Huff.
Huff.
Huff.
"Heavens! Why are you so persistent! Just die already! What's so good about life that has you clinging so desperately!"
His violet eyes gleamed with malice above a red-and-black hanfu, his voice smooth but threaded with quiet menace.
Wet and inky black hair clung to a weathered face dripping with perspiration.
He tried his best to hide his own fatigue, suppressing the roughness and cracks in his rhythm to sound effortlessly calm and commanding.
Away from him stood another man — half dead, half alive was the best way to describe him. He was draped in blood, his skin bearing a strange, pale, dying pallor. His black robe, which fell endlessly over his entire frame like living shadows, was tattered and soaked in crimson.
He strained as he leaned against his sword to respond to his opponent.
His voice emerged honeyed and melodious… smooth, too, despite his dying state.
"You coward. Even if I die, I will drag you with me."
An unsettling smile spread across the face of the violet-eyed man, with inky black hair.
"Hehe… of course you will, with the toxins that have been eating at your insides for the past three years, death is imminent, brother. And yes, I will gladly follow you. But at least you will die — killed by your own half-brother, the talentless one that was thrown into the vault of scraps to rot, the one whom you slaughtered everyone he treasured for fun. Quite interesting, isn't it?"
A slight frown tugged at the dying man's brows.
"What… do you mean?"
The low and smooth voice, sounded with the sharpness of a blade.
"What do I mean? Don't play with me Rhadomir, didn't you invite me here to kill me too?!"
Rhadomir's gaze lowered somberly for a moment.
"You knew…"
"Uh? Of course I knew. Since the very beginning I knew! Wait — did you actually think I didn't see through all of that? Your gracious gestures, inviting me to the main Clan, holding that grand banquet to celebrate my return from that wretched exile? Especially when our brothers and sisters have been dying in one intriguing way or another?"
He fell silent for a moment, staring with genuine surprise.
"Ah. Come on now, you couldn't be that dull. Did I overdo it?"
He scratched his head with a dejected expression.
"I'm very disappointed, I won't lie to you, brother. So you truly knew nothing."
His brother frowned, still struggling as his skin grew paler by the second.
"Know what, exactly?"
"That I helped you. Everything — right up to where you stand now — I helped you achieve. That brilliant idea you thought was your own? Your special advisor, may his humble soul rest in pieces, was my protégé. Though he had no idea, of course. I merely planted seeds in his mind and worked from the shadows. So yes, your genius plan to trigger the Black Lotus War was not entirely your idea."
He laughed eerily, the air falling green, silent, and cold the next second.
"Boy… I helped you slaughter your entire family. Father's death was the hardest of all — then the others came comparably easy. Your mother, first brother, first sister, third brother, second sister, third sister, fourth sister, fourth brother, fifth brother, seventh brother, eighth brother, fifth sister, ninth brother, and tenth brother. All of them. Every last one you plotted their death during the war, I was the one plotting for you, Rhadomir."
As the owner of the low voice let the name ring out, Rhadomir's eyes widened and trembled like leaves ravaged by a cold storm.
Pain twisted his features — as if the recounting of their deaths made him truly grasp the magnitude of the sin he had committed. He gritted his teeth and roared.
"Kage! You bastard! Rot in hell!"
He raised the thin sword he'd been leaning on and surged forward like a tide of liquid metal, the ground crumbling beneath his charge.
His target stood there, barely upright—he might not be bleeding much, but he was beaten and battered, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He chuckled.
"Look at you go. Didn't you want them dead to begin with? I simply made your pathetic attempts easier."
He raised his obsidian blade and blocked his half-brother's strike as it crashed down like a collapsing fortress. The entire ground groaned in protest.
He clenched his fist, trying to resist, but blood erupted from his mouth.
'Damn! Such savage power! I hate them all!'
The shockwave of the strike rippled so violently that it traveled through his muscles, shredding them from within, hitting the ground and tearing it apart in a spiderwebbed pattern of destruction.
"Aghhhhhh!"
