The two words left the Contractor of Shadows' mouth like a death sentence delivered by the night itself.
"Divine Art—"
"—Infinite Shadow Cataclysm."
The world paused.
Not metaphorically. Reality itself seemed to hesitate, as if even the laws of the world needed a moment to understand what had just been invoked.
Then the darkness answered.
It did not form a neat sphere or a contained domain. That would have been too small, too merciful. The Infinite Shadow Cataclysm expanded without limit, stretching across the destroyed village, across the mountains, across the sky itself. Wherever the Contractor's will reached, the world became pure, absolute shadow. The stars vanished. The burning remnants of the village were swallowed. The distant capital's lights winked out as if they had never existed. The domain did not merely cover space—it claimed it, rewriting the rules inside its endless reach.
Inside this place, the Contractor of Shadows was no longer merely a man. He was the absolute authority. Every thought became reality. Every flicker of killing intent birthed new horrors. Shadow beasts the size of fortresses rose from the ground. Forests of living blades sprouted and twisted. The very air turned into cutting threads of umbral force. And most terrifying of all—his wounds vanished. The caved-in ribs, the gaping stab wounds, the purple-black blood—all of it was erased as the domain poured endless vitality into its master. He stood restored, stronger than he had been at the start of the fight, laughing with pure, unrestrained arrogance.
Eryndor, still wearing the Abyssal Flame Mask, felt the change instantly.
The black-and-red flames around his face flickered under the crushing pressure. Even with the Mask's rejection of divine authority, the sheer scale of the Cataclysm pressed against him like the weight of a dead god. Black-red blood leaked from the corners of ernydor burning eye-slits.
High above—though "above" had lost most of its meaning inside the endless dark—Jae's face went white.
"What… is this?" he whispered. "This isn't a domain. This is… a world."
The Divine Flame of Curses floated beside him in grim silence. When it finally spoke, its voice carried a rare note of gravity.
"Infinite Shadow Cataclysm. One of the most feared Divine Arts among the Contractors. It does not simply create a battlefield. It creates a personal infinity. As long as the user's will holds, the darkness has no edge… and no end."
Below, the Contractor raised both hands.
"Come, previous failure. Let me show you what true divinity looks like."
The first wave hit Eryndor like a tsunami of pure malice.
Hundreds of shadow wolves the size of horses lunged from every direction. Eryndor's stolen shadow blade flashed, as he cut them down in sprays of dissolving darkness. But for every beast that fell, three more took its place. Blades erupted from the ground beneath his feet. He twisted, Sacred Echo screaming warnings, but there were simply too many futures collapsing into the present at once. A spear of condensed night punched through his left thigh. Another scored a deep line across his ribs. Black-red blood sprayed across the featureless dark.
The Contractor laughed, the sound echoing from everywhere and nowhere.
"Is that all you can do? How disappointing!"
Eryndor forced himself forward. Every step was a war. Shadow tendrils wrapped around his arms and tried to drag him down. He burned them away with Hellfire, only for new ones to replace them instantly. A giant shadow hand formed above him and slammed down. He crossed his arms and took the blow, knees buckling, the ground beneath him cratering.
He was holding his own.
Barely.
Critical wounds accumulated faster than even his monstrous regeneration could fully close them.
The Contractor appeared in front of him without warning, exactly as he had years ago in that forest of ash and betrayal. The same cold eyes. The same contempt. The same technique.
A single shadow blade condensed to a needle-fine point and drove straight through Eryndor's chest.
The exact same place.
The exact same angle.
The memory of the first death slammed into Eryndor at the same moment the blade did. Pain—real, blinding, absolute—exploded through him. Black-red blood erupted from his mouth in a thick, wet spray. The Contractor twisted the blade and then ripped it free with savage force.
Eryndor's legs gave out.
He fell to his knees. Then his body simply folded, face hitting the shadowed ground hard enough to crack whatever passed for earth in this place. Blood pooled beneath him in a widening circle. The shadow contractor divine art shatter.
The Contractor's laughter became unhinged.
"You stupid bastard! You really thought you could kill a Divine Contractor? You idiot! You absolute fool!"
He walked over and drove a boot into the side of Eryndor's head, slamming his face harder into the ground. More blood sprayed.
"What was that? Trying to say something?" The Contractor leaned down, cupping a hand around his ear in mock courtesy. "Oh, let me come closer so I can hear your final words."
Eryndor's mouth moved, gargling on blood.
