Bane of Gods
The scythe’s ascent had not stopped at flesh.
The arc Randia carved tore clean through the stone behind Vito, leaving a violent, vertical scar etched deep into the arena wall—an open wound in masonry that still steamed faintly with lingering divinity. Dust trickled down in slow, uneven rivulets, tapping against the ground like an afterthought.
Vito struggled to steady himself.
He rose with a hitch in his breath, boots scraping wet stone as he fought to remain upright. Blood poured freely from the right side of his body, dark and heavy, soaking through cloth and leather until the inside of his boot grew slick and warm, each step dragging with a nauseating resistance.
And then—
He laughed.
It was quiet at first. A thin, broken sound pulled from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Very well,” Vito said between breaths, amusement threading through the pain. “My curiosity has been… sufficiently answered.”
He lifted his gaze toward Randia, eyes sharp even as his body trembled.
“Of course. Mere human could never hope to defeat you—let alone kill you.”
With his left hand, Vito seized his own clothing and tore it open.
What had been hidden revealed itself at once.
Eight tattoos—each a unique sigil, foreign and unsettling—were etched in a circular formation across the left side of his chest. Next to them, embedded directly into his flesh, ran eight black crystals, aligned in a vertical row from the manubrium of his sternum down to his navel. They did not merely rest beneath the skin; they were part of him, fused, invasive.
Vito caught the blood spilling from his wound with his palm.
In one deliberate motion, he dragged it downward—smearing crimson across all eight crystals at once.
They ignited.
The black stones flared into a searing, molten red as a violent black mist erupted around his body. From beneath his skin, deep dark iron began to grow—blooming outward like a disease, spreading in jagged plates as though his flesh were being replaced piece by piece.
Pain descended upon him in full.
It was the kind of agony that did not scream—it flayed. As if his skin were being peeled away, as if every nerve were being dragged across fire and metal at once. The transformation devoured him, swallowing his silhouette in smoke, heat, and shrieking matter.
And then—
Randia felt it.
A chill crawled up his spine. For a brief, treacherous instant, his legs trembled—despite the godlike power coursing through his form. It was not fear in the human sense, but something deeper: a warning etched directly into soul and instinct alike.
Imminent danger.
Without hesitation, Randia raised his scythe and struck.
At the same moment, Lady Morwenn reacted.
With the barrier of Great Gardenia already gone, she extended her will outward, summoning vast black tendrils from shadow itself. They surged across the arena, layered thick with raven feathers, weaving together into a massive enclosure—an inverted nest that sealed Randia and Vito within, cutting them off from the world.
Almost simultaneously, the knights of Rosmayne finally broke through the sealed corridors.
Stone collapsed. Armor thundered. Dozens poured in, banners torn, spirits roaring with the belief that they had arrived in time.
Lady Morwenn turned.
With a voice that cracked through magic, smoke, and panic alike, she screamed—
“Get down, humans!”
The warning came barely a heartbeat before annihilation.
A colossal explosion erupted from within the arena.
Morwenn’s hastily wrought barrier endured no more than three seconds before it was obliterated—shredded into nothing as a titanic backdraft of fire and force burst outward, consuming everything in its path.
Those shielded by the ravens survived.
But only barely.
Skin left exposed suffered first-degree burns. Those closer to the arena screamed as second-degree burns tore through flesh and fabric alike, clothing igniting, breath stolen by heat.
For the knights who had just arrived—
There was no mercy.
Their armor superheated almost instantly. Internal temperatures spiked beyond survivability. Flesh cooked beneath steel. Lungs inhaled searing air, airways burned shut in moments.
Some died instantly from the blast.
Others collapsed screaming, trapped inside their own armor as it became a furnace.
The rest suffocated, choking on scorched breath before they could even fall.
All of them died.
Only those at the very rear—still partially within the corridor—survived, and even they staggered back coughing, burned, lungs screaming for air, alive by nothing more than distance and chance.
Inside the ruined arena—
The second phase had begun.
Those who survived the cataclysm struggled to understand what had just occurred, forcing their burning bodies to move through pain and shock. The rain, now falling harder, proved a cruel mercy—its weight smothered the flames, and the choking smoke began to thin more quickly than anyone had expected. Through wavering heat and drifting ash, one of them finally managed to set their eyes on the arena once again.
“Y–You all…!” the man croaked, coughing violently as his lungs rebelled.
“L–Look…!” he cried again, arm trembling as he pointed.
What emerged from the chaos stole what little breath they had left.
