"My answer," Dren said quietly, his ethereal blade materializing in his grip with a sound like singing crystal, "is the same one I gave your kind in Vyrn."
The words tasted like ash. So many screams. So many graves.
The Greater Fiend's smile faltered for just a moment—long enough for Dren to see something like disappointment flicker behind those alien eyes. Then the creature threw back its head and laughed, a sound that shattered every piece of glass in the office and sent hairline cracks racing across the windows that looked out onto impossible burning skies.
"How predictably noble," it said, its voice now carrying harmonics that made Dren's teeth ache. "And how utterly foolish. Do you truly believe that pathetic blade can harm me? That your borrowed flesh can stand against what I have become?"
The thing that had masqueraded as a CEO began to change in earnest now. Its expensive suit split at the seams as its frame expanded, bones lengthening with wet snaps that echoed through the transformed office. The flesh beneath didn't simply grow—it *reformed*, skin cracking open to reveal chitinous plates that gleamed like black mirrors, each one inscribed with sigils that hurt to look at directly.
"You see," the creature continued conversationally as wings erupted from its back—not leather and membrane like the demons of Vyrn, but constructions of interwoven bone and sinew that pulsed with their own malevolent life, "I am not some Lesser Fiend to be dispatched by a few clean cuts. I am what your kind becomes when we embrace our true nature."
The transformation was horrifying in its completeness. Where a man had stood moments before, now crouched something that belonged in the deepest pits of the abyss. Nine feet of chitinous armor and razor-sharp claws, with a skull that had elongated into something predatory and alien. But worst of all were the eyes—those same deep blue orbs, now burning with an intelligence that was entirely too human, too aware of exactly what it had chosen to become.
"Behold," it said, flexing claws that could easily puncture steel, "a Greater Fiend in truth. The kind of power your sworn brother embraced when he chose pragmatism over principle."
Dren felt the comparison hit home like a physical blow, but he forced himself to focus on the immediate threat. The creature was right about one thing—this was far beyond the Lesser Fiends he'd faced in the subway. The spiritual pressure radiating from it was crushing, making every breath an effort and setting his Soul Flame to flickering like a candle in a hurricane.
**"WARNING: HOSTILE ENTITY DETECTED. CORRUPTION TIER 3 CONFIRMED. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE RETREAT."**
*Not an option,* Dren thought grimly. Behind him, he could hear Aiko's sharp intake of breath as she registered the true scope of what they were facing. Retreat would mean leaving this thing loose in the heart of Tokyo, free to spread its corruption to thousands of innocent souls.
"Tell me," the Greater Fiend said, beginning to pace around them with predatory grace, "did you feel it when Vyrn fell? The moment when your precious realm cracked and burned? I was there, you know. Not in this form, of course—I was still playing at being human then—but I felt every death, tasted every scream."
The office around them began to shift and change, responding to the creature's will. The mahogany desk melted and reformed into something that looked disturbingly like an altar, complete with channels carved for blood to flow. The leather chairs twisted into shapes that suggested torture devices, their surfaces gleaming with an oily sheen that made Dren's skin crawl.
"Your friend Cassian," the fiend continued, its voice now echoing from multiple directions at once, "was particularly eloquent in those final moments. The way he wept as he drove his blade through your heart—such beautiful anguish. Such exquisite guilt. It took centuries for us to fully corrupt him, to convince him that betrayal was merely pragmatism, that survival justified any sacrifice."
"Shut up," Dren snarled, but his voice lacked the authority it had once carried. The Soul Flame depletion from their climb was taking its toll, making it harder to channel the divine power that was his greatest weapon.
"Oh, but I'm just getting to the best part," the creature said with obvious delight. "You see, he didn't just betray you. He betrayed everyone. Every knight who followed you, every citizen who trusted in your protection, every child who dreamed of growing up to be half the hero you were."
The Greater Fiend paused in its pacing, fixing Dren with those burning blue eyes. "They all died because of him. Because your 'sworn brother' chose to open the gates and let us in rather than fight a battle he might lose."
