Kyron's teeth ground together at the Smiler's words. The creature's mockery scraped at something raw inside him — not because it hated, but because it treated death like sport. His hands tightened on the hilt until the leather creaked.
Anger rose like a furnace. He didn't think. He moved.
"Anger Emotion: Bird Style—" he barked.
"Bird Dash!"
The world narrowed. Flame coalesced around him, shaping into the silhouette of a bird whose wings beat the air into heat. For a moment Kyron felt like he rode inside living fire — a bright, burning shell that consumed space and time.
He slammed into the crystal clone with a hurricane of heat. The Smiler's body smoked and sizzled as the flames licked at its facets; colorful light fractured into dull sparks. Kyron's blade sang through the air, trailing incandescent feathers with each swing.
"So your crystal clone body isn't as durable?" he taunted between strikes.
The Smiler's painted smile did not falter; its eyes glinted with something colder. "You will see how effective it is when it pierces your flesh." Even its hate wore a half-smile — the old, corrupt grin of The Smile.
Before Kyron could react, one of the Smiler's hands sprouted crystalline blades and slammed forward like a wolf's maw. It lunged with predatory speed; Kyron pivoted and, with a single clean motion, severed the blade-arm. Crystal exploded like glass in a thunder of color.
"Your fake body shatters easy," Kyron said, breathless and laughing with the small, sharp joy of battle.
Glass fragments tinkled to the cavern floor — and then two more voices called at once, coming in from left and right as if the cave itself echoed their own cruelty.
"Is that so?" the voices said together, the words overlapping. Two new clones materialized, each formed from the same prismatic seams as the first. They moved in perfect synchrony, a mirrored mockery of the one Kyron had just cut down.
Kyron's grin faltered for the briefest second. Multiple clones. That explained the deaths. That explained the trap.
"Make no mistake," the nearer clone said, almost kindly. "We can be many places at once. You cannot stop us forever."
Kyron felt the heat of his anger spike again. He drove forward.
"Anger Emotion: Bird Style—"
"Flame Rush!"
He became motion. Fire blurred his edges; his blade a comet. He struck toward one clone with everything he had.
This time they were ready. One clone slammed up a crystalline wall that erupted from the ground, blocking the path of the rush. The other took advantage of Kyron's committed motion and delivered a savage blow that sent him careening off-balance. He hit the cavern wall hard, pain cracking through his ribcage.
"See?" the Smiler sneered as Kyron staggered. "We wear you down. We break you."
Then came the shards — a storm of slivered crystal hurled in a deadly spray. They shredded through the air, each edge catching the torchlight and singing. Kyron tried to parry, to twist, to move, but the barrage found places his guard could not protect. Flesh tore. Ribbons of blood arced through the cave light.
He tasted iron. He tasted heat. He tasted the old familiar sting of being mortal.
"It hurts," he admitted, voice rough, but his eyes still held steel. "It hurts a lot… but I can still fight."
Hands shaking, Kyron dug into his pocket and brought out the small bottle he'd been saving — a vial of holy water glowing faintly like a sliver of dawn. He upended it and swallowed the whole thing in one sharp pull.
For a second the flavor was nothing like he expected: not brine nor bitter herb, but a strange clarity. He felt purity run down his throat — cool, bright, like sunlight in liquid form.
"It tastes like… purity," he murmured, lips curving despite the pain. "Like divinity bottled as water."
Around him, the Smiler clones watched. Confusion flickered across their crystalline visages as Kyron's wounds began to knit. The golden light started small—an ember under his skin—then swelled like a sunrise breaking the horizon.
Where red, furious flame had burned moments ago, a soft golden radiance now unfurled. His katana's edge shifted from angry red to warm, living gold; the heat in the air changed tone from scorch to hum. Kyron drew breath. The pain dulled, not erased but transmuted into something else — a weightlessness, a calm that filled every hollow space in his chest.
"What is this feeling…?" he whispered to himself, astonished. "Am I supposed to be dying? Why does it feel… like peace? Like time has slowed just for me."
The Smilers exchanged looks — a mirrored, crystalline bewilderment. They had expected screams, or rage, or the flailing panic of a dying hunter. Instead, Kyron's expression softened. He smiled—not the empty curl The Smile wore, but a real, steady smile that touched his eyes and didn't look away.
