BOOM.
The two collided again, a shockwave rippling out from their impact. Their fists met mid-air, lightning against flame and the clash cracked windows for blocks.
Irohk grinned savagely, blood streaking down his cheek.
"You're finally fun."
Dævd said nothing, eyes wild, body burning with stormlight. He launched forward.
SLAM!
He drove a thunder-charged punch straight into Irohk's chest, sending him crashing through the side of a five-story building. Glass and steel buckled inward with the impact.
Dævd flashed forward, appearing behind Irohk just as the Branded brute stumbled from the rubble.
A knee to the back. A left hook to the jaw. An uppercut laced with Aether.
Irohk flew through two more buildings, each one collapsing seconds after he passed through.
He laughed the entire way down.
Irohk rebounded off the wreckage, flames exploding outward. He blitzed Dævd mid-charge, their bodies colliding and skidding across an asphalt road, carving a ditch as they wrestled for control.
Civilians screamed and scattered, distant but still watching, their silhouettes backlit by fire.
Irohk lifted Dævd overhead, spinning, and threw him like a comet into a collapsed parking structure.
BOOM.
Concrete burst. Smoke plumed.
But Dævd shot out of the wreckage like lightning, fists glowing with fury. He feinted left, kicked Irohk in the gut, then spun behind him and slammed an elbow into his spine.
Irohk coughed blood. Then laughed.
"I love this!" he roared. "This is what it means to be alive!"
They brawled across rooftops now, each step cracking tiles and asphalt.
Dævd caught a wild haymaker, twisted Irohk's arm, and hurled him into a communications tower. The metal structure snapped in half, plummeting behind them with a long screech of bending steel.
Irohk stood slowly, panting, skin charred, flames flickering, teeth bared.
"You think pain stops me?"
He punched the ground, erupting in a column of fire.
Dævd blurred through the smoke and met him mid-jump, a double punch collided in mid-air, sending both spiraling into opposite buildings, walls exploding outwards like paper.
Blood dripped from Dævd's mouth, his knuckles bruised and raw.
Still, he rose.
He wiped his mouth, lightning crackling across his arms, aura flaring, even without Lucent Grave, he was still the storm.
Irohk emerged limping, chest heaving, but smiling.
"You've got it in you," he rasped. "That fury. That raw edge. I see it now."
Dævd's eyes narrowed.
"I'm just getting started."
The two dashed again, fists colliding midair, and the entire street beneath them cracked like an eggshell.
They spiraled mid-fight, bouncing off buildings, walls, rooftops, throwing each other like rag dolls, but neither backing down.
Dævd skidded backward across the broken street, dust clouding around him. Blood ran from his lip. His arms trembled, not with fear, but restraint.
Across from him, Irohk panted, chest scorched, skin cracked with molten fissures. He raised a fist again, but stumbled. His flame flickered.
"You're tough," he growled. "But you'll break eventually."
Dævd lowered his stance.
His blindfold was already gone.
But now, his pupils changed, from burning light to something ancient, cosmic.
A pulse rippled through the city.
Rena, miles away in Division-7's surveillance room, slammed a button.
"Power spike… again! It's him!"
Kade, standing amid smoke and fire, dragging two civilians to safety, paused, feeling the surge ripple through the air like pressure from a god.
"…He's using it."
A low hum echoed as everything slowed for everyone but Dævd.
0:01
He disappeared from sight.
0:02
He reappeared behind Irohk, delivering a precise elbow to the neck. The Branded elite's body convulsed as his vertebrae cracked.
0:03
Before Irohk could turn, Dævd struck his ribs with ten lightning-precise strikes in a second, cracking them like brittle wood.
0:05
A knee into Irohk's gut. A punch to his liver. Then an upward blast of Aether into his jaw, launching him into the air.
0:07
Dævd blurred above him, flipped, and heel-kicked Irohk down like a meteor, shattering the concrete below.
0:08
Before Irohk could even scream, Dævd was behind him again, fist charged with lightning and grief.
"For everyone you've killed…"
0:09
He punched straight through Irohk's shoulder, erupting flames and blood from the other side.
0:10
Dævd appeared in front of the falling brute. One final strike, a comet-charged uppercut that rocketed Irohk through four buildings and into the clouds.
Dævd dropped to one knee, panting hard, aura flickering, blood running from his nose.
Around him, the world had stopped. Minions stared. Civilians hid. Even the sky was silent.
A groan echoed from the distance, Irohk, now a crumpled crater in the cityscape.
But the flames didn't die.
Far off, Irohk's charred body shifted, cracking, groaning, twitching… then rising slowly, his one good eye glowing ember-red.
Still smiling.
Still burning.
He wiped blood from his mouth, bones crunching as he stood.
"I felt that." he coughed, laughing weakly."
Irohk staggered from the crater, body torn and trembling, skin blackened with scorch lines and cracked flame. He spit blood, then… laughed. A cruel, guttural sound that echoed over the ruins of the city like thunder.
"YES! I love this pain… You're better than I thought, boy."
He raised one cracked arm and pointed.
"But let's see how long you last without rest."
The Irohk summoned 50+ flame minions, mindless, rabid, and blazing, moving in unison.
The rest abandoned the civilians, stopped burning buildings, and charged Dævd all at once, like a swarm of infernal beasts.
Their flaming claws scraped against the ground. The sky glowed red with smoke and ash.
Dævd slowly rose to his feet, chest heaving, Lucent Grave flying into his open hand with a pulse of light.
He gripped it tight.
Eyes ablaze. Aura trembling.
"Arc Dominion."
He whispered the name.
Lightning and energy exploded around him a storm of divine fury. Dævd's King's Eye Dominion surged again… but this time, his sword shimmered with Arc Severance's runes overlapping into something new.
A new technique was born:
Arc Dominion – a divine lightning slash amplified by Dominion, striking every marked enemy in his aura's range simultaneously.
The moment he moved, the world split.
Dævd vanished in a blue flash and reappeared standing calmly, sword sheathed.
The minions kept running until… they all stopped.
Dozens of flaming soldiers suddenly froze mid-lunge… before being cleaved cleanly into glowing segments, hundreds of thin diagonal and horizontal slices across their torsos, legs, heads.
One by one, they crumbled into radiant ash, the light fizzling upward like dying embers.
Not a single minion remained.