The wind carried rusted blood and charred bone fragments across the scorched battlefield. Raine's boots sank into half-melted paladin armor. Hermann stood at the epicenter, his skin sloughing off like wax to reveal writhing void matter beneath. His voice was no longer human—more like thousands of dying screams stitched together.
"Son," tendrils of light slithered from Hermann's ruptured throat, "here to claim your inheritance?"
The Dragonheart Blade trembled in Raine's grip, its draconic eye weeping black ichor. Something stirred inside the sword—not whispers, not curses, but an ancient, almost sorrowful resonance.
"Inheritance?" Raine's scales bristled against the demonic pressure. "You call this shit inheritance?"
Three hundred meters away, Serena's four wings hung in tatters, her asphalt blood pooling into an inverted cross. Dracula toyed with three hovering droplets of Source Blood—the very ones she'd sold him years ago.
"Little bat," his smile resembled a cracked tombstone, "time to repay your debts."
Serena responded by tearing open her long-healed turning scar. Black blood sprayed onto Dracula's suit: "Principal with interest, old man."
They vanished and reappeared in crimson mist, each collision ripping temporary vacuums in space. When her shredded cloak entangled his fangs, she grinned like a child stealing candy: "Souvenir~"
Ellen's mechanical legion crawled from fissures. Her body was no longer recognizable—more a patchwork of starlit scales and abyssal slime. Data-tendrils from her spine imparted fleeing scholars, her core glowing brighter with each absorbed mind.
"Purge protocol initiated," her voice synthesized into sterile calm, "targeting all organisms with heart rates above 60 BPM."
The Blade's cracks spread as Raine blocked Hermann's tendrils. When it shattered, the fragments weren't metal—but the translucent soul of the First Dragonkin, his eyes identical to Raine's.
"At last," the spectral hand brushed Raine's slit pupil, "we may rest."
The pre-dawn darkness thickened. All supernatural entities began weathering away. Hermann's demonic shell crumbled like dried mud, exposing his ravaged human form. Before Serena's wings disintegrated, she blew Raine a soundless kiss.
As sunlight pierced the clouds, Raine's mutated eye reflected Elaina's image. Her hand covered his vision, fingers warm enough to break hearts: "Don't look, Leonard."
The battlefield split open—a starless abyss swallowing corpses and weapons alike. Only three things remained in the ashes:
Ellen's still-pulsing chip at Raine's feet. Serena's cloak fragment tangled with Dracula's fang. And one human tooth Hermann dropped, carved with the same draconic sigil as Raine's infant swaddling cloth.