Gluf's laughter rolled through the shattered arena like a funeral bell, low and merciless, grinding against Jack's raw nerves until they screamed for release.
Blood glistened on the villain's lip. He dragged the back of his hand across it slowly, painting a thick crimson smear across his cheek like war paint. His eyes—black pits lit by cruel starlight—locked onto Jack with the hunger of something that had always fed on despair and always would.
"You motherfucker," he whispered, voice soft as silk over broken glass. "You truly believe that little stick of steel and your desperate sparks can reach me?" A soft, mocking chuckle. "Stop pretending, boy. It only makes the breaking sweeter."
He stepped forward. The ground cracked beneath his boot like old bone. The air turned thick—hot with spilled blood, cold with the promise of more. Gluf's smile widened, splitting his face into something no longer human.
"And that trembling ghost behind you… your mother's last pathetic echo?"
He let the words hang, savoring Jack's flinch like fine wine.
Then, quietly: "Watch."
Gluf's laughter died as abruptly as a throat cut. Darkness gathered in his palm—a living void that drank the moonlight, the starlight, every faint hope left in the world.
"Star Crest—Soul Destroyer."
The beam tore forward, a howling lance of violet-black corruption that split the night itself. It struck her dead center.
Time slowed to a cruel crawl.
She looked down at the hole blooming through her chest, silver light bleeding out in thick, agonizing streams. Her mouth opened—no sound at first, only silent agony. Then the scream came: a sound no human throat could make, the raw unraveling of a soul. It clawed straight through Jack's skull and nested in his heart, a wound that would never close.
Her form convulsed. Ribbons of ethereal flesh peeled away, charring to ash before they could fall. Her fingers reached for him one last time—fingers that had bandaged his scraped knees, wiped his tears, held him when the world was too big—and turned to glowing cinders in the air.
The scent of lilies burned away into something acrid and final.
The last fragment of her face lingered. Her eyes locked on his. In them Jack saw everything: pride, forgiveness, unbearable love. Her lips shaped his name—no voice, only the silent plea: Live.
Then she shattered.
The pieces scattered like broken glass made of starlight, each shard shrieking as it burned out. The final spark winked into nothingness.
Silence crashed down, heavier than any scream.
Jack's sword fell from fingers that no longer felt like his own. He dropped to his knees in the cooling ash that had been his mother, palms scraping stone until skin tore and blood mixed with her remains. A sound tore out of him—something primal, wordless, the howl of a child who just watched the universe murder its last light. Tears scalded paths through the grime and ash on his face. His chest heaved, but no air reached his lungs. Something inside him broke clean in two and kept breaking.
Across the ruin, Steve watched the last wisp vanish.
The world narrowed to one crushing truth: they were going to die here.
But beneath the despair, something older rose—love twisted into fury, grief sharpened into a blade he would use to carve his own heart out if it would make the pain stop.
Not Jack. Not after this.
If this is the end, I'll drag that monster into the grave with us.
Steve closed his eyes. Drew one last breath that tasted of smoke, copper, and unbearable loss.
"Lightning Crest—Inhuman Boost."
The activation was apocalyptic.
Lightning detonated from his core in a blinding azure nova. Veins ruptured instantly along his arms and throat. Skin split along every old scar; blood poured hot down his chest. Bones groaned like timbers in a hurricane. His heart stuttered, lurched, then hammered at a pace that should have killed him already.
Agony consumed him—lightning threading every nerve until thought itself burned. Blood streamed from his eyes. Pink foam gathered at his lips.
But his mind ascended.
Time dilated. Jack's tears hung suspended like diamonds. Gluf's sneer froze halfway. Steve saw every detail: the throb of a vein in the villain's temple, the faint tremor in his hand, the flicker of arrogance about to become terror.
Two minutes. That was all his body had left.
He spent them like a prayer.
He moved.
To the others he was only a streak of living lightning carving molten scars across reality. He materialized inside Gluf's guard and struck.
The first blow shattered ribs into shards that punched through lung and heart. Gore exploded from Gluf's mouth, hot and thick across Steve's face.
The second—a rising elbow—obliterated the jaw. Teeth spun away in crimson arcs.
The third—a knee driven upward with meteoric force—ruptured organs in a wet, obscene burst. Gluf folded, vomiting steaming viscera onto the stone.
