The Real Monster
Pressure first — sharp, wrong, felt in the back of the throat before anyone understood why.
Then the sound arrived.
ZINNGGG——
Too high for metal. The kind of pitch that cuts through everything and makes the body respond before the mind does. War Shadows mid-lunge went still. Lili's hand froze mid-reach. Welf stopped mid-step.
The crack came — two cuts reading as one, the echo bouncing back doubled.
The raised scythe hit the floor.
The one through Raska's shoulder was severed at the root.
The cleaver buried itself in the wall, and the resonance began — low, sustained, moving through stone, into the floor, and up through everything touching it. Lili's knees. Raska's palm flat against the stone. Bell's boots. The whole chamber humming from one embedded blade, still going, still going.
Nobody moved.
Every eye on the floor snapped toward the back.
Something had cut the air.
The boy was standing.
Nobody had seen him get up. Nobody had seen him throw it. Just — down, and then standing, empty hands, the cleaver in the wall behind it all, the resonance still moving through the stone like it hadn't decided to stop yet.
He moved.
Fast.
Faster than they had ever seen him move. Straight at the monster—straight at Raska—straight into the heart of the chaos. His kick cut the air, the beast recoiling just beyond reach.
And then—
The space broke open.
One stride. He dropped, hand closing around the severed scythe. Rising, obsidian weight in his grip.
Wrong balance.
Wrong length.
Wrong design.
A weapon carved for something that had never feared death.
His eyes never touched Raska.
Not once. Not even when her breath hitched, when blood streaked the floor beneath her.
They fixed on the Irregular. Unblinking. Unbroken. The kind of stare that stripped the room of everything else.
Raska's body sagged against the wall, pinned, trembling. He stepped past her as if she were shadow.
He turned, shoulders squaring. The air between them thickened, charged, as if the weapon itself demanded blood.
He moved again.
The first step landed harder than it should have, boot grinding against stone, body pitching forward before the rest of him caught up. The scythe dragged with him, sweeping low in a brutal arc, too wide and too heavy, its weight pulling him through the motion.
His left arm should have failed. The sleeve hung dark and wet, fabric torn where the blade had split it earlier. For a breath the arm lagged, useless—then it locked, and the swing carried through. Obsidian carved a black crescent across the chamber.
The Irregular stepped in. Not lunging, not retreating—just one heavy shift of weight, its own scythe rising to meet the blow.
The blades struck. Stone cracked beneath them, the chamber ringing with the impact. No crush, no press, no monster driving prey. Just a stop.
The Irregular held its ground, scythe braced, as if the calculation had shifted and it hadn't yet decided what to do with the reversal. Its stance ground deeper into stone.
And the boy, battered and bleeding, stood there with the stolen weapon trembling in his grip—exactly where he meant to be.
The clicking changed.
Not the rhythm it had carried since the seventh floor—steady, patient, reading. This was shorter, stuttering, the sound of a calculation running itself ragged. It searched for the signals it always found when collapse was near: pain responses, hesitation, the falter of bodies almost spent.
Nothing came back.
Not suppressed. Not fought through.
Nothing.
It was staring at something that moved like a living body but registered like nothing it had ever hunted.
The clicking faltered.
And for the first time since the fight began, the patience broke.
The Irregular came forward.
No patience. No reading. Just force — scythes driving down in sequences it hadn't used before, the calm calculation stripped away for something rawer.
The boy gave ground. One step. Two.
Then he stopped giving it.
The scythe came across — not redirection, not technique. Just weight and timing. Obsidian met obsidian with a hard crack. He rode the recoil, body turning with it, and his right foot snapped forward into the joint.
The Irregular staggered.
Not an adjustment.
A step back.
The first ground it had given to one person.
The first ground it had given to anything.
The Irregular screeched.
The war‑shadows on the floor stirred, breaking from the stillness that had held them since the boy's strike.
They slid toward Raska's side. Bell broke forward, blade flashing, cutting into them to hold the line. Steel rang, shadows scattered—then more turned toward the boy.
Bell shifted, ready to intercept—
But he was already moving.
