The ghosts faded.
Not because I'd beaten them.
Because they'd made room—for him.
Adim stepped down from the blood-forged dais, cloak trailing behind him like a living river. His boots splashed through the crimson tide, each step echoing like war drums in my skull. There was no more crowd, no more specters. Just him.
And me.
"You've bled," he said. "You've broken. Now… you choose."
My fists tightened. "Choose what?"
Adim stopped ten feet from me. "What kind of god you want to become."
I laughed, short and bitter. "I'm no god."
"Wrong," he said simply. "The moment you touched the Relic, you stopped being just flesh. You are a nexus of death and memory, stitched together by suffering and bound by blood. Your enemies look at you and see an aberration. That's not fear, Kiro. That's recognition."
I swallowed, throat dry. "You talk a lot for a ghost."
Adim smiled, and suddenly, he was gone.
And behind me.
He didn't attack. Not yet.
He waited.
I turned slowly. "This a sparring match or a eulogy?"
"It's a mirror," he said, and lunged.
I barely blocked. His blade—my blade—carved through the air with terrifying familiarity. Every movement he made was something I'd done. Every step, every feint, every raw instinct—I knew them because they were mine.
But faster. Sharper. Like someone had taken my will and sanded it into perfection.
"I'm not here to kill you," Adim said, driving his heel into my ribs. "I'm here to finish you."
I slid backward, spitting blood onto the living street. "Then you're not me."
That made him pause.
"Say that again," he said.
I stood straight. "You're not me. You're what I was. What I had to become to survive. The system needed a caretaker, sure—but you didn't just take the keys. You locked the door."
His expression twisted. Just a flicker. Just enough.
I pressed forward.
"You weren't just a steward," I said. "You were a wall. Between me and the truth. Between me and the system. And now that I'm back, you're scared."
He lunged again, but slower.
I dodged, twisted, and slammed my fist into his chest.
It cracked.
A jagged line split down his torso—light spilling out.
"…You're a mask," I breathed. "But masks crack."
Adim staggered back. His eyes flickered—not red, but black.
Void-black.
And suddenly it clicked.
"You were corrupted," I whispered.
He grinned. But it wasn't my grin anymore.
"You think the Void stopped at the gates of your mind?" he rasped. "You carried it in. Like rot in the roots of a tree. You invited it."
My skin prickled. My heartbeat slowed.
"Then this isn't a trial," I said. "It's an exorcism."
Adim let out a scream—not a human one. Not even blood-born. Something deeper. Older.
The runes on his body twisted into jagged glyphs. His flesh stretched. His eyes went black, then deeper—like they'd opened into another world entirely.
"Fine," he roared, voice now layered with something alien. "Then bleed me out."
And the fight changed.
He moved like a god with nothing left to lose.
But I'd fought dragons. I'd fought armies.
I'd fought myself.
So I fought him.
We tore through the City of Blood—crashing into towers, shattering bridges, ripping through memory itself. Every punch I landed erased a scar from my mind. Every blade I dodged shed weight I'd carried since childhood.
And when I finally—finally—drove my fist into his chest and shattered the void-corrupted core inside him, he fell to his knees.
His face was mine again.
Calm. Human. Free.
"I remember now…" he whispered, fading. "The system didn't need a god. It needed a man."
He vanished in a whisper of blood and light.
And the sky split open.
[Blood System Interface – Reactivated]
SYSTEM CORE: UNLOCKED.OMEGA VEIN ACCESS: GRANTED.USER: KIRO – TRUE INHERITOR OF THE BLOOD GOD SYSTEM.BEGINNING CORE RECLAMATION…
I stood alone.
But not powerless.
The city was still bleeding, still whispering—but the voice had changed.
It was mine now.
And somewhere—distant but real—I could feel it.
My body.
Still sleeping in the hands of a grumpy, swearing doctor named Jiji who smelled like burnt metal and noodles.
And I smiled.
"I'm waking up," I whispered. "And when I do…"
I looked toward the blood horizon, where shadows gathered and a darker war waited.
"…I'm not holding back."