Rage boiled up from somewhere deep in Dren's chest—not the cold, focused anger of a trained warrior, but something primal and devastating. For a moment, he felt his carefully maintained control slip, felt the temptation to let that fury consume him entirely.
The scar across his left cheek began to burn, not with the gentle itch of healing but with real fire, as if someone had pressed a red-hot brand to his skin. It was his body's way of reminding him who he was—not just Dren Valisar the Blade Saint, but the man who had chosen duty over revenge, protection over personal satisfaction.
"You're trying to make me angry," he said, his voice steadying as he found his center again. "Turn me into a weapon pointed at my own past. But anger without purpose is just destruction, and I've seen enough destruction for one lifetime."
The Greater Fiend's expression shifted, disappointment replacing cruel satisfaction. "How boringly predictable. Very well, if you won't be turned, you'll simply have to be broken."
It moved.
Dren had fought Greater Fiends before, in the final battles for Vyrn's capital. He knew they were fast, strong, and cunning in ways that Lesser Fiends could never match. But this one was something else entirely—a creature that had spent decades in human form, learning to think and plan and adapt with an intelligence that went far beyond bestial cunning.
The first swipe of its claws came from three directions at once, the creature somehow moving fast enough to create afterimages that struck with real force. Dren's ethereal blade met two of the attacks, but the third scored across his ribs, opening lines of fire that burned with unnatural cold.
**"SOUL FLAME CONSUMED: 5%. CAUTION: DEFENSIVE BLESSINGS RECOMMENDED."**
But defensive blessings would drain his Soul Flame even faster, and he was already dangerously low from the climb. Instead, he threw himself into a combat pattern he'd learned in the siege of Thornwall—constant movement, never staying in one place long enough for the enemy to predict, using speed and precision to compensate for raw power.
It might have worked against a normal Greater Fiend. But this creature had been studying human combat techniques for decades, learning to counter the very strategies Dren was employing.
"Predictable," it hissed, catching his blade between two claws and twisting with enough force to send jarring impacts up Dren's arms. "Youfight like what you were, not what you are. Still clinging to techniques designed for your old body, your old strength."
A kick to his chest sent him flying backward into the transformed desk—altar—whatever the thing had become. The impact drove the breath from his lungs and sent white-hot pain racing down his spine. When he tried to roll aside, one of the creature's bone-wings swept down like a scythe, forcing him to manifest a desperate parry that cost him another precious fragment of Soul Flame.
**"SOUL FLAME LEVEL: 47%. WARNING: APPROACHING DANGEROUS DEPLETION THRESHOLD."**
"Dren!" Aiko's voice cut through the sound of battle, sharp with concern and determination.
He risked a glance in her direction and saw her moving through a combat form he didn't recognize—fluid, graceful movements that seemed to flow like water while her ceremonial daggers blazed with silver light. She was weaving some kind of binding spell, trying to create openings he could exploit.
The Greater Fiend noticed her efforts and laughed. "Two insects instead of one. How charming."
It gestured with one clawed hand, and the shadows in the corners of the office came alive. They flowed toward Aiko like living smoke, reaching out with grasping tendrils that sought to wrap around her limbs and drag her into their embrace.
"She dies first," the creature announced with casual malice. "Let's see how noble you remain when her blood paints these walls."
Something cold and terrible settled in Dren's chest. Not rage this time, but something far more dangerous—absolute, crystalline focus. The kind of clarity that had allowed him to hold the Bridge of Sorrows against impossible odds, to stand alone against the Crimson Titan when all hope seemed lost.
He'd been fighting like the man he used to be, in the body he used to inhabit. But Kenji's frame, for all its limitations, had its own advantages. It was smaller, more compact, built for speed rather than raw power. And more importantly, it was *his* now—not borrowed, not stolen, but earned through weeks of relentless training and gradual adaptation.
"System Alert: 'Crimson Retribution' blessing available. Warning: This technique will consume 25% Soul Flame. Confirm usage?"
