The throne hall was falling apart.
Not just structurally—though yes, the floor had begun melting and one of the support columns was now screaming in Abyssal—but magically, cosmically, like reality itself was trying to escape the building.
At the center, the Demon Lord stood... no, floated, no longer walking but gliding, limbs stretched thin by power that was too much even for him. His once-pristine armor buckled outward in places, bulging where relic magic fought to escape. Heat bled from his skin in smoky pulses, curling through the air like the castle was exhaling its last.
His eyes—six of them, scattered and twitching—glared at us from different angles. No longer reading our movements, but anticipating futures that weren't even happening. His mouth stretched in a sneer that looked more like a fissure in a dying volcano.
"I gave this world meaning," he hissed, voice layering again in those hideous harmonies. "And you... are clowns."
Behind me, Lyra whispered, "Says the guy who crowned himself with a magic Beyblade."
I would've laughed if I hadn't been busy shielding my face from the heat rising off the throne like we'd opened a portal to a particularly angry furnace.
The relic at my waist trembled—pulsing like a warning flare, flaring in sympathy with the storm erupting from his chest. Whatever it was tethered to inside him was coming apart.
Velis was the first to act.
She jammed her staff into a cracked rune on the floor and barked a string of syllables I swear she made up on the spot. Glyphs ignited in a chain reaction—zigzagging toward the Demon Lord, wrapping him in a web of anti-casting fields.
He snarled and raised his hand.
The crown above his head spun faster.
A blast of energy shot toward her—
—but Iria intercepted, crashing through the beam with Edelbrecht glowing white-hot.
Her feet skidded across the floor. Her armor sizzled. But she held.
And then Silas emerged from the shadows behind the Demon Lord, holding something small, sharp, and very much non-magical.
He plunged the slime-coated dagger into the Demon Lord's lower back—right where one of the relics pulsed.
The monster shrieked.
The gauntlet spasmed. A flood of ambient energy turned in on itself, flashing red, white, then violet before detonating.
Chunks of the floor vanished. The ceiling warped. The throne shattered.
And suddenly, the Demon Lord wasn't floating anymore.
He was staggering.
Lyra didn't hesitate.
She flung a vial of luminous blue light—a homemade concoction of purifying potion, anti-curse powder, and just a little leftover mimosa fruit pulp for flavor.
It cracked against his shoulder and burst in a cloud of holy vapor. The relics buckled inward.
His breath caught.
That was all we needed.
"Now!" Velis shouted.
Iria leapt. Silas sprinted. Velis flung spell after spell to anchor space in place.
And I—Kaname Hitoshi, walking accident—charged behind them, clutching a relic that hadn't been fully explained since the second arc and a pink cat-shield that glowed brighter the more scared I got.
The Demon Lord raised his sword—what was left of it. Maledictor hissed through the air.
And then—
It bounced.
The edge clipped something stuck in the floor.
My sword.
The rusty, long-forgotten heirloom sword from the King of Men, wedged sideways at just the right angle.
He lost his footing.
He missed.
And Iria did not.
Her strike split his shoulder open to the core, slamming him back into the center of Velis's glyph array.
He fell to one knee.
The Heart in his chest pulsed once—
Then cracked.
The light pouring from him wasn't light anymore.
It was glitching magic. Broken color. Pieces of spellcode. Symbols that blinked in and out of reality like a dying system error.
The ground beneath him liquefied.
He looked up at me.
And the sneer was gone.
He was shaking.
Not with rage.
With fear.
"You don't understand," he whispered. "I had to be this. Someone had to be. I made them afraid. That was the point. That was the role."
The voices were gone. Just his voice now.
His hand reached out.
"I can undo it. I'll stop. I can... I'll take it all back. Please. Please."
There were tears in the corners of his eyes. Actual tears.
"I didn't mean to become this. I just—I just wanted to be remembered. Isn't that what heroes do? You'd understand. Wouldn't you?"
He looked at me—not like a villain.
Like a kid who realized the game was over and there was no respawn.
I stared at him.
I didn't say anything clever.
No last pun. No triumphant quote.
Just:
"You should've picked a better part."
And I dropped the relic into the cracked Heart of the Worldsplitter.
It pulsed.
Shrieked.
The castle flashed white.
The relics shattered.
The Demon Lord screamed—
And came apart.
Like smoke.
Like fiction.