Xain's entire body screamed in protest.
Breathing felt wrong. Each inhale was shallow, forced, like his lungs refused to expand under the crushing weight pressing down on him. The air barely reached him, and what little did felt thin, useless. He could not move. Not properly. Not even enough to shift his own weight.
He turned his head as much as the pressure allowed and looked around.
Vilak was down beside him, body trembling, fingers digging uselessly into the ground as he tried to push himself up. Mae and Zee were no better, both pinned flat, their bodies shaking under the strain, their faces twisted in pain. Lia struggled just to keep herself conscious, her grip on the ground slipping as the pressure kept increasing.
Xain wanted to reach out.
He wanted to grab one of their hands, to pull them close, to do something, anything that might offer even the smallest bit of comfort in the middle of this.
He could not even lift his arm.
The weight bearing down on him made even that impossible.
And he hated it.
He hated how useless he felt. Hated how, while everyone else was out there fighting, bleeding, breaking themselves just to survive, he could not even do something as simple as that.
His gaze dragged toward the crater.
What he saw there made it worse.
Ercale, Bram, Callum, all of them were down. Their bodies were not just pinned, their legs had given out under the pressure, twisted and broken as they were forced into the ground. Prince Mark and Samwell looked like they could not even breathe, their chests barely moving under the crushing force.
The demon he did not know, Drimus, was in a far worse state. His massive form had been driven so deep into the ground that he looked almost flattened, his body crushed to the point that even blood could not escape properly under the pressure.
On the opposite edge, Clara, Amara, and Annabel were pinned just like him, unable to move, unable to act. The woman he did not know, Sarandel, was on her knees, holding out better than anyone else, but even she could not stand.
And somewhere through all of it, he could hear King Domine speaking.
Something about surviving him.
Something about him winning.
He couldn't make it out. The pain was too much. The pressure, the strain, the sheer weight bearing down on him drowned everything else out.
He thought to himself, this was it, this was death, he was trapped in this madness and he was being beaten hollow, unable to do anything for himself or anyone else, he just wanted it to end, the pain, his ability to see others in pain, he just wanted his life to stop so that this all finally ended, so that it all stopped.
But then, he saw something.
One person he had overlooked when he was looking at everyone.
The Fiend.
He was in the crater, in the middle between where Xain and Ercale, the furthest and closest points of the battlefield collapsing inward under the pressure. He was there in the middle, his body forced low, but still there.
And his mask… was cracking.
At first, it was just a few thin lines, barely visible fractures spreading across the surface. Then those lines deepened, branching outward, splitting further and further as the strain continued to build. The cracks spread, intersected, and weakened the structure until finally, from the slow fractures that had taken hold across it, the mask broke.
Pieces gave way.
Fragments fell.
And beneath it, Xain saw it.
Golden hair, faded to white at the tips, spilling free and dragged downward by the overwhelming gravity. As his head lowered slightly under the pressure, it exposed the pointed ears beneath.
Half-elven.
For Xain, everything else ceased to exist.
The pain vanished from his awareness. The weight, the noise, the chaos of the battlefield, all of it faded into nothing.
Time might as well have stopped for him.
As he focused on this one thing.
As he focused on The Fiend.
As he focused on him.
As he… focused on Nori.
Just as he was about to give up, just when he wished for it all to end, he saw his best friend again. In that moment, something deep inside kept him alive. This feeling deep inside his chest, this unknown, was trying to come out, scratching at his very soul to get out, and, for the first time in his life, he fused into the unknown and lost control.
"You all will die here! And after this! I am going to make sure to hunt down every single person you know and execute every single one of them here!" King Domine yelled, his voice tearing through the crater as the pressure continued to mount.
Then he felt something.
It was wrong.
Out of place.
His eyes narrowed, all three focusing upward, toward where the necromancer had been standing, toward where the pain in his chest had been coming from.
And what he saw made all three of his eyes go wide.
"What?" he muttered in pure shock.
The blue haired boy, the one he had considered the least threatening, the one who should have been crushed into the ground like the rest of them, was standing.
Standing.
"I will sacrifice, everything that I am to make sure you all survive this," Xain said, his voice steady, his gaze locked onto King Domine.
His body was already changing.
It started at his legs.
The transformation spread upward, his form shifting, breaking apart and reforming in ways that no longer followed anything human.
"You, for the first time in life, you made me want to kill someone, and that's you," he said, his voice lowering as the change overtook him completely.
Blackness consumed him.
It spread across his entire body, swallowing him whole until there was nothing left of the boy that had been standing there.
And then something else emerged.
Something no longer human.
It was humanoid in shape, but everything about it was wrong, layered in dark plates and scales that formed a natural armor across its body. Two tails extended behind it, moving with slow, deliberate motion. Its head was almost dragon-like, elongated and predatory, with four sets of eyes that locked onto King Domine with perfect clarity. Its hide fell behind it, draping like a coat, while its arms and legs were plated and scaled in a way that made it look as though it was clad in living armor.
This thing, this Beast, looked down at King Domine with Beastial Hatred burning in its gaze.
Then it threw its head back and let out an earthshaking roar that tore through the air itself.
And in the next instant, it leaped forward, launching straight toward the Demon King.