The cavern was quiet, except for the sound of their breathing.
Oni crouched low, sweat dripping off his jaw and sizzling on the warm stone, chest rising and falling in sharp, controlled gulps. His golden eyes cut through the dim light, feral and alert, but every muscle trembled with exhaustion.
Beside him, Rain leaned against the wall, sheathing his dual swords with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. They'd done it—they'd killed the Minotaur. Fourteen months of hell in Pangea, and this trial was finally behind them.
Rain spat a glob of blood and grit. "…I want a nap. A stupid, long, nothing-can-kill-me nap. Before the next homicidal freak shows up."
Oni's laugh was dry, humorless. "If the next one doesn't kill us, exhaustion will."
Rain slid down to sit against the wall. "Fine. I'll just… close my eyes for ten sec—"
The ground shook.
The sound was deep, rumbling—not like footsteps. Like the planet itself was warning them.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the stone beneath them, red light bleeding up from the seams like the earth was about to split open. Rain's tired grin faltered. "…That didn't sound like a nap."
The cracks widened into a perfect circle, ancient runes carving themselves into the stone, glowing with hungry, blood-red light.
Kazin's voice hissed in the back of their minds, distant and cold: "Some doors… do not wait to be knocked on."
Rain stood, swords half-raised. "Nope. No thank you. Not today. Close the door. Slam it. Board it up. Whatever this is, tell it we're—"
WHIP!
Spectral chains shot out of the glowing circle, snapping around his chest and legs like iron snakes.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Rain swung both swords, cutting two, but four more wrapped him, yanking him off his feet.
Oni's claws slashed out, shattering chains that lashed for him, but more kept coming, coiling around his throat and arms like steel pythons.
Rain flailed midair. "This is kidnapping! I didn't RSVP to Hell!"
The circle exploded downward, and the ground swallowed them whole.
Stone became liquid shadow, and they were dragged into the void, tumbling through a screaming vortex of magma rivers, writhing spectral faces, and the sound of grinding bone. The air burned in their lungs. It felt like being devoured alive by the earth.
Then—impact.
They hit jagged black stone hard enough to rattle their bones. Rain rolled, groaning, every inch of his body protesting. He blinked through the haze and froze.
The cavern was colossal, lit by rivers of slow, bubbling magma and the eerie glow of runes carved into bone piles the size of houses. The stench of sulfur and rotting flesh was so thick it coated the tongue.
And somewhere in the darkness… something breathed.
Deep. Slow. A predator that knew they were here.
Oni rose first, blood dripping from his temple, claws flexing. "We're not in the Minotaur's den anymore…"
"No shit," Rain muttered, wobbling to his feet. "Ten gold says this is where heroes die."
Then the roar came.
It was not a sound for mortal ears—a guttural, metallic, animalistic bellow that vibrated through their bones and made the magma ripple.
From the darkness, it emerged.
The Chimera Titan crawled from the shadow on four clawed limbs, each one the size of a tree trunk. Stone cracked under its weight. Its upper body rose into a four-armed Minotaur, the top two hands gripping abyss-forged cleavers, each longer than Rain was tall.
Cerberus heads jutted from its shoulders, magma drooling from their jaws.
A dragon skull split its chest, the ribs forming jagged armor, molten light flickering in its throat.
Its Manticore tail bristled with venomous spines as long as lances.
Nine spectral Hydra heads formed a writhing halo, hissing and dripping spectral venom that burned the stone where it fell.
Its molten eyes found them.
"You… are… mine…"
Rain's jaw slackened. "…I officially miss the Minotaur."
Oni's claws sparked with magic. "If we live through this, I'm eating that thing's heart."
"Not if it eats ours first!"
The Chimera Titan charged. The first charge was like a mountain moving.
Oni dove right, Rain rolled left, and the ground exploded under the Titan's cleaver swing, sending shards of bone and stone clattering into the magma.
Rain came up in a crouch, dual swords drawn. "Okay! New rule—no naps! Ever again!"
