(Third POV)
"Just keep moving... just... keep," he muttered, forcing one foot in front of the other.
The gutted city lay in ruins around him—burned-out homes, crumbled towers, and the haunting flicker of violet fire still clinging to charred stone. Shadows shifted in the fog like ghosts, their forms vanishing the moment he tried to focus on them. His breathing was shallow, his body weary and trembling from the mental strain, the physical toll, and the drugged haze still clinging to his thoughts.
And then, he saw her.
Slumped against the broken remains of a stone wall, Eris lay motionless. Her sword was several feet away, buried blade-first into the ground, and her right shoulder was gruesomely exposed, charred and slick with an acidic burn that had eaten through her armor and flesh alike. Steam still hissed softly from the wound, and her chest barely moved with shallow breaths.
"Eris!" Paul stumbled forward, dropping to his knees beside her. He shook her gently, trying to rouse her. "Come on... wake up. Please."
Her eyes flickered open, unfocused and dazed, before closing again with a soft groan.
A sudden gust of wind swept through the narrow corridor of broken buildings—unnatural, purposeful. It cleared a small pocket of the fog.
And what Paul saw through that clearing turned his blood to ice.
Elinalise stood defensively over Roxy's unconscious body, her shield raised but dented, her armor scorched. The mage lay sprawled behind her with her mantle having blocked most of the damage, staff still clutched in one hand, her fingers twitching. Elinalise's lips moved as if whispering a prayer or a curse, her stance faltering until she fell next to Roxy.
To the left, Ruijerd was draped over a fallen stone pillar, his head bowed unnaturally, his spear discarded beside him. Blood trickled from his mouth, staining the debris below. He didn't move.
And further out in the fog, Ghislaine… Paul's breath hitched.
She was still standing—or trying to. Blood painted her body, her clothes hanging in tatters. Her stance was swaying, barely upright. Her sword was used to keep her upright like a cane.
"No…" Paul's voice cracked. "No, no, no—"
The sound came too fast for him to react—a sharp whoosh, the rush of displaced air.
He turned just in time to see the monster's tail—massive, barbed, and moving like a whip—hurtling toward him.
He raised his longsword.
*CRACK*
The blade broke on impact.
The blow lifted Paul off his feet, sending him crashing through a hill of more debris. Dust filled the air as he hit the rubble, knocking the breath out of him.
He gasped, coughing violently, arms trembling as he tried to lift himself up. His broken sword lay beside him, a useless fragment of steel.
Then he heard it.
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. Approaching through the mist.
He looked up.
The three-headed monster emerged from the clouded veil—an unstoppable force of raw hatred and hunger. Its head swayed menacingly, its eyes glowing with primal rage. Acid dripped from its jagged fangs. The glow in its throat pulsed with barely contained energy, ready to unleash devastation again.
Each step brought it closer.
Paul's body screamed in protest, but he forced himself upright, blood dripping from a fresh gash on his forehead. His eyes met the beast's middle head.
No more running. No more fog. This was it.
He had no weapon. No plan. And most definitely, no one to fight at his side. He was alone.
Paul felt utterly defeated. Even more so than the time he nearly lost against the Water God.
'Is that all you got? All those words you've spewed, giving promises you can't hold like always? Pathetic.'
All Paul could do was reprimand himself. He didn't know what else to do.
He longed for a future that now felt so impossibly distant — a life where his family was whole again, where his children could grow up together, surrounded by the warmth of their mothers and the bonds of kinship. He wanted to see them laugh, to see them quarrel, to watch them live their lives. But here, in this ruined, cursed place, those dreams felt like fading light, slipping further from his grasp.
Zenith would be mourning next to Rudeus. Lilia and the other would be stuck on the Demon continent. And Paul would have to die knowing all of it could have been avoided had they retreated to make a better plan, finding a better solution, one that would lead to all the precious moments he imagines daily.
And the more unreachable that life became, the more his fury burned.
His vision blurred in red. His heart pounded against his ribs, and his arms trembled as a searing heat built beneath his skin. White fire began to swirl around his body — not warm, but cold, hungry, and terrible. A dreadful aura spilled from him, thick and suffocating, halting the three-headed monster mid-lunge.
Paul's breath came ragged, every heartbeat pounding like a war drum in his chest. His fingers closed around the hilt of the shortsword. It could go through the armor of scales, but not through the flesh. But a weapon nonetheless.
The monster loomed before him, three heads writhing in fury, the guttural growl vibrating through the earth.
But it hesitated.
The white fire around Paul, cold and malevolent, sent a ripple of unease through the beast. It took half a step back, uncertain for the first time.
That was enough for Paul to start his madman assault.
Paul hurled himself forward, a storm of grief, rage, and searing will propelling every movement. The shortsword rose, one hand gripping the guard, the other bracing the pommel, and with a savage roar, Paul slammed the blade into the beast's chest. The tip bit into thick scale, not cleanly, but deep enough to lodge, his Touki bypassing the enchantment's limits and tearing into flesh.
Planting a boot against the monster's hide, Paul twisted, yanking the blade sideways. Flesh tore, violet ichor spraying over his arms and face. The beast shrieked, its middle head lunging, but Paul ducked low and drove the sword upward, wedging it into the throat beneath jagged fangs.
Snarling, he shoved harder. The blade split sinew and muscle, jamming beneath bone. Letting go for a heartbeat, he seized a protruding scale and hauled himself onto the beast's shoulder. The creature bucked, but Paul clung like a madman.
