He woke again, lying still on the ground.
"One hundred thirty-seven…I've died one hundred thirty-seven times."
He tilted his head upward, his fingers curling into the ground. The blossoming green grass had been soaked so many times in his blood that it no longer looked the same.
"The same thing keeps happening…The anger, every time I die, it comes back with me."
He exhaled through his teeth.
"I don't even know what it is anymore. I try to understand it, but it just hurts. Like needles piercing into my chest. It wants me to kill her—but every time I try, she tears me apart."
He stared up at Nocstella, his stomach still on the ground.
"I hate her..." He swallowed and dragged his arms under him. "I-I fucking hate her."
With a heaving groan, he forced his knees beneath his torso and rose, inch by inch.
His balance wavered.
He leaned back unintentionally, like the weight of his thoughts tried to pull him down.
But he caught himself. One foot slid slightly, adjusting. His shoulders drew back.
And then—
Crack
He tilted his head sharply to the left, the vertebrae in his neck snapping back into alignment.
"None of it makes sense...The Vale? Overseers? Respondents?" Ren straightened his posture, finally steady. "Death itself doesn't even exist here..."
Across the glade, Nocstella was floating inches off the ground, ink oozing from her eyes.
"But...thinking on it now won't change a thing...will it?" He took a step forward, slow and dragging—but steady. "I've tried to make sense of it all...Tried to piece it together."
Ren took another step forward.
"…Maybe Eva's looking for me." His voice faltered. "Maybe she'll find a way to—No..."
He stopped moving.
"…No."
He closed his eyes for a moment, chest rising with a ragged inhale.
"No," Ren repeated in a firmer tone. "I don't want that...I don't want her here. I don't want her anywhere near this place."
He looked up again at the abomination hovering ahead.
"She should be gone, far away and safe."
Another step
"She doesn't belong here with this monster…"
One more step.
"…or with me."
Ren let out a deep, frustration-filled sigh.
"I've wasted enough time thinking." He said, rolling out his right shoulder. "All I can do now—all that's left—is kill you."
Nocstella hovered motionless, her ink-black eyes still fixated on him, expression unreadable beneath the thick veil of ink-like shadows that curled. Inky tears dripped from her cheeks.
Then, without warning, the ground exploded beneath Ren's feet. Dark tendrils surged upward, snapping and lashing out towards him. He dodged between each, every motion honed by the countless deaths and resurrections he experienced.
Ren sprinted forward, sliding beneath another wave of slicing shadows. His left arm caught a blow—skin shredded, muscle split open, blood sprayed out in an arc—but he didn't flinch.
He had felt this pain too much to care anymore.
"You've killed me..." Ren thought, pushing himself upright mid-run. "Too many times..."
Another tendril snapped toward him, whistling as it descended. Ren dropped to one knee and thrust upward with his right arm—his palm catching the brunt of it.
For a second, it halted in place, piercing down into Ren's grasp.
The air within the domain bent under the pressure. His legs fracturing under the pressure, blood pouring down his forearm as the tendril drilled into him.
"You're afraid," Ren hissed through bloodied teeth.
With a fierce groan, Ren pushed it away, its momentum sending it cratering into the ground.
Nocstella had yet to speak. Instead, her body contorted in a motion both graceful and grotesque—arms opening like wings, torso arching forward unnaturally, tendrils erupting from her spine like a blooming flower. Each thrashed violently across the glade.
But Ren didn't retreat.
"She's afraid...Because she knows I'm not going away. Because she knows no matter how many times she kills me, I'll come back."
Tendrils whipped in from every direction, and for every one that lashed, Ren countered.
He jumped
He ducked
He spun
He even let one slam into his ribs just to close the distance between them.
He reached her and slammed his fist into her stomach.
The punch was nothing supernatural, no enhanced punch or such, yet an odd sound emitted from the contact. An imploding sound of some sort, like he had punched through more than just her physical form.
Ink sprayed from her mouth in a black mist, scattering like char over the field.
"It...hit me? That thing shouldn't be able to touch me. Not in this form...not even a respondent." Nocstella questioned, gasping from the shock. "Ceadros...what's happen—"
Nocstella stopped speaking, her entire body freezing in place.
The voice came back, that layered voice of male and female, from Nocstellas lips.
"Your time grows thin, Nocstella."
Her ink-filled eyes began to stream even more down her cheeks.
"No, I still have time." Nocstella's own voice came back to respond. "The deal was made..."
Then, the layered voice returned, using her body to speak.
"You have failed the terms. The debt remains unpaid. Your favor wanes."
She lowered her feet to the ground, clutching her chest, where the dark veins pulsed.
Nocstella shuddered, her words cracking as the power inside her shattered.
"I'm not done. Just...a little more time. I...I can still—"
"No," The layered voice cut in again, stern and merciless. "What was lent shall be reclaimed."
Nocstella crumbled to the ground, nails digging into the ground as the black ink gushed out.
From her eyes.
From her mouth.
From her nose.
From her ears.
It spilled out and soaked the ground with the spilled remnants of her borrowed power.
"I see now...If that's how it is, Ceadros..." She coughed violently. Blood mixed with the ink now. "Then I don't need you. I don't need your help. I don't need your shadows."
She collapsed onto her side, the last remnants of her 'blessing' fading away.
Her skin held no color once again.
Her eyes were now crimson red.
Nocstella stated firmly, lifting herself to her side.
"You can strip your ink from my veins. Take your shadows from my control. But—" Nocstella dragged herself upright, if only just barely. "In the end...this is still my domain."
Her legs refused to fully support her, but she stood regardless, shaking and smeared with ink, like a drowned god crawling back to shore.
"I'll use the rest..." Her eyes gazed up to the sky, an abyssal void opening up once more—a spiraling hole in reality. "The last of your given power...to end this. By my own terms..."
The abyss stretched, covering the entire glade in a profound darkness. In an instant, both Nocstella and Ren, as well as everything in the glade, were engulfed by the ink-like abyss.