The battlefield was soaked through. The smell of blood had long since stopped being something you noticed and become something you simply existed inside, a weight in the air that pressed against everyone still standing.
Luxorious turned to Lyoth, the anger in his voice controlled but present. "None of that matters. Tell me what you actually want with humanity."
Lyoth seemed almost amused by the question. "What I want," he said slowly, letting each word arrive on its own. "I want the black stone. The absolute power needed to awaken my master."
"That's impossible. Norm banished him to the nothingness. He cannot be brought back."
"You know half the truth," Lyoth said. "Never the full." He paused. "The Death Blade carries power comparable to the black stone — perhaps more, if it were returned to its original form. That is our last resort." Something crossed his face that was almost satisfaction. "But it is a resort that exists."
"You talk too much."
Luxorious charged.
Lyoth turned to meet him and the collision was immediate — the impact sending dust rolling outward in a wide ring. When it settled, both of them were still standing, neither moved from where they had been.
"Don't make me laugh," said Lyoth.
They came together again.
The exchange that followed was sustained and brutal — auras thick with bloodlust, neither pulling back, neither conceding ground without taking some in return. Strikes and counters overlapping in rapid sequence, the sound of the clash carrying across the ruined field. But Luxorious was reading him now, absorbing the rhythm, finding the pattern beneath the power. Lyoth was becoming slower to him — not weaker, but readable, and readable was enough.
He saw the dagger thrust coming and let it pass.
Then he was inside Lyoth's guard.
The dagger drove into Lyoth's chest. His hand was cut in the same motion. And then the punch landed — full, clean, without obstruction — and Lyoth was sent skidding far back across the earth, the impact echoing outward like a struck bell.
---
At the other end of the battlefield, Aron and Trail worked through what remained of the dark army side by side — methodical now, the desperate urgency of earlier replaced by something grimmer and more deliberate. A hundred soldiers left. Then fewer. The catapults came down one by one. The line kept moving.
Lilith had long since taken the front.
He killed without pause or ceremony, each engagement ending before it fully began. A soldier broke from the line and tried to run — Lilith threw his sword without looking and it found him cleanly, the body folding in two before it hit the ground.
Then it was over.
Lilith lowered himself onto one knee. His eyes closed. The silence arrived all at once, the way silence always does after too much noise — not gradually but completely, like something being switched off.
*This is what a victory looks like,* he thought. *Peaceful. And painful at the same time.*
The quiet settled over him and he let it.
---
Across the field, the two most powerful servants of the darkness remained.
One had been driven into a mountain. The other had regenerated.
Luxorious waited, watching the dust thin around Lyoth's last position. When it cleared fully there was nothing there. No shape. No silhouette.
Lyoth was gone.
Zeiris stood alone where the fighting had been. Something had reached him — a command, felt more than heard, arriving from somewhere far above the battlefield. *Come back. Transfer now.*
He smiled once, to no one in particular.
Then he dissolved. Not quickly — slowly, like frost leaving glass, his edges softening and separating until the air where he had been standing was simply air again.
The field was quiet in every direction.
The surviving soldiers lowered themselves where they stood, exhaustion finally permitted to arrive now that there was nothing left to fight. One by one, swords were driven point-first into the earth — not discarded, but placed, deliberately. A gesture without words. A grief offered to the ones who had fought beside them and hadn't made it to this moment.
The sun was going down.
The last of its light came in at a low angle, moving across the field in a long warm line, finding the living where they sat and rested. It felt like something intentional. Like acknowledgment.
---
Aron felt the collapse coming and couldn't stop it.
The strength simply left — not gradually but all at once, the way a held weight drops when the hands finally open. He went down on the battlefield, catching himself on the Death Blade driven into the ground, using it to stay partially upright while his body decided what it was going to do.
Trail saw it and covered the distance fast.
Aron was breathing. His eyes were open, barely. Trail checked him over quickly and understood — not a wound claiming him, just everything at once catching up. He had burned through every reserve he had and then burned through whatever came after that. Trail stayed with him until the eyes closed.
Exhaustion had won what nothing else had managed to.
---
When Aron woke, the night was gone.
The camp had been established around him while he slept — fires, shelter, the organized quiet of soldiers in recovery. His body had been bandaged while he was unconscious, the worst of it dressed and wrapped. He sat up slowly and took in what was in front of him.
Trail. Luxorious. Zord Skeeth.
All three, together, in the same space. The sight of it was something that didn't need commentary — a concentration of power and presence that simply announced itself.
Luxorious was speaking quietly. "He told me they need the black stone to resurrect their master. Xeudeus."
"That's impossible," Zord said. "Norm sent him to the nothingness."
Trail was quiet for a moment. "Maybe. But maybe there is a way."
Zord considered it. "You may be right. And if their master is resurrected—" He let the weight of it settle before continuing. "They will be more than five times what they are now. And with him will come the most powerful heirs of the darkness. All of them."
"They kept mentioning a Nemesis," Luxorious said. His voice was lower now, the word carrying something personal in it. "Every fight. Every exchange. They kept bringing it back to Nemesis."
"I've seen that man."
All three of them turned.
Aron had been listening from where he sat, still and quiet enough that they had spoken freely. He raised his right hand slowly.
"It was in a memory. The man had red eyes and red hair. Norm was with him. They were talking — I couldn't hear all of it — but at the end, the man said he would be sleeping from now on." He lowered his hand. "That's all I saw."
The three of them were silent.
Zord spoke first, carefully. "If what you saw is true — if it really was what it sounds like — then that man may be the one closest to Norm himself." He paused. "Nemesis."
The fire between them crackled once and went quiet.
No one said anything for a long moment after that.