Chapter 72 — What Remains When Steve Disappears**
The laughter came first.
It wasn't a gradual sound — it was an explosion, bursting from Steve's chest like something that had been trapped for far too long and had finally found an opening wide enough to escape completely. Loud. Free. Completely wrong for that body in that place.
The possessed Steve bent forward slightly with the laughter, hands on his knees, the purple-pink eyes watering from something that wasn't joy but used every muscle meant for joy.
"Haaaa—" came between bursts of laughter, the voice carrying an extra harmonic that didn't belong to any human throat. "Fresh air. Real fresh air."
He knelt. His hands touched the underground stone floor.
He stayed like that for a second — fingers spread flat against the surface, testing the pressure, registering the temperature. Then he looked at his hands with the expression of someone seeing something extraordinary where everyone else around only saw the ground.
"The ground is real."
He leaped to his feet. His arms spread wide, the purple-pink eyes sweeping the valley in a full arc — the destroyed wagons, the bodies of the werewolves, the craters opened by combat, the torches that still burned at irregular intervals.
"Magnificent," he said, his voice carrying genuine admiration that was disturbing precisely because it was genuine. "Everything is real."
His head turned.
Toward the group.
Keara had her healing magic active — golden light pulsing between her fingers with no wound to receive it, her eyes wide, her body frozen in that specific paralysis of someone who doesn't know whether moving will be the trigger. Orzun gripped both knives so tightly his knuckles had turned completely white, sweat running down his neck and temple, his breathing short and controlled like someone trying not to make a sound. Fanzel had taken three involuntary steps backward — the kind of steps the body takes when the mind hasn't yet decided to flee but instinct has already decided that staying is a mistake.
Nessira stood motionless. Her emerald eyes fixed on Steve's face with total attention from someone who recognized what she was seeing and would rather not.
"So you are all real."
The disturbing smile never left his mouth. His head tilted, his eyes moving from Keara to Orzun to Fanzel to Nessira with the specific curiosity of something cataloging rather than recognizing.
Orzun couldn't hold it in.
"Is that still your friend?"
Nessira didn't look away from Steve.
"No," she said, her voice completely flat. "What is in that body now is the chaos of his cruelest personalities. The opposite side of the real Steve."
The possessed Steve turned his head toward her.
The smile remained, but his eyes changed slightly — not in expression, but in focus. As if something had been classified into a category that wasn't a threat but also wasn't irrelevant.
"That woman," he said to himself, in the tone of a note.
Then he turned fully forward.
Toward Fanzel.
The scythes materialized in his hands.
Not like the large scythe from before — these were small, proportionate like daggers, with short handles and curved blades that fit completely in the palms. But the purple runes pulsed the same way. The blade distorted perception the same way. The impossible geometry of the weapon existed the same way, only in a version that fit into smaller spaces and moved at angles a large weapon could never achieve.
"I'm going to kill you first," Steve said to Fanzel, his voice completely conversational. "Then your colleague."
Fanzel fell into total panic.
His fingers were already tracing runes before his mouth could process what was happening, the portal materializing behind him in a circle that rapidly expanded — an exit, an escape, anywhere that wasn't here—
Steve was in front of him.
He hadn't run. He hadn't jumped. He was simply there, where he hadn't been a moment before, his hand closed around Fanzel's head with fingers finding the exact pressure points between the bones of the skull.
Fanzel hung in the air.
His legs kicked uselessly. His hands clutched Steve's wrist with desperate strength that produced absolutely no result. His blue eyes — the ones that had pulsed with calculated mana throughout the entire fight, that had evaluated threats, found weaknesses, and executed plans with technical precision that made Dregor far more dangerous than he would have been alone — those eyes now showed only pure, simple terror.
"No—" came between short, desperate breaths. "No, not me, not—"
Dregor took a step back.
His single functional eye fixed on the scene before him. The axes were in his hands but his arms didn't rise — his body recognized, before his mind could fully formulate it, that raising the weapons at that specific moment would be declaring an intention he had no defense prepared to sustain.
"Stay calm," Steve said to him without turning his head. "Your turn is coming soon."
Fanzel tried to open another portal.
The necessary concentration never arrived. The mana was available, but fear occupied the channels the magic needed to use, and fear and technical precision do not coexist when the fear is great enough.
The pressure increased.
Fanzel screamed — a sound that cut through the underground valley, made Keara close her eyes on instinct, made Orzun turn his face away, and made Nessira not blink because blinking meant losing a second of information that could be relevant.
Then the sound cut off.
Fanzel's body fell.
Steve stood with his hands at his sides, the dagger-scythes still in his palms, looking at what remained with the expression of someone who had completed a task and was checking if it had been executed correctly.
"Hm."
He turned to Dregor.
"Now it's your turn."
---
Dregor did not run.
It wasn't cowardice or courage — it was evaluation. Running in a straight line from something faster than anything he had encountered so far was a specific way to die. Familiar terrain was an advantage. The underground stone forest that had been used against him minutes ago could now be used by him.
He entered the forest.
The trunks closed around him in a geometry he had already mapped during his escape from Jelim's stakes. Corridors that ended without warning. Alleys that forced sudden changes of direction. The darkness between the trees where the torchlight didn't reach.
The silence was total.
Then it wasn't.
