A curse is a deliberate wound carved into existence.
It is intention sharpened. A malignant script etched across reality itself. Hatred, sorrow, divine judgment… when those emotions condense far enough, they stop being feelings.
They become structure.
Once anchored, a curse begins to feed.
It leeches from everything around it—memory, energy, identity, meaning. It digs hooks into the story of a thing and rewrites the lines until the target no longer remembers what it once was.
Curses rot the flesh of worlds.
Cities decay. Bloodlines fracture. Histories warp until only the wound remains.
But sometimes—
A curse grows deeper than simple malice.
When the one carrying it possesses an inner narrative strong enough—when their grief, their conviction, their refusal to yield becomes the axis of their existence—the curse approaches something far more dangerous.
Truth.
Not the Truth.
Their Truth.
A reality so absolute within the bearer that it begins forcing itself outward, rewriting the world to match the story they believe.
Ashantiana’s grief had crossed that threshold.
The Malefic Herald did not merely spread Sryun.
She spread her cursed legacy.
A bottomless sorrow that bypassed ordinary defenses, slipping past armor, past Ryun barriers, past techniques—because it did not attack the body.
It attacked the soul.
Those who had never looked inward—never truly confronted their own story—collapsed under it immediately.
Soldiers dropped where they stood, eyes hollow as grief they had never processed flooded their minds.
Warriors choked on memories they had buried.
The battlefield fell into suffocating stillness.
That was the silence the Malefic Herald carried.
Weight.
An ending.
A sorrow so deep it sought to drag every soul present down into the same abyss she had fallen into.
Into the pit of grief where Dorferan had been buried.
Where her family had been erased.
Where forgotten stories rot.
And the deeper the silence spread—
———
Ozzy rolled his shoulder once, loosening the tension in it.
The battlefield between him and Jack had stretched for miles by now—cut trenches in the land, shattered structures, scattered corpses of spectral Reapers dissolving into white vapor.
Jack stood across from him.
Bleeding.
Breathing ragged.
Around him, the last of Ozzy’s summoned Reapers crumbled apart—white skeletal hands sinking into the ground, grinning skulls dissolving like ash, long crescent blades fading from existence.
Jack had managed a few decent hits.
If you could call them that.
Ozzy tilted his head slightly.
Then—
The void opened.
Even from this distance, he felt it.
Weight.
Something pushing down on the world.
His blindfold turned toward the horizon instinctively.
Inside that pressure were familiar presences.
North.
Destiny.
Jamal.
Crisper.
S?urtinaui
His grip tightened.
Tabia.
For the first time since the fight began, Ozzy’s expression shifted.
Concern.
Everyone in that radius was about to die.
He could feel it.
He glanced back at Jack.
The boy was barely standing now—blood running down his chin, his conjured weapons flickering unstable in the air around him. But even now Jack was still trying to fight. Still pretending this was winnable.
Ozzy lifted his sword slightly.
He could finish him right now.
But if he did—
Everyone else might die before he got there.
Ozzy exhaled once.
Decision made.
He lowered the blade.
“I’ll collect the rest later,” he said simply.
Then he stepped backward.
Jack’s eyes widened slightly as Ozzy’s presence began to fade.
“You’re running?” Jack rasped, blood sputtering out his mouth.
Ozzy didn’t answer.
His body dissolved into a white blur and shot across the horizon toward the cursed epicenter.
Jack staggered forward a step, watching him disappear.
He spat blood onto the ground.
Around him the last Reaper faded into dust.
Just like North and the Calmbrand… he couldn’t copy Ozzy.
Not his abilities.
Not his strange conceptual rhythm.
Every attempt to overwhelm him with layered afflictions had collapsed before it could anchor.
And that thing spreading through the air now—
Jack had tried to copy it.
Just once.
The moment the curse touched his mimicry engine, something inside his power recoiled violently.
It began eating at his meaning.
At him.
He shut it down immediately, stumbling back as cold realization crept through his thoughts.
“That… thing…” he muttered hoarsely.
Jack wiped blood from his mouth.
His body was wrecked.
Energy reserves nearly empty.
But Ozzy had left.
Left him alive.
Jack’s eyes hardened.
“Good,” he whispered.
Ozzy had gone to save his friends.
That meant the battlefield had opened.
And Jack knew exactly what kind of opportunity that created.
He straightened slowly, summoning a fresh orbit of weapons around himself.
“Now,” he muttered, voice cold.
“Let’s see how much you regret sparing me.”
