The dirt in his mouth tasted of copper and ash.
Renji lay pinned to the earth, the weight of the air itself pressing down like a slab of lead. Above him, the silhouette of Oni was a jagged tear against the clotted red sky. The hellfire blade moved—a slow, deliberate arc meant to savor the resistance of bone.
His vision was a wet smear. The world was failing, receding into a grey hum where the only thing left was the rhythmic throb of the wound in his chest.
Kerry… Kerry… Kerry.
It wasn't a shout. It was the sound of a hand brushing against silk. A memory of a kitchen at dawn, the smell of burnt toast, and a voice that shouldn't be here.
Through the haze, he saw her. She wasn't a goddess or a warrior; she was just his mother, her face lined with a grief that hadn't aged. She reached out, her fingers inches from his grit-stained cheek.
"Mom..." The word was a bubble of blood in his throat.
"Stand up, son," she said. The voice was quiet, yet it carried the weight of a mountain. "You have a responsibility. The world doesn't end here."
Renji's fingers twitched in the dust. A tremor, slight as a heartbeat, ran through his frame. Oni paused, the tip of his blade hovering inches from Renji's throat. The Demon King's brow furrowed, his eyes tracking the sudden, impossible spark in the mortal's gaze.
"How dare you move," Oni muttered.
"Wake up, Kerry. You are the King. Stand up!"
Renji didn't feel the pain anymore. He felt a different kind of agony—the sensation of his soul being hammered flat to fit a power that shouldn't belong to a human. He ground his teeth until they cracked, tasting the salt of his own life, and forced his spine to straighten.
"I am not watching you..." Renji's voice was a guttural rasp. "...destroy my world!"
He threw his crossed forearms up.
The impact was a cataclysm. When the hellfire blade hit Renji's aura, the atmosphere didn't just break; it detonated. A shockwave of raw, uncolored energy tore across the ward, stripping the remaining paint from the ruins and throwing a wall of dust three stories high.
The main battle was a graveyard in motion.
The eight Shadow Soldiers had been efficient. They didn't fight; they harvested. Of the thousands that had dived from the clouds, only dozens remained, scuttling through the rubble like insects. But the cost was etched into the pavement. The Hunter squads were broken, men sitting amidst the wreckage of their own limbs, staring at the red sky with hollow eyes. The Obsidian Warriors were a line of ghosts, holding their blades with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
Renji didn't look at them. He used the recoil of the explosion to flip backward, his boots skidding through the dirt.
He didn't reach for one weapon. He reached for two. In his left hand, the Necromancer sword manifested—a sliver of frozen night. In his right, the Void blade hummed, a jagged tooth of emerald light that made the air around it bleed.
Oni charged. He didn't use techniques; he used the momentum of a god. "I will make this slow, mortal!"
They collided in a blur of frame-skipping violence. Renji fought with a desperate, jagged fluidity. He slashed with the shadow-blade, leaving trails of black ichor that clung to Oni's limbs like tar, slowing the Demon King's frantic pace. Then he followed through with the Void blade, the green energy carving through Oni's dense muscle as if it were rotted wood.
Clang. Crash.
Oni was a flawless engine of destruction. Every punch he landed didn't just bruise; it shattered. He ignored the finesse of the Void, focusing on the meat and bone of the man before him. He caught Renji in the ribs, the sound of the snap lost in the roar of the wind.
Renji didn't fall. He fought smarter. He slammed his left hand into the dirt, erupting Necrotic Shackles—coils of shadow that snagged Oni's ankles for a fraction of a second. It was enough. Renji launched a sequence of Void-enhanced kicks, the energy burning black pits into Oni's thighs.
The Demon King snarled. This mortal... he's a flickering candle. Why won't he go out?
Oni's retaliation was a pressurized wave of raw malice. He didn't punch; he thrust his palm forward, the air itself becoming a solid wall. The impact hit Renji's chest, collapsing what remained of his ribs.
Renji staggered, the shadow-blade clattering to the ground. Before he could breathe, Oni's hand clamped around Renji's left bicep.
"You've lost your use!"
With a sickening, wet snap of tendon and bone, Oni tore Renji's left arm from the socket. He tossed the limb aside like a piece of refuse.
Renji didn't scream at first. The shock was too deep. He hit his knees, the stump of his shoulder a fountain of hot red. His clothes were rags, his skin a map of lacerations and bruises. But his right hand remained clamped around the Void blade.
Arm... gone. Kael... gone.
Renji forced himself up. He was leaning heavily to the right, his balance ruined, his breath a wet whistle. He looked at Oni—the Demon King was bleeding, a gash across his face weeping gold, his chest heaved.
Renji lunged. He was slow. He was predictable. But the sheer desperation of a one-armed man made him dangerous. He caught Oni's flank, the green blade sinking deep. Oni roared, trying to shake him off, but Renji held on with the grip of a corpse.
"Say hello to the Abyss," Renji whispered.
Beneath his boots, he opened a portal. Not to Gehenna. Not to Aetheria. He reached into the Null—the place where even the gods were afraid to look.
"Existence Termination: Null."
The world went quiet. The sound of the wind, the screams of the dying, the crackle of fire—all of it was swallowed by a ravenous, black circle that didn't reflect light. It was a hole in the universe.
Renji felt the Void pull at his marrow. He looked Oni in the eyes—seeing the sudden, pure terror of a King realizing he was about to be nothing—and pulled them both in.
The portal snapped shut. The earth where they had stood was gone, leaving nothing but a smooth, circular crater of fused glass.
The air grew still. The red clouds began to thin, revealing a sky that was grey and bruised, but no longer bleeding.
Across the battlefield, the seven remaining Shadow Soldiers stopped. They stood like statues for a heartbeat, then began to dissolve. The black armor turned to smoke, the emerald eyes faded, and the essence returned to the wind.
"What's happening?" a hunter asked, his voice cracking.
The Obsidian specialists watched the fading shadows, the truth settling in their chests like cold iron.
"The King is gone," one whispered. "The source is dry."
The cheering that should have followed the victory never came. There was only the sound of heavy breathing and the distant, rhythmic thud of approaching medevacs.
Kaelith limped through the wreckage. He was held together by bandages and a single crutch, his face a mask of grief. He stopped at the edge of the glass crater. He didn't shout. He didn't cry. He just looked into the empty space where his son had been.
"I'll miss you, Kerry," he murmured. "I'll hold the line."
Sirens cut through the silence. Helicopters hovered overhead, their spotlights sweeping the dead. The war was over. The price had been paid in full.
Far away, in a room that smelled of dried sage and old parchment, a man whose skin looked like weathered wood sat in a high-backed chair. He was ninety, maybe older, his eyes clouded with cataracts that hid a sharp, terrifying intelligence.
He felt the ripple in the Void. He felt the King's heart skip, then resume a slow, rhythmic beat in the dark.
The old man's mouth twitched into a dry, yellow smile.
"The Mortal King is still breathing," he whispered to the shadows. "Hahahaha. He's still breathing."