---
Yaman's boots slammed against the cracked volcanic stone, each step echoing like a drumbeat of war. The girl clung to his chest, sobbing, her small fingers digging into his jacket. Behind him, the world was collapsing — ash raining, lava bursting, the air vibrating with impossible power.
He didn't dare look back.
But then the roar came.
Not one roar. Three.
The sound ripped the night in half, shook his bones until his teeth rattled. Yaman stumbled, almost falling with the girl in his arms. Against every instinct, he turned his head.
And he saw it.
From the sundered battlefield, a titanic shadow rose. Three monstrous heads, eyes like molten suns, jaws spilling rivers of flame. The very air warped around it. Cerberus. The beast of nightmares, clawing its way into the world.
Yaman froze, his breath caught in his throat. His father's silhouette was there, a lone figure before the demon, cloak whipping in the hurricane winds of hell. And Zeldaris — shirtless, tattooed, bleeding, laughing like a mad god beside his pet from the abyss.
The sight stabbed Yaman's heart. His legs trembled. His eyes burned with tears.
"Dad…" he whispered, voice breaking. For a heartbeat, he wanted to run back, to fight, to die beside his father.
But then the girl whimpered in his arms. Her fear, her fragile life, reminded him.
Yaman grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached. He shook his head violently.
"No… I can't. I have to finish this. I have to save her."
He turned back, sprinting again, lungs screaming for air, eyes wet but focused.
"Dad… win. Please. I'll believe in you. I'll finish my mission."
Behind him, the battlefield shook again.
Fernando's voice thundered, sharp and commanding, cutting through the roar of Cerberus.
"Dark Barrier: Abyssal Cage!"
A dome of pitch-black darkness wrapped around him and the beast, sealing the battlefield. Lightning from the volcano cracked across the sky, lava spattered like rain, but the cage held.
Zeldaris' laughter rolled through the air even outside the barrier, reaching Yaman's ears.
"YES, DARK KING! That's it! Trap yourself with me! Hahaha! Let the boy flee — he'll die later anyway. This night belongs to us!"
Yaman didn't look back again. His tears streamed, but his feet carried him further and further from the nightmare, the girl pressed against his .
---
The Abyssal Cage sealed shut with a bone-shaking boom, its walls of swirling darkness rippling like an ocean of night. Inside, the air became heavy, suffocating, charged with killing intent.
Then Cerberus moved.
The beast's three heads roared in unison, a sound so violent it cracked the obsidian stone beneath its claws. Its massive frame surged forward, faster than its size should allow. Each paw strike was like a boulder slamming the earth, leaving craters in its wake.
"HELLFANGS!"
Its left head lunged, snapping at Fernando with teeth the size of swords, each dripping with corrosive flame. Fernando spun aside, his cloak nearly torn, the sheer force of the bite exploding the ground where he had stood. Shards of molten rock sprayed outward like shrapnel.
Before he could recover, the center head reared back. A circle of burning crimson formed in its throat.
"INFERNAL BURST!"
A beam of pure fire roared forth, white-hot, melting stone in an instant. Fernando swung his blade, wrapped in darkness.
"Eternal Eclipse Slash!"
The black arc cut through the fire, splitting it apart, but the explosion still hurled him backward, smashing him against the cage wall. Darkness rippled and groaned but held.
Zeldaris stood off to the side, cloakless, grinning like a man possessed. His club rested lazily on his shoulder, his tattoos glowing faintly red with each flash of Cerberus' fury.
"YES! Show me your strength, Dark King! Let me see how long you last against the jaws of the underworld!"
Cerberus didn't relent. The right head struck, exhaling a toxic miasma that burned the ground black.
"PLAGUE BREATH!"
Fernando leapt, his sword spinning in a whirl of obsidian light. The darkness carved a path through the poisonous fog, dispersing it — but the middle head was waiting.
Its jaws slammed shut around Fernando.
The sound was like a mountain collapsing.
For a heartbeat, Zeldaris thought it had ended. But then — from inside the beast's maw — darkness erupted.
"Graviton Implosion!"
A surge of gravity exploded outward. Cerberus shrieked in rage, jaws forced open as Fernando shot free, blood streaming from his arm but his eyes burning with cold resolve.
The cage walls shook violently, lava spraying through cracks in the volcanic earth. The whole battlefield quaked as if the volcano itself feared the duel.
Zeldaris laughed louder, his voice echoing like thunder.
"HAHAHA! That's it! Spill your blood! Break your bones! This is the power I craved to face! Keep fighting, Dark King — until Cerberus rips the last scream from your throat!"
---
The Abyssal Cage was fire and shadow incarnate. Each second stretched like eternity as Cerberus unleashed carnage.
The left head lunged again, jaws snapping with brutal precision. Fernando swung his blade across, darkness flashing.
"Eternal Eclipse Slash!"
The fangs shattered against the arc, sparks and black blood spraying. Yet the impact still sent Fernando sliding across molten rock, his boots carving trenches in the ground. His chest heaved, sweat and blood soaking his shirt.
The center head gave him no pause. It inhaled deeply, volcanic smoke swirling into its throat until its chest glowed like a furnace.
"INFERNAL BURST!"
The beam fired — a searing lance of fire hotter than dragon's breath. Fernando barely raised his sword in time.
"Dark Matter Wall!"
A massive black magic circle bloomed before him, sucking in the flames. For a moment, it held — then cracked. The fire exploded outward, blasting Fernando into the air, his body spinning before he crashed hard against jagged stone.
He staggered to his knees, coughing blood. His left arm trembled uncontrollably. His sword, slick with his own blood, hummed with unstable darkness.
The right head was already moving.
"PLAGUE BREATH!"