———
Ozzy saw the spiral of darkness long before he reached the battlefield.
It twisted upward like a black hurricane, devouring light and sound. The grief pouring from it spread across the horizon.
He didn’t hesitate.
He dove straight in.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the sorrow struck him.
The Malefic Herald noticed instantly.
Her abyss reacted.
The spiral tightened, the weight of countless memories and losses pressing downward. The curse moved to drag him into it—into the same drowning grief that had crushed the armies and broken the warriors.
Arrogance.
Anger.
Both were easy handles for despair to grab.
He should have fallen.
Instead—
Ozzy smiled.
He continued descending.
Deeper.
Further into the suffering.
Ashantiana tilted her head.
What was this?
How was he—
White light spread from his form.
Ozzy landed softly on the shattered ground and began walking toward her.
Casually.
As if approaching someone he already knew.
His white boots stepped through the black essence without resistance. With each step, the area around him changed. The oppressive darkness faded, turning pale, washed in a calm white aura that swallowed the abyss inch by inch.
Sorrow recoiled.
Sryun struggled to cling to him.
Even the weight of her curse faltered.
Ashantiana watched him carefully now.
Her rage had cooled.
And that let her see him clearly.
He was strong.
Not simply powerful.
Solid.
He walked toward her like an old friend she hadn’t seen in forever.
White robe.
White hooded cape drifting behind him.
A carved white X marked his forehead, partially hidden beneath dark locs.
A white blindfold covered his eyes.
Yet somehow it felt like he saw everything.
With every step, the black spiral lost ground.
The battlefield around him turned pale.
Quiet.
Ashantiana studied the phenomenon as he approached.
Then she stepped into range of his aura.
And immediately understood.
The sensation hit her like sudden clarity.
Equivalence.
His power did not reject sorrow.
It did not resist it.
It matched it.
Balanced it.
Every ounce of despair her curse produced was met with equal weight from him—until the force simply… canceled.
Equilibrium.
Her abyss of grief had found something that refused to tilt.
Ozzy stopped walking a few steps away from her.
The black storm howled behind her.
The white calm spread around him.
The Malefic Herald descended slowly.
Black essence had fully hardened into her new form—sleek obsidian skin smooth and reflective like polished ink. Curved horns arched from her head like twin crescent blades, and jagged wings of fractured shadow spread behind her like a broken night sky.
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Her scythe rose.
The air trembled.
Across from her, Ozzy lifted his hand.
White and black light gathered.
His blade appeared.
The moment the weapon formed, Ashantiana understood something.
Her eyes narrowed.
He was a captain.
A leader.
Just like she had been.
The realization settled immediately in the way he stood. His posture carried a certain weight—a stillness that only people who had once led others carried.
Both of them had lost their people.
From the way he held the sword, the calm in his stance, the absence of hesitation—she reached the obvious conclusion.
She must have been the one to kill them.
The one who destroyed his life as she once had done to her.
From Ozzy’s perspective, the understanding arrived just as quickly.
He could read her stance.
The grip on her scythe.
The placement of her feet.
The stillness in her shoulders.
Commander.
A leader who had watched their people die.
Her aura told the rest of the story.
Grief sharpened into purpose.
A desire to make loss mean something.
He understood it instantly.
Because it mirrored the meaning behind his own presence here.
Leadership was never just about strength.
Anyone could swing a weapon.
Anyone could win a duel.
But carrying the will of others—those who fought beside you, trusted you, died beside you—that was a different burden entirely.
A leader’s duty wasn’t revenge.
It wasn’t pride.
It was preservation.
Making sure the collective will and legacy of those under your command continued forward.
That their existence didn’t end when their bodies did.
Both of them understood that.
Which meant the truth of this moment became very simple.
They weren’t fighting for revenge.
They weren’t fighting to prove anything.
They were fighting for love.
Two forms of it.
Ashantiana fought for the love of finality.
A belief that the story of suffering deserved an ending worthy of its pain.
Ozzy fought for the love of continuation.
A belief that the stories of the fallen should carry forward into tomorrow.
Two leaders.
Two legacies.
Two interpretations of what honoring the dead truly meant.
They moved at the same time.
No declaration.
Just motion.
Ashantiana stepped forward and her scythe traced a crescent through the air, the blade humming with condensed Sryun.
Ozzy met it instantly.
His white-and-black blade rose with perfect timing.
Steel kissed the curved scythe edge.
A sharp crack split the air as the two weapons collided.
The shockwave rolled outward across the battlefield, scattering loose stone and black ash.
