The golden resonance expanded like an exploding star, warping the inverted geometry of the void into an undulating ocean of sovereign light. For a fleeting second, the very fabric of the battlefield belonged to Rehan Kumar. The oppressive necrotic mist vanished, burned away down to the last trace of dark ether.
Yet, holding a Domain was an ordeal of catastrophic proportions.
Veins bulged along Rehan's neck and forehead like violently thrumming wires. His teeth ground together so hard that fresh blood welled between his gums. The Zenith Sovereign Domain was an incomplete art—a nascent manifestation of authority that his mortal vessel had not yet matured enough to sustain. The sheer structural recoil tore at his internal pathways, turning his lungs into furnaces of suffocating agony.
He couldn't crush the reality entirely. He couldn't shatter the ancient laws governing Morgath's terrifying soul.
All Rehan could do with this fleeting burst of supreme authority was redirect the inevitable.
"Be gone!" Rehan bellowed, channeling every drop of his unstable Domain's gravitational force into a single, focused vector against the black-iron shaft of the scythe.
CRACK-BOOM—!
The spatial shockwave repelled the weapon with astronomical momentum. The immutable Death Scythe was ripped clean out of Morgath's upper-left hand, spiraling across thousands of meters into the deep, turbulent abyss of the outer rift before vanishing into the dark dimensional drift.
The strain snapped. The golden domain flickered erratically and collapsed back into Rehan's chest with a violent, hollow gasp.
Rehan dropped to one knee, coughing up crimson blood onto the fractured stone, completely drained of the sudden burst.
Morgath didn't give him even a fraction of a heartbeat to breathe.
"Insolent brat!" Morgath roared, his four eyes ablaze with absolute fury.
The demon closed the gap with feral velocity. With three limbs remaining, Morgath didn't bother using intricate sorcery—he unleashed pure, unadulterated physical brutality. His massive lower fist drove like a battering ram into Rehan's solar plexus, lifting him completely off the ground before slamming him violently back-first onto the shattered bedrock.
CRASH!
The stone caved in. Rehan gasped for air, his vision swimming, only to see Morgath's towering four-armed silhouette standing directly above him, planting a massive clawed foot onto Rehan's chest to pin him to the earth.
Morgath leaned down, his elongated fangs dripping with dark saliva, his face mere inches from Rehan's battered features.
"An incomplete territory... a half-baked parlor trick you barely understand," Morgath hissed, his voice trembling with malicious condescension. "Did you think throwing my blade into the void would save your fragile, pathetic life?"
Rehan struggled beneath the crushing weight, his bare, bloodied hands clutching at Morgath's talon-like foot, trying desperately to pry the demon off. "A weapon you cannot hold... is no longer a threat..." Rehan wheezed, defiance still burning beneath the agony in his eyes.
Morgath burst into a cold, mocking laughter that rattled the floating ruins around them.
"Ignorant human. You understand nothing of the artifacts born from the primordial dark," Morgath sneered, his tone shifting into a chilling, ancient pride. "The Death Scythe is not an ordinary blade crafted by a mortal blacksmith. Centuries ago, when the first mortal empires dared to challenge the Nether Monarchs, that very scythe was forged from the distilled sorrow and crushed souls of seven fallen kingdoms. It drank the lifeforce of ten thousand soul-masters before it ever saw a battlefield. It is bound to my core by blood, oath, and the eternal laws of decay. It does not obey the physical world—it obeys me."
Morgath slowly raised his upper-left hand, opening his clawed palm toward the distant void.
"Return to your sovereign," Morgath commanded softly.
SHUUUUUU—!
From the pitch-black horizon of the rift, a dark beam of necrotic lightning tore through space. Defying all distance and inertia, the Death Scythe reappeared in a blink, locking firmly back into Morgath's waiting grasp with a deafening, metallic ring.
The soul-reaping aura flared instantly, casting an ominous black-green glow across Rehan's pinned, exhausted body.
Morgath raised the immutable blade, placing the freezing, razor-sharp edge directly against Rehan's bruised throat. His smile stretched into an abyss of pure cruelty.
"Look at you now, pinned beneath my heel, bleeding like a dying animal," Morgath whispered, his voice dropping into a venomous, absolute cadence. "Is this the pinnacle of your resistance? Is this your grand design, weak boy? You preached that the weak can overthrow the strong... yet in the end, reality remains unyielding. The strong conquer. The strong reap. And the weak... exist only to be crushed beneath our feet."