Nezhzhar came down hard.
Faster than before.
No taunt this time. No theatrical spin. Just violence, pure and abrupt.
His remaining arm—wreathed in a whisper of voidlight—crashed down against Aelius with a single clean arc. There was no spell name, no trick, no delay.
Just a strike.
And it hit.
Aelius tried to move—he did. The intention was there, coiled in every exhausted tendon—but his body lagged behind his will. The rot around his knees slowed him. The blood loss dulled him. The shock of everything so far had already pushed his reflexes past the edge of collapse.
He was a moment too late.
The strike connected with the side of his face.
There was a sound like a thundercrack underwater—shhhhhkkkkt-crkk—as metal split and bone gave way. The left side of his mask exploded outward in a burst of iron shrapnel and dry, flaking blood. A broken fragment of ceramic spiraled into the dirt, still glowing with the embers of protective runes now dead.
And with it—his eye.
Aelius staggered, his hand flying up to the side of his head. But it wasn't instinct. It wasn't defense. It was pressure—an attempt to stop what was leaking.
The orb was gone.
Shattered.
A ruin of crimson ichor spilled down his cheek like tar drawn from a corpse, thick and slow. The air around him rippled at the sight, like the world itself had been wounded in tandem. A breath escaped him, gurgled and short. One step backward, then another.
And his face—what remained of it—was exposed now.
And behind it. His expression wasn't pain. It wasn't even fury.
It was still. Cold. A silence that felt ancient.
Aelius didn't scream. He didn't shout. He didn't fall.
He blinked—just once—with his remaining eye, slow and deliberate. The crimson streaks down his throat shimmered like paint on marble, his body swaying like a tree that refused to break.
"Okay," Nezhzhar muttered, taking a half-step back, lowering his blade just a little. "That was… that was a bit more mess than I expected."
A moment passed.
Then another.
Nezhzhar lifted his head, squinting. "Wait. You're still standing?"
Aelius didn't respond.
He simply raised his right arm again—slowly, mechanically—like a puppet with one string still intact. His hand curled tight, pulling in the rot around him like smoke drawn into a lung. What poured through his veins now wasn't magic—it was sheer, agonizing, pressure. A cracked conduit of will and disease and death that refused to shut down.
His voice, when it came, was quiet. Throat-burnt.
"…still here."
Nezhzhar hissed between his teeth, backing up now in earnest, hand snapping up to guard his chest. "Seriously? You should be on the ground. You should be twitching and drooling and leaking life like a broken spout."
Aelius stepped forward.
The rot followed.
"And you're still here?" Nehzhar barked, voice rising with disbelief and simmering irritation. "You don't have any magic left. You don't have a sword. You barely have a face—and you're still—"
He caught himself mid-rant, snarled, and threw his arm up like a tantruming storm god denied lightning.
"RRrrrrgh—GODS, you're so annoying!" he roared, fingers twitching with the recoil of half-formed spells. "Even your vitality should have limits! You're a mage, not a cockroach!"
Aelius didn't reply. His chest heaved, half from blood loss, half from something deeper—something older than exhaustion. Something forged not in strength, but in choice.
Nehzhar pointed at him, as if summoning the universe itself to witness the absurdity.
"Look at you! You're bleeding out, you're gasping, your mask is gone, your eye is somewhere in the dirt probably making friends with worms—and you're still shambling toward me like you're trying to win a medal in Stubborn Bastardry!"
Aelius stopped—not because he was done.
Because his legs were shaking too hard to move without falling.
Blood dripped in rhythmic pulses from his fingertips, pooling quietly into the rot.
Nehzhar stared for a moment longer, expression contorting, rage and bafflement coiling into something darker. He wasn't laughing now. He wasn't even smiling.
"This isn't courage," he spat, stepping forward. "It's not resolve. It's not even will. It's just—stupidity. You've lost. Just stay down, Aelius. You've done your bit. You've impressed me, wow, hooray, great show—but the curtain's falling."
