Samael froze, his heart shrivelling in pure and absolute fear. Korynth’s eyes narrowed, and she violently whipped her head back, her body turning just as a twin pair of daggers manifested in her palms.

"Oh?"

Kael floated in midair, a couple of meters away from them.

He was shirtless, his tunic torn and pants ripped, covered in blood and deep gashes exposing his inner organs; from his beating heart, to his churning intestines, to his expanding lungs.

His prosthetic was gone, showing his twisted visage in all its splendor. The worms of gold within his skull seemed particularly alive, wiggling without end, the sound disgusting and soul-stirring.

The sea of blue eyes within all calmly stared ahead, their sharpness digging into them. What was new, though, was the haloed crown that floated atop his head; it was a blend of golden worms and bloody fingers lapped and stitched to one another, with a golden eye as the jewel of the crown.

"..."

He looked... like a Horror, in the truest sense of the word.

But before they could further study his unholy form, they suddenly both flinched as he gently threw his arm forward, hurling something at them.

SPLAT!

The sound was wet and horrifying to hear, of breaking bones, rupturing flesh, and spilling organs.

Samael’s eyes widened to their absolute limits just as Korynth’s gaze darkened to a zenith, returning to her previous scowl, as they both saw what had been thrown at their feet.

Uriel.

His guts splattered all over the ashen, sandy ground of the hall, his stomach torn open and his spine disconnected from his hips, loosely hanging out of his body, bark still connecting it to his skull.

His left arm was nothing but a charred stump, and his right one stood as a mangled mix of bone, sinew, and flesh. As for his legs, he had none.

All that remained of them were stumps.

His blood was cold, seeping into the thirsty sand, and it had gone blue, long since having lost any sparks of life.

His eyes were wide open, cloudy and empty, and his mouth loosely hung open, twisted and nearly torn off the rest of his face.

He was limp. No heartbeat, no breath, no aether, no soul, no Will, no consciousness, nothing.

He was dead.

"..."

Samael fell to his knees.

Korynth stared at Uriel’s corpse, and her jaw couldn’t help but tighten. She looked up to meet Kael’s gaze, the sea of blue, indifferent eyes.

"You are twisted beyond saving. This was a child."

Kael’s lower lip, one of the only features of his face left intact, spread wide as his worms wiggled and mimicked what could only be called a smile.

"He was rather impressive. He helped me advance my path quite a bit," he said simply. "But he deserved it."

"So you killed him, so brutally at that? How are you going to fix your soul now?" she said, the fury laced in her voice evident.

Kael paused. Then, his blue eyes widened. But they soon relaxed, and he shook his head, laughing.

"Ah, the bastard got me one last time before dying."

"He made me forget about that," he admitted. "The boy would’ve been quite the Soul Mancer, had he been allowed to grow."

"It’s unfortunate." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

He shrugged. "But it’s fine. He made me realise quite a lot about my fall, and the rise that came after."

"I’m not sure there’s anything to fix. Maybe my soul isn’t broken—it’s simply different, don’t you think? Phoenixes never regenerate; they rise from their ashes whole and transcended."

He looked down at his palms. "Perhaps I’m like this not because I’m broken, but because I didn’t fully burn. Maybe it’s because... there’s something beyond it all."

"Maybe I need to take one more step to fully reap all that I sowed."

His hands caressed his chest, near his heart, the spot where he’d implanted the Phoenix core into himself all those years ago.

A spot that, now, was empty.

Kael looked at the broken and listless Samael, who kneeled with his Will shattered and eyes full of despair.

"And I’d like to see what lies at the other end of it." He floated down, then slowly walked towards the boy. "And for that, I need what your brother took from me."

KAH!

His palm clamped down around Samael’s neck, squeezing hard as he lifted him into the air, his feet dangling. The boy scratched and clawed at his arm, trying to free himself, trying to breathe, but it was futile.

Kael’s grip was unbreakable.

While holding the boy, he walked forward until he stood at the edge of the void that lay beyond the gate, the void within which the coffin floated.

He eyed it with a chaotic swirl of emotions. "Here’s your blood and flesh."

"If I cannot get my answers through you, then I will get them through him. Give me back what is mine, or the boy is..."

He didn’t finish his words. Not because there was a threat laced within, but rather because something strange suddenly happened.

Kael slowly turned away from the void, turning to stare at the sandy hall of ashes and azure. He observed it with a narrowed gaze.

He blinked once, and suddenly, it all became a blurry fresque of watered-down colours. But then he blinked again, and the world returned to normal.

With one major change.

’...?’

Blood.

All across the hall—from its crystal ivory ceiling and clear glass stalactites, to its pillars of azure crystals and sandy ground of ivory and golden ash—everything was covered in blood.

It was all etched with runes drawn in blood, assembling into a gigantic formation spanning the entire hall.

The same formation Kael had seen in the dimensional prison where he’d fought Uriel.

His gaze suddenly shot towards Uriel’s corpse. But before he could analyse it, he looked away, staring at the ashen anchor, which, somehow, he hadn’t noticed until now.

The anchor shook. Then, in a blinding flash of light, a figure appeared.

The Mirage creature.

"...?"

Foreboding overflowed in Kael’s heart.