The colossal sword parted the sky as it grew incredibly large, its steel edge radiating a blinding, absolute majesty. The wind tore through the earth, ripping up sheets of bedrock as the force coming from the immense beam of divine light gathered enough raw, cataclysmic power to completely wipe out an entire battalion in a single breath. Hevana held the towering, glowing weapon with both hands, her muscles straining against the kinetic pressure, and then she forcefully lowered the blade to execute her final, world-splitting strike.
"Domain of Darkness."
The words Areia spoke echoed throughout the valley with a chilling, absolute finality. The exact millisecond the Paladin's world-splitting strike tore downward, the entire domain was instantly plunged into a pitch-black abyss.
It was a deep, choking darkness that actively tore the life from any living creature caught within its radius. It felt exactly like being violently plunged into the immense, bottomless depth of a freezing sea, where the pressure alone could crush bone. Hevana's apocalyptic strike never even landed; the blinding beam of divine light simply vanished into the void, swallowed whole as if it had never been created in the first place.
The Paladin frantically grabbed her own throat, gasping for air as the dense, unnatural darkness pressing on all sides threatened to choke her to death. Every single one of her senses was completely cut off. She couldn't see, hear, or feel anything in particular, stripped entirely of her awareness in the void. Aside from the terrifying physical pressure, an immense, primordial fear crawled up her spine—the terrifying realization of her own helplessness. For the first time in a very long while, the proud Holy Saintess felt true, unadulterated fear.
But she refused to let the darkness claim her mind.
With a desperate, animalistic instinct, she bit her tongue until iron-tasting blood filled her mouth, using the sharp spike of pain to ground her teeth. A dangerous, unyielding level of madness instantly set into her brain, overriding her terror with pure fanatical willpower. Her eyes snapped open in the void, glowing with an unstable, white-hot light as she screamed her counter-attack into the abyss:
"World's Purity!"
The suffocating darkness was dispelled instantly. The Paladin wasn't entirely sure if her desperate skill had actually worked or if Areia had simply dispelled the shadow herself, but she wasn't about to let a single opportunity slip by.
Areia stood perfectly still, her regular steel sword held loosely in her hand. Even while navigating the total blackout of her own domain, she hadn't made a single move to attack the defenseless, panicked Paladin.
Seizing the opening, Hevana tore through the shattered ground like a blinding beam of light, launching her entire body straight toward Areia—a catastrophic mistake she would soon come to deeply realize. Areia didn't flinch. Her deep purple eyes didn't waver for even a fraction of a second. As the golden-haired saintess blurred into her personal space, Areia's hand shot out like lightning, caught the speeding Paladin violently by her hair, and rammed her skull directly into the bedrock with merciless force.
Even pinned, Hevana's warrior instincts flared. The massive holy sword cut through the air toward Areia's exposed flank in a swift, clean arc.
Without breaking a sweat, Areia reached out and grabbed the razor-sharp divine blade with her bare, gloved hand, stopping its lethal progress instantly. The legendary weapon hummed violently against her palm, desperate to slice through her flesh, yet it couldn't leave a single scratch.
"Do you actually want to die?!" Hevana yelled frantically from the dirt, her voice cracking. "Why would you grab a divine blade bare-handed?! It'll—"
*Crack*
She stopped mid-sentence as her eyes traced the thin purple line now running through her divine blade like cracks on glass, her eyes widened in terror. Straing wildly against the crushing weight pinning her down, she managed to look Areia dead in the eyes.
The white-haired girl wore a total poker face. There was absolutely no emotion left on her features; her earlier volcanic outburst of anger had completely vanished, replaced by a hollow, terrifying void. Yet, something raw and primordial within the depths of her purple gaze made Hevana want to abandon her sacred sword entirely, turn tail, and run somewhere far, far away.
The Saintess tried with every fiber of her being to break free from Areia's iron grip, but it was physically impossible. It was as if the girl who had subtly struggled in their earlier contest of brute strength had completely evaporated, replaced by an immovable mountain.
"I will devour your world, your god, your sense of justice, and absolutely everything else," Areia whispered, her voice a flat, freezing dynamic that cut straight to the bone. "Those damned angels who think they can freely mess with my allies... I will strip you all down to your absolute bare.Nothing shall save you from me. Your precious holy light shall be nothing more than a flickering candle in the eternal darkness I'm going to bring."