For a moment, Dren hesitated. Using such a powerful blessing would leave him dangerously depleted, risking the memory fragmentation he feared more than any physical death. But Aiko was struggling against the shadow-tendrils, her silver light beginning to dim under their assault, and the Greater Fiend was already moving to finish her.
"Confirmed," he said quietly.
The change was immediate and overwhelming. Divine fire coursed through his veins, burning away the limitations of mortal flesh and transforming Kenji's compact frame into something approaching its full potential. For one perfect moment, he felt truly like himself again—not the towering presence he'd been in Vyrn, but something new, something that belonged entirely to this world and this life.
His ethereal blade blazed with crimson light, extending from a simple sword into something that hummed with barely contained power. The weapon felt right in his grip for the first time since his transmigration, an extension of his will rather than a foreign tool he was still learning to wield.
The Greater Fiend turned toward him, its alien features twisting into something that might have been surprise. "Impossible. You cannot—"
Dren moved. Not with the careful, still-adapting steps he'd shown before, but with the fluid grace of a master swordsman fully in harmony with his chosen weapon. The crimson blade carved through the air in a perfect ascending spiral, each movement leaving trails of divine fire that seared through the corruption-tainted atmosphere.
The first strike shattered the creature's left wing, bone fragments exploding outward like shrapnel. The Greater Fiend shrieked—a sound that combined human anguish with something far more alien—and staggered backward, ichor streaming from the wound.
But it recovered faster than Dren had expected, adapting to the loss with predatory efficiency. Its remaining wing spread wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp bone spurs that it began launching like arrows.
Dren's enhanced reflexes allowed him to weave between most of them, his crimson blade carving the rest from the air in showers of sparks. But each parry sent jarring impacts up his arms, reminding him that divine blessings came with mortal costs.
Behind the Greater Fiend, Aiko had broken free of the shadow-tendrils through some combination of skill and determination. Her ceremonial daggers blazed like twin stars as she moved to flank the creature, looking for an opening to exploit.
"You burn your very soul for this pathetic display?" the fiend snarled, its voice now strained with pain and genuine anger. "What do you hope to accomplish? Even if you destroy this form, there are thousands more where I came from. Millions. Your precious new world will burn just as Vyrn burned, and there is nothing you can do to stop it."
"Maybe not," Dren admitted, pressing forward with a series of cuts that forced the creature to give ground. "But I can stop you. Here. Now. And sometimes that's enough."
The Greater Fiend's laugh was bitter now, tinged with something that might have been respect. "Spoken like a true hero. No wonder Cassian found you so insufferable."
It lunged forward with desperate fury, claws extended to tear out Dren's throat. But the attack was driven by emotion rather than calculation, and Dren was ready for it. He sidestepped the killing strike and brought his crimson blade around in a perfect horizontal cut—a technique he'd used to split mountains in Vyrn, now refined for the more intimate scale of mortal combat.
The blade met the creature's neck just below the jawline, divine fire warring against abyssal corruption. For a moment they stood locked together, predator and prey, the outcome balanced on a knife's edge.
Then Aiko struck from behind, her ceremonial daggers finding the gaps in the creature's chitinous armor. Holy light erupted from the wounds, and the Greater Fiend's agonized shriek shattered what remained of the office windows.
Its grip on Dren's blade faltered.
The crimson edge slid forward, cutting through corrupted flesh and twisted bone until it found the creature's heart—or the writhing mass of darkness that served that function. The divine fire followed the cut down through the creature's core, burning a path straight to its heart. Leaving both Dren and Aiko temporarily blinded.
When the spots cleared from his vision, the Greater Fiend was collapsing. Its magnificent armor cracked and crumbled like old parchment, the bone wing scattered across the floor like discarded refuse. What remained was heartbreakingly small—just the desiccated corpse of what had once been a man, dressed in the tattered remains of an expensive suit.
**"GREATER FIEND PURGED.
VALOR GAINED: 50.
SAINT RANK INCREASED TO RANK 2.
BLADE MIGHT ENHANCED.
SOUL VIGOR ENHANCED.