He reached his good hand out, crackling with another surge of pure magic.
"Stay down."
But Aelius raised his head—not high, not proud, just enough. Enough to show he'd heard. Enough to show he refused.
Blood matted the left side of his face where his mask had shattered, his ruined eye a hollow ruin glistening darkly. His breath came in ragged shudders, shoulders rising like a man dragging himself up from his own grave.
"Scarier things than you," he said, voice cracked and raw, "have tried harder…"
He took another step forward, and the rot responded, swelling at his heels like something eager to follow.
"…and I'm still standing."
Nehzhar flinched. Not visibly. Not obviously. But the corner of his mouth twitched, and his fingers stopped moving for half a breath. That ancient, ridiculous weight of a man who should have died a dozen times was still here.
Still standing.
Still looking him in the eye—well, eye socket, technically.
"You know what?" Nehzhar said slowly, forcing his usual flippancy back into his tone. "I don't know whether to be offended or concerned that this line would've hit harder if you weren't gushing blood out of your face like a horror movie sprinkler."
He forced a grin—one that didn't reach his eyes. "And for the record, I am scarier. I'm hilarious and deadly. That's a combo."
Aelius didn't laugh. Didn't blink.
Nehzhar's fingers twitched, briefly considering another spell, but his hand stilled mid-gesture. The tension that crawled down his spine didn't come from fear—it came from confusion. From the sharp, unfamiliar edge of uncertainty cutting into the script he'd written in his head for this fight. Aelius wasn't supposed to keep going. Not like this. Not with nothing.
His grin faltered.
"You're a stubborn little bastard, I'll give you that," Nehzhar muttered, pacing sideways in a slow arc, keeping distance. "Most people stop after the whole 'face explosion' bit. Some even start crying. I respect it. I do."
Still no reaction.
Aelius just walked forward, steady, broken, hunched like a scarecrow dragged through war and stitched together wrong. There was no more swagger. No cool mask. No theatrics.
Just movement.
Rusted, grinding, purposeful movement.
The ground beneath his feet squelched with the soft hiss of corrupted matter—plague thinned and dying, starved of energy, flaking in strange patterns as if even it was tired. But Aelius didn't care. He didn't need the rot anymore. Or the sword. Or the flask.
He had momentum.
And Nehzhar hated momentum.
"Okay," Nehzhar said sharply, tilting his head, one hand raised again. "You're not healing. You're not casting. You're walking at me with your damn ribs poking out like a goddamn haunted coat rack. What's the plan, Morvain? You gonna headbutt me to death?"
Still nothing.
Aelius was close now. Close enough that Nehzhar felt the weight of him pressing into the air between them—not magical, not divine, not theatrical. Just presence. Pressure. The kind a man leaves when he refuses to fall down.
"…You're bluffing," Nehzhar tried.
He wasn't.
Aelius moved faster than he had any right to. It wasn't grace—it was desperation honed into a blade. He lunged like a beast cornered for the last time, bones screaming through every movement. His fist slammed into Nehzhar's barrier—no spell, no incantation, just a hit—and the barrier cracked.
Not shattered. Not broken.
But cracked.
And Nehzhar blinked. Because he'd felt that.
"Oh," he muttered. "So that's what this is."
A second hit came before he could finish the thought, this time a backhand that caught his shoulder and sent him stumbling sideways with a grunt. It wasn't strong. It wasn't fast.
But it was relentless.
Aelius followed, another step, another swing, another strike—and Nehzhar deflected it, barely, with a wall of magic so thin it hissed against the man's skin like burning paper.
"You're not even trying to kill me anymore," Nehzhar barked, stepping back again. "You're just trying to wear me down. That's the play, isn't it? Bleed on me until I get bored?"
Still no words.
A knee hit Nehzhar in the gut. Sloppy, underpowered, and thrown with the force of a man whose body was already failing—but it landed. And for the first time since the fight began, Nehzhar felt his footing slip.