The poisonous mist rolled like a living fog, hissing as it devoured stone. Fernando gritted his teeth, stabbing his blade into the ground.
"Abyssal Drain!"
The darkness spiraled outward, sucking the miasma into a vortex of shadow. The fog screamed as if alive before vanishing into nothingness.
But the moment he rose, the middle head's claws struck.
The blow connected.
Fernando was hurled like a ragdoll, smashing through a spire of rock. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His ribs screamed with every breath. For a second, his vision blurred — the three-headed monster looming like a god of annihilation above him.
Zeldaris' laughter thundered.
"YES! SURVIVE, DARK KING! SURVIVE UNTIL EVEN SURVIVAL ITSELF BREAKS YOU!"
Cerberus reared, all three heads glowing with their next attack. Fire, plague, and raw crushing force fused together.
Fernando stood, sword quivering in his hand. His dark aura flared violently, cracks of black lightning tearing across the cage. His chest rose and fell, blood dripping, but his eyes blazed with stubborn defiance.
He whispered through clenched teeth, to himself more than to the monster:
"I am… the wall between light and shadow. I will not fall… here."
The beast roared. The volcano itself quaked. And Fernando lifted his sword one more time, his silhouette black against the inferno.
---
The cage tore the world into two kinds of noise: the thunder of falling stone and the small, intimate sound of someone refusing to stop breathing.
Inside the Abyssal Cage, Cerberus was a living apocalypse. Fernando's body was a map of fresh wounds—cuts smoking with ash, blood streaking down his ribs—yet he stood, sword clutched in a hand that trembled like a struck bell. He had bled, been smashed, been hurled through stone; still he rose. His pupils were only black now, the left eye already a bruise of shadow as if some part of him had been hollowed out.
Zeldaris roared and seized the moment with the grin of a predator tasting a new kind of sport. He slammed his club into the beast's flank as if to command more fury, then leapt toward Fernando with a speed that made the air scream.
"HELLCLAW REND!" Zeldaris bellowed.
Three claws of shadow and bone lashed out from the commander's hand—a violent, jagged slash meant to shred flesh and spirit. Fernando moved to meet it, sword rising in a desperate arc of black light, but the blow was faster than thought. The Hellclaw hooked under his guard, searing through the air with a heat that smelled of old graves. It struck across Fernando's face with impossible force.
Pain detonated behind Fernando's left eye. For a single, suspended instant the world lost color—there was only a white, flaring ribbon of pain and heat. Then the leftness of his vision went, a splintered dark where sight had been. He staggered, one hand flying instinctively to his face and coming away wet and red.
Blood pooled hot against his fingers. He tasted iron. The blade of his sword caught the firelight; his breath came in a torn rasp.
Zeldaris tilted his head, eyes glittering. "Good," he said softly, savoring the moment. "Bleed, Dark King. Show me how a warrior looks when the light finally leaves him."
Fernando's jaw worked. He tasted dirt and ash and the rawness of a wound that had nothing to do with flesh alone. For a beat he faltered. The cage's shadow pressed in; even the volcano seemed to hush and strain to hear him breathe.
Then, from somewhere that had nothing of cowardice in it, Fernando laughed—half a bark, half a curse—and lifted his sword again. Darkness poured from him like a tide.
---
Far from the screaming heart of the mountain, Yaman ran.
The city beyond the ash line was a battered thing—roofs blackened, shutters splintered, crowds wide-eyed and raw with fear—but it still had a pulse of ordinary life. People scattered before him as he barreled into the market square, the little girl curled against his chest, sobs muffled into his shirt. He followed the smell of smoke and the frantic shouts until he found them: the butcher and his wife, eyes rimmed with soot and disbelief, pulling each other into a trembling, awful hug.
"She alive," the butcher whispered, fingers like knives on his wife's shoulders. The woman's tears fell into the folds of his coat as if they couldn't quite reach the moment.
Yaman set the girl down on her feet. The mother scooped her up, shaking, kissing the top of her head as if committing the moment to memory. The three of them—father, mother, daughter—collapsed into each other in a tangle of smoke, fear, and relief. The butcher's rough hands patted Yaman's back as if greeting a son.
"You brought her back," the butcher said hoarsely. His voice broke and then steadied. "You saved my girl. God bless you."
Yaman's breath hitched. The child looked up at him with big, solemn eyes. She touched the corner of his shirt—ash on his sleeve, streaks of blood still drying against the pale cloth. She pressed a tiny hand to his chest where his heart pounded like a drum and, with a bravery that shocked him more than anything he'd seen on the field of battle, she smiled and said:
"Thank you, big brother."
The words cut through the smoke colder and truer than any blade. Yaman crouched and ruffled her soot-dark hair with a gentle hand. He answered with a small, tired smile and a hand that trembled.
"You're welcome." He hesitated, looking up at the butcher and his wife, at the faces in the crowd that had watched too much horror tonight. Then he straightened.
The little girl's small voice stopped him: "If you go back there, you will die."
For a heartbeat, Yaman's face drained. The truth of it sat on his shoulders like a boulder. He looked at the child—at her trembling chin, the way the mother's arms tightened around her—and felt something fierce and terrible bloom in his chest.
He smiled, a brave, overlarge smile that came out of him like triumph and foolishness all at once. "I laugh in the face of death," he said quietly, and the words were both an answer and a promise.
Without another word, he turned. His boots bit into the ash and he ran—back toward the volcano, toward the roar, toward whatever war had swallowed his father and the night.
Behind him, the butcher and his wife clung to their daughter and watched, faces tangled with gratitude and fear. Yaman vanished into the shadow of the smoke and the falling embers, a lone silhouette charging back into the heart of hell.