The air was still.
Dust hung motionless, suspended in the wake of carnage. The ruins groaned under their own weight, scorched earth trembling faintly as though afraid to breathe.
David stood above the fallen Rook, his chest rising and falling with slow, deliberate breaths. The dark aura still coiled around him like living smoke, whispering and twisting in shapes that made the air shudder.
Beneath him, the creature quivered, its once-majestic form now a grotesque silhouette of what it had been, a broken mass of sinew and bone heaving in laboured breaths.
Their gazes met—one pair filled with the flickering light of a life clinging desperately to the edge of oblivion, while the other shimmered with an unsettling intensity.
David was draped in shadows, his crimson eyes radiant and fierce, reflecting a depth of emotion that transcended mere rage, hinting at a tumultuous vortex of pain and longing.
Predator and prey.
For a moment, time itself seemed to recoil from them.
David's voice cut through the silence—low, steady, final. "You fought well…" he said, the words edged with something colder than pity. "But not well enough."
He raised both blades.
A dense, shadowy aura wrapped around them, throbbing with a weightiness that mirrored his dark intentions. With a sudden, forceful motion, he drove them downward—plunging them simultaneously into the very core of the Rook's skull.
The blades sank deeply, and a resonant crack reverberated through the crumbling streets, echoing the chaos of the shattered environment around them.
The creature convulsed once. Then, stillness.
A faint tremor rippled through the ground, as the city itself exhaled in relief. The dark aura flickered around David before receding slightly, though never completely disappearing—it clung to him, as though reluctant to leave its master.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
…..
Far away, near the transport, the survivors and others stood in silent witness. Felix, Kara, Ethan, and Philip—all frozen—watched the aftermath unfold with wide eyes. None of them spoke because words felt meaningless against the magnitude of what they had just seen.
Even after all their battles, none of them had seen that before.
A Rank Two human… slaying a Rank Three Rook.
Felix swallowed hard, a lump forming in his throat as a whirlwind of thoughts collided in his mind. He couldn't shake the memories of his own gruelling battle against the other Rook—the savage intensity of the fight, the overwhelming sense of desperation as he pushed himself to the brink of death to overcome his opponent.
Yet now, he stood awestruck, watching someone else of equal rank accomplish what had seemed impossible—dispatching their foe with a speed and brutality that left him breathless. The figure wielded an aura of ferocity that felt otherworldly, something that challenged the very definition of humanity.
His gaze swept across the faces of his companions, and he noticed they were all enveloped in the same hollow disbelief. Kara's lips hung slightly ajar, her eyes glazed and unfocused as if she were peering into a void of thoughts she couldn't articulate.
Beside her, Ethan shifted anxiously, his hands twitching restlessly as if part of him still hungered for combat, instinctively bracing for another challenge.
Philip, however, stood eerily still, a statue carved from stone, every muscle frozen in shock, his expression betraying a profound sense of vulnerability that contrasted sharply with the ferocity they had just witnessed.
Eryn, however, wasn't watching the battlefield.
Her sharp eyes were on the girl, Thalassa. While the others stared at the destruction, her instincts fixed on her calmness amid chaos. She hadn't flinched once during the entire battle. Even now, as the echoes faded, she stood unbothered, gaze locked in the same direction David had gone—as though she'd known exactly how it would end.
Jace stood a few paces behind them, his expression now stable and unreadable. He'd seen what this monster could do. And yet, nothing about what he'd witnessed could still surprise him. He exhaled slowly, as if confirming something rather than discovering a miracle.
By the time Felix finally tore his gaze away from the battlefield, he looked at his team, who were gathered, whole, battered, bruised, but alive. He'd found them moments before the end, just long enough to see the impossible unfold.
Apart from a few quick words exchanged—checking injuries, ensuring no one was dying—they'd all fallen into the same stunned silence.
Even Felix couldn't blame them.
Because, despite worries, despite his experience, his focus, too, had been stolen by the thing fighting in the distance. No, the being.
And now, I stood over a corpse that used to be a monster.
A faint vibration stirred the ground again—a rhythmic thud, thud, thud.
The team turned, hands twitching toward their weapons, until the sound was joined by a voice. "Thalassa," the tiger rumbled, its deep tone rolling across the ruined street. "Come here."
The girl blinked, her distant expression breaking for the first time. Without hesitation, she turned and walked toward the great beast.
Rea—his fiery mane now dimmed to a soft ember glow—waited as she approached. She climbed onto his back with graceful ease, settling atop the tiger's broad shoulders. Rea let out a low rumble of acknowledgement before turning his head toward the battlefield's edge.
Smoke and ash still drifted thick through the air. The stench of burnt flesh, blood, and scorched concrete filled every breath. And from within that fog, a silhouette began to emerge.
At first, it was only a shape—a flicker of movement against the dying embers.
Then the shape solidified.
A man, walking through the ruin.
His pace was steady, unhurried. The dark aura still lingered faintly around him, curling in tendrils along the cracked street. Two guns hung at his sides, both still smoking. At his waist, two short blades rested, their faint red glow visible even through the gloom.
Step by step, David came closer—his boots crunching over glass and ash, his gaze fixed ahead. Each step sent a tremor through the onlookers' chests, a primal unease clawing at them.
He wasn't running, or bleeding, or triumphant. He was simply… there.
Alive. Breathing. Walking.
The air itself seemed to recoil from his presence.
And for a moment, as his shadow stretched across the broken ground toward them—long, dark, and heavy—it felt less like they were watching a man approach…
…and more like the reaper himself was walking out of the smoke.