"Hell's Art—"
The words left Eryndor's mouth like a curse spoken by the abyss itself.
"—Hell Kingdom."
Black-red flames erupted from Eryndor in every direction, not as wild fire, but as structured, authority.A kingdom of Hell.
The ground became cracked obsidian that bled molten crimson. The sky was a vault of eternal night pierced by rivers of black fire. Towers of fused bone and cooled magma rose in the distance like the spines of dead gods. The air itself carried the weight of judgment. This was not a domain that simply enforced rules. It was a domain that declared. Inside this place, only the law of Hell exists.
And the first law was absolute restoration for its king.
The moment Hell Kingdom fully manifested, every wound on Eryndor's body vanished. The gaping hole in his chest sealed without a scar. The deep cuts across his grey skin closed as if they had never existed. The internal damage from gripping the Blade of Absolute Severance—the screaming organs, the stuttering heart, the life force being drained—was forcibly reversed by the domain's authority. The Abyssal Flame Mask burned brighter than ever, no longer flickering under strain. For as long as Hell Kingdom stood, Eryndor's body would not be allowed to fall. The domain itself refused to let its king remain broken.
High above, still watching through the thinning barriers between realms, Jae's eyes widened.
"He… healed everything. Instantly. That's not regeneration. That's the domain itself rejecting the idea that he can be wounded."
The Divine Flame of Curses remained silent for a long moment. When it spoke, its voice was low.
"A Hell Art… created by a mortal who crawled out of the abyss. How many centuries has it been since something like this was last seen?"
Below, the Contractor of Shadows staggered. His restored body, which had been perfect moments ago, suddenly felt the pressure of a superior authority pressing down on him.
Eryndor moved.
He held two blades now.
In his right hand,the Blade of Absolute Severance, its thickness seemed to cut the concept of distance itself. In his left: the purple-black shadow blade he had torn from his own chest earlier—the Contractor's own weapon, now turned against its master.
He charged.
The Contractor tried to summon a new shadow sword. Darkness gathered in his palm—
—and instantly unraveled.
The Blade of Absolute Severance did not merely cut matter. It severed the laws that allowed techniques to exist. The moment the shadow blade began to form, the Severance's aura touched the concept of its creation and erased the permission for it to be. The darkness simply ceased, as if the universe itself had forgotten how to make a shadow sword in Eryndor's presence.
The Contractor's eyes widened in pure disbelief.
Eryndor was already on him.
The first slash opened a deep diagonal line from collarbone to hip. blood sprayed. Before the Contractor could even scream, the second slash crossed it. Then the third. Then the fourth. Eryndor's movements accelerated with every exchange. The Abyssal Flame Mask burned like a crown of judgment. Hell Kingdom itself seemed to lend him speed, each step covering more ground, each swing arriving faster than the last.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
The Contractor's torso became a map of deep, precise cuts. Flesh parted. Ribs showed. blood poured in sheets. He tried to form shadow armor; the Severance erased it mid-formation. He tried to fold space; the law of distance itself was cut before the technique could complete. He tried to summon beasts; they dissolved into nothing the moment the Severance's aura touched their conceptual existence.
Eryndor did not slow.
He became a storm of grey skin, black-red fire, and absolute cutting. The stolen shadow blade in his left hand carved secondary wounds while the Blade of Absolute Severance delivered the true damage—wounds that refused to close because the very idea of healing them had been severed.
The Contractor coughed a thick mouthful of blood. His legs trembled. One knee nearly buckled.
Eryndor's eyes—burning points within the Mask—locked onto him.
He raised both blades for a final, decisive cross-slash.
In pure desperation, the Contractor forced one last shadow blade into existence through sheer will, pouring every remaining drop of his Divine Flame's authority into it. He raised his left arm to block—
The Blade of Absolute Severance met the hastily formed sword and the arm behind it.
There was no resistance.
The shadow blade shattered into nonexistence. The Contractor's left arm, from mid-forearm down, simply came free. It spun through the air in a spray ofblood and landed somewhere in the burning distance. The stump sprayed blood in rhythmic pulses.
The Contractor's remaining strength left him.
He fell to his knees hard, the impact cracking the obsidian ground of Hell Kingdom. His head hung forward. Blood poured from dozens of deep cuts across his chest and back, raw, red, ruined flesh exposed to the hellish light. His breathing was a wet, broken rattle.
Eryndor stood over him for a moment, chest rising and falling. The life-force drain of the Severance blade finally caught up even through the domain's healing. He staggered, coughed a mouthful of black-red blood, and let the Blade of Absolute Severance slip from his fingers. It sank into the ground as if the world itself was afraid to hold it.
Then he turned.
Slow. Deliberate.
He bent, picked up the Contractor's own purple-black shadow blade from where it had fallen, and began walking toward the kneeling man as the the abyssal flame mask faded away. The tip of the blade dragged across the cracked obsidian, leaving a thin glowing line of severed reality in its wake. Sparks of purple light flared with every scrape.
Eryndor approaching the ruined, kneeling Contractor through fire and smoke, the weight of absolute victory in every step.
He stopped directly in front of the older man.
Raised the shadow blade.
Placed the edge against the Contractor's exposed neck.
Eryndor's voice was quiet, almost conversational.
"Any last words?"
The Contractor of Shadows coughed once more. blood ran down his chin. He did not beg. He did not curse. He simply closed his eyes, the arrogance of centuries finally burned out of him.
Eryndor's arm moved.
One clean, horizontal cut.
The head left the shoulders with almost no resistance. It tumbled through the air, and hit the ground with a dull, final sound. The body remained kneeling for a full second longer before toppling sideways into a spreading pool of blood.
Silence.
For the first time in recorded history, a Divine Contractor had been killed.
Hell Kingdom shattered.
The obsidian ground, the rivers of black fire, the towers of bone—all of it dissolved like a nightmare ending. The real world rushed back in: the ruined village, the burning buildings, the mountain valley under the early night sky. Only ordinary darkness and fire remained.
Eryndor dropped to one knee.
His long black hair hung limp and soaked. He stared at the headless body in front of him, chest heaving, every breath sounding like it cost him something vital.
"…I did it," he whispered.
Then louder, almost disbelieving.
"I actually fucking did it."
A broken, breathless laugh escaped him. He pressed one hand to the ground to keep from falling further.
"I killed a Divine Contractor…"
High above, Jae was frozen.
"He… he actually killed one. That's impossible. That's supposed to be impossible."
The Divine Flame of Curses watched the headless corpse with an expression that might have been grief, or might have been something older and colder.
"Nothing is impossible," it murmured, "for a man who has already died once and decided the second time would be different."
Eryndor was still kneeling, still staring, still trying to process the magnitude of what he had done, when a new presence slammed into the valley like a falling star.
A man with long, flowing grey hair and pristine white robes that seemed untouched by the surrounding filth landed at the edge of the devastation. His face was beautiful in the way ancient statues were beautiful—too perfect, too refined. The moment his eyes found the headless body of the Contractor of Shadows, something inside him broke.
"BROTHER!!!"
The scream tore across the burning village with enough force to crack the remaining walls. Tears already streamed down his face. Divine authority of the White Moon flared around him in silver-white radiance, pure and furious.
His eyes locked onto Eryndor—grey-skinned, blood-soaked, still kneeling beside the corpse.
Rage and grief twisted his perfect features into something feral.
"YOU WILL PAY!"
He charged.
Silver-white light gathered around his hand, forming a staff of pure lunar authority as he rocketed toward Eryndor with murder in every line of his body.