from the pressure.
The war raged on around them, but for a moment, the world itself seemed to pause, watching, holding its breath for the outcome of this single confrontation.
Inside,
Grace's body slammed against the far wall. The entire underground chamber trembled, dust falling from the ceiling like gray snow.
Her chest ached and lungs burning, fever biting deep into her skin but she forced herself up. The survivors were behind her, huddled, terrified. And in front of her the Demikruel was standing.
Its form was wrong, half human, half nightmare. Two sets of mismatched arms, one scaled like a lizard's, the other covered in molten flesh that dripped onto the ground and hissed. The faces of Sassy and Vincent melded into one, their features stretched, screaming silently through the same torn mouth.
Grace staggered a step forward, her eyes glowing as her sick body strained against her own weakness. The ground beneath her boots murmured, she stopped time.
Everything slowed, air warped, the movement of blood inside the Demikruel's body looked like lazy rivers of fire. She dashed forward, blade drawn, slicing across its abdomen, its chest, its throat, hundreds of slashes within 5 seconds which was 5 minutes for her.
Time resumed.
The cuts vanished on contact with the barrier, dissolving like smoke.
The Demikruel tilted its head. A mocking smile shone up unnaturally wide. "Graaaace…" its voice came from both mouths, layered and broken. "He...elp...me...die..."
Grace's breath caught. She didn't attempt any movement or said.
The monster lunged, the barrier striking first like a wall of compressed gravity. Grace was thrown backward, sliding across the floor. Her knees buckled.
She coughed hard, once and then twice tasting the iron although, she didn't stop.
Her hands trembled as she traced glowing lines in sigils, her energy flickered unstable because of her fever. She pointed her palm forward, muttering under her breath.
Mirrors of time began forming around the Demikruel, freezing its reflection in dozens of temporal loops. Grace moved between those moments, attacking each reflection to gather kinetic backlash. The mirrors shattered together sending a tidal wave of compressed motion back into the real creature.
The impact shook the bunker but the barrier remained, barely dented.
Grace gritted her teeth, panting. "It's converting motion into static potential.… not a defense field, it's.… a time-anchored delay. Also, due to my sickness, my Face turned weaker...."
She blinked sweat out of her eyes, mind racing through strategies. She couldn't brute-force it.
Grace closed her eyes, slowing her own thoughts until she was nearly calm. Then, she shifted the flow of her local time zone, making her movements happen between seconds rather than inside them. The Demikruel swung its monstrous claws but Grace wasn't there.
She appeared above, pressing her palm against the barrier. The skin on her arm began to peel from the friction of time displacement.
"Last.… I'll outlive your barrier," she hissed.
The glow around her intensified. She was accelerating her time while dragging the barrier's timeline backwards. Forcing its existence to unravel moment by moment.
The Demikruel screamed, black ichor splattering from its mouths. The barrier began to ripple faster, fighting back. Its temporal anchor trying to stabilize.
Grace gasped, her veins glowing. Her fever was burning her alive now.
The Survivors were shouting in the background, but she couldn't hear them anymore. Her ears were filled with a low, resonating choir, the sound of time collapsing.
The barrier cracked.
A small fracture ran through its surface, glowing white like a star.
Grace's lips curled into a faint smile. "Got you."
The Demikruel roared, slamming its claws down, Grace dove aside just in time. The shockwave leveled half the room.
Grace coughed, blood staining her hand. Her legs shook. She was fading. She raised her blade again. Her body beyani to break our but her eyes fierce.
"If I can't destroy your shield," she whispered, steadying her stance, "then I'll destroy your time."