The clones prepared another volley. They poured power into the attack and threw it with all the malice they could gather. Jagged shards screamed toward Kyron.
They hit air.
For an instant it looked like Kyron had stepped aside with impossible speed. But that wasn't it. The shards passed through a place in space that was Kyron — and yet did not cut him. Time seemed to move around him in a different rhythm; the shards slowed, as if passing through water, as if his body occupied a narrower truth.
The clones whispered to each other, voices like glass on glass. "What… what is happening to him? We hit him—"
"He is not bleeding as we expected," the other answered. "He… does not feel us the way others do."
Kyron's voice rose, calm and clear, carrying to every shard-strewn corner of the cavern. It was not threatened, not furious — it was almost reverent.
"Between the lands of Heaven and Hell, I am the only honoured one."
The words hung there, heavy and bright. He smiled — truly smiled — and the canyon of light around him seemed to recoil in awe.
"And you," he said, turning slowly to the nearest clone, "are going to be honoured to die by me."
The tone was not a sneer. It was a benediction. The Smilers flinched, because they knew what that meant and they recognized the holiness in it for the first time.
Then Kyron advanced.
For a moment, silence reigned in the cavern — the kind of silence that hums louder than sound.
Kyron stood in the center of it, his golden aura spilling across the cracked crystal floor like liquid dawn. The Smiler clones, though born of corruption, felt something unfamiliar—something their cursed smiles could not mimic. Fear.
The two remaining clones exchanged a single look. Their expressions, usually frozen in perpetual grins, twisted — not with joy, but confusion.
"What is he saying?" one whispered, voice brittle like glass about to break.
"He's insane," hissed the other, its voice trembling. "He must've lost his mind from the pain. End him!"
They both spread their arms wide, summoning a storm of crystal shards that shimmered with deadly intent. Thousands of razor fragments whirled toward Kyron, shrieking through the air like a living hailstorm.
Kyron did not move.
The shards tore through the golden light — and passed harmlessly through him.
For a fraction of a second, it looked as if they had pierced him clean through… but when the light settled, Kyron still stood there, untouched, his eyes soft, his smile calm.
He raised his gaze, golden irises reflecting the clones' horrified faces.
"See?" he said quietly. "You're pathetic."
The words landed heavier than any blow.
The Smilers, bound by an existence of forced laughter, felt the weight of insult for the first time — and it terrified them.
"What… what even are you?" one clone asked, its voice quivering, its crystal skin vibrating with unease.
Kyron took a slow step forward. The light around him pulsed with each heartbeat — but his tone was not prideful. It was divine.
"I am the divine warrior," he said, "whose divinity stands above all."
His voice echoed like a hymn through the crystal caverns, and for a brief instant, the air itself bowed.
"You're nothing but a kid playing hero!" the second clone spat, shaking off its hesitation. It lunged forward, forming twin crystal blades from its forearms. The blades reflected Kyron's calm face in their mirrored surfaces — until his sword moved.
A flash of gold.
The air cracked.
The clone's head slid from its neck in utter silence before the body even realized it had been cut.
The shards that made its face disintegrated into dust midair, scattering like fragments of broken laughter.
Kyron exhaled slowly. "See? So pathetic." His tone carried no hatred — only pity. "One down."
The final clone screamed and charged blindly, desperation cracking its voice. Its arms morphed into jagged spikes as it drove forward.
Kyron raised his katana, golden light swirling down its edge like molten sunlight.
"True Happiness: Human Style…" he whispered.
Then he swung.
The blade passed through the clone like light through glass. The Smiler froze in place — and for the first time in its existence, the false grin faded. Its form glowed from within, turning into golden dust.
As it crumbled, it whispered faintly, almost peacefully.
"…warm…"
And then it was gone.
Kyron lowered his sword, watching the last specks vanish. The golden aura around him dimmed slightly, though it still shimmered faintly against the crystalline walls.
"It was too easy," he murmured, not out of arrogance, but quiet acceptance.
He turned his eyes toward the shattered corridor ahead, where faint echoes of battle still lingered — the direction Ali and Luca had gone. Without hesitation, he lifted his blade, sliced through the thick crystal blocking the path, and stepped into the glowing dust.
"Hold on," he said softly, his voice barely above a whisper, yet filled with warmth and determination.
"I'm coming."
The light followed him as he walked away — divine, silent, and serene.
[TO BE CONTINUED]