CHAPTER 28: LAST FLAME OF DUSKFALL

The mud clung to my boots, each step echoing like a futile escape in this field of corpses. Behind us, the screams and explosions never stopped. Sarhael... that monster. The air still vibrated with his aura, and even while running for my life, I felt as though he was breathing right down my neck.

Elyra, Thorn, and Albrecht had gone ahead, as if their bodies themselves refused to abandon the battlefield. They had caught up to him. I wanted to rush after them, to scream, to throw myself into the fight. But my throat was dry, my chest burning. And as if to answer my thoughts, Elyra shouted, her voice slicing through the chaos like a blade:

— "Run!! Get as far away from here as you can!"

Fuck... my legs froze for an instant, but I saw Maeron raise his staff at once, his lips spitting a forbidden incantation that shattered the air in a red circle. Beside him, Ilyas was already firing a rain of runic arrows, each shaft whistling like a shooting star. Thorn charged, enormous, his sword heavier than a wall, lifting clouds of dust, and Elyra, her corset torn, skin damp and taut beneath, rushed forward too, her crimson spear carving an arc through the night. Albrecht roared, his bloodied armor vibrating with mana, his runic sword striking like an anvil.

I wanted to follow them. Fuck, I wanted to be there. But Ayame was still pulling me by the hand, her fingers slick with sweat and blood, her heavy breasts bouncing against my arm with every leap. Panic clogged my throat. And then—

BOOM.

Something flew past me. A dull, wet sound. I turned my head, and my blood froze.

It was a head. Not just any head.

Thorn.

His eyes still open, staring. His mouth half-open, as if he still wanted to scream. His cracked helmet, the streak of blood running down his cheek. I didn’t have time to think. My mind went blank.

A voice burst out, torn, broken:

— "That’s twice today... twice... fuck... it’s too much."

Miyu.

Her voice cracked, hoarse, strangled by rage and tears. Her legs suddenly stopped running. Her silhouette trembled, her bare thighs covered in dust and sweat, her black kimono ripped in places, showing her shoulders and the swell of her damp breasts. Her hair, stuck to her skin by sweat and ash, framed a face twisted with a pain I had never seen on her.

Her eyes flared.

I understood a moment too late.

Miyu spun around, and her whole body burst into flames. Torrents of fire erupted from her hands, her thighs, her heaving chest, as though her very anger had set her ablaze. All around her exploded in fire. The ground split, corpses began to sizzle, and the air warped under the heat.

She screamed. Not in fear. Not a command. An animal scream, visceral, the cry of a girl who had lost too much, far too much.

Then she ran straight at Sarhael.

Flames devoured her, licking her skin, swirling around her hips and legs like a mantle of living lava. She was sublime, terrifying. Her breasts shook with each leap, her throat streaked with soot, her thighs glowing with the scarlet reflections of her own fire.

I had never seen her like this. Never.

This wasn’t the stubborn, impulsive, spoiled Miyu I knew. Not a comrade. Not even a heroine.

She was a fury. An incarnation of flames. A fucking enraged goddess, burning everything in her path, ready to consume herself with the world if it meant bringing down that demon.

Ayame squeezed my hand tighter, her voice snapping like a slap:

— "We’re changing strategy!"

She pointed to Ilyas’s daughter, that Black Hound soldier still limping, helmet cracked, eyes brimming with tears and dust.

— "You! Take the others, bring the wounded to Hikari. Heal yourselves, and once you’ve regained your strength, come back and help us!"

— "Yes!" Hikari answered, her voice trembling, her thighs pressed together beneath her bloodstained kimono, her damp chest heaving with each breath.

Ayame then turned her eyes to Reina and me. Eyes of steel. Eyes no longer human.

— "Let’s go. We’ll buy time another way."

I didn’t recognize her anymore. She had always been strong, yes, but this... this was something else. Her power was changing her. She was becoming harder, colder, more mentally unshakable than ever. Witnessing so much horror before her eyes was forging her like steel in a furnace.

She suddenly turned to me, cutting off my thoughts. Her lips parted, a bead of sweat sliding between her breasts still taut with tension.

— "Get ready to unleash everything. Throw it all." Her eyes burned. "The decisive moment is coming."

I nodded, breath ragged. I knew she saw what I could only imagine: the immediate, bloody future where everything would be decided.

Ayame’s voice thundered like a bomb above the chaos:

— "Listen to me, all of you! Our only chance of survival is Miyu’s charge. Don’t try to stop her. Coordinate with her."

The words fell, sharp, and the whole battlefield seemed to hold its breath. They understood. Understood that, for a second, all humanity rested on this girl in a kimono, on her rage, on this fire gnawing at her veins. Wounded soldiers, archers, Black Hounds — all turned toward Miyu, ready to push her, to escort her, to break for her.

Even Sarhael stiffened. A flash of anger crossed his face when he recognized her:

— "HER?! SHE CAN STOP ME?!"

