The atmosphere in the underground hideout didn't just heat up; it died. The oxygen was sucked from the room as Skull, pushed into a corner by a "bottom-tier" brat, finally snapped. Driven by a primal terror he hadn't felt since his fight with the Xenocides, he threw his arms wide, and a Supernova of Black Flames erupted from his very marrow. The fire wasn't orange or red—it was the color of a starless night, a hungry, the heat of the flames that turned the stones , metal into dust and caused the bedrock above to groan under the sudden thermal expansion.
Jaxen, slumped against a crumbling wall with his eyes barely open, shielded his face with a trembling, soot-covered hand. He waited for the scream. He waited for the smell of burning flesh that always followed Skull's "black flames"
technique.
But instead, he heard a sound like grinding tectonic plates.
As the black fire washed over Elias, it didn't char his skin. Instead, a series of Jet-Black Scales—harder than any know substance and cold as the void—rippled out from his chest, locking together like tactical plate armor. They coated his shoulders, his back, and the newly regrowing muscle of his left arm. The flames hit the scales and simply slid off, redirected by the sheer physical density of Elias's new form. He didn't just survive the fire; he stood in the heart of it, a dark silhouette of absolute defiance.
Elias stepped through the inferno. His eyes were no longer human; they were the cold, piercing gold of a predator that had survived its own extinction.
Elias moved. There was no flash of light, no warning—just a sudden displacement of air as he shattered the sound barrier with a single, explosive step.
He was inside Skull's guard before the monster could even blink. Elias didn't just punch; he dismantled.
Elias drove a stiff left jab into the bridge of Skull's nose. The sound of cartilage snapping like a dry twig echoed through the chamber, followed by an upper cut to the jaw that connected critically to skulls jaw.
As Skull recovered he swung a wild, flaming haymaker in a blind rage, Elias dipped his shoulder, stepped into the "pocket," and caught Skull's bicep. Using a high-level Judo transition he'd practiced until his hands bled, he used Skull's own massive momentum to heave the man over his hip and slam him into the stone floor with the force of a falling meteor.
The Ground and Pound: Before Skull could bounce back, Elias dropped a heavy, scale-clad knee into his solar plexus, pinning him to the earth. He unleashed a flurry of short, compact elbows—each one aimed with surgical precision at the gaps in Skull's kinetic plating.
Skull roared, his Black Flames flickering wildly as he struggled to draw a single breath. He had spent years "collecting" the lives of others, but he had never fought someone who moved with this kind of power . Elias wasn't just strong; he was a master of every fighting style , he's master Keal had beaten into him during those long, bloody nights in the training pits. Every strike was a lesson learned in pain.
As Elias's fist slammed into his jaw for the tenth time, Skull's consciousness began to tear at the seams. His vision fractured into a kaleidoscope of gray and red.
Suddenly, the heat of the battle faded. Skull saw fragments of lost, forgotten memories—images that had been buried under years of slaughter and cold ambition. He saw a field of tall, golden grass under a sky that wasn't choked by smoke. He saw a pair of small, reaching hands and heard a laughter that sounded like bells in the wind—a sound he hadn't heard in a lifetime. He saw a woman's face, blurred and fading, her lips moving to speak a name he could no longer remember.
These weren't just memories; they were ghosts. Pieces of a man he might have been if the world hadn't turned him into a weapon. The grief hit him harder than Elias's fists ever could. The realization that he had traded his humanity for a flame that only brought darkness made his heart wither.
"Damn you!" Skull screamed, his voice cracking with the weight of a decade of suppressed agony. "You protect these weaklings! You stand for a world that wants you dead! Why won't you just break?!"
Skull surged upward, his body radiating a desperate, unstable heat. He drew every ounce of his remaining life force into a single point—a massive, swirling orb of Black Flame held between his palms. It was a "suicide strike," an attack designed to erase everything in a hundred-yard radius. The stone beneath his feet began to liquefy, turning into a pool of glowing lava.
"D-I-E!" Skull lunged, thrusting the orb directly at Elias's face.
Jaxen's breath hitched in his throat. "ELIAS! MOVE! YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT!"
Elias didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. As the orb touched his chest, he did the unthinkable. He leaned into the heat. He opened his mouth and inhaled.
The Black Flames didn't burn his throat; they were drawn into his lungs like water into a desert. The energy fed the dark engine of his new evolution, traveling through his veins like molten lead. His scales turned a deeper, matte black, and the veins in his neck glowed with a dull, volcanic light. He had swallowed the monster's very essence, turning the villain's greatest weapon into his own fuel.
Skull stood frozen, his hands empty, his spirit completely shattered. His eyes were wide with a terror that surpassed death. "What... what are you?"
Elias didn't answer with words. He balled his good fist—the one that had regrown from the ashes of his sacrifice. The muscles in his back rippled like steel cables, his black scales grinding together with a metallic screech. He lowered his center of gravity, coiled his hips like a massive spring, and exploded upward.
The Uppercut.
It wasn't just a punch; it was a physical statement of existence. Elias's fist connected with Skull's jaw with the force of a collapsing star. The impact sent a shockwave through the bedrock that traveled all the way to the surface, shattering the stone pillars and sending a pillar of dust and debris screaming , upward to the surface.
Skull's head snapped back, his eyes rolling into his skull. He was launched twenty feet into the air before crashing down into the rubble