Ashantiana flowed into the next movement without pause.
Her wings flexed and she pivoted low, the scythe shaft sliding through her hands as the weapon reversed direction in a vicious back-arc meant to sever the ribs.
Ozzy stepped inside the swing.
His blade rotated in his grip and he performed a tight deflection. Letting the scythe glide across the flat of his sword instead of resisting it directly.
The moment the scythe slid past—
He struck.
A short, brutal thrust toward her centerline.
Ashantiana twisted her torso just enough for the blade to skim the lacquered obsidian of her armor.
She retaliated instantly.
The scythe shaft spun across her palms as she launched a rotational technique that turned the weapon into a whirling halo of cutting arcs.
Three strikes.
Left.
Right.
Overhead.
Ozzy’s sword moved like a metronome.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Each strike intercepted perfectly.
Their weapons sparked against each other, white and black energy bleeding into the air like opposing tides.
Ashantiana rose into the air with a sudden wingbeat and brought the scythe down in a vertical cleave meant to split him from head to waist.
Ozzy slid one foot back.
His blade rose in both hands.
The impact thundered when they connected.
The ground beneath Ozzy cratered—but he didn’t budge.
Instead he pivoted under the locked weapons and performed a spinning cut from the hip.
The white-black arc forced Ashantiana to release the clash and glide backward across the air.
She landed lightly.
Ozzy followed with a forward step, blade already moving into another strike.
Ashantiana answered.
Scythe and sword collided again.
And again.
The exchange became a blur.
Her techniques were elegant and predatory—long arcs, rotational strikes, momentum that never wasted a motion.
His swordplay was compact and surgical—precise angles, efficient counters, minimal movement with maximum control.
Each time she attacked—
He answered.
Each time he pressed—
She redirected.
Their blades carved glowing trails through the air, black sorrow and white equilibrium intertwining with every collision.
Neither landed a clean hit.
Neither lost ground.
Finally—
Both disengaged at the same moment.
Ashantiana slid backward through the air, wings stabilizing her.
Ozzy stepped back onto the shattered ground.
For a moment the battlefield fell quiet again.
A smile slowly crossed Ashantiana’s face.
Across from her—
Ozzy smiled too.
He then lifted his hand slowly to his face.
For a moment he didn’t move.
Ashantiana watched him carefully, scythe resting low as the storm of Sryun continued to spiral behind her.
In that brief pause, a memory surfaced to Ozzy's mind. The talk he had with Tabia after she tried to kill Cawren.
At the time he’d told her that sometimes victory wasn’t the point. Sometimes survival, sometimes continuation—that was the real objective.
That truth held here too.
Ozzy could feel it.
The Sryun saturating the battlefield was growing heavier. The curse Ashantiana had awakened was eating away at the equilibrium he created.
Her sorrow was endless.
If things continued like this, the balance would tilt.
He needed to even the odds.
His fingers hooked under the edge of his blindfold.
And pulled.
Ashantiana moved instantly.
She raised two fingers.
The spiraling sorrow condensed around him, collapsing inward like a tightening fist. The weight of grief multiplied as she lunged forward, scythe screaming toward his exposed throat.
But she never reached him.
Seventy figures erupted into existence.
Gigantic Reapers—towering skeletal forms cloaked in pale shrouds. Long blades curved like moons in their hands while enormous glowing white palms reached outward.
They intercepted her.
Sryun and shadow collided as the Reapers surged forward, their movements silent yet relentless.
Ashantiana carved through the first wave, her scythe spinning in elegant arcs that cleaved through bone and cloak alike.
But the delay was enough.
Ozzy’s blindfold fell to the ground.
And he opened his eyes.
The battlefield changed.
His irises were white.
In each corner of his pupils rested four black dots.
The carved X on his forehead ignited.
Light burst from the mark as it spread slightly along his face like branching veins.
Across the battlefield the dense mass of Sryun faltered.
Something was pushing back against the curse.
The moment the air touched Ozzy’s gaze—
Reality twisted.
He had opened the Eyes of Insanity.
His Magic.
The black and white forces clashed across the battlefield like colliding tides.
Where Ashantiana’s sorrow tried to drag minds into grief—
Ozzy’s gaze shattered them.
Madness spread.
Soldiers screamed as their thoughts went from sorrow to fractured.
Warriors dropped their weapons, laughing, crying, clutching their heads as memories and impossible visions flooded them.
Some collapsed into despair.
Others into hysterical laughter.
Crisper gripped her cockpit seat as the world warped.
