In that fatal moment, the Gazelle left Kealen no loophole for escape. He pounced with a terrifying coldness, clamping his long, slender fingers like talons onto Kealen's head. His grip possessed an unhuman crushing force, like freezing steel pliers sinking into the skull. Kealen felt his head bones groan under the pressure, while the Gazelle fixed a gaze filled with absolute madness into the boy's eyes unblinking, leaving him no room to even inhale a single atom of air.
Then, with a slow, theatrical movement designed to evoke horror, the Gazelle began to raise his leg.
The movement was gradual, as if he were flaunting his extreme physical flexibility; his foot rose to surpass the level of Kealen's staggering head, hanging in the air like a guillotine blade waiting for the signal to drop. In that instant, everything around them froze; Kealen saw nothing but the shadow of that thin, powerful leg blocking out his last glimmer of hope.
The Gazelle's leg descended vertically with thunderous force, striking Kealen's shoulder and chest simultaneously. The impact roared like the shattering of boulders, its terrifying echo vibrating through the silent forest trees. Kealen's body was driven into the soil under the weight of that force; dust and withered leaves flew in a vortex of violence, while the earth beneath his back shook violently. As his ribcage compressed, a forced surge of fluid and blood erupted from his mouth in a painful burst the result of the massive pressure that crushed his lungs and shattered his ability to resist.
Amidst this destruction, the Gazelle erupted into a hysterical laugh a laugh that rang through the clearing with an echo of madness and bitter mockery. In a voice as cold and sharp as a blade, he cast a single word that shook what remained of Kealen's soul:
"Weak."
The Gazelle began to lean into Kealen's face with a strange, crawling slowness befitting a creature that does not belong to humanity. His features, twisted by a golden smile, drew closer and closer until his cold breath brushed the bloody face of the boy. He whispered with a terrifying, cult-like obsession:
"Soon.. very soon, my Ruler shall come to Planet Earth, and everyone who dares to defy his laws will be erased from existence."
His sick smile widened, and his eyes flashed with absolute darkness as he continued like a madman:
"And it will be me.. yes, I, the Gazelle.. one of his Saints who will rule this wretched planet. The Earth will not return to what it was; it will belong to us!"
Suddenly, without the slightest warning, that whisper turned into an explosion of brutality. The Gazelle began raining punches down on Kealen's face insanely. His slender fists struck like rapid hammers, blow after blow without pause right and left until Kealen's blood began to splatter in every direction, staining the Gazelle's white clothes and completely coating his hands in deep crimson. He did not calm down; instead, his savagery increased with every trail of blood that flowed, as if the hatred he carried fed his muscles with renewed energy.
The Gazelle screamed insanely while continuing to demolish what remained of Kealen's features:
"Do you hear me, you insect?! I will kill you here and trample your corpse to be a lesson for everyone who stands in our way!"
Then, the Gazelle raised his hands high toward the sky, clasping them together tightly as he began to activate his aura with terrifying intensity. Energy began to swirl around his arms in a frightening spiral, compressing the air before he swung all that concentrated weight directly onto Kealen's shattered face.
The explosion roared with a force that shook the forest to its roots.
Kealen's teeth scattered into the air, falling onto the wet dirt, and blood erupted from his mouth in a torrential waterfall. Within seconds, Kealen's face had become a distorted mass completely covered in blood; his features lost their identity, and he was no longer recognizable amidst the rubble and destruction.
The Gazelle finally stopped, standing tall with his long shadow over the body embedded in the earth. He looked at Kealen's wreckage with a manic smile; there wasn't a grain of pity in his eyes. Rather, he saw in this brutal scene merely the beginning of the purification rituals promised by his Ruler.
