The Darkness grasped the whole land of Durkan. Over one billion population were about to get thrown out from the sack of nightmare.
Fahrenheit stood with Tepès resting on his shoulder, its red glow reflecting off his pale face. Xamin was hovering above, fingertips trembling, small red orbs rotating in the air around him, shaping equations of death with eerie calm.
Elior stood on the opposite, one wing unfurled, sand rising in steady waves around his body. His eyes were locked and reading every little movements in Fahrenheit's muscles.
Fahrenheit lunged first, the ground exploding under his feet. He swung Tepès in a wide horizontal slash. The blood blade howled, sending bloody, stingy slashes everywhere. The sheer pressure sending a tremor across the field.
Elior dodged backward, leaving behind a sand clone that instantly burst into a blinding spray. Fahrenheit cut through it, his blade screamed but Elior was already behind him.
Elior's hand moved and space folded into a rift forming near Fahrenheit's chest. Fahrenheit snarled and slammed his sword downward, tearing a wound in reality itself that dispelled the rift.
"This is the end for the livings!" Fahrenheit roared, turning, his sword burning red.
He dashed forward again, feinting low, then thrusting upward. Elior brought up his arm, his wing curling into a shield of sand and black mist. The sword clashed with the wing. The impact sent sparks and grains into the air like glowing embers.
From above, dozens of scarlet threads shot downward. Xamin's manipulation, blood turned into sharp needles. They twisted, seeking openings, distracting Elior's vision. Elior sliced through them with space tears, but in that single hand down of defense, Fahrenheit appeared again.
The vampire floating in mid-air, spinning, Tepès tracing a red spiral. It collided with Elior's sand barrier, shattering it. Elior coughed blood and tumbled back catching himself with a surge of levitating sand.
He raised both hands. The ground split, hundreds of sand shards forming shaping like dagger points. They swarmed toward Fahrenheit swiftly.
Xamin waved his hand and blood equations burst in front of him and a transparent wall of energy formed around Fahrenheit, deflecting the shards like rain.
"You're working hard, hunter," Xamin said coolly. "You're not built for this tempo."
Elior smirked through his blood. "Go and goon, I'm not done yet."
The sand beneath Fahrenheit turned black suddenly. It had been altered, atom by atom, during the battle.
Before Xamin could react, it imploded a micro rift form. The explosion launched Fahrenheit upward violently.
Elior followed, dashing up through the debris. His wing slashed open the sky itself, cutting through the veil of night, catching Fahrenheit mid-air.
But Fahrenheit didn't panic and drew his sword to absorb the shock, pulsing brighter. He grinned. "You think I can't dance up here?"
He swung the sword downward. Blood vines burst out, wrapping around Elior's arm and wing, trying to crush him. Elior countered with sand explosions from within, shattering them. Both fell together in a blur, colliding again as they hit the ground.
Dust covered everything. A brief silence held on.
Then, from the smoke, a crimson light flared. Fahrenheit's cape rippled, his sword gleaming, while Elior emerged with blood dripping down his face, his sand swirling like a living creature around him.
Xamin landed lightly nearby, eyes sharp. "He's adapting faster now. Don't play with him anymore."
Fahrenheit smirked, raising his sword once more. "Who said I was playing?"
He ran crazily dragging his greatsword.
The ground shattered again.
The heat radiated from the blade turned the surrounding desert.
Elior leapt back through a wall of swirling sand but the shockwave still caught him. His armor cracked, ribs splintered, blood spilling from his lips. His wing curved forward to block the remaining impact, sand exploding outward in a radiant golden wave.
Fahrenheit grinned, cape whipping behind him. "You think you've seen fire before?" he growled. "This is my hymn for the your death!"
He raised Tepès skyward as blood vines extended from the blade, reaching the heavens like red roots. Then the light shifted. The blood ignited a corrosive radiance that devoured heat itself.
It wasn't burning the world. It was freezing it in time. The sky above fractured into mirrors, the stars trembled, flickering in and out. Every color dimmed, except for red.
Fahrenheit brought the blade down.
