Chapter 4

And then—everything shattered.

Not in the usual way of things breaking apart, but as if his soul had been ripped from his body and hurled into a bottomless abyss. Absolute silence. No sound. No light. No time.

And then—like a faint pulse—Ercolash opened his eyes.

His body was intact. No wounds. No blood. But there was something... new. A resonance rising from deep within his chest. A pulse that did not belong to a heart, but to a hunger clawing its way back from the void — a hunger to possess.

He stood, breath cold as frost, eyes trailing a figure that swept across space like a merciless wind: Alisa.

Each of her strikes tore through the air. No—tore through sound itself. Every movement sliced into the fabric of space. The naked eye could not follow. There was no time to react. Only the primal instinct to retreat in vain.

And then—the greed awoke.

It did not erupt. It did not scream. It simply bloomed quietly in Ercolash’s mind like a black flower—and he understood: the Evil God was laughing.

"Do you want it?" A faint voice whispered into his ear. "Then take it. Pay with your soul—with your point of no return."

And Ercolash—smiled.

His body began to change. Not through muscle or magic, but through something deeper — dark veins crawling from his bones, etching into his skin patterns like markings from the afterlife. And from somewhere unseen, he stole a part of her.

There was no sound. No flash. But Alisa stopped.

Her eyes widened. As if something essential had been stripped from her core. The hand that held her sword trembled. Not from fear—but from a primal unease.

"...You have..." she whispered.

And then—Ercolash moved.

He was no longer the same man cornered moments before. Now, he tore through the air alongside Alisa, keeping pace with the fading traces she left behind.

“No... Impossible—”

She tensed, her blade awakening, no longer restrained. Once again, she drew upon her strength—her speed, her endurance, her reflexes, just like before.

But—they were gone.

Alisa felt it. Clearly. The slashes that once split the battlefield now lacked their razor edge. The pressure that once crushed the space around her was no longer absolute.

And Ercolash—surpassed her.

He dodged every strike. Not by reflex, but as if he understood her—every step, every breath.

Her blade still found flesh, once, twice—guided by experience, by muscle memory born of war. But they began to slow. And then, they stopped.

For the first time in her life—every strike Alisa delivered was evaded completely.

She gasped. Cold sweat slid down her cheek. Her eyes remained frozen, but beneath that ice, a storm was forming.

"You... stole it."

Ercolash didn’t deny it. He simply smiled — a smile like a blade slicing through reason.

“You shouldn't exist,” Alisa growled.

“No, I shouldn’t,” he whispered. “But you… you gave me a reason to keep going.”

Ercolash raised his blackened sword, its edge glinting with a dark crimson light—like dried blood catching fire.

In that moment, the world fell silent again.

No gods. No salvation.

Only two cursed beings, standing in the realm of the dead, facing each other with powers bought by the price of their own souls.

And the world... burned.

Alisa’s figure stood solemn in the silence, and the air itself dared not stir. Her long silver hair was now swept back by a force unseen—not wind, but power, raw and divine. Slowly, deliberately, she raised her hand to the sky, and as her voice rang out—not loud, not screaming, but steady like the toll of judgment—the heavens themselves seemed to listen.

“By oath unbroken. By light unyielding. Let this body become the sword of the Last Order.”

A pulse. Then another.

The world trembled.

From her back, light burst forth—not soft, not gentle, but searing and radiant, as if the sun itself had been forced into mortal flesh. Silver and gold threads of divine will coiled into armor, wrapping her limbs, fusing into her bones, until her figure was no longer merely human, but something far beyond.

“Vow of the Knight.”
(The true name. Not just a title—an invocation etched into the fabric of eternity.)

Her eyes opened.

Ercolash, though still standing, felt every nerve in his body scream. He had seen monsters. Gods. Undead horrors crawling through the dirt with tongues of fire and blood. But this—this was something else.

This was justice made form.

And justice… had no sympathy for the damned.