Aelius grabbed his collar, brought him in close, mouth bleeding, half his face caved in—and whispered, barely audible through broken teeth:
"You talk too much."
And slammed his forehead forward.
Nezhhar's head snapped back, vision briefly going white.
"Son of a—!"
The next blow came before he recovered—an elbow to the chin, followed by Aelius collapsing forward with the weight of his body, dragging them both into the rotted mud below.
It wasn't a battle anymore.
It was a mauling.
A grim, breathless, scrambling storm of fists and shattered bones, of feral snarls and broken hands trying to choke the last breath from an immortal throat.
And somewhere beneath it all, Nehzhar felt the whisper of something awful—
Not power.
Not fear.
Just intent.
Raw, human, and furious.
Nezhzhar finally ripped himself from the muck and flung both arms outward with a sharp snap—his patience, his playfulness, his smug composure, all obliterated in a burst of raw irritation.
"Magic Gods: Lance Barrage!"
A cascade of onyx spears erupted from the air around him, serrated and shrieking as they screamed forward in a spiral—twenty, thirty, maybe more, slamming into Aelius's chest, shoulders, thigh, neck. The impact rippled the air like shattering glass, magic carving deep lines through flesh and bone alike. Some of the lances detonated with hollow, thunderous booms.
Aelius didn't flinch.
Blood erupted from the wounds in thick, diseased ropes. His chest collapsed slightly on one side. A spike pierced straight through his thigh and drove into the earth behind him.
And he kept walking.
Nezhzhar growled and twisted both wrists, shadows curling around his fingers like living smoke.
"Magic Gods: Gravity Hallow!"
The weight hit like a mountain, slamming Aelius into the ground with crushing force. The swamp cratered around him, rot exploding outward, bodies of fallen creatures long devoured rising up like bloated balloons before collapsing again under the sheer pressure.
And Aelius stood back up.
One leg was shattered. One arm barely attached. A long, ragged cut from temple to jaw, leaking blood like molten wax.
But he stood.
And walked.
And hit.
A wild fist caught Nezhzhar in the ribs—hard. Not because of strength. Because Aelius no longer cared about the pain. No longer registered the blood in his lungs or the absence of a jawline.
Another punch.
Then another.
A knee.
A shoulder slam.
Nezhzhar stumbled, spitting out blood of his own now.
"This is insane," he hissed, throwing another spell like a reflex. "Magic Gods: Charnel Chain!"
A writhing set of bladed links burst from the air, wrapping around Aelius's limbs—biting into bone, yanking tight, glowing with sickly runes designed to cut magic itself.
They didn't stop him.
He just dragged them.
Feet grinding through the mire. Muscles locking and seizing. But his right arm still pulled free, chain slicing through his flesh, and drove another punch forward—this one slamming Nezhzhar across the face.
Spittle and blood flew.
Nezhzhar reeled, rebalanced, and screamed:
"Plague Gods: Black Wind Ritual!"
The very air turned against Aelius, spiraling into a cyclone of sickness, the clouds above boiling green and yellow as the cursed wind fell upon him. Boils erupted across his arms. His back split open. His ruined left eye popped again.
And still—
He didn't scream.
He didn't acknowledge it.
He just kept swinging.
Nezhzhar parried a hit, ducked another, then barely avoided a headbutt that would've cracked his nose if it hadn't already been broken earlier.
"STOP IT!" he roared, frustration boiling over. "You're losing! I'm winning! DIE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!"
Aelius answered with a hit to the throat.
Then a tackle.
Then a slow, grinding slam of his forehead into Nezhzhar's temple, over and over again, every impact weaker but no less determined.
"I will kill you," Nezhzhar hissed, spitting blood. "But I swear to the gods—"
A tooth flew from his mouth.
"—You're going to make me work for it, aren't you?"
Aelius didn't blink.
Didn't smile.
Didn't speak.
