{Ding!}
{Critical Warning: Blood loss exceeding safe parameters}
{Warning: Continued exertion will result in—}
Akhil ignored every warning and brought the blade down.
The strike carried everything he had left—all the blood flowing from his wounds, all the essence he'd been rationing, all the desperate will that had kept him standing when he should have collapsed. It descended in an arc of pure crimson light that was less a sword strike and more a guillotine of solidified life force.
Najim tried one last time to phase, to escape into shadow, to become intangible—
The blade caught him across the chest, not quite center but close enough, carving through armor and flesh and whatever passed for bone in something that could become shadow. It didn't sever him completely—Najim was too durable for that, his nature as something other-than-human saving him from being split in two—but it opened a wound that sprayed that dark blood in a fountain across the platform.
