Jay didn't chase.
He savored.
The second Mercy's death crystallized in the furnace of his chest, the ruins of the med-wing became the birthplace of something apocalyptic. A pillar of blue-white inferno punched into the night sky, so vicious it bleached the clouds bone-white and turned the city's emergency sirens into a choir of panic. The roar that ripped out of him wasn't rage anymore—it was ecstasy. A sound so deep and primal it cracked foundations for six blocks, flipped cars like toys, and sent thousands of people bolting from their homes with no idea why their souls were suddenly screaming at them to run.
He walked. Slowly. Deliberately. Each molten footprint hissed against the pavement like a promise.
Reaper flickered ahead, already phasing, already trying to become nothing. Pathetic.
Jay's clawed hand tore through the veil of shadow and yanked him back into the world so hard the street imploded beneath them. Reaper hit the ground with a wet crunch of shattering bone. His mask split down the middle. Shadows bled from the fractures like oil from a cracked engine.
Jay planted one burning knee on Reaper's chest and leaned in close, hollow sockets blazing like twin dying stars.
"You don't get to run."
The words came out as a low, rolling growl that vibrated the rebar in the broken buildings. Reaper thrashed, trying to phase again. Jay let him—just far enough to feel hope—then dragged him right back out, slamming him down harder. Again. And again. Each impact slower. More deliberate. Jay wanted him to feel the helplessness.
Inside the phase, the cold dark became Jay's torture chamber.
He buried both hands in Reaper's intangible throat and held him there, forcing the shadows to burn slow. While Reaper screamed, Jay let the memories flood him—his memories, the ones that made the fire inside him roar louder.
Angela's soft laugh in the lab at 3 a.m., her fingers brushing his flame without fear.
The way she'd pressed her palm to the seal and whispered, "Even devils can be soothed."
Her golden hair catching the monitor light while she hummed, completely unafraid of the monster sharing her space.
Jay forced every single second of it into Reaper's mind—not because the wraith cared, but because Jay did. Because making Reaper witness the light he'd snuffed out made the pain sweeter.
"Look what you took," Jay snarled, voice layered with centuries of grief. "Feel it."
He dragged Reaper back into the physical world and began the real work.
No quick kill. No mercy.
Jay punched a flaming fist through Reaper's chest—slow, twisting, grinding bone to powder—and left it there, letting the fire cook him from the inside while he watched the wraith's eye widen in dawning horror. Reaper tried to regenerate. Jay burned the new flesh away before it could finish forming. Over and over. Methodical. Cruel. Every time Reaper healed, Jay made it worse, flames licking deeper, tasting the soul beneath.
"She trusted me to protect her," Jay whispered, almost gentle, while his fire ate Reaper's lungs. Another memory flashed behind his sockets—Angela's hand in his, warm and steady. He crushed Reaper's windpipe just to hear the wet gurgle that followed. "And you turned her into meat."
Reaper clawed at him, nails scraping uselessly across living flame. His screams turned hoarse, broken, pathetic. Jay tilted his skull, savoring the sound like fine wine.
He ripped out Reaper's arm at the shoulder—slow enough for the wraith to feel every tendon snap—and set the stump on fire so it couldn't regenerate. Then the other arm. Then a leg. Each time Jay paused, crouching over the broken body, letting the city's distant screams and helicopter rotors fill the silence while he relived another memory.
Angela humming while she typed her notes.
The way her eyes lit up when the seal responded to her voice.
The last time she smiled at him before the world ended.
"You don't even remember her face, do you?" Jay asked, voice dropping to a lover's whisper as he knelt on Reaper's shattered ribs. "But I do. Every second."
He plunged both hands into Reaper's chest and seized the core—the twisted scrap of soul that had once been Gabriel Reyes. Jay didn't rip it out. He squeezed. Slow. Deliberate. Letting the fire seep in like acid, burning away layer after layer while Reaper convulsed and screamed and begged in a voice that no longer sounded human.
Jay leaned in until their faces were inches apart, flames dancing behind his empty sockets.
"This is for every breath she never got to take."
He twisted.
The soul ignited from the inside, white-hot and screaming. Reaper's body arched so violently his spine snapped in half. Fire poured from his eyes, his mouth, the gaping wounds across his torso. Jay held him there for a full minute, watching the legendary Reaper reduced to a twitching, whimpering thing that pissed itself in pure animal terror.
Only when the soul was nothing but a flickering ember did Jay close his fist.
It imploded in a silent blue supernova that lit the entire block like lightning. No corpse. No dramatic fade. Just dust on the wind and a perfect scorch mark shaped like a man, still glowing white-hot on the ruined street.
Jay rose slowly. The hurricane of flame around him settled into a low, hungry crackle. He tilted his skull back and let out one final, earth-shattering roar—pure, unfiltered vengeance given voice—that rolled across the skyline like the end of days.
The city answered with distant screams and the wail of sirens too afraid to come closer.
Jay exhaled steam, not breath. The fire quieted, but it never went out. It waited inside him, patient now. Sated.
For the moment.
He turned and walked deeper into the night, molten footprints glowing behind him like a trail of judgment no one would ever escape.
The monster wasn't finished.
He was only warming up.