The thought didn't strike Aelius like a revelation—it settled, slow and heavy, the way ash settles over the ruins of a burning home. It wasn't a panic, or a fear. Just a fact. Another weight on the growing list of weights. His limbs barely responded now. His vision swam. His left eye was gone, ruptured in its socket, and his right could barely keep Nehzhar in focus.
He couldn't remember the last spell he cast. Couldn't even feel the wellspring in his gut where magic used to live—just an echo, thin and dry like trying to draw water from a shattered basin. Every movement now was pure will, bone grinding bone, muscle stripped raw by too many detonations of power and rot and blade.
But he didn't stop.
He couldn't stop.
Because if he did, Nehzhar would win. And if Nehzhar won. No.
Not even a full thought. Just the shape of one. Enough to send another burst of motion through his exhausted body. Enough to make his ruined right arm move again—strike again.
He'd stopped thinking of winning a long time ago. That wasn't the goal anymore. This was endurance. Attrition. He was playing for seconds, inches, fragments of space between Nehzhar's strength and his own dying form.
Nezhzhar was faster. Stronger. Still overflowing with magic. Even wounded, he had reserves left, still flinging spells with color and weight and sickening speed.
Aelius had only rot.
Only will.
His thoughts turned numb, but one kept flashing in the dark:
One more. Just one more hit.
The air warped as Nehzhar fired another spell—loud, cruel, burning black and crimson.
"Magic Gods: Binding Crucible!"
The magic slammed into Aelius's chest like a meteor—bones cracked, ribs gave way, and he felt his right lung collapse with a wet, inside-out sound. He staggered. Fell to one knee. Blood frothed from his lips.
He should've gone down.
He didn't.
He pushed off the ground, dragging himself back upright, barely seeing Nehzhar now, but feeling him—like pressure behind the eyes, like a thorn in the soul.
Nehzhar can't win if he is still standing.
His left leg buckled. His spine screamed. His mask was gone. His magic was gone.
Aelius knew spells wouldn't work.
Even if he had the magic left, even if his thoughts were steady enough to summon the syllables and shape the magic into something with form, Nehzhar would just eat it. Devour it, laugh through it, spit it back up in his face. The man could dodge spells by instinct, raise barriers like reflexes, hurl them aside like they were pebbles tossed by dying hands.
So he didn't waste the breath.
Didn't waste the words.
Didn't try.
Instead, he turned the only weapon he had left—his body.
He drove every flicker of energy still swimming in the marrow of his bones inward—not to launch, not to cast, not to strike. But to fuel. To burn the magic as kindling. He fed it into cracked muscle, into splintered cartilage, into torn ligaments and misaligned joints. It wasn't magic anymore—it was momentum, will, force.
His spine realigned with a pop like breaking stone.
His tendons pulled taut again, elastic re-knitting beneath burnt flesh.
His right leg, nearly limp from damage, found its footing once more—and drove forward.
He didn't care about spells.
He didn't need them.
Nehzhar blinked—just for a second. Enough time to see Aelius not casting. To realize he wasn't summoning, wasn't invoking, wasn't calling out—
He was charging.
The first blow cracked against Nehzhar's barrier.
The barrier shuddered.
Not shattered. Not crumbled. But recoiled—like a living thing surprised it had been hit that hard.
Aelius didn't wait. He stepped into the next blow like a hammer falling from the heavens.
A second strike, blood-drenched and unguided by spell, crushed into the edge of Nehzhar's defense.
A third, a backhanded sweep with a shattered arm wrapped in blood, broke a portion of the dome, sending shrapnelized magic scattering in the air.
Nehzhar hissed—actually hissed—stepping back.
"You're cheating," he barked. "That's not how this works!"
But Aelius didn't respond. Couldn't. His mouth was blood-clogged and broken and too tired to form syllables. His thoughts were smears of pain and will and fire.
Instead, he kept coming.
He grabbed Nehzhar by the shoulder—gripped hard enough that rot surged from his fingers into the Godslayer's skin—and drove a broken knee upward into his ribs. The crack was sharp, undeniable, real. Nehzhar stumbled back, not in mockery, not in dramatic flair, but from pain.
