Erekrath didn't wait. The creature lunged with the slow, terrible deliberation of something that had been wounded and was now furious—no longer defending, but hunting.
The first strike came without warning: the tail snapped like a battering ram. The spike dove under Shojiro's guard and drove upward into the back of his kneecap. He screamed as the joint detonated, hot white fire blossoming up his leg. He stumbled, weight collapsing onto that shattered hinge, the knee folding sideways in a useless, ragged buckling. He fought to stay upright—each breath jagged, each step a broken promise—but Erekrath pressed the advantage.
A corrosive maw found his shoulder next. The beast clamped down with its wide, tooth-rimmed mouth and shook, tearing through muscle and tearing a raw chunk from his deltoid. Warm blood sprayed, and he felt tendon and grit grind under his teeth. He tried to wrench free, but claws found purchase and ripped along his arm. Bone screamed under impact; a sick snap answered the world as one of his forearm bones shattered, splinters biting through flesh and Vythra-darkened skin. He howled, dropping to one knee, fingers groping uselessly at a limb that would not obey.
Erekrath's claws hammered his back in a staccato hail—each strike like hammers on a bell, each one lodging shards of brittle bone into muscle like splinters. A spike slammed into the small of his back, folded him forward with gut-searing pain, and he tasted bile and iron. The beast pivoted in a blur and, with surgical cruelty, drove a hooked talon into the thick of his left thigh—the femur taking the full weight of that blow. Bone cracked with a sound that punched the air out of him; the world tilted and went red around the edges.
He stumbled, vomited blood; his face took the next blow—razor claws scoring across cheek and jaw, shredding skin and exposing raw tissue. Pain became a physical fog; lightning in every nerve. For a moment the world was only agony and the mechanical rhythm of his heart beating against the floor of a ruined chamber.
But even as Erekrath kept coming—closing, tearing, testing the limits of what he could suffer—Shojiro did not break. The old man's heartbeat in his chest hammered like a war drum beneath the cacophony of pain. He tasted revenge with every ruined breath.
Using his remaining strength and the shards of discipline left inside him, Shojiro lunged upward, bleeding, dislocated, barely coherent. The creature reared for another strike—its maw open, tail arcing—but Shojiro drove himself into it. He wrapped one remaining arm around its neck, hooked a broken forearm across a splice of exposed vertebrae, and used the momentum of the creature's lunge to climb.
The tower echoed with the sound of their collision—bone against flesh, the sicking grind of teeth on tendon. Shojiro hauled himself up, knuckles slipping with blood, breath a ragged chain. He drove his forehead into Erekrath's crown, then levered his legs, dragging himself astride the beast's back until, impossibly, he had purchase.
Erekrath thrashed, a living storm beneath him, trying to fling him free. It bucked, rolled, twisted—bone plates flashing like knives—yet Shojiro clung on, every scar and shattered limb screaming. He planted his knees into the beast's flanks and braced, face streaked with blood and bone dust, one eye wild with a ferocity that made the air taste of iron.
For a long breath they were locked—predator and prey inverted. Erekrath twisted, tail lashing uselessly; Shojiro rode the movements, using the momentum to stay hooked on the beast's spine, chest heaving, life-thump loud in his ears.
He was on top of it, soaked in his own blood and the creature's, and for the first time since the battle began he felt the faint, brittle edge of a plan: the orb still beat somewhere inside that living vault. He had taken savage damage—kneecap ruined, femur shattered, arm half-broken, his face carved like a map of war—but he sat astride the monster's back like a god-thing gone wrong, furious and far from finished.
Erekrath's chest convulsed beneath him, heartbeat a distant drum beneath his own. The beast was wounded, breathing hard; its orb would not stay sheltered forever if he kept forcing it, kept tearing seams.
Shojiro's single remaining eye locked on the pulsing ribs. He tasted blood, pain, and the cold iron of coming victory.
"This ends now," he hissed, and braced himself against the savage, bucking body beneath him—waiting for the moment the heart would blink into reach.
Shojiro didn't hesitate. The instant he steadied himself atop Erekrath's spine, the world narrowed into a single, burning purpose — destroy the heart.
He tore into the creature's back with his bare, blood-soaked hands. His claws of crimson muscle ripped through the first layer of bone plating like wet clay, but he knew from the last attempt that it wouldn't be enough. Erekrath's regeneration was relentless — its flesh stitched itself back almost as quickly as he shredded it.
So this time, Shojiro decided to make his own body the weapon.
He pressed his trembling fingers against the regenerating muscle fibers, channeling Vythra not outward, but inward. The energy flooded through his arms, veins bulging, flesh boiling from the overload.
Shojiro: "You're not healing this time…"
Each fingertip detonated like a miniature sun — a searing red bloom that tore apart layers of bone and sinew.
BOOM.
One finger gone — a hole blown straight through the creature's carapace.
BOOM.
Two fingers — tissue evaporated, a line of smoke and blood carving through muscle.
BOOM.
Three fingers — his own hand started to melt, but he didn't stop. He dug deeper, ripping out what was left of the plating with the stumps of his hand, using what little muscle remained to pry open the wound wider.
Each explosion shook the chamber, crimson flames chewing through Erekrath's body from the inside out. The creature shrieked — a sound like shattering metal and burning air — as its spine twisted under the assault.
Shojiro was covered in gore, half-blind, half-limp, and yet more alive than ever. His breath was fire, his heart an inferno. The deeper he dug, the closer he came to it — the faint, rhythmic pulse of something alive.
Then he saw it — the orb.
A perfect, heart-shaped core glowing faintly under layers of living flesh, veins of black energy coiling around it.
Shojiro's one good eye widened. He reached for it, his entire arm trembling from blood loss and recoil.
Shojiro (raspy whisper): "Got you—"
But before his hand could close around it, the world went white.
Erekrath's tail shot backward like a spear, impaling Shojiro straight through the torso. The blade burst from his chest, carrying with it a splatter of blood and entrails. The air was filled with the wet, sickening sound of flesh being torn apart.
Shojiro gasped — blood streaming from his mouth, the pain blinding. His body convulsed, his vision flickering between red and black.
The tail twisted, trying to fling him off, but Shojiro didn't let go.
He wrapped his ruined arm around the pulsing orb, fingers digging in despite the searing agony. Erekrath thrashed, roaring so loud the stone beneath them cracked — but Shojiro's grip held.
Shojiro (voice breaking, teeth bared): "You're… done…"
With a final surge of everything — strength, rage, life — he crushed the heart-shaped orb in his palm.
It shattered like glass — a blinding burst of red and black light flooding the dungeon. Erekrath froze, the sound of its roar cut off mid-scream. Its entire body stiffened, light bursting from every wound and seam.
The tail still impaled Shojiro, trembling, before finally collapsing limp.
And as the world fell silent, Shojiro — bleeding, broken, and still skewered through the chest — exhaled one last ragged breath, the faint echo of his father's heartbeat fading into his own.
The monster's body began to disintegrate beneath him, turning to dust and blood mist. Shojiro stayed kneeling atop it, hand still clutching the crushed remains of the orb — a dying god who refused to fall until his enemy stopped breathing.