Jamal clutched his head as the air itself whispered nonsense.
S?urtinaui rolled on the ground as her mind betrayed her.
Tabia dug her fingers into the ground as madness swirled around her.
Even distant combatants staggered as the battlefield lost its stability.
Ozzy’s power made the world insane.
But by doing so—
He became the only sane point inside it.
The center.
His locs slowly shifted color, turning bluish-white as energy surged through him.
The X across his forehead flared brighter.
Around him, the Reapers continued battling Ashantiana, buying seconds.
Ozzy lifted his blade.
White and black energy flowed along the edge like quiet fire.
Then he spoke.
Softly.
The battlefield seemed to pause.
His voice barely rose above a whisper.
“Madness Reaper Symphony… Third Act.”
Ashantiana felt the madness slam into her mind like a storm.
Voices.
Memories.
Distortions clawing at the edges of her thoughts.
But Sryun surged through her veins like a dark river.
Her sorrow was too focused, too absolute to be scattered by insanity alone. The black energy wrapped around her consciousness, stabilizing her awareness and forcing the chaos back.
She exhaled slowly.
Good.
The world faded into noise.
This fight now demanded everything she had.
And it felt strangely good.
Just a single opponent who understood the weight she carried.
For the first time since Dorferan fell—
Ashantiana felt unchained.
Across the battlefield Ozzy stood within his field of warped sanity, white eyes steady and calm.
For him, this was the same.
A truth meeting another truth.
Two leaders measuring whose will carried further.
Ashantiana moved.
She rushed straight toward the stampede of Reapers.
The first giant swung its sword downward like a falling comet.
She slid beneath it and spun, channeling Sryun through the shaft of her weapon.
The scythe erupted with black energy as she carved a diagonal arc through the Reaper’s torso, splitting it apart in a burst of pale fragments.
Another lunged.
Its massive white hand closed toward her like a collapsing gate.
Ashantiana thrust her palm forward.
A compressed spike of Sryun shot outward, piercing straight through the Reaper’s skull and detonating behind it.
It collapsed.
But the others were already upon her.
Blades swung.
Hands clawed.
Some opened skeletal mouths that screamed soundless beams of energy as they bit downward.
Ashantiana twisted between them, her wings snapping open as she vaulted into the air.
Her scythe spun in a wide halo.
Black crescents erupted outward, shredding through ten Reapers at once as their cloaks burst apart like torn banners.
Yet more surged forward.
One lunged from behind—
Its mouth stretching unnaturally wide.
She pivoted and drove the butt of her scythe into its skull, then swept the blade upward, cleaving through its jaw as dark energy poured along the cut.
Ozzy moved.
His sword flickered through the air like a quiet pulse.
Every swing was deliberate.
Every step placed with exact intention.
A Reaper lunged toward Ashantiana’s blind spot—
He thrust his hand outward.
A silent burst of white force erupted.
The blast hit her directly and tore a trench through the ground.
She slid backward through the air but twisted mid-motion.
Her scythe spun downward, carving a dark arc that split the incoming energy in two.
The battlefield erupted with collisions.
Reapers swarmed.
Their blades scissored through the air.
Their hands slammed into the ground like falling towers.
Their hollow mouths snapped and screamed as they lunged.
Ashantiana moved through them like a dancer.
Sryun exploded from her scythe in violent bursts—spears, waves, crescents of black energy tearing apart the constructs.
Ozzy stepped through the chaos with surgical precision.
His sword intercepted every opening.
White Ryun blasts pulsed outward from his movements, detonating against her defenses and forcing her to constantly shift her stance.
The sky above flickered between the pressure.
Blades clashed.
Energy tore through the air.
Reapers collapsed only to be replaced by more emerging from thin air.
And at the center of the battlefield—
Neither retreating.
Neither slowing.
Ozzy could feel the battlefield slipping.
Not the fight.
The world around it.
The sea of despair Ashantiana had unleashed was spreading further with every second. Even with the Eyes of Insanity stabilizing the center, the pressure was still crushing everyone caught in it.
Jamal.
Crisper.
S?urtinaui
Tabia.
North and Destiny.
They wouldn’t last much longer.
Which meant he didn’t have the luxury of a drawn-out duel.
Ozzy stepped forward.
His blade flicked upward.
The Reapers responded instantly.
Twenty of them surged ahead of him in perfect coordination, their movements eerily synchronized. Giant skeletal palms opened wide as they formed a loose circle around Ashantiana.
She noticed the formation immediately.
Ozzy moved.