"I said—STOP—"
And Nehzhar hesitated.
Not because of the words. But because Aelius was still moving.
Barely alive. Barely holding together. But moving.
Then, before Nehzhar could draw breath for a retort, Aelius lunged.
Not with grace. Not with strength. Just a burst of raw, starved desperation given shape and momentum. His left hand was too mangled to close properly, and his right hung like a meat-hook from his shoulder—so he used what was left.
The bones.
Where fingers had snapped and tendons had ruptured, the bone had punched free—white, jagged, and glistening with red. Not a weapon meant for killing. Just splinters of anatomy no longer bound by flesh.
Aelius drove them up.
Not into the chest. Not into the stomach.
But straight into Nehzhar's throat.
The sharpened tips of broken fingers stabbed into soft skin—wet, sickeningly slick, the impact punctuated by the dull crack of cartilage giving way.
Nehzhar's words died before they formed.
His eyes bulged.
His magic surged on reflex—too late.
Black tendrils of godslayer energy arced out in all directions, snapping into the air, into the ground, flailing with no direction. But Aelius didn't pull back.
He shoved further.
Bone dug deeper. Nehzhar's arms twitched. His body buckled. But he didn't fall.
He gripped Aelius by the wrists, finally reacting—finally ripping the ruined hand out of his neck with a savage, bubbling snarl. Blood—tainted with divine magic—poured down his collar, steaming where it hit his clothes.
"You—" Nehzhar coughed, voice shredded, eyes wild, "—you rabid little—!"
Aelius didn't answer.
He simply stood there, swaying, face torn open, his breath coming in choking fits.
The attack hadn't killed Nehzhar.
But it hurt.
And worse—it made him bleed.
"You're not supposed to push me back," Nehzhar whispered, tone tilting somewhere between fury and disbelief. He touched his neck with one hand, pulling it away to see the glistening stain of his own blood. "I'm above this. I'm the—"
He didn't finish.
Nehzhar growled—a low, guttural sound that rolled out of his ruined throat like thunder passed through gravel. His jaw tightened, blood still dribbling down his neck, painting symbols of rage in uneven strokes across his chest.
His gaze shifted—not to Aelius, not immediately. But past him. Just a flick of the eye, a minute rotation of his head, as if checking something that only he could see. A ticking clock on the horizon. A thread fraying too fast.
Whatever it was, it made him snarl again.
"No more games," he hissed, voice rasping and uneven. "No more goddamn rounds. I've let you dance long enough, N."
Aelius twitched forward again, the weight of death still pushing his battered frame into motion. Nehzhar didn't let him finish the motion.
He raised a single hand—shaking not from fear but from boiling adrenaline—and pointed it like a blade.
"I have to finish this now. Before I get too impressed again."
Black magic gathered with unnatural speed. Faster than before. Tighter. Denser. "Magic Gods: Singularity Execution."
The very air constricted, recoiled from it, like it could feel what was coming.
The moment Nehzhar spoke the spell, the battlefield shifted.
Space clenched—folded inward as if the world had sucked in its breath and was too terrified to let it go. The rot recoiled. The air shattered like glass in slow motion.
Aelius moved.
Not instinctively. Not clumsily. But deliberately, every shattered tendon and dying muscle fiber pulled tight under sheer will. His legs dragged through mud, rot sloshing around his feet like tar, trying to catch, to hold. He pivoted—not away, but off-center, knowing that getting clear was impossible.
But surviving?
He'd built his life on that word.
The moment the spell struck the ground, it didn't explode. It collapsed. The world caved in—a single pinprick of absolute blackness igniting into a gravitational maelstrom. A singularity in the most literal sense, not fire, not pressure—deletion. The spell didn't burn. It didn't cut. It erased.
Aelius barely cleared the core.
But it wasn't enough.