ADVANCEMENT PROGRESS: SAINT RANK 2- 10/200."**
The rush of power was immediate and intoxicating, divine energy flooding through his system like liquid lightning. But it was followed almost instantly by the crushing weight of spiritual exhaustion. The crimson blessing faded, leaving him once again in Kenji's slowly-adapting frame, and his Soul Flame...
**"Soul Flame level: 12%. Warning: Extended depletion risks memory fragmentation. Seek restoration immediately."**
Memory fragmentation. The clinical term for what happened when a Blade Saint pushed too hard, burned too much of their spiritual essence at once. Dren had seen it happen to other warriors in Vyrn—proud knights reduced to confused shadows of themselves, unable to remember their own purpose, let alone their techniques.
The thought terrified him more than any demon ever could.
He staggered, barely keeping his feet as waves of disorientation washed over him. The transformed office flickered in and out of focus, sometimes replaced by half-remembered scenes from Vyrn's final battle. For a moment, he was certain he could hear Cassian's voice calling his name, filled with the same warmth and affection it had carried before everything went wrong...
But that was impossible. Cassian was... Cassian was...
"Dren?" Aiko's voice seemed to come from very far away, though she was standing right beside him. "Are you alright?"
He wanted to answer, but his attention was caught by something glinting among the Greater Fiend's remains. Something that definitely hadn't been there when the creature was alive, as if its death had somehow revealed what it had been carrying.
A locket. Ancient, ornate, and unmistakably crafted in the style of Vyrn's royal artisans. The sight of it hit him like a physical blow, because he knew that locket. He'd commissioned it himself, years ago, from the finest craftsman in the capital.
With trembling hands, Dren picked up the small piece of jewelry. It was warm to the touch despite the creature's death, and as his fingers traced the intricate engravings on its surface, memories came flooding back—not the fragmented, painful flashes that came with Soul Flame depletion, but clear, vivid recollections that cut deeper than any blade.
He remembered the nervous excitement as he'd waited for it to be completed. Remembered the way Cassian's face had lit up when he'd presented it as a gift—a token of brotherhood, of shared oaths and bonds that should have been unbreakable.
The locket opened with a soft click that seemed to echo through the ruined office.
Inside, nestled in a bed of tarnished silver, lay a single strand of raven-black hair with a subtle blue sheen that only Cassian's hair had ever possessed. Hair he would have recognized anywhere, even after years of separation and the devastating knowledge of betrayal. Cassian's hair, cut from his head on the day they'd sworn their brotherhood oath, just as Dren had cut a strand of his own to place in Cassian's matching locket.
**"Purge Deed activated: Seek the betrayer's true path. Clue obtained: Brother's Token. Additional objectives will be revealed as investigation progresses. Soul Flame partially restored through successful completion of secondary objective."**
The system's words registered dimly, but all of Dren's attention was focused on the simple strand of hair in his palm. It looked exactly as he remembered—glossy black with hints of blue in the right light, still carrying the faint scent of the sanctified oils they'd used in the brotherhood ceremony.
But that was impossible. This locket had been in Vyrn when the realm fell. Cassian had been wearing it the night he'd driven his sword through Dren's heart. For it to be here, in the possession of a Greater Fiend operating in Tokyo...
"He's alive," Dren whispered, the words torn from his throat like fragments of broken glass. "Cassian is alive."
The implications hit him in waves, each one more devastating than the last. His sworn brother hadn't died in Vyrn's fall—he'd survived, somehow, and become part of whatever vast conspiracy had brought the corruption to Earth. The Greater Fiend's taunts hadn't been psychological warfare; they'd been literal truth.
If Cassian had lived, then his betrayal hadn't been a desperate last act. It had been the beginning of something larger. Something monstrous.
Cassian was alive. Cassian was working with these creatures. And worst of all, Cassian knew Dren was here.
The rage that filled him was absolute, primal, and entirely without the noble purpose that had once guided his actions. This wasn't the righteous anger of a protector defending the innocent; it was the fury of a betrayed friend, the wrath of a brother stabbed in the back by someone he'd loved more than his own life.
