Quickly, now that I had a break, I pulled out two handles and overloaded them with OD. The blue blades swept, disintegrated, created a bloody respite. Would it be perfect or bad?
Perfect because it kept immediate death at bay. Bad because it was a suicidal waste. Every second I maintained that defensive whirlwind was one second less of my life span, my wounds beginning to bleed.
If the vampire approached... that was the point. It wasn't moving anymore. My last approach, the one that ended with the mallet and me flying, had changed something. It wasn't fear. It was an ancestral predator's instinct telling him that physically approaching carried an unpredictable risk.
The mallet was still there in his hand, his last defense if I got close. A tool of absolute erasure, ready to nullify any surprise on my part.
If I continued at this pace, in a matter of minutes I would lose. Not because of a blow from him, but because of exhaustion. I would be exhausted, defenseless, lying on the ground for the remaining ghouls or the next stake to finish the job. He just had to wait.
I had to do something quickly.
My mind, forced into clarity by the proximity of death, processed everything in an instant. I couldn't charge at him. I couldn't stay on the defensive. I had to change the game.
An absurd, desperate plan began to form. With one last powerful twist, I cleared a semicircle of ghouls and quickly threw the two black keys I held in my hands. They weren't precise throws. They were brutal thrusts, like throwing two bricks loaded with all my OD. The blades of celestial energy whistled through the air and stuck into the ground, not at the vampire's feet, but a couple of meters on either side of him, forming a triangle with him in the center.
"You missed!" The vampire's voice cut through the air, laden with renewed disdain and a touch of disappointment. "Have you already given up and accepted your fate?"
I stood up straight, a wild, blood-stained smile spreading across my lips.
"I never aimed at you."
His expression of contempt froze for a fraction of a second, replaced by a quick flash of recognition before I could react.
Then, the keys I threw exploded.
They were implosions of unstable OD. The priest was right: overloading them was inefficient and dangerous. I could blow off a hand. I was wasting my OD grotesquely. But he never mentioned the side effect.
¡BUM!
Two muffled explosions, like thunderclaps. From the points where the keys had been driven in, smoke screens expanded. They spread rapidly, enveloping the vampire, obscuring his silhouette, swallowing the space between us.
The tactic worked. The purple smoke curtain swallowed the vampire, buying precious seconds. But the ghouls, devoid of fear or confusion, continued to advance toward me, emerging from the fog with their jaws open.
I quickly pulled out and threw several more Black Keys, snatching them from my belt with jerky movements. I didn't aim. I instantly overloaded them, injecting them with my OD, a murky torrent of pain, cold, and pure denial, and threw them like blind grenades at the approaching groups of ghouls.
They all exploded. A series of muffled BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! shook the ground. There were no flashes of light, only concentric expansions of that vibrant, corrupt darkness that disintegrated undead flesh on contact and, as they collided with each other, created more smoke screens. The square was transformed into a labyrinth of purple fog and patches of emptiness where the ghouls had been. The air thickened, charged with sharp static and the smell of burnt ozone and recent death.
Amidst the chaos of smoke and explosions, I forced my memory. I remembered the exact spot where the vampire had been standing before the first curtain enveloped him. His location was a fixed coordinate in my mind, the epicenter of all this hell.
And I ran. Propelling myself forward, I pushed my way through the swirling fog, dodging the still-active edges of the detonations.
Just as I reached where I calculated him to be, the curtain of smoke in front of me parted. It didn't dissipate. It was split, like a curtain torn by an invisible force.
And he was there.
Not disoriented. Not irritated. Ready. He had anticipated my move. His silhouette was a nucleus of absolute stillness in the chaos of smoke. In his right hand, the mallet of darkness no longer hung limply. It was in full swing, brought back with the quiet and terrible power of a slow-motion tsunami.
But it wasn't the mallet that hit me first.
A kind of wind came out of the mallet. It tore away the shreds of fog, silenced the sound in its path, and hit me squarely before I could dodge.
It was as if all the air in my lungs, all the heat in my blood, was sucked forward. It stopped me in my tracks, freezing me from within, paralyzing my muscles in a spasm of absolute cold. I couldn't move forward. I could barely breathe.
And in the center of that whirlwind of nothingness, the hammer completed its downward arc, inevitable, definitive.
With the last atom of willpower, I moved aside. Not a jump, but a sideways collapse, letting myself fall to the ground as the wind of oblivion tore at my clothes and froze my skin where it touched.
The hammer struck the ground where I had been a moment before. There was no crash. There was a deep silence, and then a crack that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
Without getting up, from the ground, with my left arm trembling, I threw a Black Key at him.
The vampire, recovering the mallet from his failed blow with supernatural fluidity, swung again.
And another gale of that wind collided with my black key.
I was on the ground, exhausted, drained, the cold wind still gripping me. He was standing, unscathed, the mallet now hanging at his side, looking down at where I lay, through the clearing his own power had created in the smoke.