Every impact was intimate. Steve felt flesh yield, bone splinter, life spill hot across his fists. Electricity burrowed deep, flash-cooking muscle beneath charred skin.
Inside Steve, the backlash mounted. Muscles tore from bone. Blood frothed in his lungs. His vision strobed white with pain.
He did not stop.
He struck for the mother reduced to ash. For the boy on his knees, fingers clawing uselessly toward them both. For every light Gluf had ever extinguished.
The final second arrived like a death knell.
The lightning vanished with a thunderclap that shattered stone for yards around.
Steve collapsed.
He hit the ground hard enough to crack broken ribs again. Blood poured from his mouth in a continuous stream. His left arm lay twisted, muscle shredded to ribbons. His heartbeat faltered—skip, lurch, skip—teetering on the edge of silence.
Yet through sheer, stubborn will he lifted his head.
Twenty feet away, Gluf still stood—barely.
The villain swayed. One arm hung by wet ribbons of tendon. His chest gaped open, ribs splayed, organs glistening and ruined. Blood sheeted down his legs, pooling black beneath him. His face was unrecognizable—swollen, burned, split to the skull. One eye dangled from its socket, swaying with each ragged breath.
A wet gurgle rose in Gluf's throat and died into a choked rasp.
Smoke coiled between them, thick with the stench of charred meat and spilled entrails.
Steve's ruined lips parted. Blood cascaded over his chin as he forced the words out, voice cracked and barely human:
"Tell me… monster… Was it… enough?"
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating, broken only by the slow drip of blood on stone and Jack's ragged, animal breathing.
Steve lay crumpled in a spreading lake of his own blood. His chest barely rose—shallow, erratic hitches that could stop at any moment. Lightning scars crisscrossed his skin like black veins, still smoking faintly. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth with every weak exhale. His eyes stared at the shattered sky, pupils blown wide, the light in them a dying ember.
Jack crawled toward him on shredded palms, voice broken into nothing. "Steve… please… get up… don't leave me too…"
A faint, wet rattle escaped Steve. His fingers twitched once, desperately trying to reach back, but the arm lay limp and ruined. Life clung to him by a single fraying thread.
Then, from the smoke twenty feet away, came a sound.
A low, wet drag. Flesh on stone. Slow. Deliberate.
Gluf moved.
What was left of him rose inch by agonizing inch. Bone ground against bone. Charred muscle split further. Violet-black light flickered weakly in the wounds—cauterizing just enough to keep the monster upright. Not healing. Just refusing to die.
He took a step. The ground hissed as blood flash-boiled beneath his boot.
Another step.
Jack froze, fingers inches from Steve's face. His head snapped up. The plea died in his throat, replaced by a high, childlike whimper of pure terror.
Gluf kept coming. Slow. Inevitable.
When he was ten feet away, he stopped.
The remaining eye fixed on Jack's tear-streaked, ash-smeared face.
His lips—split to the teeth, half the jaw hanging crooked—parted.
The voice that emerged was barely air, yet it cut straight into Jack's soul like a scalpel.
"…Not… enough."
A pause. A wet inhale that rattled loose teeth.
"Boy."
Gluf's head tilted with a sickening pop of vertebrae. The dangling eye brushed his cheek, leaving a fresh red streak.
"Your mother screamed beautifully." The words were soft. Intimate. Loving, almost. "She begged me not to hurt you. Begged until her voice gave out."
Jack's entire body began to shake uncontrollably. A broken sob tore free—small, lost, the sound a child makes when he finally understands no one is coming to save him.
Gluf took one more step. Close enough now that Jack could smell the reek of his own lightning-cooked insides.
The monster's remaining hand lifted—fingers broken backward, nails torn off, yet still moving. It hovered over Jack's head like a mockery of blessing.
"Shall we see… if you scream prettier?"
Behind Jack, Steve's chest hitched violently. A wet, choking cough sprayed blood across the stone. His ruined fingers scraped weakly against the ground, inching toward Jack's leg—one last, desperate, dying command: Run. Fight. Live.
But Jack didn't move. Couldn't. The world had ended twice in one night, and there was nothing left inside him to fight with.
The hand descended.
In the final inch before contact, the violet-black light in Gluf's wounds flared brighter.
Not healing.