The city was dying.
The streets burned.
The sky wept black.
The last prayers of the weak scattered like ash in a collapsing storm.
And at the center of it all,
two souls collided.
Arin charged, light blazing from her broken Sigil,
a desperate comet tearing across the battlefield.
Asura met her with empty hands,
no weapon needed.
Only the crushing force of his existence.
Their first clash split the earth.
Shockwaves tore through ruins.
Flames died in their wake.
The very stones beneath them cracked and wept.
Light versus Abyss.
Hope versus Silence.
Arin struck again and again,
her blade weaving desperate arcs of golden fire.
Each blow pushed her beyond endurance.
Each blow screamed a single message:
"Come back.
Please — come back."
Asura absorbed her strikes like a living storm.
His body cracked under her light —
then reformed, stronger, darker.
Every attack she unleashed only fed the monster he had become.
Every memory she tried to awaken —
every glimpse of humanity she reached for —
was drowned beneath an ocean of ruin.
Still, Arin fought.
Still, she hoped.
Still, she believed.
They broke through walls.
They shattered cathedrals.
They tore the sky apart with every blow.
And still…
Still she whispered with every strike:
"You're still there.
I know you're still there.
You don't have to be this.
You don't have to fall."
For a heartbeat —
just a heartbeat —
Asura hesitated.
The blackness around him flickered.
A memory —
not of a king.
Not of a god.
Of a boy.
Small.
Afraid.
Crying in the rain, bleeding on the Academy floor, begging the world to see him.
For one impossible moment,
his hand faltered.
The world trembled.
Arin saw it.
The crack in the abyss.
The crack in the king.
The crack in the monster.
She stepped forward, voice breaking with raw hope:
"Kai…
Please."
The name —
his name —
echoed through the battlefield like a lost prayer.
Asura flinched.
The System glitched violently:
[Warning: Identity Instability Detected.]
[Warning: Emotional Contamination Detected.]
The Abyss roared inside him.
Screaming.
Clawing.
Burning.
And with a shuddering gasp,
he buried the boy.
Beneath ruin.
Beneath silence.
Beneath the Crown of Ash he had built with his own broken hands.
When he looked at Arin again,
there was no hesitation.
No crack.
No boy.
Only the Abyss.
Only Asura.
He struck.
A single, merciless blow.
Arin threw up a desperate shield of light,
but it shattered on impact.
She was hurled backward —
crashing through rubble, gasping, bleeding.
She lay broken on the ground,
light flickering weakly from her shattered Sigil.
Tears blurred her vision.
Pain tore through her ribs.
But worse than the pain…
Was the knowledge.
The unbearable truth.
She couldn't save him.
Not because she wasn't strong enough.
But because he no longer wanted to be saved.
Arin rose on trembling arms.
Blood dripping from her lips.
Her vision blurring.
Her heart breaking.
Still she stood.
Because even if she couldn't save him…
She would still fight him.
Until her last breath.
Until her last light.
Asura watched her rise.
Silent.
Unmoving.
A king crowned in ruin.
For the first time,
he spoke —
his voice a funeral bell in a dying world:
"There is no salvation for me.
Only conquest.
Only ash."
And he stepped forward.
The final battle would not end with salvation.
It would end with silence.