Yejin did not waste a second, moving straight in to finish Victorina where she knelt coughing blood into the sand.
But before the blade could land, stakes tore up out of the ground in her path, forcing her to twist aside — one caught her across the leg anyway, opening a shallow but stinging cut. She had to leap clear entirely to avoid the rest.
Victorina flicked her hand, and the stakes changed direction at once, chasing after Yejin now, driving toward her from three angles at once. Yejin twisted through the air, landing and spinning low across the sand, weaving past each one with barely a hair's width to spare.
Then, thick, foul-smelling black smoke rolled up around Victorina, swallowing her wounded form from view entirely. "Filthy pests," her voice hissed out from somewhere inside the cloud, low and shaking with fury.
Yejin steadied herself, blade raised, bracing for whatever came next.
"I'll make every one of you pay for this." The voice curled out of the smoke, closer now.
Dark shackles erupted from the ground without warning, snapping tight around Yejin's wrists and ankles before she could react. Her eyes went wide — she'd let herself focus too hard on the smoke, missed the ground beneath her own feet. She strained hard against the grip, but the shackles held fast no matter how she pulled.
Victorina emerged from the dark cloud fully now, drifting there as though the smoke itself were holding her aloft. Her eyes were burning a deep, glowing purple as she gazed at Yejin. "It's time," she said softly, almost gently, "for your soul to travel to Moknon."
Meanwhile, back where Yul and Vincent stood, Garoda was bleeding badly now, wounds open along his side and arm — and yet he barely seemed to register any of it. He advanced on them anyway, grin still fixed in place, eyes still hungry for more bloodshed. He lifted his own arm to his mouth and licked a streak of blood clean off the skin.
"Man. You're disgusting." Vincent grimaced.
Garoda laughed, low and rumbling. "Shut it. Won't be long before it's your blood I'm licking off these hands instead." The threat only made Vincent's face twist further in disgust.
Yul said nothing, settling into a steady, focused stance, weight balanced and ready for whatever came next.
Garoda's eyes slid over to him, grin widening. "You're really committed to this, aren't you, pretty boy?"
"You're exactly the kind of person I despise most." Yul's voice stayed level, cold. "To you, a life's nothing more than something to toss aside without a second thought. Your bloodlust ends today."
"HAHARHARHA!" Garoda slammed his cleaver down into the earth, splitting the ground apart hard enough that Yul stumbled to keep his footing. Without pause, Garoda swept the blade back up through the air in one violent arc, unleashing a searing red slash that tore across the space between them.
Yul's eyes went wide for half a second before he steadied himself, driving his own crescent slash forward to meet it head-on. The two attacks collided in a burst of light and pressure.
Garoda did not let up. He swung again, and again, unleashing a relentless string of crimson strikes through the air, each one crashing against Yul's mana-imbued blade as he fended them off one after another.
"You've got guts, kid! Let's see how far they carry you! RARGH!" Garoda surged forward and drove a full-force blow straight through Yul's guard, the impact hurling him backward across the ground.
Vincent answered fast, unleashing a wave of searing flame aimed straight at Garoda, trying to swallow him whole in fire. Garoda's skin held against the heat — thick, tough, built for punishment — though it wouldn't stay that way forever if the flames kept climbing.
Then Garoda let out a roar and hurled his whole massive frame into a spinning vortex, cleaver whirling with him, launching dozens of razor-edged red shadows outward in every direction at once. The attack tore through everything in its path — soldiers, barricades, even the boulders scattered along the shoreline, all of it shredded apart in seconds. The sheer force of the spin kicked up a localized storm of dust and blood.
Several imperial guards caught in the radius did not survive it. Vincent managed to hold his barrier against the worst of the shadows, but when Garoda's spinning mass collided directly with it, the resulting explosion threw him hard across the ground.
Still spinning, still a blur of red steel, Garoda turned toward Yul next. Yul held his ground, calm despite everything, and drove a radiant crescent strike straight at him, but it was deflected easily, barely slowing the vortex down.
Guards nearby tried to shield themselves and failed outright, their only real option to scatter and run as the shadows kept tearing through anything unlucky enough to be standing nearby. Not even the SAT's own soldiers were spared from it.
Yul's grip tightened hard around his hilt, jaw set.
"He's lost his mind! There's no stopping him!" one imperial guard shouted, backing away fast.
"Fall back! Stay clear of him — he's coming for me!" Yul's voice cut through the chaos, and the retreating soldiers scattered wide, giving him room as the spinning vortex bore down.
Yul pushed his speed higher, staying just ahead of the violent spin, buying himself the space he needed.
Vincent shook off the blast and pushed back to his feet, hurling fireball after fireball at Garoda — all of it deflected without effort, the vortex shrugging off every strike.
"Deflecting all that, huh?" Vincent muttered, dropping low, both palms pressed flat against the ground. "Let's see you deflect this." Heat surged down through the ground beneath him, and moments later, fire erupted directly underneath Garoda's spinning form, throwing him hard up into the air, the vortex breaking apart around him.
Yul saw the opening and moved instantly, settling into a fresh stance, both hands locked around his hilt. He closed his eyes, opened them again, gaze fixed hard on Garoda's falling body.
"Five-Fold Morning Glory..."
Four crescent slashes tore through the air in rapid succession, one after another, and Yul spun through a final rotation to release the fifth and brightest of them all.
"...Cut!"
All five slashes converged on Garoda at once, cutting through him again and again as they arced back and forth around his falling body, refusing to let him drop.
Vincent stared, stunned into stillness. "Damn, Yul," he whistled, shaking his head with an appreciative grin. "Didn't know you had that kind of heat in you."
Around them, soldiers on both sides had stopped fighting entirely, watching the spectacle unfold overhead.
A moment later, all five crescents collapsed inward at once, meeting at the center of Garoda's chest in a single violent burst of light. The explosion swallowed him whole, and what was left of the Third Commander dropped lifeless onto the ground below.