Celestine's body trembled against the cold stone, her limbs bound and strained, her breath ragged with exhaustion, but her glare had not dimmed in the slightest. Chaos loomed only a few meters away from her like a monument of finality, dark chains writhing around his arms with a predator’s poise. He regarded her with something that resembled amusement, his monstrous head tilting slightly to one side, as if he were trying to understand just how she was still breathing.

  “You’ve fought well, Princess,” he said, his voice a low and twisted hum of disdain. “Better than I expected from a creature so polished, so adored. I’ll admit, I hadn’t planned for the sword to be as troublesome as it was. It was... inconvenient.”

  The chains around her tightened. Her wrists cracked under the strain, and her white and rainbow blood slid down her golden gauntlets. Still, she never looked away. Not once.

  “Have you any final words to offer your people, before the stars forget your name?” Chaos asked the fallen Liberator.

  She smiled at him, blood trailing from her lips. “If I fall today,” she whispered, “It won’t be with a prayer on my tongue... but with your blood on my teeth!”

  Chaos laughed a loud, feral and cruel sound that was cut short as Regulus crashed into his side like a flaming comet. The Phoenix Knight’s gauntlet, coated in molten light, smashed into Chaos’s face with a grunt of fury, forcing the beast to stumble, his hold on Celestine snapping just enough for the chains to weaken and her body to drop hard against the stone.

  Chaos stood again, shaking off the blow, his body unmarred. “Still clinging to this farce?” he asked Regulus, voice laced with disappointment now, not rage. “You see how useless it is, don’t you? How your grand strategies and stubborn hopes end in ruin. Your heads might full of visions... but your hands remain empty.”

  Regulus, now on one knee, was barely holding his body together. His armor was cracked open in half a dozen places, one pauldron shattered entirely, exposing bruised skin underneath. His right gauntlet steamed with blood and fire. He said nothing.

  “Kneel,” Chaos said, stepping closer, his chains swaying lazily like vipers tasting the air. “Kneel now, Regulus—before the grave you chose for yourself. I will grant you an end fitting for a man like you.”

  The flames on Regulus’s cape flickered weakly in response to the looming shadow, like a candle in a hurricane. Then, through gritted teeth, voice hoarse but unbroken, Regulus answered: “The North taught me one truth…” He began to rise, his breath turning to steam from the effort. “Better to die roaring than kneeling.”

  But before he could rise fully, the cavern shifted, as Kaiser walked past him. One slow, dragging step at a time, his body a tapestry of torment. His arms hung with dozens of chains still skewering through them like butcher hooks. His blood, thick and dark, dripped down his legs, pooling quietly with each step. And yet, he walked.

  Celestine tried to rise, voice cracking as she called out to him. “No... Stay down... play dead, damn you!”

  Regulus whispered his own apology, barely loud enough to hear. “I’m sorry... I brought you to this grave...”

  Even Elsie, nestled on the shoulder of the ice-scorched knight, whispered something under her breath, a horrified sound that might have been his name.

  But Kaiser ignored them all.

  His crimson eyes… Those same inhuman crimson eyes that mirrored Chaos’s own, did not blink nor waver. He walked forward, every chain swinging from his body like ribbons from a corpse... until he stood face to face with the darkness itself.

  And Chaos looked down at him, this broken man of blood and ruin... And for the first time, he truly recognized him for what he was.

  A subtle shiver crawled down Regulus’s spine as he knelt, bloodied and scorched, his fiery gaze locked onto the figure that had just passed him. This was no longer the man he’d exchanged secrets with in the Jericho. No longer the curious stranger bound for the capital. The man walking toward Chaos now moved with a silence too deliberate, a weight too ancient, a presence that did not belong to someone who had walked the earth for only a few decades. Something in him had changed, something had awakened.

  Celestine, still recovering from the crushing impact of her chains, stared up through strands of golden hair, her expression unreadable but her body tense. There was fear in her—yes, but not of Chaos. Her eyes were fixed on Kaiser, as if witnessing the birth of something alien. Something that had no name in the tongues of men. Something that should not be.

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  And yet, Chaos stood calmly, his cloak of darkness coiling around his limbs, his chain-whips swaying in the air like the breath of the void itself. He did not react with hatred, for hatred was his constant, his baseline, his very form. He simply watched. Until something caught his attention. One of Kaiser’s eyes, the one marked by the scar beneath it, was slowly changing, its crimson fading into obsidian, drop by drop, like ink spilling into wine. It bled black from the edges of his iris, until half his gaze reflected nothing but the void.

  And then, Kaiser stopped.

  He stood before Chaos with chains still dangling from his body, but no longer a victim to them. His arms rose slowly, gracefully, slipping into a stance none of them recognized. His fists lifted just beneath his chin, elbows tucked close to his sides, spine straight but relaxed. It was a stance honed for close quarters, for deadly precision, for survival not in war, but in the cage of something far more primal.