Her purple eyes began to glow with a dark, bottomless light, actively sucking the very divinity away from Hevana's core.
"Fuck it," Areia growled softly, the air pressure dropping dangerously around them. "I'll just kill you right here and enter your world myself."
"Gravity of the Devout!!!" Hevana yelled in a blind panic, trying to manifest a crushing gravitational field to blow her opponent off her. But the high-level spell had absolutely no effect on the girl currently pinning her to the earth.
"Hallow-Steel Echo!!!" she cried out again, trying to trigger a sonic vibration through her blade. Still, nothing happened.
Her voice was trembling violently now. She felt entirely trapped, suffocated, and utterly weak. She desperately tried to utter more words, more spells, reaching deep into the absolute peak of her arsenal of divine skills—but staring directly into Areia's unblinking eyes, her mouth completely froze solid. The magical circuits in her throat refused to click.
"Jahannam," Areia began, her voice resonating with the ancient cadence of an absolute death sentence, ready to take the life of the helpless girl pinned beneath her boot.
But suddenly, she stopped short.
An annoying, high-pitched buzzing noise was echoing through her ears. She had shut off the rest of the world so completely in her blinding rage that she hadn't actually realized what she was doing or what was happening right in front of her face. The faint sound echoed through the silent, ruined expanse of the land, cutting straight into her returning sanity.
Areia blinked, looking down at the girl beneath her hand, and instantly saw exactly what the noise was.
Having given up all remaining hope, and driven by pure, unadulterated terror... the proud Holy Paladin was crying, her tears cutting clean lines through the dirt on her face.
"Well, I didn't actually expect you to start crying," Areia said slowly. She let go of her grip, stepping back to take a seat on a large, jagged stone slab, staring at the Paladin with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief.
Havana wiped her eyes quickly with the back of her bare arm, desperately trying to pull her shattered composure back together. "You literally threatened to kill me!" she said, her voice instantly snapping into a deeply offended, defensive tone.
"Who knows? I could have just been joking," Areia shrugged casually, resting her elbows on her knees.
"How on earth am I supposed to determine that?!" the golden-haired girl yelled, her face flushing crimson as she stood up from the dirt and still wiping her teary eyes. "You literally threatened to take my life, and you had an incredibly scary look on your face!"
"A scary look?" Areia tilted her head, a genuinely puzzled expression crossing her face. "This is a first. I usually only ever hear about how insanely pretty I look." She reached up, casually touching her long white hair.
"Ugh!" Havana muttered in pure disgust, rolling her eyes and sniffed. "Yeah, that's technically true... but I'm pretty sure that belief will fade the exact second people see what you almost did to me!"
"Relax, will you? I didn't actually hurt you, did I?" Areia smiled, the dark, menacing aura from moments ago completely evaporating into a light, playful energy.
Havana didn't answer right away. She looked down, her winter-blue eyes staring blankly at her once-flawless divine blade. A dense spiderweb of glowing purple cracks was now etched deeply into the steel, throbbing with a residual, forbidden energy. Her fair fingers ran gently along the fractured metal, a sudden realization hitting her.
"That word you muttered right at the end..." Havana whispered, her head snapping up.
"What word?" Areia asked, completely playing innocent.
"You tried to kill me with the literal fires of Hell, and you didn't even know it?!" Havana yelled furiously. She slammed the fractured blade back into its sheath and stomped her bare foot against the ruined bedrock. "You are absolutely insufferable!"
"So, I take it you aren't actually scared of me anymore, right?" Areia asked, a mischievous glint in her purple eyes as she smoothly got off the rock.
"Well... if you suddenly run at me or make any sudden moves, I'm pretty sure I'll turn around and run away," Havana said, eyeing Areia with extreme wariness as she took a cautious step backward.
"I'll do exactly that then," Areia smiled warmly.
Without a single second of warning, she bolted straight toward the golden-haired Saintess.
Havana took to her heels instantly, her athletic frame kicking into high gear as she sprinted away across the demolished, canyon-like terrain. "Leave me alone, you crazy woman!" she yelled over her shoulder in a high-pitched panic.
"Come on! I just want a hug!" Areia laughed loudly, her high-heeled boots effortlessly eating up the distance as she chased her through the valley.