The first demon lunged, jaws wide, claws poised to shred him open.
Kairo's body moved before his mind did. His chains rattled, his fists clenched, and with a broken rhythm he drove his palm upward.
The strike pierced through the beast's throat. A gush of black blood sprayed across the sand as the creature collapsed at his feet.
The crowd erupted, shrieking with joy.
But Kairo swayed, his chest heaving. His arms trembled, his knees buckled. He fell to one hand, coughing blood into the sand. His crimson eyes dimmed.
"I'm… at my limit…" he muttered, voice shaking, body ready to collapse.
The demons closed in, ninety-eight shadows looming over him, their snarls vibrating the arena floor.
And then—
The world fell away.
Kairo's vision blurred, not from blood loss, but from memory. The sand dissolved into light, the arena into sky. He was falling again — falling from Heaven. Flames roared above him, golden light breaking against his skin, his body cast down like ash through the void.
He remembered.
The fire. The betrayal. The voices screaming his name. The reason he endured.
His goal.
His crimson eyes snapped open, burning brighter, silver threads in his hair pulsing like lightning. The rhythm of the Judgement Dance surged back through his body — not weak, not broken, but alive.
Step.
Pivot.
Strike.
Breath.
The next demon lunged — and Kairo was no longer there.
A flash of crimson.
He appeared behind it, his chains cracking across its spine. Bones shattered, the beast collapsing in a twitching heap. Another demon swung down with claws like spears, but Kairo spun, the Dance carrying his movement into a strike that split its jaw apart.
One. Two. Three.
He blurred again, a flash-step carrying him into the crowd of monsters. His fists cracked skulls, his chains coiled like serpents, his strikes flowing in rhythm.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
Nine demons fell, their bodies staining the sand black, their death cries drowned by the roar of the faceless crowd.
Kairo stood among the corpses, his chest heaving, his blood dripping into the dust. His body still burned, but his eyes were steady now, locked on the horde that remained.
Eighty-nine demons circled him.
And the Dance had only just begun.