Ercolash turned to run. Not out of fear—he had long forgotten what true fear tasted like—but out of survival instinct, cold and primal. His feet tore into the blackened soil, and within a heartbeat, he had covered a hundred meters.

But within less than a second, she was beside him.

He didn’t even hear the sound of movement. No whistle of wind, no vibration in the ground. Only the flash of her image—blurred like a mirage—and then her voice, so close it seemed to bloom inside his mind:

“You cannot run from an oath.”

And then—

The sword fell.

A crescent of divine light arced through the air. Where it passed, reality itself warped and tore, burned white-hot. Stone turned to vapor. Trees became ash. The very idea of shadow was ripped away by its purity.

The ground beneath their feet exploded into molten glass, the force of the heat peeling away layers of reality like burning pages in a sacred book. The slash had missed—but barely. If Ercolash had reacted a fraction of a breath slower, he would have ceased to exist.

Gasping, half-crippled from the air itself scalding his lungs, he rolled, staggered, leapt from ruin to ruin. Her strikes rained down—not wildly, but with the terrifying precision of a being that could calculate judgment itself.

Each swing was the execution of a god’s sentence.

And Ercolash, for all his stolen power, was but a heretic standing on stolen ground.

Blood trailed him. Not his own—not yet—but close.

He tried to activate Miren’s borrowed skills. The ones he had taken when her soul broke in his hands. Speed. Reflex. The blessing of fate.

But even they seemed... sluggish now. As if the world no longer wanted him to survive.

Then—pain. Sharp. Blinding.

A line of fire bloomed across his side. He turned. Alisa’s blade had grazed him—but that was enough. Not just flesh had been cut. Something deeper screamed. A part of his spirit was ripped, frayed like old silk. He could feel something missing—a memory, maybe. A name.

She was cutting not only the body—but the soul.

He stumbled. Vision flickered.

But then—

A glimmer.

Alisa paused. Her breath short. Her arm trembled.

Blood.

A line of red spilled down her neck. Thin. Almost invisible. But it was there.

Ercolash’s eye widened. Then narrowed. His heart did not leap with hope—but with calculation.

He had seen the truth.

“Vow of the Knight”—he had absorbed enough of Miren’s knowledge to grasp it now. A divine gift—but one bound by its own cost.

It bestowed armor no blade could pierce. A sword that could unmake the dead, the unholy, the lost.

But it came with an oath.

To protect.

To fight.

And if it failed—if the sword failed to fulfill its purpose, the pain of that failure would turn inward. The light, no longer given, would consume the vessel.

Each second that passed without her victory was turning her divine power into poison.

Ercolash didn’t attack.

He moved. He waited. He endured.

He led her in circles. Through ruins. Into shadows. Always staying just out of reach.

The world around them paid the price. Mountains fell. Forests vanished. Craters miles wide bloomed like black roses. But Ercolash remained.

Alisa’s breath grew heavier. Her strikes began to miss—not for lack of aim, but because her own limbs began to falter.

And then—

She roared.

Her voice shattered the silence like thunder from a cracked sky. She raised her blade, every ounce of remaining strength drawn into that final strike.

Light bled from her pores. Her armor screamed with divine pressure. The very clouds parted, exposing a hollow sky.

And then, the blade came down.

A circular slash.

Not an arc—a dome.

A horizon of annihilation.

The land around them split open. Mountain chains shattered into dust. Chasms a mile wide tore through the world. Light swept outward, burning everything that had a shape.

It was not a battle anymore.

It was judgment.

But fate—always cruel, always mocking—had one last act to play.

In the moment of the slash, as the world itself seemed to split, Ercolash fell.

Not from a wound. Not from despair.

From luck.

The ground beneath him cracked, and he plunged into darkness, a sinkhole born from the earlier destruction. The light of Alisa’s blade missed him by inches—no, less than inches. And the flames raced past, never touching him.

Silence returned. But it was not peace. It was the stunned hush of fate realizing it had missed its mark.

Above, Alisa stood amidst the ruin.

Breathing heavily.

Dripping with her own blood.

