A brilliant blaze sliced past, missing him by inches, the holy sword’s luminous extension hunting him. Ren plummeted, only for it to arc in pursuit. He twisted his body, flung himself in all directions, each desperate movement a prayer against obliteration. The veins beneath his skin pulsed faintly, thin lines branching outward. Numbness had replaced pain. Sensation itself had become a distant memory.

  The whip snapped toward him. His fingers splayed wide. Gravity burst from his palm in a concussive wave. The tendril shuddered, recoiled, then shattered into motes of fading light. Silent rivers of gold flowed back into the sacred relic, gathering along its notched edges. Those golden eyes remained fixed, unblinking. No longer on the terminal or the fleeing survivors below. On him alone.

  I’m grateful.

  The fateful battle had never been in the world they once called home. Despite prophecies and destiny, the Hero’s blade and the Demon King’s power had remained strangers to one another. It was Leon who had stood against her in the end, bearing Evelyn’s wrath while Ren battled Renfield above. Until now, across dimensions, far from home.

  Except it wasn’t destiny. His title as Demon King had been empty. “Hearthearth,” Ren shouted. “You remember that tavern, don’t you?”

  Evelyn’s face remained a mask of cold purpose. “The past is dead,” she said.

  “That day… we shared a meal.” The ghost of a smile crossed his face before pain twisted it. He doubled over, coughing. Dark blood spattered, taken away by the wind. He wiped crimson from his lips. “In some kinder universe, I think we could have been allies.”

  “It does not matter now. You are at your limit. I can see it, what little remains fades. It’s over, devil. This world is dying. You are dying. Stand down.”

  I wish you’d stop calling me that… The word left him tired. “Even divine relics have their limits. When you run out of juice, I’ll drag you to the bottom of the ocean.”

  “You’ll die before then.”

  The faces blurred from his consciousness, all fading. There was only Evelyn, and this moment, this rage beneath his skin. An urge seized him—to scream until his throat bled, to rip and tear with his bare hands, to force someone, anyone, to taste, if only for a single moment, the bitter poison he’d swallowed every day.

  And…

  I’m sure that you feel the same way.

  His fingers curled, knuckles whitening. Evelyn’s body coiled. Far below, the tarmac buckled and split. Concrete cracked. Aircraft debris wrenched free from the ground. Metal shrieked against metal as the debris field collapsed toward her. A jagged wing section struck first, sending her tumbling over the churning water. More wreckage followed—stacking onto the other with impossible force. He clenched his fist. The maelstrom compressed tighter, denser, until it formed a grotesque sphere of wreckage suspended above the ocean. He drove it toward the depths. It howled as it speared toward the waiting sea—

  —only to cleave apart. The mass split open as a searing edge of light sliced through. Where it passed, everything turned to vapor. Ren wasted no time. He launched himself at her, inches from her face in the shadow of falling wreckage. His fingers found her throat, clamping down. They plunged earthward, a meteor breaking from celestial moorings. Hurtling. The sea erupted, a liquid volcano, walls of water climbing skyward where they pierced its surface. Spiraling currents followed their descent as he forced them deeper, his grip unyielding around Evelyn’s throat. The weight of the deep pressed in, a pressure that would pulverize ordinary flesh, implode ordinary lungs, obliterate ordinary people.

  They were anything but ordinary.

  His fingers uncurled from her throat, surrendering her. Evelyn drifted through the suffocating darkness, her irises kindling with fury. I can’t hurt her directly, and that sword dispels any direct magical strikes. But she’s not immune to environmental factors. Even her immunity has limits—

  The abyss erupted with light. A supernova underwater. A cataclysm of divine incandescence that devoured the depths, turning miles of seawater into steam.

  Ren’s reflexes saved him by milliseconds, his power twisting gravity into a protective shell. He hung suspended in a void. Around him rose liquid walls, a perfect cylinder gouged from the sea itself. Water thundered at the edges, curving toward the distant surface. Along the boundary, sea life twisted in its death throes, bisected bodies and severed tails still twitching, caught between drowning in air and the aftermath of Evelyn’s wrath.

  She struck without a moment’s pause. Spears made of divine light pierced the dark, carving through the air at him. The ocean above thundered inward, a collapsing cathedral, billions of tons of water rushing to fill the sudden emptiness.

  He tried to ascend, but he didn’t make it far. Light coiled around his ankle, the radiant whip snapped tight with a violent crack, flaring as it bound him. Agony detonated through his leg. A sharp, searing, absolute pain, as if every nerve had been set ablaze. His flesh sizzled where divinity kissed skin, the stench of charred meat swallowed instantly by the roar of converging water.

  Thought fractured.

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  Focus disintegrated.

  The ocean reclaimed him, tons of seawater collapsing, crashing into him. His eyes burned. His lungs screamed. Salt invaded open wounds. The whip held fast as Evelyn swung him. His body spun helplessly while the ocean battered him from all sides. She jerked him backward. Pain lanced from tailbone to skull in a single, unbroken current. Beneath the crushing weight of the sea, his mouth stretched wide in a scream no one would ever hear.

  Evelyn looked in the darkness like a specter of divine wrath. Between her fingers, the holy sword had transformed, its bulky white and gold luminescence stripped away to reveal something stark and sleek. White light cut through water, its edge so fine it seemed to sever the dark itself.

  Ren tore through the abyss toward her waiting blade. The last dregs of mana coursed through his failing body. He did not retreat, he dove directly at her. His bound leg pointed, gathering force. Water warped around the limb, the ocean itself straining beneath the impossible weight, the sea parting with a banshee wail as he hurtled through the depths.