  From his skin, a strange liquid heat dripped, something that wasn’t blood nor sweat, but something molten. Like fire made liquid. Not the golden flame of Regulus, nor the holy brilliance of Celestine. This fire hissed with a deeper tone.

  Chaos, ever hungry for challenge, stepped forward without hesitation. He thought he understood. He believed Kaiser, like Regulus, had come to die with dignity. With defiance. With flames in his heart. So he obliged him, swinging.

  But Kaiser moved.

  His body twisted, turned, bent—not dodging so much as flowing. He did not fight gravity, he danced with it. His feet were silent, his chains clinking softly in rhythm with his steps. Chaos’s monstrous fist cut through the air, missing by less than a whisper. So he struck again, and again, and again. Each strike met nothing but afterimage. Each lunge found only empty space. Kaiser dipped beneath a clawed swing, spun under a hook, shifted his weight with such unnatural grace it looked choreographed, like a deadly ballet written in real time.

  The chains embedded in his body dragged behind him like trailing ribbons of some morbid costume, their weight seemingly forgotten, their clatter adding percussion to his impossible footwork. His movements carried no wasted motion. He did not attack. He simply made Chaos miss.

  Chaos snarled. Not from pain, but from frustration and confusion. He struck faster, his arms becoming blurs of darkness, talons slicing through the space where Kaiser should have been. There were cuts now. Slices along Kaiser’s side, shoulder, thigh. But none were deep. None were clean. Chaos could not land the blow he needed.

  And then, without realizing it, Chaos found himself tethered.

  The very chains he had buried in Kaiser now wrapped around his own arms. Around his torso. His leg. Somewhere during the dance, Kaiser had begun turning, pivoting, twisting his body to weave the chains into a trap of his own design. It was not strength. It was precision, patience and control all fused into a single dance.

  Chaos, in all his towering might, could have torn the man apart like paper—of that he was certain. But now, with the chains binding him tighter, and Kaiser's form locked close to his own, he realized something unsettling: he felt cornered. Trapped. Not by power, but by a man who refused to die correctly.

  Meanwhile, something deeper was rising in Kaiser. The molten orange flame that licked across his body began to twist and churn like a pot about to boil over. It thickened, darkened, and then turned a haunting shade of crimson. Red flames, more like blood than fire, burst violently from his body, bubbling over his limbs like cursed oil. His right arm, caught in the heart of it, ignited fully. The flesh boiled away in an instant. It shriveled, blackened, crackedturning to something between char and bone—yet the flame did not stop.

  Chaos’s gaze locked onto it. For the first time, his monstrous facade broke. His voice dropped to a whisper, almost reverent. "The flames of Tartarus…"

  The moment he spoke the name, he regretted it, for it made the reality feel tangible.

  Kaiser’s arm was nothing but a vessel now, a claw wrapped in crimson death. He stretched it forward, unflinching, even as chunks of himself dropped like embers to the floor. Chaos tried to recoil, to snap the chains away and retreat, but the same threads that once dragged Kaiser now dragged Chaos in turn.

  The instant Kaiser’s burning hand met Chaos’s flesh, the shadows exploded. A shriek, not born of man or beast, tore from the depths of Chaos’s being—a sound no one there would ever forget. Not a roar. Not a scream. A shriek, long and sharp and pure, an animalistic wail of true, unfiltered agony.

  Chaos staggered. The chains disintegrated, melting like wax. In desperation, he slammed his foot into Kaiser’s chest with such force that the man was hurled backward, limbs flailing. Bone cracked. Blood erupted from Kaiser's mouth like a geyser, yet his face remained distant. His eyes still locked on his enemy.

  And Chaos? He stumbled back, clutching his right arm. The crimson fire had caught hold. His monstrous limb spasmed violently as the flame tore through muscle and shadows alike. The chains that had once dangled from his sleeves were now puddling into molten pools on the floor as the smell of burning shadow filled the air.

  He tried to smother it, tried to douse it with darkness. but the fire only grew.

  Then, in one final act of sheer desperation, Chaos turned his head, opened his monstrous maw and bit down hard on his own arm. Black flesh tore, cloth and shadow ripped apart, and from the stump of the limb, black mist hissed into the air like a dying breath. The fire vanished with it, snuffed out like a torch in a void.

  But the damage had already been done. For the first time since the battle began, Chaos was truly wounded. And Kaiser, broken and bleeding, slowly rose from the glass floor. His arm still burned, and his eyes, one blackened now fully to shadow, stared ahead with cold judgment.

  He was not done with Chaos.

  Thank you for reading!!!!!!!!

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