— "HOW DARE YOU, PATHETIC HUMANS!!"

His voice roared, and he charged, more furious than rational, his mind fixated on this living flame. He underestimated her, and that had to play in our favor.

Everything happened in seconds — and yet, in my mind, time bent and stretched like a blade heated red-hot. Miyu was no longer a child: she was the tip of a destiny none of us had asked for. Within reach of her blade, Albrecht and Elyra were already at her side, ready, muscles taut beneath blood and soot.

Sarhael unleashed his feathers — winged blades that shot out like black comets. Elyra moved. Her cry was a saw; her spear launched into a precise movement: "Spear Art — Ninth Form: Bloodstained Twilight." The feathers were pierced one by one in a flash of speed my eyes could barely follow. She succeeded, but something tore her arm. A hiss, a hole in the air: her sleeve ripped, blood gushed, Elyra staggered but stayed standing.

Sarhael smiled then, a hungry rictus, and brought his gigantic arm down on Miyu’s blind charge.

— "Again..." I murmured, hypnotized by the madness of the moment.

The demon’s arm descended, a shadow meant to crush the girl who had decided to sacrifice everything. The blow would cut off the attack, shatter the backbone of our hope. But the battle, this damn theater of despair, was already overflowing with interventions.

Reina spat blood, a red jet bursting into runes upon contact with the air. A second, and the demon’s body froze — not completely, but enough to bind him for a fraction of a moment. Albrecht seized the opening: he drove his glowing runic sword into Sarhael’s exposed flank. The blade sank to the hilt, a shard of light in black flesh. An arrow embedded itself in the demon’s shoulder, breaking the rhythm of his descending hand; a magical strike, a concentrated blast from Maeron, hit his head and half-exploded it in a spray of bone and smoke.

All this slowed the descent of his arm, but only slowed it. Seconds stretched into eternity. If the arm even grazed Miyu, she would fall. Simple as that.

— "Genesis..." I whispered, without thinking, as if saying the word could bend the outcome.

Twenty spears burst from the ground, shards of human will made manifest. They impaled Sarhael’s right side, where his arm was raised, pinning him in place, nailing the shadow-mass midair. Pain tore through the beast; he roared, a sound of collapse and steel.

Miyu didn’t wait. Her katana — slender, dark, gleaming in the firelight — found the flesh of his arm. The metal sank, then her flame exploded: not just outside, but inside. Miyu’s fire flooded into Sarhael’s wounded arm, invading the veins, consuming the slow regeneration like a tumor cauterized with red-hot iron. The blade drove in to the hilt, heat biting fur, feathers, everything igniting in a fierce flare.

Then suddenly a blast ripped everything apart — men, armor, projectiles — as if the world itself had vomited. I was thrown onto my side, burning mud lashing my ribs, Aurelia slipping from my fingers and rolling away.

Around me, bodies were hurled, helmets slammed into the earth, spears shattered into fragments. Even the hardiest were flung aside, swept up in a roar like a maddened beast. And yet, in the middle of this chaos, one image froze me: Sarhael stood firm. He alone remained upright, nailed to the sky, unmoving at the center of the storm.

He fixed his gaze on Miyu, who was already far off, neither roaring nor changing expression — just a long, cold stare, like a machine calculating — then began tearing the weapons from his flesh: one spear after another, wood cracking, earth groaning with each extraction. His skin stitched back instantly, regeneration snapping like seams closing, but where Miyu’s blade burned, the flesh stayed black, smoking, refusing to heal.

He spoke, and his voice cut the chaos like a blade. The tone was neither fully animal nor fully divine; it was the lament of a wounded god speaking to the void.

— "I have been angry for so long..." he murmured, and the sound seemed to drain the heat from around us. — "You... perhaps god... can you give them back to me?"

He tore the katana from his arm. The metal came out with a wet noise, mixed with torn flesh and sparks. A puff of smoke burst forth at once, the stench of burnt flesh choking my throat. The flesh began to bud, reknitting in an implacable clatter of regeneration... but at once, the fire reignited there, gnawing at the new tissue like a starving parasite. His arm rebuilt itself only to burn again, in a loop, condemned to burn without ever healing.

A wound for life.

Sarhael didn’t stop. His gaze came to us, to the broken crowd, and his voice took on a slyer shade, almost human in its plea:

— "Perhaps if I help you rid yourselves of these... heretics, you would help me in return. What do you say, gods?"

A leaden silence fell over the battlefield. Even the wind was smothered, stilled by his words.

I felt my throat tighten, my fingers clench in the mud. Fuck... he wasn’t just a monster. He wasn’t just a demon. He was worse: he was negotiating.

I understood in an instant, like a brutal truth splitting my skull.

Phase one: denial.

Phase two: anger.

And now...

Phase three: bargaining.

The war wasn’t over. It was only changing its face.