Her sword trembled in her hand, its light now faint. Her armor was cracking. And still—no body. No corpse. No ash.

Ercolash was gone.

But she had not won.

Not yet.

Beneath the shattered earth, where sacred ground had become a battlefield of light and shadow, a jagged fissure opened—an abyss born of devastation—and it became his final mercy. A crevice wide and deep, unplanned, unexpected, swallowed Ercolash whole, tearing him from the edge of Alisa's divine strike.

A moment. A breath. If the ground had not cracked, if he had not stumbled at that exact instant—he would have been ashes beneath the blade of light.

It wasn’t his power that saved him.

It was a lingering fragment of Miren—the last echo of the stolen blessing, the bending of fate. One final flare from the soul he consumed.

“Run, fool.”

Ercolash fell.

Swallowed by darkness.

His body slammed into jagged walls, tore through debris, each impact splitting skin and bone. Blood marked his descent, painting stone crimson. But he lived.

And when the fall ended—when silence took hold and stillness returned—he laughed.

Not in victory.

But in defiance of death.

His eyes lifted, searching through layers of fractured earth where dim light barely reached from the world above.

He stood. Trembled. Bled.

But walked.

He climbed.

Alisa knelt.

No more light.

No more flames.

Only a fragile figure amid ruin.

Her hand gripped her sword’s hilt, trembling. Her armor cracked, flaking like shattered glass. Each breath cut her lungs like broken blades. Blood trailed from her neck, her back, her chest—yet still, she endured.

He must be dead.

She told herself.

I struck true. I gave everything. No one could survive that...

And then—sound.

Footsteps.

No. No... it can’t be.

She looked up.

Ercolash.

He stepped through the dust like a phantom cloaked in blood. His robes tattered. His face painted in crimson. But his eyes—they still burned. Not with fury—but with depth. Like he had died a hundred times and returned, just to stand before her.

Alisa had nothing left. Her hand twitched toward her sword—but it no longer obeyed.

She knelt.

Breathing hard.

Eyes shut.

Finish it.

She didn’t beg.

She didn’t justify.

She simply... accepted.

But—

No blade fell.

No final strike.

Only... a hand, resting gently on her shoulder.

She opened her eyes.

Ercolash stood over her. Not in hate. Not in contempt.

But in—

Forgiveness.

“I once believed you cast me into hell,” he murmured, voice low as midnight. “But you were only part of it.”

She didn’t understand. Couldn’t.

“You sought to save this world... but it was never worth saving. You were just the sword of a false vow.”

He leaned closer.

His face near hers.

Gentle.

There was sorrow in his eyes.

“I forgive you.”

Alisa trembled.

The pain no longer came from wounds. But from a pride cracked wide open.

Why won’t you kill me?

But she couldn’t speak.

Only tears came—hot and quiet.

And then—he changed.

Not by his will.

A black mist—dense, chilling—unfurled from his spine, coiling around him like serpents. It wrapped his arms, his face, his heart. His eyes flickered red. Veins bulged with dark pulse, as if something monstrous was awakening within.

The Evil God—stirred.

“Kill her. Kill her. Kill her,” a voice hissed in his mind, thick as smoke, crawling into his thoughts.

His hand on her shoulder began to tighten.

Alisa froze.

But—

“No...”

He growled, head bowing low, body shaking from within.

“She’s... not yours...”

He yanked his hand back.

A blast of force exploded around him, shoving rubble in all directions. The Evil God screamed in his mind, a roar of hunger and wrath—but Ercolash was awake. Awake and still himself.

He turned away. No words.

And then—

He vanished.

Faster than the wind.

Only bloodstained soil remained—footsteps of a monster choosing retreat over losing its soul.

Alisa remained kneeling.

Stunned.

A part of her wished he had killed her.

But the rest—

Was grateful for what he didn’t do.

Wind swept through the ruins.

Cold.

She drew her cloak tight, eyes raised to a starless sky.

No light.

Only the silence of those who survive the storm.