The world around them groaned with arcane tension.
Smoke curled like living serpents through the broken remains of the forest where Vallamir had cast his final sanctuary. Shadows twisted unnaturally, whispering secrets in tongues too ancient for mortals. Even the stars above seemed to dim as the battle reached its final beat.
Zawish stood tall, his black hoodie soaked in rain and blood — not all of it his own. His glove, the Dar Metal pulsing with raw power, trembled faintly in response to Vallamir's enchantments. The white of his skin gleamed like ivory under the moonlight, and his narrowed eyes locked on the crumbling form of the dark magician before him.
Vallamir coughed black ichor, his once-imposing robes torn and burning from the inside out. The magic that had sustained him for centuries now betrayed him, fighting to escape its host. A single misstep. A single crack in the incantation — and Zawish had found it.
"You don't understand…!" Vallamir rasped, dragging himself back. "Without me, the Old Ones will rise… I sealed them with my soul!"
"You didn't seal them," Zawish said, walking slowly toward him. "You fed them. You whispered to them in your dreams and begged them to give you power in return."
Vallamir grinned, his teeth black. "And they answered…"
Zawish crouched beside him. There was no smile on his face. No triumph. Only silence and exhaustion.
"Tell me, magician," Zawish said coldly. "Is your fear of death greater than the pain you've caused?"
Vallamir opened his mouth — but no words came. Only shadows. They poured from his throat like smoke, screaming as they evaporated in the air. His last spell — his final, desperate curse — unfinished.
Zawish looked away.
He raised his gloved hand, and from the Dar Metal surged a coil of pure light — not fire, not lightning, but something deeper. Something ancient. The magic that existed before magic had a name.
It pierced Vallamir's chest like a silent arrow.
The dark magician did not scream. He simply stopped. As if a switch had been flipped in the fabric of reality. One moment he was pain, hunger, ambition — the next, a husk of robes and ash collapsing into the wind.
The earth was silent again.
Zawish stood, heart pounding. The jungle, burned and bruised, whispered its thanks in rustling leaves. Above, the clouds parted. And for a single, impossible moment, the stars blinked back to life — as if Vallamir's defeat had lightened the burden of the cosmos itself.
But Zawish didn't wait for applause. He turned his back on the ashes.
Because there were always more battles. More liars. More shadows waiting to convince the world that he was the villain.
And now… he could feel one of them stirring. On Earth. Among the people he loved.
"Arwaah," he whispered.
And then he vanished into the dark, his hoodie fluttering like a silent warning to whatever monster dared to rise next.