Randia had been impaled through the heart.
A blade jutted cleanly from his chest, its entry precise and merciless. A pitch-black figure stood before him, halting the downward arc of Randia’s scythe with his left hand alone, fingers locked around the haft as though gripping nothing more dangerous than wood. In his right hand, the figure wielded a massive spadone—its copper-colored hilt clenched firm, its blade an eerie green patina, stretched so long it rivaled a spear in length.
“Urk…!”
The sound tore out of Randia, raw and involuntary.
In the same instant, the Great Hero’s hand snapped shut around the blade. Metal screamed. With sheer force, he crushed the abnormal length of the sword until it shattered, fragments exploding outward like broken glass. He tore the broken steel from his own heart and hurled it back with terrifying strength. The shard struck the arena floor behind the black figure—
—and the stone detonated.
The impact alone blasted a crater into the ground, rock pulverizing into dust and shrapnel.
Yet the figure was already gone.
A single flashing step backward carried him clear of the blast, movement so clean it left no afterimage, no wasted motion.
Vito Farelsi now stood revealed.
He was clad in armor that did not merely reflect darkness—it ruled it.
His cuirass was forged from blackened steel scales, shot through with veins of muted violet, as though night itself had been tempered into metal. The plates followed the contours of his body with deliberate precision, overlapping seamlessly to grant both resilience and lethal mobility. Its surface bore no ornament, no heraldry—only eight sigils embedded across the segmented abdominal plates, each crowned with a small hexagonal seal. This was not armor meant to inspire hope.
It was meant to deny it.
A high collar rose from the cuirass, rigid and severe, framing his neck and jaw like a mantle of dominion. It did not merely protect—it imposed. Even standing still, it lent him the silhouette of an overlord whose presence demanded attention, whose authority required no elevation to command fear.
Broad pauldrons curved over his shoulders, layered and angular, shaped like folded wings awaiting release. Beneath the left pauldron hung a half-cape of obsidian fabric, heavy and lightless, its edges traced with subtle runic stitching that drank in illumination rather than reflecting it. When he moved, the cloak did not sway with elegance—it followed with inevitability.
His gauntlets were refined rather than bulky, forged from smooth black steel patterned like scales and edged with restrained silver lines. Each finger was plated in narrow, overlapping segments, granting absolute control and unyielding grip. These were hands crafted not for savagery, but for precise, irreversible violence.
He was not merely dressed in darkness.
He was the dark night itself—
the nemesis of all that dared to shine.
The broken sword in Vito’s grasp dissolved into light, its fractured form unraveling until nothing solid remained. He drew that light inward and pressed it into one of the eight sigils embedded in his armor. The sigil ignited at once, blazing crimson—as if fed, as if satisfied.
Randia staggered slightly. Something had been taken—not ripped away, but drawn out with unsettling finesse. He steadied his breath, mind already turning over the sensation, replaying the instant of impact, the strange hollow it left behind. What did he just do? The power had not felt like theft of strength, but extraction of right—a claim made through contact, through consequence. It lingered wrong in his awareness, unfamiliar, unresolved.
Even so, the divine current is still coursing strongly through him as they answered his will. Pale-gold light pulsed once from his chest, then again, slow and deliberate, as the wound at his heart closed—flesh knitting itself together under quiet radiance. The pain receded—but the question did not.
“Tired already?”
Vito mocked him, his voice distorted—flattened—by something that no longer allowed it to sound wholly human.
A full-face helm crowned him, proud and angular, its silhouette rising into a low crest shaped like a dark cathedral spire. The design was severe yet regal, symmetry enforced with almost sacred discipline rather than brute menace. A single, narrow visor slit marked the face, within which a blood-crimson glow watched steadily—measured, judging. Along the brow and crest ran macabre lines, etched like ritual script, blurring the boundary between authority and blasphemy, between sacred vow and quiet heresy.
Randia answered not with words.
He settled back into his stance, breath leveling, the tremor in his body fading as the divine current found its course again. His hand loosened, and the scythe slipped free.
It did not fall.
The weapon remained beside him, suspended in the rain, unmoving as if the world itself had agreed to hold it there.
Light gathered in his open palm once more—quiet, deliberate. It did not flare or surge. It condensed.
From that glow, a second weapon emerged. A long spear took shape, its lines spare and uncompromising, forged of the same pale brilliance as the scythe. White as galanthus—cold, pristine, and unadorned.
Two weapons now hung at his reach.
Still.
Silent.
Steady.