The air between them ceased to circulate.
Morgath hovered in the dead space, all four of his arms tensing as his pitch-black void eyes locked onto the glowing silhouette of the boy below. The ambient pressure radiating from Rehan had completely shifted. It was no longer an outward tempest; it was a dense, imploding singularity of pure, crystalline amber authority.
"You speak of souls as if your fragile mortal vessel can comprehend eternity," Morgath hissed, his demonic voice splitting into multiple discordant octaves. "You think compressing your aura inward makes you equal to an entity that has devoured millennia of existence?!"
Rehan took a single step forward. The fractured bedrock beneath his boots didn't break; instead, it solidified into a radiant, amber-glass foundation that defied the chaotic anti-gravity of the void.
"You never understood what strength actually is, Morgath," Rehan said, his voice calm, ringing with an unyielding, rhythmic cadence. "You think strength is sitting on top of a mountain, looking down at everyone else, believing you are untouchable just because you have sharper claws and older weapons."
Rehan vanished.
BOOM!
The spatial shockwave arrived half a second after Rehan had already crossed the gap. He materialized directly inside Morgath's guard, his right fist coated in hardened, compressed amber light.
Morgath reacted with unnatural, multi-jointed speed. His primary daggers struck in a violent cross, while the Death Wolf Weapon thrust from the flank to impale Rehan's ribs.
Rehan didn't dodge. With his internal domain reinforcing every sinew, his left forearm cleanly deflected the dual daggers, producing a deafening metallic ring that sent fractures through the demon's blades. His right fist drove straight through the snarling snout of the Death Wolf polearm, shattering the dark iron beast into a shower of splintered metal and driving the blunt force directly into Morgath's ribs.
CRACK—!
Morgath hissed in raw agony as three of his side-ribs caved in, black ichor spraying from his mouth. But before the demon could drift back, Rehan closed in further, raining a relentless flurry of bare-knuckle strikes that shattered the demon's necrotic barriers piece by piece.
"The strong don't stay strong by trampling the fallen!" Rehan's voice cut through the thunder of exploding kinetic impacts. "True strength is born when a weak person is pushed to the absolute edge, when they have lost everything, yet they still choose to stand back up and fight for someone else!"
Every strike carried the weight of Li Wei's sacrifice, the silent hope of Ishita, and the burden of humanity's survival. Morgath was forced backward across the void, his four-armed defense crumbling against the sheer velocity and spiritual density of Rehan's unyielding onslaught.
"You call us weak because we bleed!" Rehan drove a devastating knee into Morgath's solar plexus, lifting the massive demonic sovereign into the air. "Par wahi dard... wahi kamzori hume tootne ke baad bhi ladna sikhati hai! A tyrant like you will never understand the power of a mortal who has nothing left to lose!"
Morgath's body smashed violently into the side of a massive, floating fragment of a ruined skyscraper, the stone shattering on impact.
Blood poured down Morgath's grotesque visage, soaking his green phantom mantle. His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps. But as he looked at Rehan, who was closing in for the final, decisive blow to his core, the terror in the demon's eyes suddenly inverted into a terrifying, sadistic madness.
"You talk too much... child."
Morgath did not raise his broken daggers. He did not use the shattered wolf spear.
His upper-left arm—the one holding the indestructible Death Scythe—dissolved into pure, pitch-black temporal smoke.
Rehan's instincts screamed. His inner core flared with blinding amber light, trying to erect an absolute boundary over his vitals.
It was too late.
Morgath didn't aim for Rehan's core. He didn't aim for the head.
He exploited the single microsecond where Rehan's forward momentum committed his entire upper body into the strike. The immutable, soul-forged blade of the Death Scythe bypassed the spatial coordinates entirely, rematerializing directly behind Rehan's shoulder blade.
SHRRRRK—!
There was no sound of shattering bone. There was only a cold, sickening silence as the ancient black blade sliced through flesh, tendons, and spiritual meridians with surgical perfection.
Time seemed to freeze.
A fountain of vivid crimson blood burst into the void.
Rehan's left arm severed cleanly at the shoulder, spinning into the dark abyss along with a trail of fading golden light.
Rehan's body lurched forward from the sudden, violent loss of equilibrium. The amber luminescence around him flickered violently, threatened by the absolute, necrotic venom instantly invading his severed shoulder.
Morgath stood hovering just three paces away, his chest caved in and covered in black blood, but his fangs bared in an unholy, triumphant sneer as the dripping Death Scythe hummed in his hand.
"A mortal who has nothing left to lose?" Morgath's voice dropped into a dark, mocking whisper that echoed across the dead silence of the rift.
"...Now let us see how you preach your pathetic philosophy with only one arm left."