The temperature spiked. All the air in the Iron Forge elemental zone suddenly compressed, then reversed and sucked outward, drawing all heat and sound into silence.

The world slowed as the Soul Forger began to move, his form became an afterimage upon itself.

CRACK...CRACK...

Every vibration, every flicker of fire, every displaced particle of dust seemed to orbit him.

"...!"

Rel, who had grown accustomed to the predictability of even the most monstrous bosses, felt off about this ancient being.

He suddenly felt the unfamiliar premonition of defeat.

He’s coming.

FWAK

The Soul Forger ascended.

He was above the burning sky of his domain until he was a silhouette against the volcanic haze, his draconic form eclipsing the distant eruptions.

"You’ve done well Axel... now you may rest."

The Worldbreaker hung in his grip, and as Rel watched, the hammer began to grow.

Not merely extend. Grow.

It swelled to its original gargantuan proportions, the size it had been when the Soul Forger was in his giant form, except now it was wielded by a humanoid figure, a contradiction of scale that made Rel’s mind stutter.

FWANG!

And then the Dominance Aura hit.

Black lightning erupted from the hammer’s surface in massive, roaring geysers.

The bolts didn’t just crackle they screamed, arcing across the Iron Forge’s sky like fissures in reality itself.

Each discharge left afterimages burned into Rel’s eyes, it was impossible to not see what was coming next.

"Almighty Grand Slam."

The Soul Forger’s voice rolled down from above...

And the hammer began its descent.

DOOOOOOOM!

The Worldbreaker filled the sky.

Its shadow swallowed the entire domain every molten pool, every obsidian anvil, every inch of the Iron Forge.

The radius of escape did not exist.

It was not a question of dodging left or right. There was no left. There was no right.

There was only beneath, and soon, there wouldn’t even be that.

"Am I gonna die here?"

Rel wasn’t in the position to think straight.

His mind, usually so far ahead of the battle, stuttered against the sheer absoluteness of what was coming.

"Gamble," something in him said.

You have no choice but to gamble.

FWANG!

[Clockwork Of Time [Grade 2] Has Activated!]

The skill triggered with a sound like a pocket watch snapping shut.

For a moment the world had slowed down to a tee.

Lightning hung mid-air. The hammer crawled downward inch by inch.

The Soul Forger floated above it, frozen in the apex of his swing.

With every second that passed Rel’s stamina drained from him in a visceral wave.

Clockwork of Time was not gentle. It pulled from somewhere deep, somewhere essential, and it would demand payment long after the skill released its hold.

But for now, he could see.

Every trajectory. Every lightning bolt’s path. Every gap that wasn’t there.

There is no gap.

The hammer was too large. Too absolute. He could slow time, but he couldn’t stop it.

Eventually the clock would resume, and when it did, the Worldbreaker would erase him from existence. Not kill. Erase. There would be nothing left to bury.

Unless he went through.

Rel’s eyes tracked upward, calculating through the pain of stamina drain. The hammer’s edge was closest at the eastern curve, it had a margin of maybe two metres between the densest lightning clusters and the hammer’s physical mass.

If he could breach that gap, deflect off the hammer’s surface, use its own force as a slingshot

You’ll die.

"Probably."

He moved anyways.

FWOOSHH!

The shattered remains of an anvil became his launch point.

He kicked off it with everything his body still held, launching upward through the honey-thick air. His muscles screamed as every part of his body cramped into pieces.

"EEEUK!"

The gap approached.

SHHK!

Lightning kissed his shoulder. Flesh sizzled. The smell of his own burning skin filled his nostrils but still, he didn’t stop.

Then the hammer found him.

BAM!

The edge of Worldbreaker caught his left side. Not a direct hit, a direct hit would have killed him instantly, body and soul—but a glancing blow, a fraction of a fraction of its true force.

It was enough.

Rel heard his arm break before he felt it.

The sound was wet and wrong, like a tree branch submerged in water and snapped in half.

His radius shattered. His ulna punched through skin, white bone erupting into the amber light of the forge.

His left ribs—three, maybe four—folded inward, then outward, the broken ends tearing through his tunic like bloody flutes.