The Titan whipped its tail, a spine slicing through the air like a javelin. Rain barely caught it on his left blade, but the explosion still launched him into a boulder with a crunch.
"Ow. My everything," he groaned, dragging himself up.
Oni was already leaping, Werewolf Mark flaring as he slashed the Titan's forearm in a triple rake that left glowing, molten cuts.
The Titan barely flinched.
Then the dragon chest-mouth belched magma.
"MOVE!" Oni roared.
Rain vaulted off Oni's shoulder, flipping midair and activating Phantom Sigil. Three illusory Rains split off, all sprinting in different directions.
The Titan swatted one. The cleaver passed through smoke.
"Ha! Dumbass!" Rain yelled, landing in a crouch and carving a Wyrmfire arc along its ankle.
The left Cerberus head snapped at him, mouth glowing.
"Oh fu—"
Oni tackled him sideways, the fire blast vaporizing stone where Rain had just stood.
"You're welcome," Oni growled.
"Not the time for heroics, wolf-boy!"
They spent hours just dodging and countering, slowly learning its reach and rhythm. Every time they landed a hit, it was shallow.
By the time they crawled into a temporary hiding spot behind a stone arch, both were bleeding and panting.
Rain wheezed, "So… how long… you think this thing sleeps?"
Oni stared into the dark, where molten eyes still glowed. "…I don't think it does."
The first night in the cavern passed without sleep.
Not because they didn't try—sleep never came. The Titan never stopped moving.
Its footfalls echoed across the bone mountains, its Hydra heads hissing, its Manticore tail scraping stone, the stink of magma and blood hanging thick.
Rain and Oni huddled behind a cracked stalagmite, trembling with exhaustion and blood loss, their breaths uneven.
Rain whispered, voice hoarse, "I think… I'm starting to hate Kazin more than this thing."
Oni's eyes glowed faintly gold in the dark. "Good. Hate keeps you awake."
The Titan roared from somewhere in the cavern, the sound vibrating through their chests, and they were moving again.
The Titan didn't fight like a beast today.
It hunted.
Every time they thought they'd gotten distance, a Hydra head would slide from the shadows and sink spectral fangs into the stone, leaving trails of hissing venom.
Oni used Gargoyle Mark to anchor himself against cleaver strikes, stone plates forming across his skin as the impact sent spiderweb cracks across the cavern floor.
Rain Phantom-dashed from rock to rock, blades leaving trails of lightning and fire that sizzled in the sulfur-thick air.
Then the tail struck.
They didn't see it. They didn't hear it.
They just felt the impact—a blunt, wet crunch as a spine punched through Rain's shoulder, pinning him to the rock like a bug on a card.
He screamed, high and ragged.
Oni's roar was feral, and he tore the spine free, chunks of Rain's flesh clinging to it. He slapped a healing sigil over the wound with one hand while parrying a cleaver with the other.
Rain coughed through tears. "I—I'm fine! Totally fine! Oh god, I can taste copper—"
"Move!" Oni shoved him aside as magma breath turned their hiding place to molten slag.
Their world shrank to dodging, countering, bleeding, and cursing.
By the third day, dark humor was all they had left.
Rain's left arm was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Oni's thigh had two puncture wounds leaking black venom that smelled like rot.
The cavern floor was slick with blood and magma, bones crunching under their feet like snow.
When Oni ripped off a Cerberus head with a magic-boosted claw strike and threw it into the magma, Rain wheezed laughter.
"Hah! That's one! Eight more heads and we win a prize, right?"
The Titan answered by backhanding Rain into a bone wall so hard the air left his lungs with a wet croak.
Oni skidded next to him, half-laughing, half-coughing blood. "We… are going to die here."
Rain's smile was wide, cracked, and not entirely sane. "Then let's make it choke on us."
Their bodies stopped healing fast enough.
Oni's Hydra Mark kept him alive through venom and blood loss, but the burns were getting deep, muscle cooked in patches under his skin.