"Y-y-yo…"
The Contractor grinned wider, leaning in until his ear was almost touching Eryndor's blood-slick lips.
That was when Eryndor smirked.
The expression was small, tired, and utterly venomous.
"…You should have paid attention, cocky bastard."
The body beneath the Contractor exploded.
Not in a simple burst of flesh. It detonated with concentrated Hellfire and residual Sacred Echo force, a point-blank annihilation tailored to the exact moment of arrogance. The blast caught the Contractor at point-blank range. His left arm—from the elbow down—was simply gone, torn away in a spray of shadow-flesh and purple blood. The force launched him backward through his own domain, tumbling end over end until he managed to stabilize.
Pain and shock warred on his face.
Then he felt it.
That same sinister, familiar aura—behind him.
He spun.
Eryndor stood there, Abyssal Flame Mask still burning steadily, not a single wound on his body. The grey skin was intact. The black-and-red flames around his face flickered with cold amusement.
"You were calling me an idiot," Eryndor said, voice echoing strangely through the Mask, "when you didn't even realize that was just a clone."
The Contractor's remaining hand clenched.
"How…?"
Eryndor tilted his head.
"Honestly? You really are stupid. Your Divine Art is so fucking massive that there was more than enough space for me to move, create a perfect clone, and slip away into the darker corners while you were busy showing off. You shouldn't have made it so big just because you could. That size gave me room to roam inside your own infinity, you fucking idiot. And honestly… I thought you would figure it out. The clone didn't even have the Abyssal Flame Mask. Or did you actually believe your Cataclysm was strong enough to suppress the Mask entirely? Guess again."
He took one step forward.
"Now… it's time to really end this."
From the featureless ground near Eryndor's feet, something began to rise.
A sword.
It did not simply appear. It clawed its way upward as if the darkness itself was unwilling to release it. First the tip, blacker than the domain around it. Then the edge—so thin it seemed to cut the concept of sight. The aura that poured from the weapon made the Infinite Shadow Cataclysm itself shudder. The endless dark rippled like water struck by a mountain.
Eryndor's body twitched violently the moment the aura touched him. Fresh blood sprayed from beneath the Mask. His heart hammered in irregular, painful spasms. Every organ in his torso screamed in protest. The Abyssal Serpent's warning from that day he was grieving his sister death echoed in his memory: "Touch it, and it will take pieces of your life. Wield it, and it will unmake parts of what you are."
The Contractor of Shadows staggered back, his restored confidence shattering.
"W-what the hell is that?! Why does its aura feel… why is it…"
He had stood in the presence of the Contractor of the Divine Flame of the Sun. He had felt that solar authority that could burn entire kingdoms to glass. This was worse. This was quieter. Colder. Final. It did not radiate power so much as it erased the idea that anything else was allowed to exist beside it.
Eryndor's burning eyes fixed on the rising weapon.
The Blade of Absolute Severance.
Gifted by the Abyssal Serpent in the depths of Hell. A weapon that did not cut flesh or metal or even space in the ordinary sense. It severed laws. It cut through the rules that said "this cannot be destroyed." Infinity, regeneration, conceptual defenses, the very notion of distance or causality—none of it mattered. If the blade decided something should end, it ended. The hardest scales of the strongest dragons would have offered no more resistance than smoke. It was not a sword that killed. It was a sword that made the universe forget the target had ever been allowed to live.
Eryndor reached down.
The moment his grey fingers closed around the hilt, agony beyond anything the chest wound had inflicted tore through him. Blood erupted from his mouth in a thick, continuous spray. His heart stuttered. His lungs seized. Veins across his arms bulged and darkened as the blade drank greedily from his life force. The Abyssal Flame Mask flared desperately, trying to keep his soul from being pulled apart along with his body.
He endured it.
A slow, unhinged smirk spread beneath the Mask—visible only as a cruel curve in the black-and-red flames. The expression grew wider, creepier, until it no longer looked like anything a human face should produce.
He raised the Blade of Absolute Severance.
Eryndor's voice, layered and distorted by the Mask and by the blood still pouring from his lips, rang across the endless dark with terrible clarity.
"I fought against a lot of people who used Divine Arts… and I finally understand them."
The sinister smile stretched further.
"So with this sword… I'll create something similar."
The flames of the Abyssal Flame Mask roared higher, mixing with the soul-cutting aura of the blade until the air itself began to scream.
Eryndor's burning eyes locked onto the Contractor of Shadows.
And he spoke the words that would change the shape of this battle forever.
"Hell's Art—"