“Too easy. Didn’t expect your blood to be this pure. Compared to those useless Hydra folk, draining you equals draining their whole clan.”

The dagger drank his blood-mist like a thirsty leech, and the middle-aged man kept tormenting Nero. He even cast small sensory-boost spells, sharpening pain like salt on wounds.

Calm first, then control—Nero didn’t give him that satisfaction. Since clawing back his reason, he held the berserk bloodline on a short leash, slowing the bleed.

“Besides…”

Seeing that, the man didn’t hesitate. He stabbed Nero again. Suppressed blood roared out like a slit spring, red surging through torn banks.

“You think if you clamp down, I’ve got no way?”

“I doubt you’re walking out.”

His next thrust hung in the air. A shout detonated in the room like Thunder. Lances of deep-violet Thunder pierced the chamber, step by step driving him back.

Before he could plant his feet, a quiet frost crept under his boots. Winter shackled his ankles in ice. Black Arcane Power burst out, tar-dark and hungry, yet it did nothing against the deep-blue cold.

“Have you prepared yourself to die?”

Through a Thunder-rent hole, Senro and the others descended. Endless chill swelled, filling the room like a tide. Ice spears bloomed from nothing and skewered him before he could counter.

The cold unraveled into Runes, domineering glyphs wedging into the crimson array. Ice-blue filaments flared from the sigils in Senro’s hands, cocooning Nero in glacial silk.

Senro’s fingers closed on air. Threads hissed. The crimson array and the black Arcane Power peeled off Nero’s flesh. Even the broken tendril lodged inside him ripped out, root and all.

“No wonder they call you Lady Senro. Pity, though—my goal’s already met.”

Bound in ice, he still wore a placid smile. He even sheathed the dagger, as if the two before him weren’t enemies at all.

The moment the blade clicked home, more Thunder crashed down. This time the flood vanished mid-strike—snuffed the instant it sparked beside Duke Dion.

Thunder failed. Duke Dion lunged without a blink. His amethyst blade swelled in a breath—short becomes greatsword—then chopped for the man’s neck like a falling ridge.

“Duke Dion, you’re still not Lady Senro. Look—she hasn’t moved. What’s your hurry?”

He didn’t even flinch. The amethyst greatsword bit his throat, but the mighty arc lodged there, stuck in gristle and shadow, and went no deeper.

“An antimagic field?!”

Shock prickled. Duke Dion slammed a fist forward, only to feel it hit void. Black Arcane Power spilled from the neck wound, denser than cotton, and his punch sank into nothing.

“Don’t waste it on him, Duke Dion. I’ll handle this.”

Senro’s voice came cold, edge buried in snow. Duke blinked, wary for tricks, yanked the blade free, and fell back to their line. The man grinned as the sword slid out. Blood fanned into the air, then turned to feed the black Arcane Power, swelling it like storm-clouds.

“As expected—Lady Senro reads the field.”

He brushed his torn neck. The ragged maw sealed clean in a heartbeat, perfect as if time rewove flesh.

“Your trick isn’t an antimagic field, is it?”

Senro stepped ahead of the others. Her killing frost rose like a shield, colliding with the black Arcane Power, water and fire, winter against ink.

Within her cold, Duke Dion’s deep-violet Thunder answered again, orbiting him like hawks. But the Thunder now looked thin, a winter sun behind haze.

“Oh? I wouldn’t know…”

“No. Your power is not an antimagic field.”

She cut him off. Ice-blue flame kindled in her right pupil. The frost domain inverted in a breath, rolling over into fathomless dark.

The sudden dark didn’t writhe like his. It settled like a night sea—silent, grand. It felt less like a chamber, more like the Abyss itself.

Only the Abyss speaks that ancient loneliness, shrinking a person to a grain of dust.

He wasn’t the type to let someone chant to the end. Only story-drunk youths do that. He drove his black Arcane Power outward. Even frozen in place, he didn’t need fists to strike.

Then his eyes widened.

His twisted, black Arcane Power—once it left his side and tried to cross that dark—simply vanished. Senses cut. Gone like a spark drowned by midnight.

“Interesting. Worthy of a royal priest. With this alone, Lady Senro, you’d place among the Demon World’s Demigods.”

He pulled his power tight and quiet. Praise flowed, but his bloodshot eyes held no feeling, only a muddy, twisted calm that refused to ripple.

In this suffocating dark, his gaze stayed the same—murk and warp, like oil on stagnant water. Meet it, and all you find is disgust—or infection.

“All dims; only the stars endure.”

Senro ignored him. She whispered, voice like a hymn. Ice-blue flame left her pupil and drifted into the dark depths like a lantern fish.

Time warped. A heartbeat stretched to a long winter, then snapped. Light erupted in a festival.

The ice-blue flame burst like a god-spark, shattering into a thousand motes. The motes flew, found their places, and set like nails in the black.

Senro stood ringed by that scatter of lights, a morning star in endless night. At her brow, a deep-blue pupil Rune opened, alive, and fixed on the man.

“Let there be light.”

Radiance poured. The boundless, crushing quiet fled like mist in dawn. Only then did they understand what this dark was.

It was the unbounded sky. It was the eternal unknown.

Abyss warlocks bleed the altar for power. Eastern shrine maidens dance for peace. Priests of the Demon World look through the Star Pupil, and read tomorrow.

Call it what you will, pray how you like. They all reach for the same thing—the sky over their heads. Or the gods that sky means.

“You won’t talk? Then let the Star Pupil look.”

Starfire became spears, and under the Rune’s gaze they dove for his soul. No ward held. His walls tore like paper in rain.

Black Arcane Power sensed the knife and met the charge. Even the blood-filthy dagger surfaced, a talisman in the mind. The rush of starlight slowed, and the two forces locked within him.

It didn’t last long. But Senro bled first. She spat scarlet, and the constellations dimmed, falling back to orbit her. With them came something torn free—a mottled, mixing black shadow.

It crawled like a live thing, yet wasn’t any thing. A chimera of a thousand lives, but lacking the very bones of life.

Duke Dion sent out a thread of sense to probe that unnameable clump on the floor. Pain tightened his brow at once. A vein stood at his temple like a drawn bow.

Cold surged from Senro, clean as polar air. His eyes cleared. The vein smoothed. The frost steadied his mind like a hand on the back.

“I see… You turned yourself into a Plague of Beasts.”

Senro’s gaze cut, ice-hard, as the man’s body steadied again. Through deep-blue pupil and blazing stars, her picture wasn’t complete—but close enough.

“Huh? Plague of what? Didn’t catch that.”

He cupped an ear like a doddering uncle, brow puckered, playing at confusion.

“Mortals who snatch god’s authority always burn themselves first. And you…”

She paused. Her eyes were glacier. Her breath was winter.

“…are just dry tinder on the verge of catching.”

“Beautifully said. Truly. If I said I’m moved to tears, would you believe me?”

He clapped hard, laughing broad and alone, as if she were a soulmate who understood him to the marrow.

“What a shame…”

The black, unnameable mass suddenly billowed a great fog, night-tide swelling. It swallowed the man bound in ice in a single breath.

“You can’t stop me.”