Clean. Silent. No blade, no visible motion, just there one second and gone the next.

Veth regenerated first, blood and flesh knitting back together in seconds, the devil’s usual resilience kicking in out of pure instinct.

Coryn’s didn’t.

His severed head sat several feet from his body, eyes wide, staring at his own headless form still kneeling perfectly upright in front of the boy who’d done it.

The pressure in the air hadn’t let up at all.

If anything it deepened, settling over the ruined battlefield like something ancient and absolute had decided to finally show its full weight.

’So this is what real power feels like,’ Coryn thought, if thinking was even the right word for whatever was happening in a head no longer attached to anything.

He’d stood in front of Lord Zhask before. Felt that particular crushing reverence that came with being near something the entire devil realm bowed to without being told.

This was heavier, it was too much

"Regeneration, huh." Leon watched Veth’s head knit itself back onto his shoulders, mild amusement crossing his face like he was watching a card trick he’d already figured out. "Let’s seal that then."

His sapphire eyes glowed.

[Skill Sealer]

Veth felt something rip out of him, deep, fundamental, the kind of loss that didn’t hurt so much as it just left a hole where something used to be.

He tried pulling blood from the ground anyway.

Nothing answered.

He tried again, panic creeping into the attempt now, both hands out, willing the crimson pooled around him to rise the way it always had.

Nothing.

He looked up at Leon.

Despair hit him all at once, cold and total, the realization that whatever made him what he was had just been taken away like it was nothing, like it hadn’t taken him decades to master, his ability was gone.

Then his head fell off again.

Leon looked down at it for a moment, expression unreadable.

Then he crushed it under his heel.

Coryn stared at what was left of his partner, silence stretching out over the ruined battlefield.

"W-what," he finally managed, voice barely holding together, "are you."

"Me?" Leon met his eyes.

A grin spread slow across his face.

"I’m the strongest."

Then he crushed Coryn’s head too.

Leon crossed the distance in an instant, dropping to his knees beside the pool of blood.

His father lay still. Too still.

Dead.

Leon’s frown deepened. No. That wasn’t right. There was no way, no way his father died just like this, not after everything, not after making it this far.

[Skill Crafter]

[Grand Art of Restoration]—[Rank: SSS]

[The ability to restore an object or life form to the state it originally was]

He placed both hands gently over his father’s chest.

The blood responded first, pulling back from the ground, from his clothes, from everywhere it had spread, drawing inward and vanishing beneath his skin like it had never left. The torn flesh beneath knitted itself shut, muscle and bone realigning in silence, no pain, no struggle, just quiet correction.

Leon didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

Then, slowly, Arlott’s crimson eyes opened.

"Great, he woke up," the other Leon said in his mind.

"Finally," Crimson added, sounding almost relieved.

"Leon?" Arlott’s voice was groggy, blinking up at his son like he wasn’t fully convinced this was real.

"Hey old man," Leon said. "You good?"

"Yeah, I’m fine." Arlott sat up slowly, testing his own limbs like he didn’t trust them yet. He looked around, and the more he looked, the more his face changed. "...What happened here?"

Everything around him was frozen.

Not just the fighting near him. Everything. Monsters that had been mid-charge stood locked in place, one leg raised, mouths open in silent snarls. More kept spilling out of the portals scattered across the estate, and the second their feet touched the ground, they simply stopped, stuck the same way as the ones before them.

It wasn’t just here either.

Arlott could feel it, somehow, a stillness stretching far past what his eyes could actually see, like the whole city had been dipped in glass. Every last devil, every last monster, across all of Everett.

None of them were moving.

"I guess it’s time to go," Leon said, looking over the frozen monsters that had stopped mid-motion under his command.

He needed to end this. But he wasn’t the one controlling the portals scattered across Everett, which meant nothing he did here actually solved the real problem. Not unless he found whoever was pulling the strings behind all of it.

That was when he looked back down at the two devils he’d just crushed.

He sighed.

[Skill Crafter]

[Sovereign’s Mercy]—[Rank: S]

The words hung in front of him, and beneath them, meaning unfolded on its own, quiet and absolute.

Death, for these two, would no longer be an escape. Anyone struck down by a Sovereign’s wrath did not get the mercy of staying dead. They would return, again and again, bound to the will of the one who ended them, existing only for as long as that will allowed it.

It wasn’t kindness.

It was a leash.

The crushed remains on the ground began to move. Skull fragments dragged themselves back together, flesh knitting over bone in slow, wet motions, until both heads sat whole atop their shoulders once more.

Veth and Coryn opened their eyes.

And found Leon still standing over them.

Whatever relief either of them might have felt at simply existing again died the instant they registered his face, and the horror that followed hit harder the second time around, sharper somehow, now that they understood exactly what dying in front of him actually meant.

Both of them dropped to their knees.

And screamed.

Leon faced them.

"All I need you to do is answer my questions," he said. "Lie to me, and you know what happens, right?"

Both of them nodded their heads as fast as physically possible.

[Skill Crafter]

[Truthseeker’s Verdict] — [Rank: S]

The ability to perceive falsehood the instant it’s spoken, and confirm truth with the same certainty, regardless of how well the deception is concealed.

Then they started talking.

Veth did most of the explaining while Coryn mostly just sat there, silent, occasionally nodding along when Veth glanced his way for confirmation.

Apparently, this whole invasion wasn’t some grand scheme, some carefully orchestrated conspiracy years in the making.

It was just something devils normally did.