The scythe tore through them as if they were nothing, bodies collapsing in black dust even as his other hand met the Irregular's strike. He fought both at once, shadows and monster, without breaking rhythm.
The ash drifted. Settled.
Bell's blade caught air. His strike landed where the boy had already finished the work.
The first time Bell hadn't been able to help. The first time his role had failed.
He froze, unable to react. His sword stayed raised — half a second too late.
Then he turned, caught the scythe pinning Raska against the wall. She looked at him once, jaw already locked, and gave him the smallest nod — and he pulled.
Her body seized. Every muscle locking at once, involuntary.
Her ears shot upright. Her tail erupted — fur standing rigid, puffed wide as a bottlebrush in one violent second.
"Slow, you dammit! It hurts!" she hissed through clenched teeth.
"Sorry!"
From the ledge, the fight below had stopped making sense.
The boy and the Irregular were moving too fast for Lili's eyes to hold onto. Their scythes met again and again in bursts of black motion and ringing stone, every clash sliding into the next before she could tell where one strike ended and another began.
Every time she thought she understood the pattern, it slipped away.
The monster should have been pressing.
It always did.
But, it wasn't anymore.
The monster was in a complete defensive state the entire time.
Its scythes stayed tight to its body, braced and catching the boy's swings instead of driving their own. The patient rhythm it had carried through the earlier floors was gone, replaced by abrupt blocks and short corrections—movements that looked almost like bluffs as it struggled to keep space that the boy refused to give it.
Lili leaned forward without realizing it, trying to follow.
Beside her, Welf spoke quietly.
"Lili."
"…"
"…Which one is the real monster?"
Her head turned toward him.
The question didn't make sense. Not at first. But the way he said it — quiet, certain, like he'd just understood something fundamental — pressed against her ribs like cold iron.
Welf didn't turn to look at her.
His eyes were fixed on the chamber below, as if he were carving the moment into memory.
Her gaze dropped, finding Bell.
He stood by the wall, both hands locked around the scythe that pinned Raska.
His arms strained, wrenching the weapon free from Raska's shoulder. As her body sagged from the wall, he caught her before she could fall, then stared at the scythe blade in his hands.
He flung it aside. His eyes fixed on it for a single beat.
Lili's gaze followed his, drawn by an instinctual pull, then shifted to the center of the chamber. The obsidian scythe remained in the boy's hands, still present.
Her throat tightened.
"…Welf."
"I see it."
Severed monster parts were supposed to vanish; everyone knew that. Yet, the scythe on the floor hadn't dissolved, nor had the one clutched in the boy's grip.
Below them, Bell steadied Raska against the wall, one hand already pressing against her wound. He looked up.
"Lili! Potion!"
Her eyes darted to Raska. Her impaled shoulder began to bleed freely now that the scythe that had pinned her was gone—the very object that had stemmed the flow. She had already lost too much blood. Her old wounds may have healed, but the lost blood was irrecoverable. She struggled to stand.
Lili's hands moved instantly, then froze. A chilling realization struck her.
How could Lili go down there while the horde…
"Let's get down." Welf's words snapped her back. "I don't think we'd be a burden down there anymore."
"...Ah?"
Her eyes followed the trajectory of his gaze.
The floor was empty. No shifting shadows. No movement where there should have been.
Two War Shadows flanked him from both sides.
The boy didn't even turn his head. The stolen blade swept once. One War Shadow split apart, dissolving before its halves could even touch the floor. His body pivoted with the follow-through, a roundhouse kick snapping across the second. Bone met the second one with a dull crack—and the monster erupted into ash mid-air.
The Irregular didn't miss its chance. It followed as the last War Shadows lunged in from opposite sides.
With a combination of brutal swings, he cut them down one by one, and the kicks he threw in kept the Irregular at bay.
Silence descended upon the chamber.
Lili gasped, a sound lost in the sudden, profound silence. Just like that, only the Irregular remained.
Welf stepped to the edge.
Lili's fingers closed around the potion vial.
There is no horde anymore.
She moved with him, but her gaze stayed on Raska. All the emotions that had been building until now surged through her, tightening into desperation.
---