The ground shook as if struck by a planet. Entire dunes folded into each other; sand turned solid, then liquid, then back to dust again, cycling faster than physics could keep up. It was destruction by collapse beneath pure vampiric will.
Elior rushed forward, dodging between waves of collapsing sand. He used his wing as a springboard, closing the distance in a blink. His hand slashed through space, sending distortions like sharp ribbons. They collided with the blood wave, dispersing some of its force.
Fahrenheit met him head-on, both fists clashing. A blinding flash erupted creating a hole in space.
Above, Xamin watched silently. His crimson eyes were scanning the chaos. His mind was still and sharp.
Tepès form.… no doubt about it.
He analyzed through observation alone. Fahrenheit's base is Uptie 2, level 2. But in this form, his physical and conceptual density…. it's nearly double, Uptie 3. Elior, judging from his rift control and reaction time.… Uptie 2, level 2, maybe. He's not supposed to hold this long.
Xamin's fingers moved subtly, the blood that leaked from his palms turning crystalline. It hardened, glowing faintly like rubies under starlight. Within seconds, the blood shaped into long, curved blades that shimmered with patterns, fractal veins danced across their surface.
"Time to rebalance the equation," he whispered.
He thrust one hand forward. The crimson crystals shot through the air like homing meteors. They rotated mid-flight, connecting lines forming between them. A geometric field bloomed in the sky.
Elior barely managed to look up before the first blade struck. His sand shield absorbed part of the blow but the crystal blades resonated instead of breaking. They multiplied mid-air, duplicating like a virus.
One pierced his shoulder. Another grazed his leg, slicing through armor like silk.
Fahrenheit appeared beside him, grinning savagely, sword dripping crimson light. "We're not even close to done."
Elior exhaled, blood on his lips. His left wing burst open, scattering fragments of glowing sand that circled him like miniature suns. He slammed his hands together. The sand solidified into a shield, shimmering gold and black, meeting Tepès once more.
The collision this time was nuclear. A pulse of blood and sand erupted, lighting up the horizon. And distant bunkers shook under the tremor.
Xamin's eyes narrowed as he floated higher, observing.
Even at this distance, the resonance could crush a Homan's mind. Interesting….
He raised his right hand, forming a long crimson spear out of crystallized blood, humming with vampiric power. The weapon pulsed as the crystallization completed.
He spoke softly, calculating the trajectory.
"Fahrenheit…. hold him."
Fahrenheit smirked, twisted Tepès once and the blood vines shot out again, wrapping around Elior's leg.
Elior dodged through collapsing waves of blood and sand. The battlefield was no longer recognizable.
Fahrenheit and Xamin chased Elior through the debris, crimson trails burnt behind them. Elior used the broken space itself as footholds, teleporting through rifts. Each time he reappeared, Fahrenheit's sword reacted faster.
"Running again, hunter?!" Fahrenheit shouted, swinging down.
"Running?" Elior's voice echoed through the void. "I'm surviving your mess, buddy."
Fahrenheit's next strike split the space, Elior barely parried with his sand construct, but the impact sent him flying through several dunes. He coughed blood trying to stabilize midair with the wing.
Xamin appeared above him instantly, calm and deliberate, blades crystallized between his fingers. "You can't win this. You're surrounded by someone who doesn't die and someone who doesn't miss."
Elior smirked faintly through bruised lips. "Yeah? Then what if I don't stop?"
He launched forward, dragging the sand like a serpent. The terrain erupted behind him as he dashed straight at Xamin. They clashed mid-air. Xamin's precision against Elior's relentless chaos. For every block, another strike reached up.
Fahrenheit circled like a predator, veins glowing bright red, breath unsteady. His mind was a mess of memories — Sonia's laughter, the lullaby, the betrayal, the flame. Every scream rang over Elior's voice.
"Xamin," he muttered low, chest trembling, "you told me vengeance is a cage. What if it's the only thing keeping me alive?"
"Then you'll die in that cage," Xamin answered, launching blood spikes toward Elior.
