The darkness spread like a living thing.
The battlefield that moments ago had been fire and ash dissolved into void, an endless expanse of shifting black. The air reeked of iron, damp and suffocating, as though Ren had been pulled into the belly of a dungeon.
At the center of it stood the figure of chains.
It towered over him—its body an amalgamation of broken links, twisted and knotted, reshaping with every breath. From its hollow mask glared a single eye of burning silver, unblinking, unmerciful. Each step it took rattled the void, its chains clinking in rhythms like a death march.
Ren stood with his fists clenched, his fire dim but unyielding. His body screamed with every movement—scorched skin, bleeding palms, lungs aching—but he refused to fall. The vow-thread pulsed faintly against his chest, weaker than before, yet still there, still burning with the voice that tethered him.
"Don't let it bind you, Ren…"
The words of the vow rang through him, fragile but enough.