Rain's hands shook constantly; every parry sent lightning bolts of pain up his arms. His face was a mask of dry blood, sweat, and grit.
The Titan changed tactics.
It disappeared into the dark, only letting the glow of its eyes and the drip of magma betray its movements.
Then it toyed with them.
A spine pierced the ground next to Rain's head while he slept for half a second.
A Hydra head licked Oni's arm with spectral venom and withdrew, leaving skin bubbling and peeling.
The roars came from different directions, echoing wrong in the cavern, making them question reality.
Oni started growling under his breath, low and constant. Rain whispered to himself, muttering attack names and curse words in the same rhythm, like a prayer.
They stopped running.
There was nothing left to save energy for.
Oni unleashed Predator's Symphony, spinning in a storm of claws and spectral heads, tearing open the Titan's side in a spray of molten ichor and wet chunks of meat.
Rain screamed as he dual-slash vaulted, blades leaving arcs of radiant fire that cut a deep X across its chest, spraying gore in a rain that hissed on the magma.
The Titan howled, slamming a cleaver down.
The impact shattered Oni's left arm, bone snapping through the skin in a spray of blood. He didn't scream—he just bit down and kept swinging with his right, eyes wild and gleaming.
Rain staggered against him, giggling like a madman. "You're… missing an arm, buddy."
"You're… missing your mind," Oni snarled back, and they charged together.
The cavern was collapsing.
Magma swallowed bone piles, sending up clouds of boiling steam.
Stone bridges crumbled, leaving them trapped with the Titan on a shrinking island of rock.
Hydra heads bit chunks out of the stone, spitting poison that made the air itself burn to breathe.
Rain started laughing mid-fight, a wet, broken sound.
"I can't… feel my legs… but who needs legs?!"
Oni's voice cracked into a feral scream, blood streaming into his eyes. "FIGHT UNTIL IT DIES!"
On the seventh day, their bodies were ruined things.
Rain's armor was gone. His skin was a mosaic of burns and cuts, some deep enough to see bone through blood and char. Oni limped, one arm hanging useless, breathing like a wounded animal.
The Titan, even with missing heads and an arm, still towered—still hungry.
Then came the moment.
Rain moved too slow.
The remaining cleaver came in low and took him full in the chest, the sound a wet, crunching pop. He flew back, hit a rock, and rolled into the magma river.
Oni's scream was inhuman.
He leapt through fire, dragging Rain out, skin sizzling on contact. Rain's chest didn't rise. His eyes were glassy.
"No. No, no, no—Rain. Don't you fucking die on me!"
The Titan loomed, laughing, magma dripping from its chest-mouth.
Oni's hands shook as he ripped the Demon Priestess's Tear from his pouch. He pressed it into Rain's sternum, whispering: "Come back. I can't do this alone. Come the fuck back."
The Tear melted, dark light pulsing. Rain jerked upright, coughing blood, sucking in air like he'd been drowning.
"…Did… you just cry on me?" he croaked.
Oni bared his fangs, sobbing and snarling all at once. "Shut up… and help me kill this thing."
They became monsters. Oni howled, all seven marks flaring, wolf-shaped aura erupting around him as he ripped across the Titan's body, claws tearing flesh, bone, and spirit.
Rain leapt through the aura, dual swords blazing with Phantom, Wyrmfire, and Seraph sigils, cutting a cross of light through the Titan's chest.
Together, they stabbed its dragon heart and tore it open.
The Titan screamed like the world ending, its body convulsing, magma and gore exploding in a fountain of blood and fire.Then it collapsed into the river, and the cavern fell silent except for the crackle of dying magma. They lay there, laughing through blood and exhaustion, two lunatics who'd just crawled out of hell.
"Never… again…" Rain wheezed.
"Until… the next one," Oni muttered, and passed out.
But Pangea wasn't done with them yet.
The cavern was a graveyard of gods.