The pain was not pain. Pain was a word for something manageable, something that could be measured and endured.

[WARNING YOU HAVE SUSTAINED CRITICAL DAMAGE]

[HEALTH: 1.2%]

Not yet.

His right hand still worked. His right hand still held the sword.

The impact launched him past the hammer’s mass.

He rode the momentum upward, past the lightning, past the point of no return, and the Soul Forger’s face came into view.

"I can see you... you bastard."

The ancient eyes were still slow on tracking.

And then...

[Clockwork Of Time [Grade 2] Has Deactivated!]

"...!"

Blade to shoulder. One circular slash.

Dominance Aura flooded the sword. Black lightning traced the arc.

And the slash extended past the blade’s edge with a focused blast of dark energy aimed directly at the throat.

"False Orbit,"

The Soul Forger’s eyes widened.

"Ah—"

The head came off.

BAM!!!!

Obsidian teeth flashed in the volcanic light and then the body dropped.

The Worldbreaker shrank as it fell and crashed into the obsidian floor with a sound like a mountain cracking.

Rel hit the ground.

His legs buckled. His ribs ground together. Blood pooled beneath him, black against the polished stone.

It hurts... my left side I can’t feel it.

He couldn’t get up no matter how much he had tried.

Is this how I die huh?

The thought drifted through his head, weightless and almost curious.

He didn’t panic at all It was merely just a question he didn’t have the answer to.

Blood kept pooling. His vision fuzzed at the edges.

Then the severed head blinked.

"Impressive."

Rel’s eyes shifted.

"...?"

The Soul Forger’s body stood. No urgency. No stagger. It walked over to the head, bent down, and lifted it by the horns.

It set the head back on the neck.

Flesh knitted. Scales reconnected and the seam vanished in three seconds flat.

The Soul Forger rolled his shoulders like a man waking from a nap and looked down at Rel.

"In all my millennia, no one has severed my head."

Rel coughed. Blood speckled his lips.

"Good... for me."

The Soul Forger’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

He knelt. His hand passed through his own chest—through scale and muscle like water—and withdrew the fifth shard. It pulsed with a steady light, matching the faltering rhythm of Rel’s heartbeat.

"Take it."

He pressed the shard into Rel’s working hand.

"You’ve earned it."

Rel’s fingers closed around the crystal. It was warm. Alive.

Then the Soul Forger placed his other hand over Rel’s shattered ribs.

Hwam!

A low heat spread through Rel’s torso.

Bones clicked. Muscles reknit. The jagged ends of his ribs pulled back beneath his skin.

His left arm still shattered, still useless—began to realign. He felt the bones fuse. The flesh seal.

It wasn’t gentle. It hurt a lot but it worked.

Haah... thank God he’s god some kind of human semblance

"A favor," the Soul Forger said. "For the first man to take my head."

He withdrew his hand. Then he reached into his own chest again deeper this time and pulled something else free.

It wasn’t a shard.

"...!"

It was a small ember. No larger than a thumb. It burned black at the edges and white at the core, and it pulsed like a second heartbeat.

"A fragment of my true essence."

Rel stared at it for a moment and couldn’t believe what he was getting.

"Why?"

The Soul Forger’s pupilless eyes held his gaze.

"Because this body is not the real me."

The ember floated from his palm and sank into Rel’s chest. No pain. Just warmth. Deep and abiding.

"The true Soul Forger resides within the Tower. This orb... this world... it is merely a depiction. A shadow of the realm I once ruled."

He began to fade and thinned at the edges like smoke dispersing.

"If we meet again, Axel..."

His voice echoed even as his body vanished.

"...be prepared to face the real me."

The Iron Forge dissolved.

The volcanoes of the zone faded and the molten pools cooled to stone.

Every part of the obsidian floor cracked and fell away in sheets, revealing the original forge underneath as the real one, deep beneath the central fortress.

Rel sat up.

His body was whole. Ribs sealed. Arm answered. Whatever the Soul Forger had done, it wasn’t gentle but it was thorough.

He opened his palm.

The fifth shard pulsed against his skin, warm and alive.

"I live to see another day."