Zis chuckled, his mouth twisting into a venomous, half-mocking smile as he surveyed Ace's wretched condition . "Tell me... why does silence cling so heavily to your lips? Is it because you are bound by these shackles, or have I truly bolted the gates of your small mouth shut?". He followed his words with a cold laugh that resonated like the sharp strike of blades against frozen ice. With a lethal chill, Zis unsheathed two golden twin swords—legendary blades that seemed as though they had never been touched by the mundane fires of Java's forges. The lights of death danced upon their polished surfaces in a seductive golden hue, a brilliance that enticed one with visions of blood and absolute destruction. Zis turned slowly, presenting his back to Ace, and began to pace with rhythmic, agonizingly slow steps that made the very atmosphere of the room tremble. He stopped abruptly, resting his powerful hands upon the hilts of his blades, and whispered in a gravelly, guttural tone: "They resemble your father's swords, do they not? It shall be your greatest honor to breathe your last at my hand... and it shall be your eternal shame to be slaughtered by the very steel of the father you failed".
Zis turned his head, revealing a meticulously groomed black beard, and cast a terrifying gaze so intense that his eyes seemed on the verge of leaping from their sockets in a fit of sheer madness . Suddenly, a mechanical arm extended from the chair with a nauseating metallic screech, fixing a pair of strange spectacles onto Ace's face. Ace remained completely immobilized, pinned like a pathetic insect caught in the web of a monstrous spider. Through those lenses, a rift in time tore open; Ace saw his parents being murdered once again, as if he had been physically dragged back to that cursed moment. He watched them fight that beast known as Ever with every ounce of their dying breath. Zis roared, his voice dripping with condescension and malice: "There is the killer! Kill him! Did you not promise your parents vengeance?" .
Ace watched the blood splatter in a horrific display, and while he remained trapped within the spiritual fortress his mother had woven around him, the killer drew closer to her in an infinite, agonizing loop . "I... I can't..." Ace whispered in a broken voice, only for Zis to reply with a thunderous growl: "Of course you can't... because you are weak!" . In a barbaric motion, Zis plunged the twin swords into Ace's feet, leaning his entire weight upon them until the blades pierced through the flesh of the eight-year-old child and erupted from the other side . Little Ace screamed a cry that tore through the very soul, a sound thick with pain and regret, sobbing as he asked: "Why are you doing this?"
"Kill him now! He is right there before you!" Zis screamed, his eyes igniting with a demonic red glow. "You swore war upon them, and now you are nothing but a mouse who dared to dream he was a wolf! Is all you are capable of crying and whimpering like a babe?" Ace watched the scene of his mother's blood vanishing into the earth repeat hundreds of times before his eyes. He looked to the ground, crushed by a suffocating sense of failure, pleading for a mercy that would not come .
But Zis was not finished. He reached into his pocket and produced a revolting insect with three legs and three pulsating sensory feelers, forcing it into Ace's mouth. The creature began its ascent up his throat, tearing through blood vessels and nerves on its path toward the brain, inflicting internal agony that made death seem like a distant, beautiful mercy . As Ace trembled and his sobs filled the chamber, Zis's booming voice rose again: "Terror and fear are traits that do not belong to a revenger! I shall strip them from you entirely. You are trivial, and I cannot fathom how you ever belonged to such a powerful lineage!". Ace's eyes bled a mixture of crimson and tears as the insect reached the doorways of his mind. In his final, gasping breath, as death itself knocked upon his door, he whispered with a tone that shook the foundations of the room: "I still have a debt... I have not paid it yet".