Irohk tilted his head back, laughing wildly, arms wide, drinking in the carnage.
"Oooh, beautiful. You really are his son."
His body trembled with ecstasy. "I haven't felt this alive in years…"
Flames erupted beneath his feet, his whole body igniting anew, this time with blackened ember-flame and streaks of ashen lightning.
His voice deepened, distorted, more beast than man.
"I guess it's only fair I stop holding back."
Flames engulfed him.
His dreadlocked hair rose, ablaze like living tendrils. Eyes burned ember-white. His entire body is engulfed in roaring, flowing flame, not just coated, but made of fire, like molten ember sculpted into humanoid form. You can see hints of charred bone and cracked armor underneath, but they're constantly shifting through the heat.
He hovered off the ground, surrounded by a spiraling cyclone of hellfire. His flame crown burning brighter.
| Soaring Wraith Mode – Irohk's ultimate state, where all pain feeds his strength, and destruction becomes instinct.
He hovered above the battlefield, smoke swirling around his body like wings of fire.
"All fire answers to me. All heat becomes my will. In this form… I am flame."
"Come on, little prince…"
He smirked, licking blood from his lips.
"Let's finish this dance."
Irohk's molecules scatter as ash and re-forms split second in front of Dævd, following up with a thunderous punch to the jaw.
BOOM!
Dævd was sent flying through a collapsed tower, bricks exploding in his wake.
Irohk shot after him like a blazing missile, flaming fists pounding, each blow cracking air, smashing steel, splitting stone.
Dævd raised his arms, blocking, dodging, but still stumbling backward as the infernal beast overwhelmed him.
"His movements are faster. Stronger. That form…"
Irohk grinned as his flaming fist smashed into Dævd's ribs, sending him into the ground like a meteor. Asphalt erupted in a shockwave.
"You're slowing down, prince!"
WHAM!
A kick, slammed Dævd through an overturned bus.
"You think those pretty eyes can save you now?"
CRASH!
Another punch cracked Dævd through a skyscraper support beam.
Flames engulfed the field.
Dævd crawled from the rubble, coughing blood, his suit torn, Lucent Grave humming faintly at his back.
But then…
His eyes sharpened.
The King's Eyes shifted, the three shards inside his pupils rotated slowly, activating a deeper function.
| GraviticVeil —an ocular technique that manipulates localized force around his body, allowing perfect movement correction and counterforce timing.
He blinked once and disappeared.
Irohk cocked his fist back but Dævd appeared above.
"You talk too much." Dævd muttered coldly.
Spun mid-air, and slammed his heel down on Irohk's shoulder, driving him into the street.
Before the flame could retaliate, Dævd was already there, fist cocked…
BOOM!
A blow to the jaw.
BOOM!
Uppercut to the ribs.
CRACK!
A spinning elbow to the temple that lit sparks in the air.
The air howled with speed. Dævd was matching him now, strike for strike, reading movements before they happened.
Irohk grunted, backpedaled, then smiled through blood.
"That's it. That's the fire I wanted to see."
He raised both arms to the burning sky.
"INFERNAL VERDICT!"
The heavens cracked open.
Above, a colossal seal of ember and bloodfire appeared, molten cracks swirling like a divine curse. A massive burning glyph spins open behind his back, stretching across the sky like a hellish eclipse.
From space, it looks like a solar rift is tearing open.
A volcanic pillar of fire erupts from beneath him, the heat melts nearby skyscrapers.
The air screams. Time and space vibrate from the pressure.
As he charges it, the environment warps, oceans boil at the edges, clouds ignite, and gravity begins to distort.
He draws back both hands, the air fracturing around his palms, and bellows.
Then he unleashes a cosmic-scale beam, a blinding lance of core-temperature plasma, so massive it looks like a wall of flame from heaven, vaporizing everything in its path.
Dævd didn't flinch.
He leapt into the air, eyes calm, wind around him parting like water.
Lucent Grave shimmered. Lightning danced along its edge.
He raised the blade and drew a line mid-air, horizontal, clean, deliberate. The space itself split along its path.
"SOVEREIGN CUT: LAW SEVERANCE."
The drawn line pulsed once, then fired forward as a vast, cutting beam of radiant lightning. It clashed mid-air with Irohk's Infernal Verdict.
BOOM.
The sky exploded.
Lightning and hellfire collided, the two forces clashing in the air, pushing against each other like gods wrestling for dominance.
Irohk screamed in defiance, pouring every ounce of his fury and masochistic joy into the Verdict.
His body cracked further. Flames burst from his veins.
"I AM FLAME ITSELF!!"
But the Sovereign Cut burned brighter, cutting clean, elegant, unstoppable.
And finally…
It broke through.
The lightning slash severed the Verdict in half and Irohk with it.
The Emberking stood frozen for a moment, a horizontal line of molten light bisects him clean off his waist.
He chuckled, coughed. Blood and fire leaked from his mouth.
"…Tch…This world will still burn… even without me…"
Then his body split in two, dissipating into rising ash, fragments of flame drifting toward the shattered sky.
The battlefield was quiet now. Not peaceful, never peaceful but quiet in that dreadful way only devastation could be. The sky was still red, choked with soot and lingering flame, as if the heavens themselves hadn't yet decided whether to mourn or burn.
Dævd descended, landing hard on his knees, sword in hand, bloodied and exhausted.
The winds howled through the ruins, carrying the last embers of Irohk's wrath into the void.
Dævd stood in the heart of it all. His breath came hard and slow, chest rising and falling beneath the torn chestplate of his suit. Blood slipped from his knuckles, some his own, some not. His fingers shook uncontrollably, twitching as if still punching ghosts. The heat of the battle still clung to him like a second skin, and the smell of smoke and scorched flesh stung his senses.