Elior countered, sand tendrils deflecting most but one pierced his thigh. He growled and shot forward anyway, slamming his fist into Xamin's chest, making him staggered.
That brief moment was all Fahrenheit needed or thought he needed. He roared his greatsword blazed, blood vines flaring outward like wings. The sword pulsed, absorbing all the spilled blood nearby, including Xamin's.
"Fahren, wait—" Xamin began, realization flashing too late.
Fahrenheit swung.
The sword's edge slammed down and a slash so powerful it turned everything red. Elior ducked just in time, sand swirled up as a shield. But behind him….
Xamin stood still, eyes wide. A crimson line traced down his chest. He looked at Fahrenheit in disbelief, not pain. He painted his face. His lips parted but no sound came. Then his body fractured into crimson dust and dissolved into the wind.
Fahrenheit was shocked. His sword trembled in his hand. The light in his eyes once burning slowly faded.
Elior rose slowly, bruised, breath sharp. "…. Wasn't he your brother."
Fahrenheit didn't answer. He dropped Tepès, the blade dissolving into blood mist. The sandstorm stopped. The battlefield turned quiet eerily.
Only his whisper broke it,
"I killed what little was left of me."
Fahrenheit stood motionless among the ruins. His hands still clutched the air where the greatsword had been, the blade now gone, dissolved into mist.
The battlefield groaned beneath the silence.
All around, Vera's avatars were still clashing with vampires and skeletons but for Fahrenheit, there was only that single moment that cut looping endlessly in his mind.
His knees trembled. He laughed once, dry, cracked.
"Ha…. I killed him."
His voice broke halfway through the word him.
He lifted his bloodstained hand to his face and stared at it.
"This is what rage looks like," he whispered. "You let your rage win against you. You will go for revenge but end up hurting yourself."
Said Elior walking near him.
Fahrenheit hit his own chest, over and over. "You fool! You monster! You couldn't even protect him, you killed him! You wanted revenge, you wanted strength, you wanted to be power but what's left now to spend for?!"
His soft laughter returned filled with horror.
The blood mist around him began to fade, dripping down his body like melted wax.
Elior stood a few paces away, silent. He looked at the broken vampire, once a figure of wrath and dominance, now just a shadow collapsing under its own weight.
Elior took a glance toward the horizon. The battlefield was a graveyard. Vera's avatars screamed, skeletons crawled, the sky was bruised red and black.
Everything was falling apart.
He turned back. "What will you do now, Fahrenheit?" he asked quietly.
Fahrenheit didn't look up. "I'll....cut grass. That's all that's left for me. Rage is a parasite. It takes everything, then starves when there's nothing more to feed on." He looked at Elior, hollow-eyed. "You see? I became rage itself. I thought it would make me powerful enough to avenge.… but it made me more empty."
Elior's expression softened. He saw something familiar in that emptiness. The same void he once felt when he lost his own companions, grandparents. He wanted to show mercy. He wanted to believe Fahrenheit could still stand up, he tried to find some kind of light in him.
But mercy, he knew, wasn't always kindness.
Sometimes, it was ending the suffering.
Elior walked closer, quietly.
He reached out and the greatsword reformed in his hand, drawn from the blood mist still hanging in the air. Fahrenheit didn't move. He simply smiled faintly, eyes closing.
"You're merciful, aren't you, hunter?" Fahrenheit murmured.
Elior's grip tightened. "No, I am just a Human."
The blade slid through cleanly, piercing Fahrenheit's chest.
Just a soft exhale came out, like relief after a long war.
Crimson light rose around them. The blood vines on Fahrenheit's cape dissolved into dust. His body disintegrated slowly, piece by piece, fading into particles of faint red.
Elior stood there with shadowed eyes holding the dissolving greatsword until it melted away in his hand.
The wind carried Fahrenheit's final whisper, barely audible,
"I killed my brother.… and he forgave me by dying first."
Elior looked at the ground where the dust settled, his voice broke softly,
"You're free now."
Then, turning back toward the chaos of the field, he whispered to himself.
"Mercy always costs something. No matter how cruel I behave to someone, in the end I am cruelest to myself."