A shriek of agony tore from him as the edge of the spell caught his right side—then his legs—then more. For a heartbeat, there was no pain. No sensation at all. Just loss. The scream came a second later, involuntary, torn from a mouth that should no longer have breath.
From his ribcage down, there was… nothing. The lower half of his torso had vanished in a sickening blur of red mist and ruined cloth. His right arm was gone completely, shoulder down. The left hung by sinew, twitching, the nerves firing blindly.
He hit the ground—not fell, hit—as if gravity finally remembered to reclaim him. He landed with a wet thud in the muck of his own rot, no longer enough body left to brace the fall.
The world spun. The sky shrank.
But somehow—somehow—he was still awake.
Still breathing.
Still alive.
Nehzhar's silhouette loomed ahead, flickering with spent power, his expression unreadable behind the veil of smoke and residual magic. He didn't speak this time. Just stared.
Aelius didn't move.
Couldn't.
But he looked back. One eye, nearly blind, found Nehzhar through the haze of red and black. There was no hatred there. No triumph. Only the stubborn, infuriating glint of endurance.
A ragged exhale bubbled through his shredded chest cavity.
Then a whisper—no louder than breath:
"Still here."
Nehzhar stepped forward, slow now—not out of caution, but gravity. Finality. Like the weight of everything caught up at once and dragged his boots through the grime. The ground hissed beneath his feet but didn't rise against him. It knew better. Even the plague seemed to know who had won.
He stood over what remained of Aelius—just a torso, a ruin of flesh and cloth and bone, eye half-lidded and face caked in drying blood and ash. A body that shouldn't be breathing, and yet—somehow—still was.
Nehzhar looked down, chest rising and falling with sharp, uneven breath. His neck oozed blood from where fingers had punched into his throat. He wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, flicked it to the side like spitting after a bad joke.
And then he said it—low, quiet, but edged like the final nail.
"Not for long."
No sarcasm this time. No grin. No flippancy to hide behind.
Just a statement.
A sentence.
A promise.
Magic began to build in his hand again—not flashy, not overdone. Just enough. Enough to end it. To leave no more pieces behind. His fingers curled in a slow, deliberate spiral, threads of abyssal power coalescing between them, silent and smooth, ready to finish the story.
Nehzhar's hand came down like the swing of a guillotine—clean, inevitable, execution made magic.
But it didn't land.
CLANG.
Steel struck magic. Sparks split the moment. Nehzhar's hand, mid-swing, was knocked aside by the force of the thrown weapon. His blow—meant to cleave what was left of Aelius's skull—struck empty space, magic flashing wild against the stone.
He staggered half a step back, blinking.
Then growled. Low. Animal.
He turned his head slowly.
And saw her.
Crimson hair,wind-tossed. Armor gleaming in the gloom. Gauntlet still raised from the throw. Her posture was calm, but her presence hit like a war drum.
Erza Scarlet.
No words passed between them.
Not recognition. Not inquiry. Just distance measured in instinct and tension.
Nezhhar's eyes narrowed, gaze twitching from her to the sword lodged in the dirt beside Aelius's broken body. The trajectory was obvious. The intent, undeniable.
His fingers twitched—magic dancing between them again, hungry.
But Erza didn't move.
No threat. No warning.
She simply stared.
Still. Silent.
Waiting.
Measuring.
Nehzhar's fingers flexed again, magic dancing like static between them—simmering with heat and fury. His eyes flicked to the sword lodged near Aelius's head, and then back to her, lips tightening into something between contempt and curiosity.
The clearing stank of death.
The rot that had seeped from Aelius's domain coated everything in a withering lacquer. Grass blackened beneath bootsteps. Bark peeled from trees. Every root, every flower, every patch of once-living greenery had decayed to a skeletal ruin under the weight of the plague-born power that had boiled through the land during the battle. The air didn't move. It clung—wet and fevered. The wind had long since choked to silence.
But through that stillness—through the mire of cracked black soil and ash-choked air—footsteps began to sound.
Not loud.