He looked down.
All around him were the remnants of what had once been a neighborhood. Crushed buildings. Burnt vehicles. People, civilians, stumbling out from hiding places, dazed and silent. A woman held a lifeless child in her arms. A man limped, carrying his younger brother. Others simply stood, too stunned to cry, surrounded by ash drifting down like a cursed snowstorm.
Dævd swallowed. The weight of victory pressed against his shoulders harder than any enemy ever had. He'd won but at what cost?
And then, a sound behind him.
Clink. Crunch. Clink.
Someone was walking casually across broken debris.
"Yo!" a voice called out. "I don't know who you are, but that was insanely badass."
Dævd turned his head, slow and guarded.
A boy in a dust-covered hoodie stood atop a cracked rooftop, goggles pushed up on his forehead, chest heaving with adrenaline. Makeshift tech was strapped to his arms and torso, some kind of magnetic rig and a handheld scanner half-melted from the heat.
He grinned.
"Seriously. You you just fought a living volcano and won."
The boy leapt down, landing with a crunch of shattered glass and metal. He didn't seem afraid of the destruction. If anything, he looked impressed.
He walked up beside Dævd, then extended a hand casually.
"Name's Jules," he said. "You?"
Dævd hesitated. He didn't take the hand yet. His gaze drifted past Jules to the crowd, to the ruin, to the still-smoking horizon. His throat felt dry. His aura had settled but the fire inside had not.
"…Dævd," he said quietly.
Without warning his knees buckled as the last of his strength gave out. Jules barely had time to reach forward before Dævd collapsed against him, unconscious, his weight heavy with exhaustion and blood loss.
"Whoa…hey, hey!" Jules grunted, catching him and lowering him gently to the scorched pavement. "Dævd?!"
A low rumble rolled through the wreckage not from the sky this time, but from the ground. Tires screeched. Through the haze and drifting smoke, a sleek, heavily modified black coupe surged into view like a beast set loose. The front bumper was armored with reinforced plating, and the engine snarled with an unnatural, high-pitched growl, half-machine, half-animal.
The vehicle skidded to a stop with precision, its black chassis gleaming with heat distortion. The door swung open before the engine even finished roaring.
Out stepped a figure clad in a matte black tactical suit, a full-faced mask with glowing teal slits hiding his expression. The figure didn't hesitate.
Kade sprinted through the rubble like a soldier storming a battlefield.
Jules stepped back instinctively, hands raised.
Kade dropped to his knees beside Dævd, pulling off one glove and placing two fingers on Dævd's neck, then another hand on his chest. He listened… waited… and counted.
His fingers trembled, but his movements were sharp. Controlled.
"…Come on, kid," Kade muttered under his breath. "Come on."
The vitals were there. Weak. Faint. But alive.
Kade exhaled hard and pressed a gloved hand against Dævd's chest, as if grounding himself. His voice, when it came again, was low, furious.
"Damn it, kid… you weren't supposed to push this far."
Jules stood nearby, blinking, unsure what to say. His goggles had fallen back over his eyes, but behind them was the quiet shock of someone realizing just how far out of his depth he might be.
"…You know him?" Jules asked quietly.
Kade didn't answer. He was already lifting Dævd's body into his arms.
"Get in the car," Kade said flatly.
"Wait…what? Who are you? What's going on?"
Kade glanced at him once, just once and that glowing mask was enough to make Jules fall in line.
"…Right. Yeah. Okay."
The coupe's engine was still growling when a deep, low-frequency hum overtook the air.
From above the ruin-stained skyline, three black Division-7 hovercrafts descended like vultures, sleek and silent until their bay doors hissed open.
Spotlights flared down through the haze, locking on Kade, Jules, and Dævd.
"Move in! Confirm targets, Alpha priority is the boy!" crackled a voice over a comms channel.
Kade's head snapped up. "Shit."
He didn't even get a second step before armed operatives in dark armored suits dropped from the crafts, landing with metallic thuds in a wide perimeter. Sleek rifles raised. HUD visors glowing. Dozens of them. Efficient. Cold. Like they'd done this hundreds of times before.
Jules lifted his hands slowly. "Okay! Okay! Friendly genius civilian! Let's chill with the high-caliber aiming…"
A sharp, concussive dart hissed from one of the rifles. It struck Jules clean in the neck.
"Wh…?" he blinked, eyes rolling, and collapsed mid-sentence.
"Hey?!" Kade barked, stepping forward but half a dozen red lasers pinned him instantly.
He froze.
A woman stepped forward from the main craft. Rena. Drenched in smoke and ash, her Division-7 badge clipped tightly to her shoulder armor. Her expression was ice. She took one look at Dævd's limp, bloodied form in Kade's arms and gave a silent nod to her men.
"Stand down," Kade said through clenched teeth. "He's not your enemy."
"That's not your call," Rena replied coldly. "Put him down. Slowly."
Kade hesitated, then knelt, placing Dævd gently on a medical stretcher they wheeled toward him.
The moment he backed away, his wrists were locked in magnetic cuffs, and two agents pressed him toward the hovercraft with silent, practiced force.
"What the hell are you guys doing?" he growled.
Rena didn't flinch. "Securing a potential planetary-level threat. You don't get to argue."
A fourth craft arrived above them, unfolding into a med-evac mode. Dævd, unconscious and barely breathing, was lifted inside in a containment pod lined with stabilizing energy fields.
Rena looked down at him once before turning away, jaw tight.
"…Bring them all in."
The hovercrafts roared back to life, engines thrumming with power as they ascended into the smoke-red sky. Below them, the remains of the battlefield still smoldered.
Engines whined as the crafts lifted off into the blood-colored sky. Ash continued to fall like snow.