The air in the chamber had grown thick, a humid fog of iron and salt. The final hundred members of the Dark Saints were no longer a military unit; they were a cornered pack of animals, paralyzed by the sight of the three hundred corpses carpeting the floor. Kael stood in the center of the carnage, his chest rising and falling in a slow, murderous rhythm.
He didn't wait for them to find their courage. He lunged.
The Final Hundred
Kael's first strike caught a veteran mercenary in the throat. The man's plate-carrier did nothing to stop the kinetic force; Kael's palm strike crushed the windpipe against the vertebrae. As the man collapsed, Kael seized a heavy executioner's axe from a fallen guard, but instead of swinging it, he used the haft to parry a duo of spears. With a roar of raw physical power, he snapped the spearheads off with his bare hands and jammed the jagged wood into the thighs of his attackers.
The screams were constant now—a high-pitched, melodic backdrop to the rhythmic thud-crack of Kael's work.
He moved like a reaper. A mage tried to cast a desperate close-range blast, but Kael caught the man's head before the incantation could finish. He slammed the mage's skull into his own rising knee. The sound of the facial bones caving in was followed by a wet splash as the mage's brains were concussed against the back of his cranium.
Kael spun, his leg sweeping out in a low arc that shattered the shins of three men simultaneously. As they fell, he descended like a falling mountain. He broke arms that tried to ward him off. He shattered jaws that tried to bite. His hands were now a dark, dripping crimson, the blood of a hundred different lineages mixing under his fingernails. He was a machine of meat and momentum.
By the time the last ten remained, they were huddled against the far wall, weeping. Kael didn't offer mercy. He finished them with cold, surgical strikes—punches that pierced ribcages, and head-slams that cracked the very stone of the floor.
The Arrival
The heavy obsidian doors of the lair groaned and then exploded inward. Harold and his ten commanders stormed into the chamber, blades drawn, light-energy humming in anticipation of a grand battle.
They stopped dead.
The "Supreme Commander" and his elite stood in a silence so profound it was deafening. They weren't looking at an army. They were looking at a lake of blood. In the center stood Kael, the last of the hundred dying at his feet, his hands shaking not from fear, but from the sheer exertion of the slaughter.
"Kael?" Harold whispered, his voice trembling. He looked at the walls, which were painted red up to the ceiling. "What... what have you done?"
Kael didn't answer. He didn't even look at them. His brown eyes were locked on the obsidian throne at the end of the hall.
The Final Duel: Kael vs. Noelle
Noelle stood, his face a pale mask of horror. He drew his remaining strength, his one hand igniting with a desperate, chaotic fusion of fire and water.
"Stay back!" Noelle screamed, hurling a molten bolt at Kael.
Kael didn't dodge. He took the hit on his shoulder, the skin sizzling, but he kept walking. He was exhausted, his muscles screaming, but the Emperor State fueled his spite. Noelle lunged, using his superior reach and elemental experience. He landed a solid blow to Kael's ribs, sending the boy reeling. For a moment, it looked like Noelle's veteran instincts might prevail.
But then Kael caught Noelle's wrist.
The struggle lasted for three seconds. Three seconds of Noelle trying to pull away and Kael's grip tightening until the bones in Noelle's forearm began to grind against one another.
"You're not a god," Kael hissed, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "You're just a man who forgot how to bleed."
Kael's head snapped forward, a brutal headbutt that shattered Noelle's nose and sent him reeling. Kael didn't let go. He drove Noelle to the ground with a force that cracked the throne itself.
Kael straddled the man's chest and began to swing.
Left. Right. Left.
There was no "Emperor State" light now. There was only the wet, rhythmic sound of Kael's fists meeting Noelle's face.
Crack. Splat. Crack.
Harold rushed forward, realizing Kael wasn't stopping. "Kael! Enough! He's defeated! We need him for questioning!"
Kael didn't hear him. His fists were moving in a blur, driven by the memory of the arena, the memory of the orphans, and the memory of the cold water tube. Each strike was heavier than the last. He wasn't just hitting Noelle; he was pulverizing him.
By the time Harold reached him and physically hauled Kael back, it was too late.
The Supreme Commander looked down and felt his stomach turn. Where Noelle's head had been, there was only a steaming, red crater on the floor. From the neck down, the body of the Dark Saint was intact, but the head had been completely vaporized by the sheer, repetitive force of Kael's rage. There was nothing left but a jagged neck and a fine mist that coated the obsidian throne.
Kael stood there, his chest heaving, staring at the empty space where his enemy's life had once been.