Jhonathan stood on a pool of blood.
It didn't feel like standing on something solid anymore.
It felt like standing on a memory that refused to stop moving.
The Star he had taken earlier rested in his palm—completely coated in crimson. For a moment, he just stared at it.
Then he ate it.
The moment it entered him, his body reacted violently. Power surged through his veins like a collapsing system trying to rewrite his existence from the inside out.
But before the transformation could settle—
a knife struck his back.
---
A woman in samurai armor appeared behind him without sound.
Her blade moved once.
Jhonathan's arm was severed cleanly.
Rust spread instantly across the wound, crawling over his body like living decay. It wasn't ordinary corrosion—it carried memory distortion, warping perception and destabilizing regeneration pathways.
The Ten Blades had arrived.
A brotherhood forged through torture, hatred, and shared survival under the Hero system.
They didn't fight like individuals.
They fought like a curse.
---
Rain stepped forward and drove his blade into himself.
"Blood Sacrifice," he whispered.
The ground reacted immediately.
The spilled blood around Jhonathan responded to the ritual—rising, twisting, becoming unstable hypersonic projectiles. Each drop turned into a destructive force, firing in unpredictable trajectories that carved craters through the castle walls and floors.
Jhonathan was forced back.
Then struck again.
Speared from multiple angles.
Pinned mid-space by overlapping attacks.
The rust illusions layered over his vision, making enemies appear in multiple positions at once, distorting timing, breaking instinct.
For a moment—
even his Undying state struggled to stabilize.
---
Elsewhere in the castle—
Jessabelle moved through Mark Angelo's domain like it no longer belonged to him.
She grabbed him directly.
"You didn't die," she said coldly.
Mark Angelo didn't answer immediately.
His expression flickered.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Jessabelle pulled out a kunai.
And in that instant—
the world froze.
Not metaphorically.
Time itself locked in place.
All blood in the area—every drop spilled in battle, every fragment of injury—was captured and sealed into a single jar floating beside her.
Even the chaos stopped obeying motion.
---
Back in the battlefield chamber—
Jhonathan stepped forward.
Fully healed.
His arm restored.
In his hand now was a katana that didn't belong to him.
Taken from the Ten Blades.
The rust illusions shattered around him as if they had never been stable to begin with.
The pressure in the room changed.
Something inside the shadows of the castle began to move.
Not an assassin.
Not a blade.
Something older.
Uncontrolled.
Uncontained.
An uncontrollable beast emerged from the darkness behind the broken hall, dragging reality with it as it stepped forward into the light.