He dashed in low while the Reapers descended from above.
The first attack came from behind.
A Reaper’s blade carved downward.
Ashantiana twisted and parried it—
But that was the trigger.
Ozzy’s sword flashed.
He blurred forward in a streak of white light, his blade tracing a sweeping arc that forced Ashantiana to pivot and block.
The instant she did—
The Reapers completed the formation.
Their enormous hands curled inward.
Each pair of palms formed perfect circles.
Twenty massive O-shaped sigils of white Ryun ignited simultaneously.
Ashantiana’s eyes narrowed.
Then the sky erupted.
Blinding beams of white energy fired through every ring at once.
The blasts converged toward the center where she stood.
Ozzy added his own strike to the barrage, slashing his blade downward as a brilliant Ryun wave rode the attack forward.
The explosion swallowed her.
White energy roared across the battlefield, shredding sorrow clouds and blasting apart the surrounding Reapers in the aftermath.
When the light faded—
Ashantiana slid across the ground, wings scraping through shattered stone.
Black essence dripped from the wound carved across her chest.
But she moved immediately.
Her scythe snapped upward and a crescent of dense Sryun carved through two Reapers before they could reform.
She rose into the air and retaliated with brutal precision, her attacks ripping through the remaining Reapers.
The battlefield cleared rapidly.
Ozzy winced.
The strike had cost him.
A lot.
His magic reserves dipped sharply.
The Reapers flickered unstable around him.
White aura dimmed slightly.
Ashantiana noticed.
Her wings flexed slowly as she rose higher into the air.
If his magic ran out—
The battlefield became hers.
With full aerial and spatial control, she could drown him in Sryun from above until equilibrium collapsed.
Ozzy inhaled slowly.
His chest rose.
Then fell.
He steadied his blade.
There was only one path forward now.
A thought had been circling in the back of his mind since the moment he stepped into her sorrow storm.
A hypothesis.
Dangerous.
But his instincts told him it had to be true.
And right now—
He didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it.
Ozzy exhaled softly.
Then he stepped forward again.
For a fraction of a second the air where he had stood simply collapsed inward—
Then he appeared directly in front of her.
Ashantiana’s scythe was already moving.
The blade swept upward in a vicious diagonal arc meant to split him from hip to shoulder.
Ozzy’s sword intercepted it instantly.
Steel rang out like a struck bell.
Before the sound could fade she followed with a thrust, the scythe shaft sliding through her grip as black Sryun condensed along the blade.
A violent burst of dark energy fired point-blank.
Ozzy twisted sideways and cut through the beam with a precise slash, the white edge of his blade splitting the attack apart as it passed him.
He stepped forward into her space.
Their weapons collided again.
Ashantiana pivoted, one wing flaring as dozens of Sryun spikes erupted around Ozzy like a blooming iron maiden.
He flicked his wrist.
Three Reapers burst into existence, their massive hands catching the spikes mid-flight while their blades carved through the rest.
Ozzy lunged through the opening.
His blade cut low.
Ashantiana blocked.
The shockwave ripped the ground apart beneath them.
She countered instantly.
Black constructs formed along the air—scythe-shaped projections of Sryun that rained down like executioner blades.
Ozzy’s sword moved in perfect rhythm.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Each strike deflected the constructs before they could land.
But something about him had changed.
His right eye slowly closed.
His left eye remained open.
All of his magic began funneling out of it.
The black dots in the white iris spun faintly as the energy condensed.
Ashantiana noticed immediately.
Her scythe lashed out again, forcing him back a step.
She studied him with growing interest.
Most Outlanders could barely manage high-level Magic combat.
Even fewer could manipulate Ryun this effectively.
And none she met could balance the two while fighting at this level.
Yet Ozzy was doing all of it simultaneously.
Reapers.
Ryun.
Insanity Magic.
Swordsmanship.
And now—
He was compressing it all into a single eye.
They clashed again.
Ozzy twisted his blade upward and their weapons locked for a moment.
Instead of attacking her mind directly, Ozzy redirected the Insanity.
Not at her.
At the space between their strikes.
Tiny distortions flickered in the air every time their weapons met.
Moments stretched.
Angles bent.
Reaction windows warped by fractions of a second.
Ashantiana felt it.
A subtle shift in timing.
Her eyes sharpened.
Her inner narrative—her Truth—held steady against the madness, preventing it from infecting her mind directly.
But the battlefield itself was becoming unstable.
They broke apart.
Then rushed each other again.
Scythe.
Sword.