But underneath the rage lay something worse: doubt.
The Soul Flame depletion amplified every emotion, every memory, until they felt like physical wounds. What if he'd been wrong about that night in Vyrn? What if there had been circumstances he didn't understand, pressures that had forced Cassian's hand? What if his sworn brother's betrayal had been an act of desperation rather than malice?
And even if it hadn't been—even if Cassian had chosen corruption willingly—was vengeance really worth burning away everything Dren had become in this new world? Was one man's blood worth sacrificing the bonds he'd begun to forge, the purpose he'd started to find?
*Is Cassian's blood worth my new life?*
The question hit him like a physical blow, and he realized that for all his certainty about his mission, he'd never actually confronted the fundamental choice it represented. Revenge or redemption. The past or the future. The man he'd been or the man he might become.
And in that moment, he realized—his war wasn't over. It had only just begun.
"Dren."
Aiko's voice was gentle but insistent, cutting through the spiral of his thoughts. He looked up to find her jade eyes fixed on his face with an expression of concern and something deeper—understanding, perhaps, or recognition of the war being fought behind his eyes.
"You're in pain," she said softly. It wasn't a question.
He wanted to deny it, to maintain the stoic facade that had served him so well in his previous life. But the Soul Flame depletion had stripped away his defenses, leaving his emotions raw and visible. After what they'd just been through together, pretense seemed not just pointless but insulting.
"The locket belonged to someone I once called brother," he said, his voice rougher than he'd intended. "Someone who..." He trailed off, unsure how to explain betrayal that deep to someone who'd never experienced it.
Aiko stepped closer, and he found himself noticing details he'd missed before in the heat of battle. The way her fiery hair caught the light filtering through the broken windows. The determined set of her jaw. The blood that speckled her shrine maiden robes—some of it the Greater Fiend's ichor, but some of it her own, drawn by flying debris and the creature's desperate attacks.
She was beautiful, he realized with the part of his mind that wasn't consumed by grief and rage. Not just physically—though there was no denying the striking combination of porcelain skin and jade eyes—but in the way she carried herself. There was strength there, and grace, and a kind of spiritual purity that reminded him of the temple guardians from his youth in Vyrn.
"Betrayal leaves scars that never fully heal," she said quietly, echoing his own thoughts with uncomfortable accuracy. "But sometimes the wound teaches us something about ourselves. About what we're truly capable of becoming."
Her eyes met his, and for a moment, Dren felt like she was seeing straight through to his soul. It should have been uncomfortable, that level of scrutiny from someone he barely knew. Instead, it was oddly comforting.
"What if vengeance is all I have left?" he asked, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
Aiko smiled, and it transformed her entire face. Where before she'd seemed distant and ethereal—beautiful but untouchable—now she looked warm, human, achingly real.
"Then you haven't been paying attention," she said. "You saved those people in the subway station. You risked your life to climb forty-seven floors and face something that could have killed us both. You're already more than just vengeance, Dren Valisar. You just need to remember how to see it."
Around them, the transformed office was slowly returning to its original state. The altar melted back into a mahogany desk, the torture devices resumed their shapes as leather chairs, and the oppressive atmosphere that had accompanied the Greater Fiend's presence began to lift. Soon there would be investigators, reporters, official questions that would need official answers.
But for now, there was just the two of them in a room full of broken windows and scattered bone, holding onto a moment of understanding that felt more precious than any treasure from Vyrn's royal vaults.
Dren closed the locket carefully, slipping it into his pocket where it rested against his heart like a weight of unfinished business. The rage was still there, would probably always be there, but Aiko's words had given him something to balance it against. Purpose beyond revenge. Connection beyond the bonds of the past.
Maybe Cassian's betrayal had taken everything from him. But maybe, just maybe, this new world was offering him the chance to build something better in return.
The scar across his left cheek had stopped burning, he realized. For the first time since discovering the locket, it felt like just another part of his face instead of a constant reminder of everything he'd lost.
It was a start.