Rhadomir poured more power into his ferocious cry and crushed his little brother completely. But the snake was quick — rolling away and tumbling across the ground just before the blow could prove fatal.
Rhadomir's sword hand now dangled uselessly, mangled from unleashing so much raw power. But the sword itself—that cursed thing — was oozing sinister black smoke, like the corrupted breath of a demon.
Kage, breathing hard, slowly rose to his feet. A subtle smile played across his bloodied face.
"Oh, that spirit of Iron and Storm — I felt it, Rhad, I felt it. I guess a silver-tongued traitor with a paper sheet for a sword is still the son of Ironstorm either way."
Rhadomir's eyes sharpened to slits, steel-grey orbs glowing like molten metal.
"And you, talentless bastard. Our father's greatest mistake."
Kage stood and casually placed his sword on his shoulder.
"Oh, shut your stinking mouth and just die."
Rhadomir sighed, his breath turning cold as the atmosphere around him shifted like gathering thunderclouds.
He shifted his stance and muttered, slowly:
"Storm Severance, Form Nine, Technique Eleven: Eternal Ironstorm."
Kage felt an icy, invisible touch crawl across his entire body.
Rhadomir moved again — he gripped his sword with both hands, ignoring the mangled state of his right hand. As he rushed forward, he charged with a tide of grey tempest that rolled and churned, shrouding his figure until he seemed like a literal storm of screaming metals towering before Kage.
The latter raised his sword and settled into his stance. He looked at the approaching storm with a forlorn expression.
As the hurricane of metal rolled toward him, his eyes glistened for just a moment.
"Mother, Taro, Shinro… let's have one hell of a reunion."
Then a crooked grin split his face, and the storm crashed down upon him.
The entire ground warped like the earth was breaking apart in a natural disaster.
The terrain was shredded by the whirling metals. The storm rolled forward like a ravenous beast, devouring everything in its path.
After those few moments of devastation, the pale walls of the clan that had stood like metal fortresses were torn apart savagely. The blue pagoda roofs bore deep, vicious grooves, and the entire landscape was scarred—perhaps even groaning with pain through the hesitant, stifled howling of the wind.
Opposite each other, the two warriors who had clashed knelt in the ruins. The black-haired boy with menacing purple eyes was drenched in lacerations and blood from head to toe—he had lost a limb, and blood pooled steadily at his feet.
The other, with long black hair and steel-grey eyes, also knelt, his face deathly pale, his eyes dark and hollow.
Silence stretched between them like a taut wire.
Then Rhadomir's melodious voice rang out, cracking and slow.
"I… I might have done despicable things… but I never killed your mother. You weren't even worth my attention…"
He managed a bitter chuckle.
"If only I had known… that should have been the first despicable act I committed."
He finished those words and his body fell lifelessly to the ground.
A small frown creased Kage's brow. He was too weak to react — he was dying.
But inside, he raged with a storm of indignation.
At first, he had thought it was his father who killed his mother, his only friend and protector. But after relentless investigation, every road led to Rhadomir, and he had believed it was Rhadomir.
Yet his vile elder brother had just denied it. Rhadomir might be a silver-tongued serpent, but he wouldn't tell such an obvious lie when death was already claiming him.
Something was wrong.
He had missed the real killer of his only family. How? What were the chances?
Kage, who had orchestrated this final battle as his own funeral pyre, found himself suddenly rattled by regret—and a desperate desire to live.
He wanted to grit his teeth but was too weak to manage even that.
He could feel his strength slowly seeping from his body, his consciousness fading like dying embers. He felt it all slipping through his fingers until he couldn't feel anything anymore.
Everything was consumed by peaceful darkness.
Then…
[Congratulations, you have died]
[All conditions have been met]
[Ritual]
[Death]
[Desire to Live]
[Opening Soulscape]
[Binding Sovereign god: The Iron Sword Divine…]
[Binding Sovereign god: Weaver of Sorrow...]
[Binding Sovereign god…]
[Binding Sovereign god…]
[Binding Sovereign god…]
[Twelve Sovereign gods Supremes have been added to the Soulscape]
[You can now return]