Memories tore through his mind like lightning after Jouki's venomous words.
Stella—small, trembling—hiding behind his legs when she was a child. The first time she cried, saying her power was a problem. That people feared her. That she didn't want to hurt anyone.
He remembered the night she almost destroyed the temple by accident... and locked herself away for days, crying.
Tenklyn, voice rough, promising she wasn't alone. That he would protect her.
He remembered finding her training in secret, gripping a wooden sword with focus and fire in her eyes. She wanted to improve. She wanted to be useful.
He remembered the request. The conversation with Mei Nuhay.
— Take care of her. Teach her. She's like you... too strong for the world to understand.
The embers within him fused with his emotions, and the Heart of Aether roared.
After all... he was Stella's older brother.
And then—he erupted.
Blue flames merged with blazing red. Cutting winds danced with fire like swords of light.
Kaze was thrown backward. Jouki staggered, blood dripping from slashes across her face. Even the ground trembled beneath Tenklyn's feet.
Hazau tried to intervene, but Aisha met him head-on with precision and grace. Her strikes were sharp, measured—and despite her enemy's treacherous nature, she held the upper hand.
Tenklyn, alone, pushed Kaze and Jouki to their limits.
A monster.
A living storm.
And then—
Ash began to fall from the sky.
Aisha froze. Tenklyn felt the heat vanish.
The petals of the Tree of Life... were disintegrating. Its luminous sap turned black.
— No... — Aisha whispered.
A laugh echoed across the battlefield.
Dr. Isha stood atop an altar of twisted, blackened roots, smiling.
— Project Zohan is complete. The Tree of Life—the one you fools worshipped—always guarded what even the Sifs feared to destroy. The soul of the greatest among us.
Tenklyn's eyes widened. He could feel it.
An ancient presence. Malignant. Unnatural.
Not spiritual—but its opposite. Demonic. Crimson. Suffocating.
He remembered the old texts. The stories of the War of the Three Lines.
An inhuman warrior.
A monarch of chaos.
A being who wielded energy that corrupted soul, matter, and reality itself.
— This... can't be...
— For centuries, — Isha said, voice dripping with reverence — his scattered essence was collected. His ideas preserved. Even dead, he ruled beneath the world's surface.
Tenklyn tried to speak, throat dry.
— Dan...
But Isha interrupted.
— Dante. Our king has returned.
The altar exploded.
From its core—engulfed in black fire and smoke—a figure rose.
Dan... no. Something inside him.
Crimson eyes flickered open. His aura pulsed in violent waves.
He looked dazed... then smiled.
— Heh. So... it worked after all.
The world fell silent. No wind. No sound. Just dread.
The Crimson King had returned.
His aura was unstable, yet too powerful for the physical plane to contain. Even incomplete, his presence shattered the laws of nature.
He lifted his gaze and met Tenklyn's eyes.
— You... are strong. Let's see... how much.
Dante lunged forward, blindingly fast.
Tenklyn—now a living flame—met him head-on.
The earth cracked beneath them. The pulse of Aether surged in his chest.
And when their blows collided... the world collapsed around them.
Flame and shadow.
Shockwaves that bent the air.
The battlefield split open. The forest vaporized.
Lightning of fire. Fists that carved craters.
The clash between Tenklyn and Dante wasn't a battle—it was the collision of eras.
While Aisha defended the rear, holding off Hazau and the others, Tenklyn roared—and Dante smiled, as if reunited with an old friend of destruction.
The true war... had only begun.
Tenklyn shuddered as the unnatural aura slammed against him. It wasn't mere corrupted spirit energy—it was older, heavier, as if the world itself held its breath. His eyes widened. He knew this sensation. He'd read about it.
In the secret histories of the Sifs—records hidden even from the highest masters—there was mention of a warrior who should never have existed. A being who walked among the living as an abyss wearing flesh.
He wielded not energy opposed to the spiritual current, but one that destroyed it—a demonic crimson force that dissolved spirits, corrupted souls, and warped all it touched.
This man had led armies. Conquered kingdoms.
Forged pacts with the unnameable.
For decades, his name was synonymous with the end.
Until the Great War stopped him... or so they believed.
Now, standing before Tenklyn, was no longer a student.
No longer a boy.
But the demon himself.
---
Below, amid the ruins, Aisha stood firm. Her hands gripped her spear as she looked upward.
The sky—fractured and ashen—seemed to mourn in silence.
The air was heavy.
The energy above was wrong. Inverted. Profane.
"Dante..." she thought, swallowing hard. "So it's true... the Crimson King has returned."
But something didn't fit.
The dying Tree, the falling ash, the twisting energy—it all pointed to something greater, a plan years in the making.
Her gaze swept across the battlefield... and then she saw Vernasha.
The woman, her face marred by glowing scars, knelt trembling, as if carrying a weight too vast for her body. Her chest bled from a jagged wound that spat faint sparks of light—something burning, something refusing to be sealed.
Aisha narrowed her eyes and approached slowly.
The wound's energy scorched the air... but it felt familiar. Fierce. Alive.
"This isn't ordinary energy... it's..."
Her spiritual sensitivity—sharpened by years beside Mei—caught the impossible.
Within that still-bleeding wound pulsed the echo of Mei Nuhay's soul.
Faint... but unyielding. Still there.
Aisha's heart pounded. Her eyes widened.
— You didn't kill her.
Her voice split the silence like restrained thunder.
Isha, Kaze, and Jouki froze mid-step.
Aisha turned toward them, her eyes blazing with conviction.
— You can lie to the world, but not to me. — She pointed at Vernasha. — That wound carries Mei's flame.
Vernasha staggered back, clutching the wound instinctively.
— Someone like you couldn't even lay a finger on her, — Aisha growled. — Mei's alive. And whatever you did to her... it won't last. She's coming back.
Black fire erupted before her—Jouki, rising again, eyes blazing with fury. The air reeked of burning ash as black structures grew and coiled around her like serpents of hate.
— Still deluding yourself, Sif? — her voice was cold, trembling with rage.
Kaze stepped beside her, blood on his lips but smiling like a butcher.
— You'll die here, Aisha. Like all the others. And you'll watch the world kneel.
Dr. Isha approached, calm as ever, his voice devoid of emotion.
— Tenklyn is facing Dante. Even if he endures... he's already lost. With Mei gone, the Sif army destroyed, and you as the last one standing... this war is over.
Aisha spun her spear into position, her eyes aflame.
— A war only ends when hope dies. And you haven't killed mine yet.
Her feet cracked the ground, spiritual pressure flooding the air.
— It doesn't matter if I'm the last. It doesn't matter if he's back. As long as I breathe... you don't win.
The three took their stances, surrounding her.
Three against one.
But Aisha didn't retreat.
She glanced one last time at Vernasha, who still knelt clutching her burning wound.
— She'll return. And when she does... everything you built will burn to ash.
And then—the battle began.
To be continued...