---
There was no horizon anymore.
Only a churn of dead ash and broken earth, like the world had given up pretending to be alive.
Kael rose from the crater's lip, his bare feet dragging scars into the black soil. Blood caked him like second skin; dried rivers of red and violet ran down his cracked chest. His left arm—no longer flesh—hung heavy at his side: a woven mass of chains and runes, bound directly into bone.
The grimoire floated behind him, whispering.
Its single page, the first betrayal of its silence, glowed with words written in the ash of his own suffering.
"I am my own end."
Kael took a breath.
It hurt.
Breathing was treason in a place that wanted him dead.
The sky wept again — strands of ash like veins descending — and where they touched the earth, the soil twitched, birthing things better left unnamed.
Kael walked.
Because stillness was death.
Because thinking was death.
Because in this place, the world remembered that it hated him.
---
The monsters came first.
They were not alive.
They were not dead.
Creatures dredged from forgotten magics, their bodies rotted but hungry. A wolf with no skin, ribs jutting from purple muscle. A bird made of melted wax and teeth. A thing like a man, but its arms were wings of stitched human faces.
They came, howling, screeching, weeping.
Kael didn't raise his hand.
He opened his will.
The air around him bent — laws of nature shattering — and the creatures collapsed mid-sprint, their bones imploding under the weight of broken gravity.
Blood misted the air.
The grimoire turned, a page rustling.
But more came.
Endless.
A tide of hatred from the Zone itself.
Kael fought—not with spells, but with rejection.
He rejected their right to exist.
Chains of violet fire erupted from his spine, skewering beasts midair.
Roots rose to bind enemies, only for Kael to twist them into spikes and hurl them back at the living.
Each step he took altered the ground—what should be solid became liquid, what should be heavy became weightless.
He was unbound.
And for that, the Zone sought to unmake him.
---
Hours passed.
Or days.
Or seconds.
Time bled strange here, coiling around itself.
Kael lost track.
By the time he realized he was slowing, the monsters had stopped.
The world was quiet again, save for the weeping of the trees, bowing under the ash.
Kael fell to his knees.
His chain-arm dragged in the dirt, leaking faint sparks of corrupted mana. His body trembled with exhaustion so profound it became holy.
He dug his fingers into the earth, anchoring himself.
He had survived.
Not because he was stronger.
But because he was too broken to die properly.
His grimoire floated lower, humming.
And then—
Footsteps.
Human footsteps.
Kael didn't lift his head.
He didn't need to.
The magic pressing against his senses was ugly—twisted by greed, desperation, and betrayal.
Five presences.
Hunters.
---
"You see that, Varek?"
A woman's voice—sharp, amused.
"Little freak's still breathing."
"Doesn't look like much," another sneered. "You sure this is the artifact the old man sensed?"
"Look at the ground, idiot," the woman said, laughing. "He turned a goddamn mountain into soup."
Kael slowly pushed himself up.
The world spun.
He bled from everywhere.
His skin barely held together by the will etched into the runes across his ribs.
But he stood.
He faced them.
Five figures.
Each wearing remnants of what once might have been magic knight uniforms — torn, bloodstained, adorned with sigils of betrayal. Their cloaks were blackened. Their grimoire cases rattled at their belts like chains on prisoners.
Outcasts.
Rogues.
Hunters of forbidden things.
They smiled when they saw he could barely stand.
The biggest one—Varek—grinned wide.
"Bag him," he ordered. "Cut off anything that moves too much."
No words wasted.
The first attack came like a thunderclap.
---
Kael moved without thought.
A blast of red fire roared toward him—wide, arrogant, made for killing crowds.
He stepped forward.
Not to dodge.
To reject.
His chain-arm snapped up, absorbing the fireball into the runes, devouring it, turning it into pure heat that coiled around his fingers like smoke.
Kael hurled it back.
The rogue mage shrieked, arms raised to block—but the rebounded fire was no longer magic.
It was Kael's hate.
It hit the mage like a tidal wave of molten bone.
Screams.
Screams.
The others hesitated—shocked at how easily their comrade died.
Kael didn't.
He charged.
---
The second enemy moved fast.
Blink magic. Teleportation between points of high mana.
