In the heartbeat before the toxic lotuses could grind against his barrier, he vanished. He lunged in a high-speed blur, flanking the interior as the crimson radiance of the energy blade in his grip flared with blinding intensity.
[Shhh—FWOOOM!]
The flamus blade distended, its thermal edge expanding into a concentrated wave of heat that mirrored the wings of a phoenix. The lash of solar fire swept through the remaining Amberguards and the undead legion, who were still futilely charging his afterimage. The energy surge ballooned, engorging itself until it carpeted half the dome in a searing amber wash. For a singular, strobing instant, the world turned a violent orange-red before his silhouette flickered out of the blast zone.
It was a mirage of carnage. For a fraction of a second, the Jackblooms and Paprikabombs appeared untouched by the passing wing of fire.
Then, the chain reaction ignited.
[CRACK-BOOOM!]
A tectonic detonation ripped through the heart of the enclosure. The fire-lash had acted as a detonator, igniting the toxic lotuses in a catastrophic sequence. The fusion of flamus mageia and volatile poison catalysed, multiplying the explosive yield into a monstrous, surging force.
The resulting venomous blast was a cataclysmic upheaval, as if the very foundations of the Darkwood were being unmade. A wall of dense miasma scoured the earth, radiating from the epicentre with crushing atmospheric pressure. The air turned into a choking slurry of sulphur and raw demonic fel.
[THUMMMMMMMM!]
The world plummeted into a void of silence, punctuated only by a thunderclap like a Titan's heel crushing the earth. The briar-dome did not merely break; it erupted toward the heavens. The Darkwood buckled under the most violent tremor it had endured in a month. Massive, knotted vines were reduced to splinters and atomised dust in a heartbeat.
The roar of the explosion dragged on—a long, guttural scream of destruction. Everything within the radius was ground to ash. Neither the undead hunters nor the Raffbloom swarm could escape the ruinous reach of Princess Bloomy's ten lotuses. They were flung like chaff into the furnace of the chain reaction, their forms disintegrated by the very power of their Queen.
Even Princess Bloomy, at the very epicentre of the dome, could not withstand the cataclysm. She had failed to prepare a ward against the fusion of her own toxins and the magis's flamus lash; trapped within a furnace of her own making, she was consumed by the unrelenting roar of the detonations.
Ancient timbers were uprooted and torn asunder as if a venomous dragon were raking through the forest. Some were flung skyward, their roots clawing at the heavens under the sheer pressure of the energy wave. Seraph stood upon a high canopy, far removed from the blast. Within the radius where the dome once stood, no greenery remained. The landscape was a jagged void of scorched earth, choked by drifting miasma and a stifling, toxic haze.
The young man discarded the empty husks of his mana and healing potions, his expression carved from stone. His white-and-gold mageia cloak whipped violently in the turbulent wake of the pressure waves—gales that continued to scour the Darkwood for many minutes.
At last, the thunder subsided into a heavy, suffocating stillness. Within the magis's sight stood the ruined half-husk of Princess Bloomy. She remained upright in the centre of the slaughterhouse—mangled, charred, and teetering on the precipice of death. Not a single guardian remained to shield her. Not a single Raffbloom minion, once so suicidally loyal, was left to draw breath in her name.
Even the undead legion had been ground into nothingness, their corrupted souls shattered. There were no remains, no fragments of bone to return to the kin of the fallen. A wind of profound sorrow and desolation drifted over the Darkwood. The concentrated demonic fel began to dissipate, severed from its source, as the lingering wails of the damned faded into the distance.
Silence reclaimed the woods. The vast shroud of pulverised dust settled. A soft breeze began to clear the wreckage, and thick fog drifted lazily across the clearing. The golden light of a newborn dawn finally broke, offering a grim smile to the survivor and the victor once more.
Seraph felt no urge to rush the execution. He had already folded away his schemes, his tactics, and the remaining spells he had prepared. The war was over.
Amidst the ruin of a demon stripped of all might, the young man understood with cold clarity that the struggle had long since concluded. The hours of attrition had reached their zenith; his adversary was broken—a hollowed husk incapable of further defiance.
The flora-born magis of the Raffbloom, so recently birthed into this world, had never grasped the foundational precept of the craft.
'The first law of the magis: If thou cannot govern the tide of thy own mageia, thou must never, under any circumstance, unleash it.'
A soft breeze stirred. Pure, untainted air from beyond the Darkwood began to filter into the forest's heart—a desperate lungful for a landscape choked by the pollution of miasma. Only the slow, rhythmic pulse of natural force could mend such desecration, though none could say when that restoration would reach its end.
"…"
Seraph descended, drifting with ghostly grace to stand before Princess Bloomy. His white-and-gold mageia cloak billowed in the wind, his form as pristine as a saint in a cathedral. Yet, beneath that perfect exterior lay the shadow of a man who had skirted the precipice of death a thousand times over during the long hours of the slaughter.
"I... I merely wished to play... as any young girl might," Princess Bloomy murmured, her voice a frail, desolate rasp.
She gazed up at the man of a different race. It was a peculiar thing; though she had butchered nearly ten thousand of his kith and kin, the youth before her betrayed no flicker of the expected vengeance.
"Perhaps... perhaps I have erred in some way," she continued, her head bowing under the weight of her own fading existence.
Her form finally buckled. She collapsed to her knees before him, unable to sustain the defiance of standing. At her towering height of three metres, this final submission brought them eye-to-eye at last.
"You sought my slaughter; I sought your ruin. The victor pens the chronicle, and there is nothing more to it," Seraph stated, his voice a glacial monotone.
"Do you always converse with girls with such a wretched lack of grace?" Princess Bloomy tilted her head, her query a mere thread of sound.
Her voice thinned, fraying into the silence as her life-force bled into the ether. A torrential cascade of Origin Light Dust began to drift toward the young man—a dense, luminous inheritance passing the torch of hope to the one who remained.
"I know not. I have never harboured an interest in parleying with demons, nor has any demon ever deigned to speak with me—your kind is a malignancy. I will eradicate every last one of you without a flicker of hesitation. My resolve is iron; it does not waver," Seraph declared, his tone absolute.
"And if... if I were no demon... could you have found a kinder word for me?" she whispered, the words barely ghosting past her lips.
"You are a demon. I can hold no fellowship with your kind, regardless of how 'noble' a demon might deem itself. This is a matter of fundamental principle," Seraph countered with surgical precision.
"Then in the next life... I will be human. Perhaps then... you might find it in you to love me—"
Her final sentence fractured, hanging incomplete as the last spark of vitality was extinguished. Princess Bloomy fell still, locked in a posture of eternal submission.
✧ . ✶ . ❂ . ✶ . ✧