"...He's fighting through it already?" Vilak muttered to himself as he and the others watched King Domine stagger through the combined assault, still moving despite being pelted with every kind of magic they could throw at him. The blindness was clearly working, at least at first, but he was forcing his way through it inch by inch, his body still advancing through the light and fire as if sheer stubbornness alone could carry him through the pain.
Before anyone could speak, they heard something heavy approaching.
They turned.
Callum stood behind them, still in his werewolf form, his chest rising and falling hard as his eyes moved across the lightning barrier surrounding the group. His posture was tense, confused, trying to understand what they were inside of.
"Don't worry, we're not trapped," Xain said quickly, gesturing to the barrier and then to the ground around them, where the impact marks from the fire rods had torn into the earth. "This saved us."
Callum's gaze followed the motion, taking in the damage, then flicked back toward the crater.
Zee stepped forward slightly, her grip tightening on her sword. "What should we do now? I feel like part of the plan is not going to work if he can fight through the pain."
Lia and Xain exchanged a glance and both went quiet for a second, their minds moving through the possibilities. Lia looked down at the steam-shotgun in her hands, then back toward the fight. "Maybe I can imbue this, push something extra into it…" she muttered, then hesitated. "But that's still magic. And magic isn't doing anything to him."
"And you're right, Zee," Xain added, his eyes moving between the battlefield and the people around him, trying to piece something together under pressure. "You going out there with that sword is a massive risk. But maybe…" His gaze shifted, landing briefly on Bram in the distance before moving again, settling on The Fiend. "Uh… I know this is going to be a massive ask, but can you take Zee's sword and somehow get it to the wolf guy?"
Mae leaned slightly forward, immediately seeing the angle. "That makes sense. If he had that sword, he could do way more damage than Zee ever could."
Zee exhaled once, looking down at the blade in her hand. There was no hesitation after that. She extended it toward Nori. "This might be our only chance to actually do something."
Nori stepped forward and took the sword from her.
He looked at each of them briefly, then gave a single nod.
Then he moved.
His gaze shifted to Callum, and with a short motion of his head, he signaled him forward.
Callum exhaled through his teeth, the sound low and rough, but he did not hesitate. He dropped down onto all fours, muscles tensing as his claws dug into the stone beneath him.
They launched at the same time.
Nori surged forward in a sprint, the sword held tight in his grip as he cut straight for the barrier. Callum followed alongside him, his movement lower, faster, each step tearing into the ground as he accelerated.
The lightning barrier reacted the moment Nori crossed it.
The instant the blade passed through, the construct destabilized, the arcs of electricity collapsing inward before dissipating entirely. The space it had occupied cleared in a flash, exactly as expected.
Neither of them slowed.
They pushed straight through the opening, momentum carrying them forward as they broke into the open and charged toward the crater.
They were just in time.
Below them, King Domine's head tilted slightly as the barrage of light and fire continued to crash against him. His form was still partially obscured, his vision hindered, but not enough to stop him.
His mouth opened.
"Dominus Nihil Visus."
He did not fight the light. Instead, his eyes went entirely black.
The change was immediate and unsettling. Domine stopped relying on his physical sight and commanded the world itself to show him what he needed. The blinding radiance of Sarandel's beam and the fire around him became nothing more than a transparent haze to him. Through the glare, he looked directly at Sarandel, his vision completely unimpeded by their tricks.
"I'm going to rip you all to pieces!" he roared, and then he rushed at them.
Ercale, Bram, Samwell, and Prince Mark saw the charge and moved at once to intercept, all of them breaking forward to stop him before he could reach the group at the crater's edge. "Not working anymore!" Annabel called out, even as Sarandel clicked her tongue and looked like she was about to do something else.
She did not need to.
Drimus was already moving.
He surged forward ahead of the others, his form shifting mid-stride. His body expanded, warped, and restructured as he transitioned from his humanoid state into his full demon beast form. By the time he reached Domine, he towered over the battlefield, a massive lion-like entity with horns, his sheer size rivaling a building.
He brought both front limbs down in a crushing strike.
The impact drove into Domine with overwhelming force.
Domine raised both arms and caught it.
The collision forced him down into the earth, the ground beneath him fracturing and collapsing as the weight pressed him deeper into the crater.
But he did not falter.
Even with the pain tearing through his chest, his arms held firm.
He let out a sharp yell and pushed upward, forcing the massive body off him before twisting and throwing Drimus into the air with raw physical strength.
But that was enough.
The others had closed the distance.
"Where do you think you're going?" Bram spat, driving in from one side with his sword aimed for Domine's flank, while Ercale came from the other, already turning into a spinning kick meant to crush his opposite side.
"Dominus Tenebrae Universalis."
Darkness erupted from Domine's center.
It was not shadow in any normal sense. A sphere of absolute, unnatural blackness expanded outward from his body, swallowing everything around it. It did not simply block the light, it consumed it. For a heartbeat, the crater itself vanished into a sensory void where only Domine could see.
He seized Drimus by the leg as the lion-form demon went past, then shifted to the side just as Bram's sword reached him. The opening in his body yawned wide and swallowed the blade before Bram could commit to the strike. Bram jerked back instantly, refusing to let the opening close around his arm or weapon.
Domine did not let him recover.
He swung Ercale into Bram with brutal force, smashing the two of them together before either could separate. Then, before either of them could reset, he drove his fist down into Ercale's chest. The impact shook the entire crater again, deepening it further and spreading the fractures wider, enough that water from the pipes beneath the city began spilling into the basin below. Both of them coughed harshly from the force of the hit, their bodies jarred by the blow.
Samwell and Prince Mark had reached the edge by then.
Prince Mark launched himself toward Domine, and the Demon King turned toward him at once, raising a fist to crush him out of the air. Then he noticed something wrong. Something about the suit. A mismatch in how it moved.
*Why does that suit feel empty?* he wondered as his fist came down.
The answer came a moment too late.
The suit snapped around him instead.
His eyes widened as he saw behind it, where Prince Mark was not inside the armor at all, but outside of it, holding some kind of device in his hand.
"This is the only choice I have," Prince Mark said to himself, then pressed and held the button.
The suit began to beep.
Samwell moved immediately, throwing a sound barrier around King Domine before he could tear the suit off. That sealed him in.
The suit exploded like a nuke.
The blast itself could not be heard and the heat could not be felt through the sound barrier, but that was exactly the point. The barrier contained every bit of the detonation around Domine, forcing the full force of the suit's destruction to collapse inward on him alone. All of it, the impact, the pressure, the heat, the violence of the blast, would hit him centered on his body and nowhere else.