Suddenly, there was a boom—not from the heavens, but from within Vonjo himself.

A pressure burst forth as his arrow loosed with unrelenting momentum, piercing straight through the snarling chest of a reanimated brute mid-sprint.

Its body twisted unnaturally, convulsed, and then collapsed with a thunderous thud.

Dust billowed from the impact like a low growl echoing across the blood-soaked desert.

The Sand Man blinked—his smug grin slipping, ever so slightly.

And that was only the beginning.

Vonjo moved, fast and precise, every motion sharp as a blade, his body tuned like a string drawn taut to the brink of snapping.

He twisted, ducked, and turned, drawing arrow after arrow from the freshly materialized bundle on his back, and each one sang a promise of death.

The first flew into a helmeted skull, cracking it in half with a vicious snap.

The second pierced through the spine of a dual-sword-wielding reanimation, pinning it to the scorched earth like an insect in a collection.

The third—loosed without pause—blew through two charging creatures, its force amplified by whatever unseen energy now coursed through Vonjo's body.

With every kill, something shifted.

The Sand Man's posture began to change. His laughter faltered. His arrogance peeled away.

Vonjo's boots pounded the ground with calculated fury, kicking up dust with each evasive step.

He pivoted, released, and the arrow curved unnaturally, guided by sheer will—it found a cloaked figure in mid-air, embedding itself deep into the throat.

The thing gurgled a hiss, stumbled, and disintegrated into particles of sand.

Another arrow. Another scream. Another kill.

The Sand Man jolted back as if struck by each death personally.

His shoulders hunched with every fall of his minions, every crumbling corpse another thread unraveling from the edge of his sanity.

His eyes, which moments ago glittered with cruel confidence, now twitched with something else—nervous awe.

"Impossible," the Sand Man rasped, his voice cracking as if unused to fear. "You… you're just an archer. Just a boy."

But Vonjo didn't answer. His focus was pure—like a predator too locked into the rhythm of slaughter to hear anything but the beat of death.

Another came, this one larger, wielding a massive hammer. Vonjo fired twice.

The first arrow shattered the hammer's handle. The second arrow split its head down the middle. Blood—no, sand—spilled from the cracked vessel like a broken hourglass.

The Sand Man winced, clutching his side as if the pain were his own. "NO—NO!" he howled, a desperate rasp in his tone. "That's not how this is supposed to go!"

And yet it did. Again and again. Each arrow vonjo fired was like thunder given form. His bow, once just a tool, now felt like an extension of his soul. Reanimations lunged from every direction, but Vonjo read them before they could even move—anticipating their angles, knowing their weight, their reach.

His instincts, refined through pain and resolve, turned him into something far beyond a mere marksman. He wasn't just surviving anymore. He was dominating.

Five enemies at once? All dead before they touched him.

A dozen more?

Felled in seconds, their corpses scattering like dust devoured by wind.

And with each collapse, the Sand Man stumbled back. His bare feet dragged lines in the sand. His eyes widened with wild confusion. "W-Who are you!?" he cried, no longer mocking, but pleading. "How did a runt like you survive this long?! My reanimations should be enough to break you! To bury you! To—!"

Vonjo finally spoke.

"I don't break."

And with that, another arrow loosed, crashing into the last remaining monstrosity with a sonic snap. Silence fell.

A dry, hot wind swept across the battlefield. The corpses of the reanimations lay scattered and broken. Some were twisted into piles. Others half-buried in the sand, dissolving with a hiss.

For a long moment, the only sound was Vonjo's breathing—slow, steady, a calm in the eye of the chaos.

Then—

"Congratulations…"

The Sand Man's voice slithered through the silence like a snake's hiss.

Vonjo didn't respond.

"…You amused me," the Sand Man continued, chuckling with a hoarseness that stung the air. "I truly didn't expect it. Your eyes… they glowed like the old gods. Your hands… they moved like death's own puppeteer. You even made me feel something I haven't tasted in centuries—fear."

Vonjo narrowed his gaze.

"Tell me, archer… What drives you? Hate? Revenge? Pride? Survival? No—don't answer. I can see it in your posture. You're past those things now. Aren't you? How did you make yourself be this skilled!?"

Still, Vonjo said nothing.

Then—

A shiver ran down Vonjo's spine.

A sudden stillness fell over the field, unnatural and wrong. He turned—slowly, instinct prickling at the nape of his neck.

And then he saw it.

The reanimations. The broken, torn, pierced, and eviscerated bodies that should have been long dead—moved.

One twitched. Another gasped.

A head rolled and then reformed with its severed body.

Vonjo took a step back, stunned.

One by one, the reanimations began to stand, jerkily at first, like puppets on broken strings.

Their joints popped.

Their weapons clicked.

Sand filled their veins like blood as their bodies mended—bones reknitting, skin sealing with sickening hisses.

Vonjo's expression darkened.

"No..." he muttered, eyes scanning the impossibility.

The Sand Man laughed—a laugh full of sand and madness. "Did you really think it would be that easy, little bowboy? Do you know what binds them? What fuels them?"

Vonjo raised his bow again.

"They are bound to me. As long as I stand, they stand. As long as I breathe… they will never stop. Break their bones. Burn their flesh. Cut them into dust—it won't matter."

The reanimations began to advance again—this time slower, but stronger. Reinforced. A grotesque second wind.

"You fought well," the Sand Man cooed, tilting his head unnaturally, "but your moment is over. You had your turn, boy. Now… kneel."

