The void reeked of iron and burning ether.
Crimson blood sprayed into the anti-gravity vacuum from Rehan's severed left shoulder. The necrotic venom of the Death Scythe hissed against his torn flesh, eating at his spiritual meridians to extinguish his life force.
Yet, Rehan did not scream. He did not stumble back.
His remaining right hand clenched into a fist so tight that the knuckles groaned under the sheer compression of power. His eyes burned with an absolute, stellar radiance that consumed the very concept of pain.
The world around him ceased to resist. It obeyed.
"Aura Sovereignty: Zenith Sovereign Domain — Absolute Unification!"
The incomplete boundary did not expand outward this time. It collapsed straight into Rehan's singular right arm and core, enveloping him in a blinding sun of concentrated sovereign authority. The overwhelming defensive density locked his vital organs in a stasis of pure amber armor, instantly searing the severed shoulder wound shut and incinerating the invading necrotic curse in an explosive flash of light.
Across from him, Morgath felt the spatial fabric around his own throat constrict violently. Terrified fury contorted the demon's grotesque face as he gripped the Death Scythe with all his remaining might, channeling every drop of his primordial soul essence into the black-iron shaft.
"Die in the dark, human!" Morgath roared, his voice tearing through the fabric of the void.
"Soul Sovereign Art: Cataclysmic Nether Guillotine!"
A colossal, crescent-shaped blade of pitch-black death tore forward at lightspeed. At the exact same fraction of a millisecond, Rehan lunged forward, throwing his singular right fist with enough kinetic force to collapse an entire mountain range.
CRRRRR-KABOOOOOM—!
The collision shattered the sound barrier, then fractured space itself. The blinding golden radiance of Rehan's sovereign fist clashed head-on against the ancient soul-scythe. The absolute defense of Rehan's domain held firm against the epicenter, but the catastrophic repulsive force was so violent that the indestructible Death Scythe was once again violently torn from Morgath's grip, spiraling away into the outer drift of the abyss.
"NO! Return to me!" Morgath screamed in sheer panic, stretching his clawed hands toward the empty void.
The soul-bound scythe answered instantly, tearing back through space with feral velocity. As it whistled past, the sheer edge of its return trajectory clipped cleanly across Rehan's right flank, carving a deep, bloody laceration straight down to his waist.
Fresh blood erupted from Rehan's torso, but his momentum never wavered for a fraction of a second.
Before Morgath could catch the returning hilt, Rehan pivoted his entire body in mid-air. Channeling the concentrated sovereign weight into his right heel, he unleashed a monstrous, roundhouse axe kick directly into the side of Morgath's skull.
BAAAM!
Morgath's jaw splintered into fragments as his colossal, four-armed frame was sent hurtling violently downward, crashing into the dimensional bedrock like a fallen meteor.
Rehan did not grant him a single heartbeat to recover.
Propelling himself off the inverted air fragments, Rehan shot skyward, positioning himself directly above the impact crater. Every single particle of his remaining Aura Sovereignty gathered at the sole of his descending foot, blazing like an executioner's spear falling from the heavens.
Down in the crater, drenched in dark blood, Morgath caught the returning Death Scythe with his upper hands. Seeing the apocalyptic golden meteor descending upon him, his bottomless void eyes flared with desperate, unhinged madness.
"I am a Lord of the Nether! You will NOT crush me!" Morgath shrieked, thrusting the scythe upward with all the remaining necrotic fire in his soul.
"Abyssal End: Sovereign Severance!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The detonation was absolute. The entire pocket dimension cracked open like a fragile glass shell, exposing the turbulent colors of the chaotic outer void.
In the blinding epicenter of the explosion, the immovable met the unstoppable.
Rehan's descending foot drove straight through the ancient soul blade. Under the absolute, localized density of Rehan's Sovereign Domain, the impossible happened—CRACK! SNAP!—the supposedly indestructible, millennia-old Death Scythe shattered right down the middle, cleaving into two dead fragments of brittle black iron.
The unstoppable momentum drove Rehan's heel straight into Morgath's chest, pulverizing the demon's sternum, fracturing his demonic core, and burying his entire massive body dozens of meters deep into the crushed bedrock.
The dust settled into an eerie, suffocating stillness.
Morgath lay embedded in the crater, coughing up gallons of dark ichor, his four arms twitching uselessly, his fractured chest caved in completely. The two broken halves of his proud Death Scythe lay inert in the rubble beside him.
Standing atop the demon's mangled chest was Rehan.
His left arm was gone. His right flank was heavily lacerated. And from his right foot, the outer toes had been cleanly severed by the scythe's dying counter-stroke, bleeding steadily onto the shattered stone.
Yet, he stood tall. Unyielding. A lone sovereign standing atop the ruins of an ancient entity.
Rehan looked down at the dying Lord of Time with cold, unwavering eyes, his voice steady as iron:
"I told you, Morgath... It doesn't matter how sharp your scythe is, or how many thousands of years you've looked down upon this world."
Rehan exhaled a breath of golden mist, glaring into the demon's fading eyes.
"When a broken human chooses to stand and fight... they will bury an 'immortal' like you deep into the dirt."