But deliberate.
Crunching through rot-soaked ground, pressing into plague-softened soil. The dead growth didn't resist—it crumbled like burned parchment underfoot.
From the edge of the blighted clearing, a silhouette parted the gloom.
Then another.
Then more.
Hibiki stepped out first, Archive magic flickering in the haze, expression grim. Ren followed, sweat-soaked and silent, wind magic coiling at his fingertips. Eve emerged behind them, visibly shaken but steady. From another path came Lyon, frost trailing behind him, eyes cold as they fixed on Nehzhar. Sherry at his side looked pale, hand over her mouth, barely holding herself together.
Then came Jura. Calm, immense, unshaken. The rot curved around him as he joined the others without a word.
Behind them, Fairy Tail.
Gray led the charge, ice crackling underfoot, eyes narrowed. Lucy followed, keys clenched in a white-knuckled grip. Natsu strode in next, fire low but simmering, eyes flicking between Nehzhar and Aelius. Happy and Carla hovered close, unusually quiet.
Wendy froze halfway through the brush, the rotted ground crunching faintly beneath her feet. Her heels skidded slightly in a patch of plague-slick ash, but she didn't fall—just stood there, transfixed. Her eyes, wide and shimmering with unspoken fear, locked onto the broken form at the center of the madness.
Aelius.
Wendy's breath caught. The air reeked of blood and corruption, of ruined spells and something worse—something unnatural, like the world itself was trying to forget this place.
And then she saw it.
His chest—sunken, shredded, and slick with disease—rose. Barely. Just enough to betray the faintest draw of breath.
He was alive.
Erza didn't speak. Didn't turn.
But her sword hand twitched.
Nezhzhar stood alone across the field, still looming over the crippled, bleeding Aelius.
Nezhzhar stood alone across the scorched, rotting field, the plague-tainted ground steaming gently beneath his feet. His silhouette was sharp against the blackened horizon, haloed by smoke and the fading embers of godslayer magic. He still towered above what remained of Aelius—torn, bloodied, more ruin than man—yet now his gaze was elsewhere. Not on the broken warrior. But on the sudden wall of enemies that had emerged from the forest like judgment incarnate.
The silence stretched, heavy as a drawn blade.
Then—"Tch. Annoying."
He spat the word out like venom, rolling his bleeding jaw, his neck cracking to one side with a sharp jerk. The magic flickering at his fingertips hissed out, scattering into sparks.
"Fine." His voice was low now, but it carried. Clear. Cold. "You live, today, 'N.'"
His eyes dropped back to Aelius—half-gone, barely breathing, one eye shattered, skin blistered. The fact that he was still breathing at all seemed to irritate Nezhzhar more than anything else.
"You're lucky," he said, louder now, addressing not just Aelius but the crowd of mages watching him with fire in their eyes. "The Seis were more useless than I thought. Had enough power to take over this entire continent—hell, maybe the whole damn world—and what did they do?"
He laughed. It was ugly. Short. Bitter.
"They threw it all away. Bickering. Squabbling. Talking like gods with human plans. Thinking they'd already won just because they could blow up a mountain. All that magic, all that potential, and not one of them knew how to actually use it."
He glanced toward Jura, then Lyon, then Erza. Toward the Trimens. Fairy Tail. The remains of a coalition that should have come too late—but didn't.
"They failed you. Lucky for you."
Then his eyes flicked to Erza. Something in his expression shifted—not guilt, not shame, but awareness. A realization that the game had changed, if only slightly.
He stepped back once, slow and deliberate. The rot didn't resist him. It peeled away under his feet like smoke in reverse.
"You bought yourself time, Aelius," he muttered. "That's all this was. Time bought in blood."
A final glance at Erza—measured, wary, perhaps even curious. Then a swirl of magic, black and bending the air around him.
"But I'll be back."
And with that, Nezhzhar vanished, leaving behind only the scent of burnt ozone, the wound in the world, and a battlefield soaked in rot.