The Chimera Titan's body sprawled in molten ruin, its heads and limbs scattered across the stone like slaughtered myths. The air was thick with the stench of burnt flesh and boiling venom, every breath like swallowing smoke.
Oni crouched against a rock, claws twitching involuntarily, white hair clinging to his bloody face.
Rain lay sprawled next to him, dark blue hair streaked with dried blood, twin swords across his lap, his body trembling in the post-battle crash that came after seven days of living hell.
They didn't look ten.
Oni was a scarred wolf in human skin, his lean body etched by battle, golden eyes glowing in the dark. His movements carried that silent, predatory weight that came from fourteen months of survival.
Rain looked like a ghost of a soldier, wiry muscles cut with new scars, his smirk sharp even through exhaustion. His eyes were no longer a child's—they held the hard edge of someone who had died and come back.
Pangea didn't just test them. It stole their childhood.
Rain groaned, voice raw. "You know… if Kazin ever says 'this will be fun' again… I'm stabbing him in the face."
Oni grunted, leaning back against the rock. "…You can try. I'll help."
Then the air changed.
Not a sound. A pressure. The hairs on Oni's neck rose first, his wolf instincts howling submission.
Rain tensed, groaning. "…Oh, great. I know that feeling. Another thing that wants to kill us?"
Oni's eyes flicked to the far shadows. "…Not just another thing. Him."
The cavern rippled, and Raphata arrived.
The current Demon Lord. Apex predator of the demon world.
He stepped from the shadows like the darkness itself obeyed him, clad in celestial purple armor that breathed and shifted, as though his soul forged the metal with every step.
His obsidian skin was streaked with golden cracks, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat of molten power. White hair, long and weightless, flowed like smoke. Eyes like eclipses, black with burning crimson rings, cut the world apart just by looking.
The stone cracked silently beneath him, and the magma bowed, rippling toward him like water to the moon.
Rain whispered out of the corner of his mouth, "I think I just shit myself."
Oni didn't answer. He couldn't.
Raphata's voice rolled through the cavern like distant thunder.
"Fourteen months… and my little wolves live.
I sent boys into Pangea…
and what kneels before me now… are killers."
Rain rasped, "Kneeling's… optional, right?"
Oni elbowed him hard.
Raphata tilted his head, faintly amused.
"Do you know why your chests seize?
Why your spines crawl?"
Oni swallowed hard. "…Because of you."
"Because until now, I have been merciful.
I have been suppressing my aura.
What you feel now… is a fraction of my truth."
Then he let it out.
The world bent under him.
Air crushed their lungs, the ground cracked under their knees, and Oni's claws dug into stone just to stay upright. Rain's teeth chattered as blood trickled from his nose.
"Motherf—fff—uck this," Rain squeaked. "I quit. I'm going home. Someone call me a taxi through dimensions."
Raphata's smile widened, predatory and amused.
"Home… yes.
I smell the ticking of your clock.
Nine and a half months remain…
before you crawl back to Neifriet.
To your little schools… your soft beds.
Tell me, little wolves…
will middle school fear you… or break you?"
Rain coughed, half-laughing, half-sobbing. "I'm failing social studies just to feel human again."
Oni's eyes stayed locked, voice a low growl. "…If anyone touches me in the lunch line, they're losing a hand."
Raphata chuckled—a sound that shook the air.
Then he extended a hand, and a sphere of living darkness appeared, pulsing with his aura. It sank into their chests, heavy as lead, trying to crush their hearts into submission.
Rain trembled, muttering, "I… fuckin'… hate… this…"
Oni bared his teeth, every muscle trembling. "…We… endure…"
Raphata's grin sharpened.
"Then you might live long enough… to entertain me."
And in a blink of shadow and starlight, he was gone.
The cavern was silent again.
Rain flopped onto his back, wheezing. "…Seven days of hell… for the final boss to show up… just to flex."
Oni sank down beside him, finally letting his body go limp. "…Middle school's gonna feel like a vacation."
Rain barked a broken laugh. "…If we live that long."