Would it really end here? The question was a fire in my agony. NO! The cry did not come from my throat, but from the depths of my being. It couldn't end like this. I will win.
I got up. It was an act of pure will against the physics of pain. My bones protested, my muscles screamed. I creaked, I staggered, but I stood. Blood, sweat, and dust covered me. I was a human wreck.
The vampire did nothing but stare at me, his expression no longer one of contempt, but of weary pity. Like an adult watching a child throw a tantrum after losing. In his eyes, he had already won.
"In the end, cattle will always be cattle, even if they bare their teeth. Now, die."
It was his funeral prayer for me. He raised his hammer again, the block of darkness and oblivion, ready for the final blow. But this time, it wasn't a close swing. He threw it. Or rather, he unleashed the gale of wind that preceded the impact, but concentrated, directed, a tornado of absence that roared toward me to erase me before the physical mallet arrived.
Only this time it was going to be different.
Because I saw. Through the pain that made me cry blood, even though my eyes burned as if red-hot needles had been stuck into them, protesting, begging me to close my eyes and stop looking, and with my head feeling as if I had several migraines inside my skull...
I saw the line.
Not in the vampire. Not in the mallet.
In the wind.
Just as it emerged from that mallet, at the very core of that gale of non-existence, lines appeared in the air. They were faint, ghostly, fluctuating like smoke, but they were there. Cracks in the phenomenon itself, faults in the manifestation of its power. The wind was not a natural force; it was an extension of his will, and as such, it had breaking points.
I had to concentrate. I clenched my teeth until I thought they would shatter. I ignored the fire in my eyes, the hammering in my skull.
I took out the last Black Key I had. Not to throw it. To use it as a focus, as an extension of my finger. And I threw myself forward. Not backward. Not to the side. Straight into the gale of wind that was coming to erase me.
The vampire surely thought I was throwing myself to my certain death. One last pathetic act of stupidity.
ZAZ.
It wasn't the sound of impact. It was a sharp, clean cut, like heavenly scissors cutting an invisible thread. My arm, guiding the Black Key, pierced the brightest line at the heart of the gale.
And the gale disappeared. It didn't disperse. It didn't crash. It ceased, as if something had flipped a switch. The air was just air again.
The momentum of my jump, now without the resistance of the wind, propelled me forward with unexpected speed. I crossed the remaining distance in the blink of an eye.
The vampire, not expecting this to happen, was stunned. For a fraction of a second, his red eyes widened, his mask of superiority shattered in pure disbelief. He had seen the impossible: someone had cut off his power, if not nullifying it at its source.
That small lapse of time was enough.
He raised the mallet again, instinctively, for a point-blank blow. But there was no time to swing it.
So he blocked it. He crossed the handle of the mallet in front of him, using the block of darkness as an impenetrable shield against my weak charge.
But he made a mistake. His last mistake.
He didn't know that mallet also had lines.
And I did. In the white flash of my extreme concentration, as I lunged at him, I saw a thin, deep red crack snaking along the center of the block of darkness.
I didn't have the strength for a powerful blow. Just a touch.
With the tip of the Black Key's hilt, still glowing with the last glimmer of my will, I touched that line.
And I cut it.
There was no explosion. The mallet shattered into pieces, leaving him with an empty hand, extended in a block that no longer protected anything.
I stopped in front of him, panting, about to collapse, the hilt now dark and cold in my hand. He stared at me, his hand still in the air, his face a mask of utter shock and, for the first time, something that could be... vulnerability.
The battlefield was silent. The wind had died. The mallet had died. And between us, there remained only the edge of my will, and the sudden emptiness in the monster's hand.
"YOU... YOU... WHAT ARE YOU!"
The Apostle's voice was not a roar of anger. It was a strangled cry of pure disbelief, arising from a place deeper than contempt or arrogance. For the first time in his life, something had violated not only his power, but the very logic of his existence. His expression, always so controlled, broke into a grimace of absolute terror.
He jumped back, an instinctive, animalistic movement, trying to put distance between himself and the phenomenon I had become. Clearly, he wasn't going to let it go.
But he was unaware of one last move. When I threw all the Black Keys earlier, not all of them had exploded. In the chaos of smoke and detonations, some had stuck into the ground, into the walls, overloaded but stable, waiting like sleeper mines. And one of them was stuck exactly where his feet landed when he jumped back.
BOOM!
The explosion wasn't huge. But it was direct. A concentrated burst of OD that enveloped him from below. A scream, this time of genuine pain and rage, rose from the cloud of smoke and dark sparks. When the smoke cleared, his figure was no longer flawless. His ancient clothing was singed, and his pale marble skin, on one side and one leg, was charred, cracked, revealing blackened, pulsating tissue beneath.
I, of course, was already running toward him. In my left hand, I wielded the hilt of the last Black Key.
He, reeling from the unexpected explosion, saw my charge. The terror in his eyes mingled with savage fury. He raised his uncharred arm, trying to block. A desperate, futile gesture. Because now he knew, and I knew, that to my eyes, everything had a death.