Black beams.
White flashes.
Sryun Constructs.
Reapers.
Every collision shaking the area.
Eventually—
They stood almost chest to chest.
Toe to toe.
Their weapons moving so quickly the air screamed around them.
Across the battlefield everything else had fallen silent.
Just them.
A period.
Versus a comma.
Ozzy pushed forward relentlessly.
His movements grew faster.
Sharper.
His single open eye bulged slightly as the pressure of the condensed power built behind it.
Ashantiana matched him strike for strike.
Her scythe rotated with brutal efficiency, intercepting every attempt while her Sryun constructs forced him to constantly adjust his approach.
They carved apart the battlefield around them.
The ground split open beneath their feet.
The sky fractured under their energy.
Stone, metal, and sorrow scattered with every impact.
Ozzy moved like a man possessed.
Ashantiana met him like a storm refusing to yield.
She shifted her footing.
For a split second, her scythe angled left.
A feint.
Ozzy’s blade rose to intercept—
Too late.
Her weapon reversed mid-motion and carved across his right side in a brutal arc.
His arm separated cleanly at the shoulder.
White cloth and dark blood spun through the air.
Ashantiana smiled.
Victory—
But the smile vanished almost instantly.
Reaper hands erupted into reality around her.
Dozens.
They clamped around her arms.
Her legs.
Her wings.
Holding her in place for the smallest fraction of a second.
And that was all Ozzy needed.
He stepped forward.
His blade vanished.
Instead his palm struck her chest.
A violent pulse of Magic exploded directly into her core.
Insanity.
A raw injection of it slammed into the current of energy flowing through her body.
Ashantiana’s eyes widened as the madness ripped through her channels.
But she reacted immediately.
One of her horns snapped forward like a spear—
And pierced Ozzy’s left eye.
The sound was a wet pop.
His head snapped back.
They both flew apart from the impact.
Ashantiana skidded across the broken earth.
Ozzy rolled once before stopping several meters away.
Blood poured down his face.
His left eye was gone.
Yet—
He laughed.
A deep, hoarse laugh that echoed across the battlefield.
Ashantiana stared at him, confused.
Ozzy wiped blood from his face with his remaining hand.
And smiled.
“Turns out I was right.”
He spread his remaining arm slightly.
“Sryun… is just another way of expressing yourself.”
He tilted his head, swaying slightly like a drunk man balancing on the edge of collapse.
“So it functions like Ryun.”
He pointed vaguely toward her.
“Water and oil.”
“But both burn energy in similar ways.”
Ashantiana felt it.
Her control over the surrounding Sryun was… slipping.
Ozzy had attacked something deeper.
The current of her Sryun.
The flow itself.
That was what he had been testing the entire time.
Ozzy chuckled again.
“Sryun flows differently than Ryun… and it burns through Ryun pretty effectively.”
He staggered slightly but stayed upright.
“I had to keep layering my Ryun just to survive.”
Ashantiana felt the atmosphere shift.
Her grip on the battlefield.
Her domain.
Weakening.
Understanding dawned.
She chuckled softly.
This man had never intended to win this fight.
Not truly.
He had only needed to weaken her.
To disrupt her curse long enough for someone else to finish it.
She looked at him properly now.
“I won’t forget you.”
Ozzy smiled back.
Then she rushed forward again.
But Ozzy simply stepped aside.
A black-red fist slammed into her face.
The impact detonated like a meteor strike.
Ashantiana crashed across the battlefield before stopping.
She rose slowly.
The energy was wrong.
This wasn’t Ryun.
It was Sryun.
But instead of rage—
It was hungry.
And the red color spreading through it was unmistakable.
Blood.
The blood surged around her like living serpents.
She burst it apart with a violent pulse of Sryun as her body struggled to regenerate the damage inflicted.
Across from her—
A figure stepped forward.
Red eyes.
Black sigils rotating slowly within them.
Two crimson lines running vertically beneath his gaze.
Dark Sryun clouded the air around him. Emphasizing his black hooded cape.
Blood flowed and coiled like living beasts waiting to strike.
He looked like a wounded predator on the edge of losing control.
North never looked away from her.
“I got it from here, Ozzy.”
His voice was low.
“Thank you.”
Ozzy smiled and gave a casual salute with his remaining hand.
“Good luck.”
He turned away, already walking back toward the chaos.
“I’ll go back to handling my side of things.”
Ashantiana watched him leave.
Then she smiled faintly.
“A leader’s job…”
She raised her scythe again.
“…is never done.”
