The fragment that I collected from the demon changed everything. I woke with a piece of Vrakth's soul threaded through my own, and I found it had given me a gift he would have died to keep from me: I could feel him.
The afterimage stopped working the first time he tried it, as I had fought this demon enough time that I now knew his body the way I knew my own hand.
So I stopped chasing his tricks and started ending them. He threw the afterimage; I struck the true body. He flowed left; I was already there, because the soul-piece told me where left would be.
I broke him down with a calm I had not had in six deaths, beginning from his crown, Abyssal shield, then his eye, and finally his heart.
I stopped trying to kill him at range. I let him come close, let him think I had given up, and when he reached for my head, I grabbed his wrist, before I became Lightning Incarnate, and did one of the craziest things I had ever done in my life.
