From the smoke, she stood again.
The God of Wrath—Desiree—smiled.
Not because she had won.
But because she still existed.
---
In a single motion, she grabbed Jhonathan by the neck.
The pressure alone collapsed the air around him.
Then she threw him.
He was launched through the battlefield, crashing across the edge of the ruined town, carving a trail through broken stone and burning debris.
But before he could recover—
a blade pierced her neck.
Dexcalibur.
Jhonathan's strike landed cleanly.
For a moment, even the battlefield seemed to hold its breath.
---
Desiree didn't fall.
She reached up slowly… and held the blade.
Her fingers closed around it.
Then—
it began to change.
Wood spread across it instantly.
Living wood.
Corrupted transformation.
Dexcalibur turned into something fragile, unnatural, and then—
she swung it.
The blade shattered into oblivion.
Not broken.
Erased.
---
The impact of Dexcalibur's sacrifice rippled outward.
A shockwave spread across the entire battlefield, destabilizing space itself.
And from that rupture—
something changed in Jhonathan.
The Undying Blade evolved.
Fully.
No longer unstable.
No longer fragmented.
It had reached its complete form.
---
Jhonathan moved.
His speed surpassed perception.
Every motion became unavoidable, every strike impossible to interrupt.
The battlefield bent around his movement.
Even attack prediction failed to register him properly.
He was no longer reacting.
He was arriving after decisions were already made.
---
Aizer abilities resonated within him.
Star-based powers awakened through consumption of divine fragments.
But beneath that—
something else manifested.
Not Aizer.
Not Eizeer.
Not Taizer.
Something older.
The God of Patience.
Time around Desiree slowed.
Not fully stopped—
but stretched.
Heavy.
Like the world was drowning in hesitation.
And Jhonathan moved through it freely.
---
One strike.
Final.
Clean.
Desiree's head was severed.
---
Silence.
---
But the Undying Blade cracked.
Then shattered.
Not from weakness—
but from completion.
Its role fulfilled.
Its form no longer stable.
It broke into countless fragments of fading light.
---
Something fell from her hand.
A star.
It hit the ground softly.
But it wasn't just a star.
It held memory.
Emotion.
A life once tied to her existence.
Aniel.
---
For the first time, Desiree's expression changed.
Not anger.
Not wrath.
But grief.
She had been protecting something the entire time.
Not the battlefield.
Not the godhood.
But what remained of the one she lost.
---
Her bark form cracked violently.
She tore it away from herself.
Layer by layer.
Until nothing remained of the tree god.
Only something human-shaped underneath.
Something broken.
Something real.
---
And then—
she changed again.
Final transformation.
Not a tree.
Not a god.
Not wrath.
---
Kargalgan. The Blade of Death.
The battlefield grew silent once more.
Because whatever stood now…
was no longer fighting to win.
It was fighting because it had nothing left to lose.