The metallic clang of the severed blade still rang in the dead air.
Blood seeped steadily through Rehan's shredded uniform, dripping from his chest onto the jagged hilt still gripped tightly in his white-knuckled fist. The cut was precise, burning with temporal venom that ate at the edges of his flesh, preventing his aura from immediately sealing the wound. Every breath felt like inhaling crushed glass.
Morgath didn't press his advantage immediately. He hovered slightly above the shattered bedrock, all four arms relaxed in a posture of complete, suffocating supremacy. The twin obsidian horns atop his head crackled with jagged green arcs, casting sickly shadows over his elongated, fanged maw.
"Silence?" Morgath murmured, his four eyes narrowing into slits of pure black void. "Where did all that blazing resolve go, boy? Where is the fire that claimed the weak could topple the strong?"
Rehan slowly lowered his head, his chest heaving. His fingers trembled against the broken guard.
"Look at this fragment of steel," Morgath scoffed, using the tip of his Death Scythe to flick the severed half of Rehan's sword across the ground. It skipped and clattered before coming to rest near the edge of the void. "This was your foundation. Your conduit. Without a vessel for your power, what are you? Just flesh, blood, and brittle bones."
The Death Wolf Weapon in Morgath's upper right hand growled, its beast-carved head leaking crimson mist as the demon closed the distance with a single, soundless glide.
"I have slaughtered worlds far older than yours," Morgath whispered, raising one of the venomous daggers. "I have watched legends beg for mercy in the exact same stance you hold right now. You are not special, Rehan. You are simply next."
The dagger blurred forward, aimed cleanly for Rehan's throat.
Clank!
Morgath's eyes widened by a fraction of a millimeter.
The thrust had stopped.
Rehan hadn't dodged. He hadn't raised the broken hilt.
His bare left hand was wrapped directly around the razor-sharp edge of the demonic dagger. Black corrosive ichor hissed violently as it bit into his palm, but not a single drop of red blood broke through the surface.
A dense, incandescent layer of pure golden light coated Rehan's skin—not floating around him like an aura, but compressed directly onto his flesh like a second skin of solid, molten armor.
"You talk too much for someone who claims to be absolute," Rehan said.
His voice wasn't shaking anymore. It was devoid of rage, stripped of doubt, and colder than the vacuum surrounding them.
Rehan slowly lifted his gaze. The gold in his irises was gone, replaced by a radiant, searing white that seemed to bore straight through Morgath's dark mantle.
"A sword is just shaped metal," Rehan whispered, his grip tightening until the demonic dagger began to scream under the immense structural pressure. "The power was never in the blade."
CRACK!
With a sickening snap, the serrated dagger shattered into pieces between Rehan's bare fingers.
Morgath's reaction was instantaneous. The Death Wolf polearm thrust forward with feral speed, while the massive Death Scythe carved a descending arc from above, intending to bisect Rehan and grind his core to dust.
Rehan didn't back down an inch.
He dropped the broken hilt. Both of his empty hands ignited with concentrated stellar energy that warped the spatial boundaries around his knuckles.
He stepped directly into the kill zone of the four-armed beast.
BOOM!
Rehan's left forearm deflected the shaft of the Death Scythe, the sheer force of the parry sending shockwaves rippling through the void's ceiling. In the exact same breath, his right fist drove upward with catastrophic momentum, catching the jaw of the Death Wolf weapon and shattering its beast-carved teeth in a spray of splintered dark iron.
Morgath recoiled, genuine shock rippling across his monstrous face for the first time since his transformation. "You dare—!"
"I told you," Rehan's voice cut through the thunder of colliding energy as he closed the remaining distance, his silhouette turning into a blinding streak of light. "The weak don't stay down."
His fist, coated in an unyielding sun-like brilliance, cocked back—aimed dead center at the core pulsing within the demon's chest.