But then, Vonjo simply stared at him—those cold, detached eyes holding no fear, no awe, not even hatred. Just stillness. A stillness that crawled beneath the Sand Man's ancient skin like a chill wind slipping through a mausoleum's cracks.

The Sand Man grinned, shifting his form into a taller, more monstrous silhouette—sand rising, swirling, shaping into something grotesque. His voice echoed with the confidence of the undying. "Do you know what I am, boy? I am unkillable. I am the rebirth of calamity. I have the Reverse Curse Blessing. I cannot die. I regenerate faster than you can harm me. I am not bound by the same reality you cling to. Even my reanimations mock death!"

But Vonjo stepped forward—slow, deliberate. Each step sank into the cursed sands, yet he moved unbothered, unwavering. The Sand Man's grin faltered. There was no aura, no overwhelming energy radiating from Vonjo. Just silence. That awful, unbearable silence.

And then—

Vonjo raised his right hand.

The Sand Man blinked. "What are you—?"

Fingers closed around his throat.

He staggered back—he shouldn't have. He shouldn't be affected by a touch. His body was made of cursed sand, fluid, ever-shifting, untouchable! But Vonjo's hand remained—solid, firm, gripping with a force that was… wrong. It wasn't strength. It was inevitability.

"I—!" the Sand Man choked. "I'm untouchable! This is a trick, a paradox! I have the Blessing! I HAVE THE—!"

Then it hit him.

Not pain.

Not fear.

Memory.

A flood of it. A surge so violent it buckled his knees.

Why was he remembering this?

He wasn't supposed to remember. That life—that life—it had been locked away.

The scent of burned parchment.

The screams of cursed apprentices.

The feel of a shovel in his calloused hands as he dug up forbidden corpses in the black swamps of Malduhr.

The Era of Necromancers.

He had clawed his way up from the bottom. From nameless gravedigger to corpse-whisperer.

He had earned power through madness. Torture. Resurrections. Betrayals.

He had once controlled battalions of deathless warriors, spoken with gods of rot and disease.

He had drowned kingdoms in plagues and forced high priests to eat their own hearts in rituals of obedience.

And above it all—he remembered the Nine Tablets.

Yes, the Nine Tablets of Prophecy. He had found them scattered across hellscapes, locked beneath tombs guarded by curses that devoured time. He had deciphered them over decades, through blood, sacrifice, and pain. And he—he alone—had understood their true meaning.

The Era of Necromancers would end.

The Era of Prophecy would begin.

But only one would pass through the threshold. Only one would be chosen to be reborn with memory intact. And he, the Sand Man, had made sure it was him.

He had shed his name. His soul. His mortality. All to reincarnate into this new age with the echoes of his power intact.

So why, as Vonjo gripped his throat, was it all coming back?

"Stop," the Sand Man wheezed, eyes wide. "STOP! You—you're tampering with memory! No, it's my own mind, my own, but it feels like—it feels like—like YOU are ripping it out of me—why are you doing this?!"

Vonjo said nothing. His expression hadn't changed. Still cold. Still dead.

"I—I earned this!" the Sand Man shrieked, arms flailing, claws of sand lashing uselessly around them. "You can't just—YOU CAN'T JUST!—You're absorbing it—my cursed energy—my essence! That's impossible! I am layered in protections, in binding scripts! Even gods of death bowed to me—TO ME! I am the one who outlived even the forbidden ones! I—"

He stopped.

Something inside him buckled. Bent.

Like a support beam giving way after bearing weight for centuries.

He felt it—his power—the swirling storm of cursed sand that composed his body—start to slow. To thin. To drain.

His eyes bulged. "You're sucking it—no—syphoning! That's—who are you!? What kind of cursed technique does that!? That's not jujutsu, that's not deathcraft, that's not ANYTHING! You're breaking laws—real laws! Oh no, no no no no—this isn't possible!"

He tried to back away, but Vonjo's grip was unrelenting. Not tight. Just... absolute.

"Okay, okay," the Sand Man babbled. "Let's—Let's talk! Let's make a deal! I—I know things! Ancient things! I can show you what's coming. There are others—others like you—but not quite! And the Tablets—do you know about the Tablets!? I can show you! I can make you powerful! More powerful! I was going to rule this age! YOU COULD TOO!"

Vonjo didn't blink. His fingers began to glow faintly now—an eerie blackish blue, like cursed moonlight boiling beneath the skin.

The Sand Man wailed, convulsing, body spasming as his essence drained.

"PLEASE!" he screamed. "Please—listen—listen to me—I'm not even at full power! You caught me—caught me off guard! If I had known—if I had summoned the Eight Dead Saints—you wouldn't have stood a chance! YOU HEAR ME!? I'M STRONG! STRONGER THAN THIS!"

Vonjo leaned closer. His lips moved at last, voice cold, flat—cutting through the Sand Man's desperation like a knife through silk.

"…You're useless."

The Sand Man blinked. "What—?"

"You're not strong enough to be used as a warning," Vonjo said. "Not strong enough to impress anyone."

His fingers closed tighter.

The last of the cursed energy vanished from the Sand Man's core.

The body of sand collapsed like an exhausted hourglass, crumbling into the dust from which it came.

No explosion.

No flash.

Just silence.

Vonjo stood there, brushing sand from his hand like one might shake off dirt after a long day's work. His expression never changed. He didn't celebrate. He didn't even look back.

He simply turned—

And walked forward.