---
Cerberus reared, three heads snatching at Fernando like a living storm. The Dark King fought like a man possessed—blade flashing, shadow flaring— but the beast was beyond titanic; it was a god of jaws. One of the heads lunged with monstrous speed, teeth like obsidian razors, and clamped down on Fernando's left arm.
The sound was a wet, terrible crack—bone splintering under impossible force. Fernando screamed, a raw, animal sound that ripped the air. Blood geysered; the arm was mauled, then torn clean as Cerberus shook its head violently. Flesh, tendon, and blood flew in a spray of night and fire. Fernando's hand slipped away, the sword clattering from his ruined grip as he sagged to one knee, one sleeve shredded and empty, the stump smoking where the jaw had closed.
For a heartbeat the world reduced to two things: the white-hot scream in Fernando's throat and the terrible black hole where his arm had been. He tasted iron and ash. Pain lanced him, but beneath the pain something harder held—rage, carved from loss.
Zeldaris laughed—long, monstrous, exultant—the sound of a man who had watched the world break and enjoyed the collapse. Blood dotted his lips; his grin was a thing of hunger. "Good," he crooned, delighted. "Bleed. Let the dark king know the taste of his own ruin."
Cerberus's three heads roared as one. Then, as if their master called a curtain closed, the monstrous form began to dissipate. A terrible, flickering glow washed the creature's burning hide; embers fell like eyes blinking out. The gargantuan beast folded into shadow and flame, and in a final howl the three heads dissolved into motes of light that burned up into the boiling sky.
When the last ember winked away, Zeldaris stood alone on scorched stone—human, but unhinged. His clothes were torn; his chest heaved. He wore a madman's grin smeared with blood, lips parted to reveal teeth stained dark. His eyes glittered with fever.
He spat a slow laugh, wiping a raindrop of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. The wound he carried hardly seemed to trouble him; if anything, it flamed his mania.
From the sidelines, Kur—the Fire Disaster and Zeldaris' lieutenant—stepped forward. He had watched the exchange with a predator's interest. His face was stone, scarred and grim, every muscle coiled like a spring.
Zeldaris turned toward him, still smiling that fractured, monstrous smile. "Bring him to the post," he said, voice soft and cruel. "Crucify him. But do not kill him. Let him suffer. Let him watch what he could not prevent."
Kur inclined his head, eyes narrowing in agreement. Around them the wounded and the broken watched in dread as two figures—one maimed, one manic—decided the fate of a man who had dared to challenge a god.
Fernando sagged into the ash, blood painting his chest. The stump of his arm steamed in the volcanic heat. His breaths were ragged, but his eyes—those iron, dark eyes—still burned with a terrible light. He smiled once, a grim, broken thing that had no softness left.
"Do what you must," he rasped, voice hoarse. "I will not kneel."
Kur's hand closed on a set of heavy chains. Zeldaris' grin deepened; the storm around them felt hungrier now, tuned to the single, bitter note of a promise: cruelty will be the spectacle—they would crucify the Dark King as theater, and leave him for torment rather than a swift death.
The square shuddered under the decision. Torches guttered. The mountain watched, patient and volcanic, as men prepared to turn a living legend into a slow, public monument of pain.
---
---
The battlefield reeked of ash and blood. Fernando knelt in the ruins, his breath ragged, his body trembling from blood loss. His left arm was gone, the stump bound only by shadow magic to stem the bleeding.
Kur dragged thick, jagged chains from the earth, their links glowing faintly red as if forged in hellfire. With one brutal swing, he wrapped them around Fernando's chest and throat. The Dark King staggered, but refused to cry out. Instead, he spat blood at Kur's boots.
Zeldaris chuckled low, savoring every second. "Do you see now, Kur? Even broken, even one-armed, he defies us. That is why I want him alive. A corpse tells no story. But a crucified king? That is a legend shattered."
Fernando was hoisted, his feet dragged across the volcanic stone until they reached two jagged obsidian pillars jutting like black fangs from the earth. Kur slammed him back against them, driving chains through his shoulders and thighs. The metal hissed as it burned into flesh.
Fernando's scream tore through the battlefield, raw and unmasked. His head fell forward, dark hair matted with blood. Still, through half-shut eyes, he glared.
"Is this… all you have?" he rasped, lips curling into a defiant smile. "I will never… kneel to you, Zeldaris."
Zeldaris' laughter erupted, echoing off the volcano walls like thunder. "Good! Good! Suffer beautifully for me, Dark King. Let the world see its so-called sovereign strung like meat!"
Kur twisted the chains tighter, pinning Fernando's single arm wide. The Dark King hung crucified, a broken silhouette against the burning sky, his shadow stretching like a scar across the battlefield.
---
Far from the carnage, Yaman tore through the forest paths, his chest burning as he ran. The girl's words echoed in his ears: "If you go back there, you will die."
But Yaman's heart pounded harder, his teeth clenched with fury. He saw the glow of the volcanoes ahead, the lightning tearing the sky in half. In his mind, his father's scream cut through the thunder.
He stopped for only a moment, staring at the inferno in the distance. His fists shook. Tears rimmed his eyes, but his lips curved into a sharp, fearless grin.
"I don't care if death waits for me," Yaman whispered, voice trembling with resolve. "I will not let Father suffer alone."
And then, with the speed of a hawk, he sprinted again—straight back toward the mountain where Zeldaris' laughter still shook the heavens.
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