[You mad bastard]

They slammed together, rushing faster and faster until they snapped into a solid human shape

Da-dum.

He'd arrived.

Da-dum.

The Divine General.

Yue's mouth fell open. Selen's eyes widened, stunned.

The whirlwind of leaves crashed together one final time —

THOOM.

And the Divine General stood before Kael, motionless, looming like a judgment carved in flame.

The Duke went pale.

How could he forget him?

But he didn't flinch. No fear touched his face.

Instead, he laughed — sharp, bitter.

"You again? I thought the gods were done sending corpses to bark at me."

The General said nothing at first.

He slowly turned, eyes locking on Kael.

"So... you're the devil, huh?" he said, voice low, unreadable.

"If you hadn't called me, I'd have come myself — to kill him."

Kael nodded. "The time wasn't right then."

The General gave a single nod. "Now it is."

Only the Duke remained. He took a step back, the color draining from his face.

"Let's do this," the General muttered.

Kael was already moving.

His hand slipped into the space ring — and out came the mask.

Venom spilled over his skin in slow, creeping waves, coiling around his arms, crawling up his throat like it meant to choke him — but didn't.

It became him.

The General watched, head tilted slightly.

He raised an eyebrow.

"There… you've got something interesting."

The air grew colder.

Kael stood still as the mask locked into place, hiding his face behind void-black.

His robes darkened to charcoal shadows, flowing like smoke.

A crimson katana eased into his grip — pulsing faintly, like a beating heart.

Then came the tendrils.

They writhed out from his back, long and silent, like the limbs of something ancient and drowned.

Selene stared.

She had fought beside him. Bled beside him.

But this…

This was something else.

He didn't look like a man.

He looked like death given flesh — a monster carved from Heaven's nightmares.

And still, he was only beginning to move.

Silence.

The air itself felt strangled.

The Duke took a step back, eyes locked on Kael's hovering form — tendrils pulsing, writhing like serpents hungry for the soul.

"Are you even human now?" he asked, voice tight.

Kael didn't answer.

He simply hovered, his mask staring back — blank, unknowable.

The tendrils curled behind him.

Stillness.

Then — all at once — the silence shattered.

The Duke roared, sigils flashing across the ground.

Flames burst upward, chains of light arcing like whips through the air.

Kael shot forward, faster than thought, Dreamweaver cutting downward.

The blade screamed through the magic, slamming against the Duke's barrier — sparks and blood-red light exploding outward.

The Divine General moved in tandem.

Shadows folded around him, and he blinked — vanishing, reappearing behind the Duke, hurling a black spear of pure dread into his back.

The Duke spun, chanting in a guttural tongue, a shield of bone rising in time to deflect the blow.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The ground cracked.

Tendrils lashed out — Kael's strikes were everywhere, crawling along walls, stabbing down from the sky.

Each one was a limb of hate, moving with impossible intelligence.

Dreamweaver struck in perfect sync, not to kill — but to disrupt, to unbalance.

Every swing was designed to draw attention, to force the Duke's hand.

Kael was not here to win alone.

He couldn't.

At Rank 2, a single direct hit from the Duke would be enough to vaporize him.

One mistake — and he was gone.

So he danced along the edge of death.

His tendrils were his salvation — lashing out in bursts of inhuman speed, yanking him across the battlefield, snapping him sideways, flipping him mid-air to avoid strikes that should have torn him apart.

His body blurred, ducking beneath spells, rebounding off shattered stone, blocking with the flat of Dreamweaver just enough to redirect, never to absorb.

The Duke snarled, his gaze torn between Kael's relentless interference and the looming threat of the Divine General, who circled like a god of execution.

It was working.

Kael's job was to be a problem — a distraction so infuriating, so unpredictable, the Duke couldn't focus long enough to build the spell that would end everything.

And with every flicker, every feint —

Kael drew the Duke further from control.

The General was waiting.

And he was patient.

The Duke bled, but his magic surged.

A wave of frost rolled outward, slowing time in its wake.

Spires of ice erupted beneath the General's feet — then detonated, showering him in shards.

But the General laughed — a horrible, hollow sound.

He opened his arms, and from his back unspooled wings made of black fire.

With a roar, he raised both hands — a tidal wave of spectral knights pouring forth, screaming as they charged the Duke, each one a soul he'd condemned.

Kael descended again, slow and hovering — tendrils dragging bodies, stone, blood behind him.

His mask gleamed.

Dreamweaver pulsed like a heartbeat from hell.

The Duke caught the edge of the blade this time — barely.

His arm split open from wrist to elbow.

He screamed.

Then came the General from behind.

A hammer of gravity magic flattened the area.

The Duke coughed blood — still standing — eyes wild now, robes torn, half his spells cracked.

"You think this will end me?!" he roared, summoning a storm of blades from the air.

They clashed again.

Kael weaving through death itself, the General matching power for power — but it was clear now.

The tide had turned.

The Duke was winning.

Kael felt it — the shift.

Oh no, he thought, lungs burning. We're losing.

Then—

everything slowed.

Time itself dragged, thick as oil.

The air trembled.

Sound vanished.

In that frozen second, Kael saw it:

An opening.

A sliver in the Duke's defenses — barely a breath wide.

But enough.

The Divine General moved.

Faster than thought, his blade arced through the air toward the Duke's chest — a strike meant to end everything.

But the Duke was a monster of reflex and will.

A glowing shield snapped into place—just in time.

CRACK!

The Divine General's sword shattered against the barrier, fragments scattering like falling stars.

His eyes widened.

This is the end, he realized, powerless, empty-handed.

Then —

A red sword slid in front of him. Offered by a tendril.

Dreamweaver.

The General turned, stunned.

Kael hovered behind, mask impassive.

He nodded once.

The Divine General laughed — low and vicious.

"You mad bastard," he said.

He gripped the sword, and swung—

BOOOOOOM.