Before Ashen could continue his attack, red sores burst open across the twisted face of the giant monster, like human mouths that had been suffering for centuries. And from inside those mouths, countless blood nets shot out, shaking, twisting, and snapping like living organs looking for prey.
The nets were not launched. They were fired with extreme force, each strand like a demonic whip. In an instant, they stuck to Ashen from every direction.
The sound they made when they touched his skin was not the sound of flesh being grabbed. It was the sound of burning.
Ashen's skin began to melt immediately. The primitive iron layer cracked and turned black, as if a black flame was eating it from the inside. The threads burrowed into his muscles, sliding between the fibers, and stayed tight with impossible strength.
Ashen did not simply fall. He was slammed into the ground as if a hellish hand had struck him from the sky. The earth under his back cracked and broke, opening into a deep dirt crater.
Every thread wrapped around him like a snake with thousands of teeth. Each second, burned flesh fell from his body and evaporated before it could reach the ground.
A low growl escaped his throat, not from pain, but from blind rage trying to break through the torture.
But the giant monster did not let him.
From between its open jaws, a catastrophic howl exploded. Then another. Then a third.
Each howl was a wave of blood-colored ash that hit the air, then hit Ashen's body with enough force to topple mountains.
The first strike split his spine in the middle.
The second exploded the blood vessels in his chest, spraying his blood into the air as red mist.
The third shattered half of his ribcage, and the tip of his shoulder bone pierced through his skin like a knife.
And still… he lived.
And still… he tried to raise his head.
Then the monster's giant eye moved. A new layer of blood formed at its center, then another, then a third circle of energy swirling around the vertical pupil.
The beam gathered as if the entire world was being pulled toward that eye.
Then it fired.
It was not a beam. It was a blood-red lightquake slicing through the air, creating a vibration that crushed the fog straight through its path.
When the beam hit Ashen, he was not pushed back. He disappeared inside a tunnel of red light, then was shot out of it like an arrow, thrown through rocks, through cliffs, through tens of meters of burned ground, until he ended up buried inside a cracked stone layer that split like a broken eggshell.
The area the beam crossed became a valley of molten rock and charred flesh stretching hundreds of meters.
After a moment that could not be measured, something moved inside the rubble.
Ashen crawled out from between the stones, shaking the dust off slowly. Half his body was already hanging:
His shoulder was out of place
Two ribs were sticking out of his side
The skin of his chest was torn down to the bone
And one whole arm had the marks of the nets carved into it as if fire worms had eaten it.
His eyes were completely red.
At the same time, the ground trembled under his feet. The massive pit where the monster had fallen cracked open again, and it emerged.
Its body looked like a mountain that had been bombarded nonstop. Half its face was crushed, one of its four giant arms was hanging by a thread of flesh, and its chest was open as if cut by a divine strike.
And yet, the flesh on both of them began to return. The blood returned. The fibers healed at a terrifying, insane speed.
Ashen saw the monster, and the monster saw Ashen.
No words.
No truce.
No human reason.
Only two beasts, both refusing to die, both preparing now for the third round—
the round the ground beneath them could not survive.