And his arm, standing in the way, had a very clear death.
My blow was not powerful. But it was precise. The hilt of the Key, guided not by force but by the certainty of my vision, cut through the line that crossed his forearm.
It was the same result. Not a shock, but a cessation. His arm, from the elbow down, simply ceased to be part of him.
He let out a sound that was not human, a hiss of rage and pure agony. He was now wounded, mutilated, and I was standing over him, the hilt raised for the final blow, searching for the spot on his chest.
And then, the key slipped from my hand.
No. I let it go. My right hand, the one that had been holding on, trying to contain the pain and blood, no longer had any strength. The numbness, the cold, the damage from when the mallet had struck, took their toll at the worst possible moment. My fingers opened involuntarily. The metal handle fell to the ground with a metallic, disappointing thud, rolling out of my reach.
The failure of my right hand was an icy void in my stomach. Victory, inches away, was slipping through my limp fingers.
Quickly, with my left arm still obedient, I formed a spear. Not with a weapon. With my hand. My fingers came together in a tight fist, my index finger extended and rigid, supported by my thumb. An extension of my will, the same gesture that had pierced the ghoul's line, now charged with the last spark of my being.
The vampire, staggering, his right arm severed and unable to regenerate, understood the end. There was no time for elegance, for powers. All that remained was flesh against flesh, the most primitive struggle. His only functional limb, his left hand, reached out. It was not a normal physical movement. His fingers stretched, his nails grew before my eyes, lengthening and curving into sharp claws.
We both lunged at each other in a final, desperate exchange. There was no technique. Only lethal intent.
CRACK.
A single sound, both wet and dry, filled the silence. Two sounds, actually, overlapping.
His outstretched arm, seeking to pierce my chest, missed. My slight twist of the torso deflected the deadly blow. But he couldn't avoid it completely. The black claws, instead of piercing my heart, pierced the shoulder of my already injured limb, the right one, the numb one, the one that had let go of the key. It was a distant sensation, a cold, deep prick, as if ice had been injected directly into the joint. It didn't hurt as it should have. That shoulder had already begun to forget how to feel.
Meanwhile, I, my "spear" made of hand and fingers, had reached its target.
It wasn't a powerful impact. It was a touch. The tips of my index and middle fingers, joined together and rigid like a bone dagger, did not dig forcefully into his chest. It landed right on that spot, in the center of his torso, where that dark and murky line of death that I had seen from the beginning was beating.
There was no explosion. There was no scream.
There was an even deeper silence.
His red eyes, inches from mine, widened. Not in pain, but in recognition.
His claws, dug into my shoulder, lost their strength. He didn't withdraw them. They remained there, like roots of ice.
I kept my fingers on his chest, trembling, without the strength to push further, but without the need. The message was delivered. The sentence, signed.
We remained like that, locked in a deadly, static embrace, two ruins supporting each other on the edge of the abyss I had just opened in his immortality. The battlefield, at last, was calm.
Then the vampire breathed. A long, tired sigh, not of pain, but of acceptance.
"Haa... so this is the end for me."
His voice was a harsh whisper, devoid of its supernatural melody. There was no longer anger, no terror, not even contempt. Only monumental exhaustion, like a rock finally yielding to the erosion of eons.
"It seems my lord was right."
The phrase, laden with meaning I could not comprehend, floated in the air. His master? Was there something above this monster? There was no time for questions. His gaze, those red eyes that had been wells of darkness and arrogance, clouded over, as if a veil of dust had fallen over them. They lost focus, looking through me, toward something only he could see.
And he began to babble. Sanity, or what remained of it in his immortal mind, dissolved along with his body.
Because he began to disappear. He faded into ashes. The process was silent and swift. His contours became blurred, translucent, and then completely disintegrated, leaving only a small pile of pale ashes that the slightest breath of night wind immediately began to scatter.
He disappeared completely. Where the source of my nightmare had been, there was only a fleeting trace on the ground and the echo of his last, enigmatic words.
Instead, I... I stood alone by willpower. The same iron will that had made me get up again and again. But now, with the object of my hatred and my purpose reduced to nothing, that willpower lost its anchor.
There was only a dull, damp thud as my knees, then my hips, then my whole body gave way and I collapsed onto the cold, dusty ground.
I had no strength left. Not even for a groan. Not even to lift a finger. The blood from my wounds began to soak the earth around me, mixing with the vampire's ashes. The cold from the scratch and the pierced shoulder spread.
I was conscious. Horribly conscious. I had avenged my friends and my family. I had... succeeded?
There was no applause. Only the oppressive silence of the ghost town and the distant creaking of old wood.
But I was not completely alone.
With my only faithful and beautiful spectator.
I looked up, with an effort that made me see white flashes. There, hanging in the black mantle of the sky, indifferent to the carnage, serene in its eternal journey, was the moon.