She flickered from spot to spot, throwing knives that detonated with spatial distortion.
Kael took one blade to the thigh.
It ruptured muscle.
He staggered.
She laughed—and flickered closer, knife aimed at his throat.
Kael caught her.
Not her wrist.
Her soul.
The new magic living inside him read her choice to move, anticipated it, and cut the decision itself.
She froze mid-blink, her body twisted halfway between two spaces.
Kael grabbed her head with his rune-hand and crushed it.
Wet pop. Bone shards. Brain matter on his cheek.
---
Three left.
They came together now.
One chanting a barrier spell, two weaving coordinated blasts: one ice, one sound.
Kael saw the trap.
The ice would freeze him.
The sound would shatter him.
And the barrier would prevent his magic from leaking out.
Kael smiled.
It wasn't human.
It wasn't sane.
He let the ice hit him.
He let the sound rupture his eardrums, make blood stream from his eyes.
And when the barrier rose—
He unbound.
The chains around his heart shattered outward, piercing the air.
The barrier cracked instantly—like glass under an earthquake.
Kael stepped through the wreckage, his body steaming from internal ruptures, and grabbed the ice mage first.
He tore her throat out with his teeth.
Blood fountained down his chest.
The sound mage screamed—desperately weaving a new spell—but Kael was already there, moving faster than thought.
One punch.
Just one.
The rune-arm drove through the mage's chest, ribs exploding outward.
Kael yanked free.
The man collapsed.
Only the barrier mage remained—too terrified to move.
He dropped his grimoire.
He dropped to his knees.
He begged.
Kael listened.
Not out of mercy.
But curiosity.
The mage cried about orders.
About redemption.
About how they could use Kael to get back into the Clover Kingdom's favor.
Kael looked down at him.
The air shimmered around Kael—not from heat, but from choice. Every path. Every option.
He could walk away.
He could enslave this man.
He could forgive.
Instead, Kael whispered:
"Unbind."
The man's body split—not from force, but from a rejection of cohesion.
He unraveled into smoke.
Nothing left.
---
Kael stood alone again.
The battlefield around him was a horror: twitching corpses, shattered ground, the air thick with mana so corrupted it wept from the soil like pus.
He wiped blood from his mouth.
He didn't feel satisfaction.
He didn't feel triumph.
Only the hollow ache of being alive in a world that did not want him.
The grimoire floated closer, pages fluttering.
A second page was written now:
"Freedom is refusal."
Kael fell to his knees again.
Not in defeat.
But because his body could no longer pretend.
---
Far away.
A sword hummed.
Steel wept darkness in the Black Bulls' hideout.
Yami Sukehiro looked up from his drink, a frown creasing his scarred face.
He felt it.
Like a ripple across a pond made of corpses.
Something in the Grand Magic Zone had changed.
Something worse than devils.
Yami grabbed his katana and stepped into the night without a word.
---
When he found Kael, it was almost disappointing.
A broken boy.
Half-chained.
Bleeding into dead soil.
Surrounded by corpses.
And yet—when Yami looked closer—
He saw the truth.
This was no boy.
This was a wound in the shape of a human.
A wound the world had made.
And it was still bleeding.
Yami lit a cigarette, smoke curling around his face.
He walked forward, boots crunching dead leaves.
Kael's head jerked up, eyes burning silver and violet.
Power crackled between them.
For a moment—an instant—they weighed each other.
Then Yami spoke, voice dry and amused:
"Oi. You look like shit, kid. You still breathing in there?"
Kael blinked slowly.
He didn't answer.
He didn't trust.
But for the first time since he had fallen into hell, something inside him didn't scream at the presence of another.
Yami exhaled smoke.
He smiled.
Not kindly.
Not cruelly.
Just real.
"Good," Yami said. "Would be a damn shame if I came all this way for a corpse."
He extended a hand.
Not offering salvation.
Not offering pity.
Just offering.
Kael stared at it.
The grimoire at his back shuddered.
The pages turned.
A third sentence etched itself in black fire:
"Some cages open themselves."
Kael reached out.
And the world tilted.
---
Thank you for trying out the FANFIC and reading the chapter, Please place your thoughts in the comments, and tell me how I should push forward, I will be considering all the opinions...Have a nice day ahead ><.