  Evelyn couldn’t react in time. His heel met her face, unleashing a shockwave that tore through fathoms of water. Their bodies plummeted deeper, trailing violent currents like comets falling through the liquid night. Instinct consumed him. His limbs became a blur, each blow amplified by his dominion. Every blow carried tremendous weight, as if he fought with mountains chained to his wrists, planets bound to his ankles.

  The ocean shuddered with each collision.

  She did not so much as flinch. Her divinity remained intact—a perfect shield against his fury. But her sword arm faltered against the abyssal depths and his relentless assault. The blade that had taken his arm once now sat trapped, useless in her hand.

  Her skin ignited from within. Catastrophic light bled from her pores, swelling. But before she could unleash it, gravity reversed itself, exploding outward. The force slammed into Evelyn’s luminous form, distorting the surrounding depths. She hurtled away, plummeting deeper, vanishing into the abyss.

  From the bowels rose a soundless cataclysm, brilliance devouring water as it expanded. He could do nothing but watch it climb toward him.

  A few more minutes of this…

  And I’ll die.

  His gaze fixed on the explosion.

  It doesn’t matter anymore. That’s what I told myself. Wasn’t it?

  And yet…

  Why do I still—?

  From below, Evelyn ascended through dissipating chaos, struggling against the ocean’s weight. He lunged to meet her, but she veered mid-flight, abandoning him. His mind sharpened. Down here in the crushing deep, he held the upper hand. She knew it too, that’s why she was fleeing toward the surface. Teeth bared, he extended his arm. Gravity seized Evelyn.

  The darkness fractured into countless points of light. They materialized all around him, javelins aimed inward, their merciless glow transforming the abyss into a cage. The ephemeral weapons collapsed, a hundred points of annihilation folding into one terrible singularity. They became one giant lance, a single decisive symbol of divine retribution condensed into form. It plummeted toward him, trailing celestial fury, the weight of heaven itself descending to crush him. He forced the space to solidify before him, and everything vanished in blinding radiance.

  Ren shot from the depths, his body hurled across the ocean’s skin. He bounced against the surface countless times, consciousness flickering with each brutal impact. Then, nothing.

  * * *

  Ren’s lungs filled. His fingers pressed into something soft, blades of grass yielding beneath his weight as he pushed himself up.

  Pines and oaks stretched in every direction, their massive trunks vanishing into darkness beyond. The forest surrounded him. Flames danced and popped in the center of the clearing, sending ribbons of golden light spiraling upward. Something about this pulled at his memory, like a half-forgotten dream from childhood, its edges worn smooth by time.

  Beyond the fire, dark green leather boots caught his eye, propped on the ground, their worn soles facing him across the flames. From weathered boots to the figure lounging in the dancing firelight, to the familiar sweep of sandy hair and that unmistakable half-smile illuminated by flame. Ren’s eyelids fell and rose again, as if the image might dissolve between one moment and the next. “Midori?”

  A laugh escaped him. “Am I that forgettable?”

  “…Leon?”

  The man hunched forward, disturbing the campfire with a half-charred branch. His eyes followed the sparks climbing up, their smoky trajectories fading as they ascended toward what should have been stars. The firmament above wasn’t merely dark, it was nonexistent. A nothingness that seemed to stretch on and on and on.

  “Does it matter?”

  Certainty evaporated on his tongue. He found himself staring into the dancing flames instead, while Leon’s question hung in the space between them, as tangible as the wood smoke curling upward.

  “…Am I dead?”

  Leon snorted. “Am I dead, he asks. Always so depressing.” He prodded the flames again. “How should I know?”

  The corner of Ren’s mouth lifted in a smile. His shoulders sagged as he pulled his knees to his chest, chin settling against his forearm. “You’re right…” His voice emerged quieter. “It was a stupid question.”

  A log surrendered to the heat with a gentle crack.

  “Do you remember,” he murmured, “when you told me it was all a dream?” The stick stilled. “That one day the dreamer would wake up, and all of this would be over. So I should just be happy…” Ren stared into the fire. “Without you and Sera, I’m…” He faltered. “You two were the only place I ever fit. And with Reina,” his voice caught on her name. “I kept everything locked away, and now she’s gone, and I can’t ever—” He stopped, swallowing hard. “Now, I think I’m just waiting for that moment. For the dream to end.” The fire’s glow trembled. “It feels like I never should have been born. Everywhere I go, everything I touch falls apart. Everyone I…” His fingers dug into his knee. “Everyone I care about disappears and I can’t—I can’t keep—” A trembling breath.

  “I’m so tired of fighting, and I just want it to be over.”

  Leon nudged the dying coals, breathing new light into the fading heart of their fire. “No,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You don’t.”

  His head shot upward, chest constricted as if gripped by invisible hands, filling with rage tangled with disbelief, shame with defiance. Leon’s eyes were already on him, his lips curved in that gentle way.

  “You think you do, but you don’t.” The flames shrank back, surrendering territory to the night. “I know that because,” Leon began to dissolve, his features running like watercolors caught in rain. Darkness crept forward from between the trees, consuming the forest inch by inch. “…no matter what you’ve endured…” The fire retreated to glowing coals. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  “Leon—!”

  Don’t go. There’s still so much I want to say. He reached out, but his oldest and closest friend had become nothing more than impressions of light against darkness. The trees liquefied into the night. Leon’s final words hung suspended in the emptiness:

  “You are the dreamer,

  …so dream.”