The clock hands stopped in that ill-fated moment while the Gazelle stared at his palms, stained in deep crimson. The blood was still warm, flowing through the cracks of his skin like small rivers of death. He looked at them and laughed hysterically, his provocative laughter echoing through the dark forest like the wailing of a demon who had lost his mind. He began to mutter incoherent words, like someone reciting a spell in a deserted temple, saying with features distorted by madness: "I did it.. do you see, my Ruler? I finally killed him." With a move that would make one's skin crawl, he raised his tainted hands and began to lick the blood off his fingers slowly and with relish, whispering in a voice dripping with savagery: "Delicious blood.. truly delicious."
The Gazelle then turned toward Kealen, who was still drowned in his coma, sprawled on the ground like a lifeless corpse, while his hands gripped convulsively onto the pistols Farouk had given him as if they were the last hope remaining for him in this world. The Gazelle raised his hand high in the air, snarling with a terrifying threat: "I will turn this heart beating in your chest into something delicious to chew on."
In that moment, time for Kealen had slowed until it almost stopped. He did not feel the coldness of the earth or the threat of death; he was drowned in a mirage of the distant past. He saw himself as a small child carried by a woman with golden hair flowing like sunbeams, standing beside a man of majestic blue hair. Their features were hazy behind the fog of oblivion, but the mother's blue eyes radiated a soul-tearing tenderness despite the blurriness of her face. The woman pressed the small child to her chest, saying softly: "Look, my husband.. our child, how cute and innocent he is." The man replied in a voice filled with dignity mixed with suppressed bitterness: "Yes.. but you know well what we must do."
The woman went silent for a moment, her grip tightening on the little Kealen as if trying to protect him from an inevitable fate. She asked in a trembling voice: "Do we really need to sacrifice him?" The man did not answer with harsh words, but with a voice choked by tears and sorrow, stemming from the weight of responsibility toward the Kingdom and the family. In the final moment of that vision, their features appeared with stark clarity; they hugged him with a strength that was the final farewell, and whispered into his ear with a silent cry that pierced the depths of his soul: "Do not die, Kealen.. you must live!"
Reality suddenly exploded as the Gazelle's hand was swinging with lightning speed toward Kealen's chest to tear out his heart. But in the fraction of a second before the catastrophe, a thunderous shot rang out. Kealen blew out the Gazelle's right eye in a cloud of blood and tissue, turning the Gazelle's laughter into screams of horror that shook the place. The Gazelle recoiled, clutching his shattered eye socket and screaming hideously: "My eye! My eye!"
Kealen staggered as he tried to stand on his feet with extreme difficulty; his body was shaking from the impact of the blows and the blood he had lost profusely. He looked at his opponent with eyes exhausted by weariness. As for the Gazelle, he had lost every shred of his sanity, screaming with deep-seated hatred: "You bastard.. I will eat your flesh when I kill you! I will take your head and impale it on a stake in front of your teacher's house to be a lesson!" The Gazelle stood upright, and a pale green aura erupted from him a terrifying energy emitting from his body and his remaining left eye, which ignited with a demonic spark.
The Gazelle struck the ground with his foot, and with a supernatural ability, the soil beneath his feet transformed into a rubbery substance, giving him immense propulsion to move with the speed of lightning. The Gazelle flew through the air, pouncing on Kealen, who saw the whole world in red due to the blood flowing over his eyes. Kealen glimpsed the Gazelle's shadow approaching to rip out his heart, and with an innate quick-wittedness, he dropped to the ground, letting the opponent pass over him, and fired a precise bullet targeting the Gazelle's leg to force him to retreat.
Kealen finally began to move, surpassing his pains, and started firing a volley of bullets toward the Gazelle, who was jumping between trees like a madman, shouting threats. Suddenly, Kealen found the Gazelle right above him, carrying a gleaming dagger swinging toward his head. In that decisive moment, Kealen saw an imaginary "Line" defining the strike's path; he maneuvered his body skillfully and fired a bullet directly at the dagger's blade to knock it from the Gazelle's hand, then followed it with another bullet that settled in the Gazelle's right wrist. The Gazelle retreated in pain, dripping with grudge and hatred, snarling in a hoarse voice: "You bastard!"