Before Konrad could continue forward, before he could rise one more time to spit in the face of death, his body finally gave out.
His legs buckled, his torn muscles collapsing inward, and he fell to the crimson-smeared ground with a heavy, wet thud. All his blood was burning. The world spun.
He lay there, broken and defeated.
His plan… his desperate chance… his final defiance…
All of it fell apart, crumbling into the mud and blood, washing away with the falling rain.
The abomination approached slowly, its grotesque body moving with deliberate menace. Its hulking figure loomed over Konrad like an executioner's shadow, eclipsing what little light remained.
It raised one foot and, without hesitation, brought it down like a hammer onto Konrad's right knee.
CRACK.
The impact shattered the already weakened armor, crumpled steel like paper, and crushed the bones underneath with sickening finality.
Konrad screamed — a raw, animalistic sound ripped from deep inside his chest. His body arched from the agony, but there was nowhere to run, no way to retreat.
Before he could even process the pain, the second foot came down.
CRACK.
The left knee gave way, the same brutal devastation repeated. His legs were ruined. Useless. Mangled meat barely clinging to shattered bone.
The agony was blinding, all-consuming.
Still, the abomination wasn't finished.
It bent down, bringing its misshapen face level with Konrad's, its foul breath washing over him like a wave of decay.
Their gazes locked.
Konrad stared into its eyes — hollow, mad things swirling with ancient malice, insanity, and the endless torment of a will too stubborn to die.
He saw no pity there.
No mercy.
Only endless cruelty.
Yet somewhere, from the black abyss of his mind, Konrad's will flared once again. His soul raged even if his body betrayed him.
Without warning, his one good arm shot forward, claws flashing toward the abomination's neck in a final desperate strike.
There was a flash of motion.
The horror caught his wrist mid-thrust, its clawed fingers crushing down.
Konrad heard — felt — the bones in his arm shatter with a hideous crunch, the plates of his gauntlet buckling inward.
He gasped, a strangled cry escaping his lips.
The horror paused for a heartbeat, as if mocking him, then without warning struck again.
It grabbed his left arm — his only remaining limb — and pulverized it with a vicious twist.
Konrad howled as he felt his flesh tear, his nerves burn, his bones splinter like dry twigs.
Helpless, trembling, he could only watch as the abomination grabbed one of his broken claws — the obsidian talons he had once forged with his own soul, the weapons that had felled nightmares and tyrants alike.
The monster's black blood welled up where the razor-sharp talon bit into its palm.
It didn't care.
With slow, deliberate cruelty, it wrenched the talon from Konrad's gauntlet.
CRACK.
Konrad screamed again — a sound full of rage, helplessness, and agony — as he realized, with horrifying clarity, that the talons were connected directly to his nerves. He had never known… had never felt them rip from him like this before.
The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced. It went beyond the physical, lancing into his soul.
Then another talon was seized.
CRACK.
Another scream tore itself from Konrad's throat, raw and broken.
One after another, the abomination tore the talons from his mangled hands. Each time the same terrible crunch, the same soul-shattering agony.
By the time it was done, Konrad's hands were little more than ruined stumps, twitching weakly in the rain.
The horror finally released him.
Konrad slumped back into the shallow water, gasping like a dying fish.
His vision was blurry, the storm spinning overhead in wild arcs. The cursed rain fell harder, hammering against his broken body.
He could do nothing. He couldn't move. Couldn't lift his arms. Couldn't crawl.
All he could do was lie there, powerless, drowning in his own blood and failure.
Is this it?
Is this really how it ends?
He had fought so long. Struggled through every nightmare, every betrayal, every impossible trial. He had clawed his way up from nothing, from death and despair and darkness.
And now… like a broken doll, he would be discarded. Forgotten.
Tears of rage and helplessness welled in his black eyes, mixing with the rain.
He had failed.
He had failed them all.
The abomination moved again, dragging the enormous black cross — the crucifix of darkness — through the rising water. It raised the massive cross and slammed it into the ground with a booming impact.
The earth shook. The dark sea roared. Waves surged outward from the impact.
The crucifix towered into the sky like a monument of despair.
Konrad stared at it, hollowly. Some deep, primal part of him knew what was coming.
Still, when the monster bent down, seized his shattered body, and lifted him effortlessly onto its shoulder, he fought.
Weakly.
Futilely.
He kicked, he twisted, he thrashed like a dying animal.
It didn't matter.
He was no more than a rag doll in the horror's iron grip.
The abomination carried him to the black cross and, without ceremony, threw his battered form against it.
Konrad slumped, his broken body sagging against the slick, unnatural surface.
The horror worked methodically, cruelly.
It produced black iron nails from somewhere — twisted, jagged things — and began to crucify him.
