The air inside the chasm turned boiling hot, thick with the metallic stench of scorched blood and dark divinity.
Rehan struggled to rise, pushing against the shattered obsidian rubble. The wound across his lower ribs burned with dark frost, fighting against his internal regeneration. Ishita knelt beside him, her hands pressed desperately against his torn armor, channeling every remaining drop of her life-mana to suppress the bleeding.
Across the crater, Lord Ghost Demon stood tall.
His shadow claws were not gathering violet Nether lightning this time. Instead, a twisted, blood-red azure flame—the exact spectral energy absorbed from Zahir's final stand—erupted from the demon's palms.
"The iron vanguard gave his life to seal me in an Asura cage..." Lord Ghost Demon laughed, a cold, mocking sound that echoed through the rocks. "...Yet he only gifted me the perfect weapon to bind his sovereign."
Lord Ghost Demon slammed both hands into the earth.
"Corrupted Asura Art: Infernal Binding Shackles!"
Unlike Zahir's technique, no towering celestial gate appeared from the heavens. There was no ancient war deity judging souls. Instead, the stolen, corrupted essence manifested solely as raw, merciless instruments of restraint.
CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!
From the cracked bedrock directly beneath Rehan, four massive, jagged chains of blackened iron and pulsing blood-crimson runes shot outward like striking vipers.
"Rehan, watch out!" Ishita screamed.
Rehan attempted to phase through space using Horizon Step, but his damaged meridians caused his movement to stall for a fraction of a second.
That split-second was fatal.
CLANGGG!
The four heavy chains snapped shut with brutal force. Two wrapped tightly around Rehan's wrists—pinning his right physical hand and his left phantom arm to his sides—while the other two coiled around his ankles, driving his boots deep into the stone floor.
Rehan was locked completely upright, an immobilized target pinned to the volcanic ground.
"Get off me!" Rehan roared, his muscles bulging as he pulled against the iron links with the full, titanic weight of his Zenith Sovereign Domain.
VUMMMM—!
The chains did not snap. Instead, the blood-red runes flared with blinding intensity. The corrupted shackles began aggressively siphoning Rehan's divine authority, violently dragging the golden sovereign aura and the emerald necrotic fire out through his skin and funneling it directly across the ground into Lord Ghost Demon.
Rehan's breath caught in his throat as a wave of paralyzing exhaustion washed over his body. His twin swords slipped from his immobilized fingers, clattering onto the stone at his feet.
"Rehan!" Ishita cried, drawing her crystal dagger to strike the glowing chains, but the dark shockwave thrown off by the runes hurled her backward into the dirt.
Lord Ghost Demon stepped forward with slow, measured strides, his crimson void eyes drinking in the sight of the trapped sovereign.
"A god bound by the blood of his fallen comrade," Lord Ghost Demon whispered, raising his right arm toward the sky as the dark clouds began to swirl into an apocalyptic vortex.
"Now, sovereign of ash... let us see if your heart is as indestructible as your pride."