Soo Ah walked slowly back to where her friend's body lay. She knelt beside him again, more gently this time. Her hands found the crimson scarf still wrapped around what remained of his neck.
The fabric was soaked with blood. The silver threads were dark and cold.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry I wasn't fast enough."
Piers said nothing. He was staring at his hands—the hands that had failed to save his friend. That had watched helplessly as Noir was killed.
Minutes passed in silence.
Then Soo Ah noticed something.
The crimson scarf in her hands was warming up.
Not much. Just slightly. But definitely warming.
And the silver threads were beginning to glow.
Faintly at first. Then brighter.
"Piers," Soo Ah said quietly. "Look."
Piers raised his head, his empty eyes focusing on the scarf.
The glow intensified, spreading from the silver threads into the crimson fabric itself. The blood soaking the scarf began to evaporate, steam rising from the cloth.
The crimson light intensified, spreading through Noir's broken body.
Soo Ah gripped the scarf tighter, her heart hammering. "Piers, what's happening?"
"I don't know," Piers said, his voice hoarse. "I've never seen—"
A sound cut through the silence.
Not from Noir's body.
From the shadows.
Clicking. Scraping. Coordinated movement.
Piers' head snapped up, and his blood went cold.
Rippers.
But not the mindless, feral kind. These moved with purpose, emerging from different points simultaneously. Seven of them, spreading out to surround the two seers. Their movements were synchronized, tactical.
"The coordinated group," Piers said quietly. "The ones Shin Jin warned us about."
Soo Ah tried to stand, to raise her blessed axe, but her body wouldn't cooperate. Her ribs were broken. Her spiritual energy nearly depleted from fighting Rui. She'd used everything.
Piers was worse. He could barely hold himself upright after killing the evolved ripper and using his fire technique. His hands shook with exhaustion.
The coordinated rippers moved closer, sensing weakness. Easy prey.
One of them chittered—a signal—and the others responded in kind. They were communicating. Planning.
"Soo Ah," Piers said quietly. "I can't—"
"I know."
They'd survived the trap. Killed an evolved ripper and a professional assassin. And now they were going to die to a coordinated hunting pack because they had nothing left to give.
The rippers lunged as one.
Soo Ah raised her axe with trembling arms. Piers managed to create a thin barrier of ice. But it wouldn't be enough.
A ripper's claw reached for Soo Ah's throat—
Then stopped.
Every ripper in the basement froze simultaneously, their eyeless faces turning toward the same point.
Noir's corpse.
A sound was coming from it.
Wet. Organic.
The rippers backed away, their coordinated behavior breaking down into something that looked almost like fear.
Soo Ah's gaze dropped to Noir's body, and horror crawled up her spine.
His belly was moving.
Not breathing. Not the crimson light healing him.
Something was moving inside him.
His abdomen began to swell, the skin stretching impossibly tight. The fabric of his shredded crimson suit tore further as whatever was inside pushed outward.
"What the hell is happening?" Piers started.
Noir's belly burst open.
Blood and viscera sprayed across the concrete. Through the torn flesh, something emerged.
A hand.
Clawed. Gray.
The hand gripped the edges of the torn abdomen and pulled.
Something dragged itself out of Noir's body from the inside. An arm. A shoulder. A head emerging from the cavity like a grotesque birth.
The creature that pulled itself free was humanoid, but wrong in every way that mattered. It stood slowly, viscera sliding off its form, and even the rippers seemed to recoil.
It looked like Noir.
The same build. The same face—mostly. But the brown hair now had stark white streaks running through it like lightning. And on the left cheek, a black dragon marking coiled and seemed to move in the dim light.
The eyes opened.
Not green.
Red. Glowing crimson red with slit pupils that belonged to something reptilian.
The creature looked at its clawed hands. Flexed the fingers. Tested the weight of its limbs.
Then it noticed the rippers.
What happened next lasted three seconds.
The creature moved.
Not fast—impossibly fast. Faster than sight could track. One moment it stood over Noir's empty corpse. The next, it was in the center of the ripper pack.
Blood sprayed.
The first ripper was torn in half vertically, its two halves falling in opposite directions.
The second lost its head before it could even react.
The third, fourth, and fifth were dismembered simultaneously—arms, legs, torsos separated with surgical precision.
The sixth tried to run. Made it three steps before claws punched through its back and out its chest.
The seventh managed to chitter once—a warning that would never be heard—before its skull was crushed like paper.
Three seconds.
Seven coordinated rippers that had been about to kill two trained seers.
Reduced to scattered pieces.
The creature stood in the center of the carnage, not even breathing hard. Blood dripped from its claws—claws that had moved too fast to see, that had cut through spiritual corruption like it was nothing.
Then it turned to face Piers and Soo Ah.
Soo Ah's breath caught. Up close, the resemblance to Noir was undeniable—but so was the wrongness. The white streaks. The dragon tattoo that seemed alive. The red eyes that held no recognition, no humanity.
Just curiosity.
And hunger.
"Who..." Piers' voice was barely a whisper. "Who are you?"
The creature tilted its head, studying them with those inhuman eyes. When it spoke, the voice was Noir's but distorted. Layered with something deeper, older.
"I am simply... the End."
Soo Ah felt something drain from her body. Not blood. Not strength.
Spiritual energy.
It was being pulled out of her, siphoned by the creature's mere presence. Her blessed axe clattered to the ground as her arms went limp. Beside her, Piers collapsed to his hands and knees, gasping.
"The End of everything you know," the creature continued.
Soo Ah tried to move, tried to resist, but her body wouldn't respond. The spiritual energy that had sustained her through the fight was gone, pulled away like water down a drain.
She fell forward, barely catching herself. Piers was beside her, equally helpless.
They couldn't fight.
Couldn't run.
Couldn't even stand.
End took a step toward them, moving with the same fluid grace it had used to massacre the rippers. Predatory.
Perfect.
"I can feel it," End said conversationally, crouching down to be level with them. "Your fear. Your exhaustion. How easy it would be to simply..."
A clawed hand reached out, stopping inches from Soo Ah's throat. The same claws that had just torn through seven rippers in three seconds.
"...end you."