The left head snapped at him — fangs like knives — but Paul grabbed his sword's hilt, yanked it free with a wet rip, and as the head lunged, plunged the blade into its eye. The globe burst in a flood of viscous fluid. The beast howled, thrashing violently. Paul wrenched the blade out and stabbed again, and again, into the ruined socket.
Violet blood gushed, the head shuddered, but still it lived. Not enough.
His gaze locked onto the jagged, gleaming horn crowning the central head. Gritting his teeth, Paul gripped it with bloodied hands. Solid, rooted deep — but he was past pain now.
Bracing a foot against its plated shoulder, he bellowed like a beast, seizing the blood-slick horn and ramming it deep into the creature's raw, gaping throat. It pierced scale and muscle, biting down to the bone.
Paul was relentless, driving the severed horn deeper with savage blows, using his sword's handguard as a makeshift hammer.
He reached the ground, blood and ichor dripping from head to toe.
The beast staggered, blinded on both sides, its central head drooling violet gore, the wounds now too numerous, too deep.
It tried to take a breath, its throat swelling, but the hole Paul had ripped in its neck choked it, the breath weapon dying in a cough of corrupted blood, only to regenerate less fast.
This visibly stunned Paul, halting him in his assault as this strange phenomenon confused him. But as the monster writhed in pain, he saw white fire in between the wounds.
It didn't take him long before he understood that the flames nullified, or at the very least, cancelled the regeneration of the monster.
With this realization, another feeling rose in Paul. A feeling he was not aware he was having at all, which brought his eyes into a shining glimmer of gold and black sclera. Bloodlust.
This fight was no longer between man and beast; it was a fight between two monsters.
Paul bellowed like a beast, seizing the blood-slick horn and ramming it deep into the creature's raw, gaping throat. It pierced scale and muscle, biting down to the bone.
The monster convulsed violently, then began to collapse. Its massive frame fell sideways, the ground quaking beneath its bulk.
With that, he took a few steps back, the effects of the fog still lingering in his body, bringing the fight to a halt.
Losing the grip on his sword, the nausea overtook him for a moment, the white flames raging on him while the ones on the monster's wounds vanished, giving the beast time to regenerate enough.
Although slightly out of breath, Paul looked down at his hands, where flames gathered, the heat biting and beautiful.
Slowly, Paul pressed his bloodied palms together. A shape formed between them — long, curved, single-edged. A katana, forged not of steel, but of pure, seething power. Its aura screamed of old, buried gods and ancient wars, the air around it warping with a cold, terrible hunger.
The monster's last remaining head recoiled, a guttural whimper shuddering in its throat.
But Paul was already gone.
A blur — a savage arc of white fire — and the left head soared from its neck, a grotesque mask of shock frozen upon it as it hit the ground.
The beast staggered, its balance lost, eyes wide with disoriented terror.
Before it could gather itself, fresh agony lanced through its body. Its front right leg was severed at the joint, tumbling away in a wet thud. The crippled thing writhed, panicked, its remaining head jerking wildly, unable to track the storm closing in around it.
A heartbeat later, the right head toppled too, cleaved clean, violet ichor spraying in hissing gouts.
Paul's strikes blurred the line between man and specter. The katana moved as if born from his very soul, its edge a flawless extension of his will. Every cut was precise, merciless, and absolute.
Violet blood flooded the battlefield, thick, caustic rivers pouring from the ragged stumps. Yet still, the cursed flesh twitched, writhing, bubble-blind in its refusal to die. New, malformed tissue fumbled to regenerate, but the white fire coiling around Paul's blade ate it away as fast as it came.
The final head lost a scream — not of rage now, but of pure, animal terror. A sound stripped of hatred. A plea for mercy it would never receive.
Across the field of ruin, Paul stood unmoving, white fire burning along his silhouette, the katana a gleaming shard of moonlight in his grip. His eyes, once drowning in uncertainty, now blazed with pitiless fury. Each ragged breath misted the cold air, the silence between them thick as death.
The broken, one-headed monster lunged one last time—a desperate, clumsy charge.
Paul didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. Didn't doubt.
He raised the katana overhead, both hands tightening on the hilt. His Touki surged, his aura charging to the blade's edge. The air split around him, and in a blinding flash, he unleashed a flawless [Longsword of Light].
For the first and final time, the monster saw something it could not understand.
Jet black wings unfurled behind Paul, vast and silent. Grey crystals glimmered beneath the curtain of white flame bleeding from his arms to the blade.
And then — oblivion.
The cursed monster was cleaved in two, a perfect, final stroke. Its body collapsed in steaming halves, the ground quaking beneath it.
It was over in seconds — twenty heartbeats Paul would never count.
As the katana faded into mist, Paul remained standing, swaying on unsteady legs. His hands were empty, his breath ragged, his vision swimming in red haze. Every muscle screamed, but his heart knew one thing: The battle was done.
His legs buckled, and he fell to his knees. His eyes drifted closed.
Unseen, unheard, and unknown to those still alive within the fog-choked labyrinth, something stirred at its heart. The rules of this cursed place, one of the few that it followed, had been fulfilled — the Guardian slain. And so, in the bowels of the ruin, the prison's lock began to turn, preparing to release the one who had created everything in here.
But what it released, and what results the imprisonment brought, were yet to be seen.
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