Konrad howled as the first nail was driven through his ruined wrist, pinning him to the cross.
The second followed.
Then his ankles.
The cross drank his blood, dark rivulets running down its ancient wood.
Pinned and broken, Konrad sagged against the cross, his vision going dark at the edges. Every breath was a battle. Every heartbeat a miracle.
He had never felt so powerless.
So utterly defeated.
Frustration burned in his chest like a second sun. Rage, helplessness, agony — all mixed into a seething cauldron inside him.
He wanted to scream. To tear himself free. To rip the monster's throat out with his teeth.
But he couldn't.
All he could do was hang there, nailed to a cross of darkness, as the storm raged and the black sea swallowed the world.
Konrad's head sagged forward, his vision fading.
Yet somewhere, deep inside him, a tiny ember still burned.
Small.
Pathetic.
But alive.
He wasn't dead yet.
Not yet.
***
Konrad's hollow eyes, dim and glassy, stared across the rising black waters. Through the writhing mass of nightmare creatures and drowning the Sleepers, he caught a glimpse of something. A lone beacon, struggling against the tides of annihilation.
A radiant figure. A silver flame.
Changing Star.
Star… Star…
The word echoed in the void of Konrad's mind.
It struck something deep, something that still refused to die.
His broken heart clenched.
He understood.
He knew what he had to do.
It was the only way.
The only way left.
Meanwhile, before him, the abomination — that cursed revenant of ancient defiance — began to move in a grotesque, slow dance. Its twisted limbs cut through the air in a ritual both revolting and horrifying. Each movement bled with dark purpose.
Konrad could feel it: if that dance ended, if that wretched spear struck home, everything would be over.
He clenched his teeth, blood trickling from his lips.
Lightning crackled in his black eyes.
And then, with a voice broken by agony but steeled by defiance, he began to chant. The chant was the part of an ancient school sorcery.
The ancient tongue rolled from his cracked lips, a dead language long lost.
Intent — Smith.
Target — Sinner.
Star — Sirius.
Projection — Nameless Sun.
Power — ???
A foreign power shuddered awake inside his dying soul.
"Night Haunter!"
Konrad screamed with everything he had left, every shred of soul, every ounce of life.
Inside his soul sea, in the raging eye of the storm, one of his soul cores, the tyrant core — one painstakingly obtained through endless bloodshed and suffering — trembled and then shattered.
A flash of pure white lightning shot through the chaos, cutting a blinding arc across his spirit world.
The thunderbolt plunged downward, striking the depths of his soul sea like a judgment from the heaven— and then, it vanished without a trace.
Pain unlike anything Konrad had ever known ripped through him, cleaving flesh from soul, memory from existence. His body convulsed. His mind collapsed.
He felt hollow.
Empty.
Shattered.
His breathing slowed, each ragged gasp a desperate pull against oblivion.
---
Far above, in the storm-ravaged sky of the Forgotten Shore, the black clouds froze.
The endless down pour of rain stopped.
The wind stilled.
The boiling darkness parted like a curtain, and for a heartbeat, the grey sun that ruled over this cursed land was laid bare.
It blazed with a pale, wrathful fury.
And then, without warning, a pillar of light descended.
A lance of brilliance, pure and merciless, hurtled down like a god's blade.
It struck.
The abomination stood poised before the cross, its accursed spear extended, the tip a hair's breadth from Konrad's heart.
It did not falter.
It did not flinch.
The pillar of light engulfed it.
There was no explosion. No sound. Only a terrible, searing silence.
The light devoured it utterly in an instant.
When the pillar vanished, the storm clouds rushed back in, as if trying to erase what had just occurred. Darkness swallowed the world once more.
---
Konrad hung limply from the cross, barely conscious. His blood dripped into the black water below.
And then…
Splash.
A small sound, insignificant against the raging storm.
The cursed spear, once aimed at his heart, fell from nerveless fingers and splashed into the water at his feet.
It sank, vanishing beneath the surface without a trace.
Konrad's cracked lips twitched.
And then, another sound.
A sound that made his battered soul tremble with savage joy.
The voice of the Spell.
Cold. Indifferent. Cruel. Fair.
[You have Slain a Corrupted Devil, First Sinner.]
[You have received a memory.]
[You have unlocked your Aspect Legacy.]
[You have received an Aspect Legacy.]
It was real.
He had won. He had killed it.
Somehow, against all logic, he had survived.
The cross creaked ominously as Konrad sagged against it, the strength draining from his body completely now that the battle was over.
His vision blurred.
The rain fell harder.
The black water rose higher.
But in the distance, through the haze, the silver flame of Changing Star still burned.
And somewhere deep in his chest, through all the agony and ruin, the battered ember of his soul pulsed weakly — but alive.
He was still alive.
The death had not claimed him yet.
And neither would despair.