The laughter arrived from all directions at once — not an echo, not a reflection, but a multiplied presence, as if the entire valley had learned to laugh in that specific way and was now practicing it.
"It's almost time," the voice said, coming from nowhere and everywhere. "You're about to meet your companions."
Dregor stopped. Evaluated. Axes raised.
"Where do people this powerful even come from."
It wasn't a question. It was a thought spoken aloud — the kind that slips out when the mind is too busy with other things to filter what comes out of the mouth.
Steve was in front of him.
He had simply appeared — without sound, without displacement of air, without any of the signs that precede a physical arrival. Only absence, and then presence, with the smile between the two.
Dregor attacked on pure instinct.
The right axe went first — a fast diagonal strike, taking advantage of the remaining distance before it closed completely. The left followed in a complementary angle that blocked any lateral retreat.
Steve punched the axes.
He didn't dodge. He didn't block with the scythes. He punched with his bare hands, and the impact sent both axes flying in opposite directions — the right one embedding itself in the stone wall to the left, the left one disappearing among the trees to the right, both out of reach before Dregor could process that his hands were empty.
The first punch landed on his jaw.
The second on his solar plexus.
The third, fourth, and fifth arrived before the second had even finished registering — speed that didn't belong to a body of that size, that didn't belong to any human body of any size, that belonged to something using Steve's body as an instrument without the limitations Steve normally imposed on himself out of habit, fear, or concern for his own bones.
Dregor danced.
Not by choice — by impact. Each blow redirected his body before the previous one had finished, his armor giving way at multiple points, the metal deforming where it shouldn't have deformed. Blood appeared first at the corner of his mouth, then on his eyebrow, then in places the armor covered but didn't protect well enough.
The final kick came from below.
Dregor rose.
He tore through the canopy of the underground stone trees, branches snapping under his moving weight, stone and root resisting and failing in sequence until the air above the forest opened and, for one absurd moment, Dregor saw the ceiling of the Underworld far above, the stone formations hanging from it like stalactites, and the darkness between them that was deeper than any darkness he had encountered in this place.
Steve was in front of him.
In the air.
With the same smile.
The punch to the stomach had no warning.
The descent was vertical and fast, and the impact with the ground created a circular crater that expanded in a shockwave strong enough to extinguish the torches within a twenty-meter radius, launch stone fragments in every direction, and produce a cloud of dust that swallowed everything for several full seconds.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Then, inside the dust, a sound.
Dregor trying to get to his feet.
His arms pushing against the crater floor, his legs responding with reluctance, his body refusing to fully accept what had just happened. He made it halfway — on his knees, hands on the ground, head hanging with the weight of everything accumulated.
He stayed like that.
Footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. With that specific rhythm of something that is in no hurry because it knows there is nowhere to go.
Steve reached the edge of the crater. He descended. He stopped in front of Dregor, who did not raise his head.
"It's the end," the voice said with the wrong harmonic. "It's the end. It's the end."
Dregor took a deep breath.
He lifted his head.
His single functional eye met the purple-pink eyes and did not look away. There was no more evaluation in that gaze. No strategy. There was only the simple, complete recognition of someone who had reached the end of what he had to give and knew it with a clarity that needed no words.
"What are your last words?"
Dregor remained silent for a moment.
Then:
"For Maldrath."
Steve tilted his head. The dagger-scythe rose.
"Excellent."
---
The group heard the silence before they saw the result.
The kind of silence that follows a sound no one wants to describe — short, definitive, without echo.
Orzun was the first to speak.
"This is our chance," he said, already turning. "Before that thing comes back, we need to—"
The explosion of impact cut the sentence short.
The valley floor trembled. Dust rose in a dense column that blocked vision across half the battlefield. Keara grabbed Jelim — still unconscious, still bleeding — and pulled the body backward on pure instinct.
The dust settled.
Steve stood in the center of the valley.
With the smile. With the scythes. With eyes that were not his.
"Now it's your turn to die."
He began to walk.
The steps were slow — not from lack of ability but for the same reason Dregor's steps in the forest had been slow. Because slowness was part of the moment. Because arriving quickly meant ending quickly, and ending quickly meant wasting what lay between the beginning and the end.
Orzun didn't run. He stayed between Steve and the others, knives raised, sweat now flowing freely now that any attempt to control his breathing had been abandoned.
Nessira stood beside Keara, her hand gripping the healer's arm — not to hold Keara, but to hold on to something real while she watched that face walk toward them.
Steve accelerated.
He exploded into speed — the ground cracking beneath his feet with the momentum, the scythes rising, the distance closing in a fraction of a second that gave no time for reaction—
The impact came from above.
Not from Steve — onto Steve.
Something fell from the ceiling of the Underworld with force that created an explosion of air, stone, and dust, sending Steve flying horizontally before he could reach the group. The ground opened into another crater. The shockwave made everyone lose their balance for a second.
The dust began to settle.
A figure stood in the center of the new crater.
Human. Black hair with gray at the temples. Scars. The sword in his hand was not raised — it was simply present, an extension of the arm that waited without urgency.
Dagon looked at Steve.
Steve — whatever was inside Steve — looked at Dagon.
The smile didn't disappear.
But it hesitated.
Just for a second. The first hesitation since the eyes had changed color.
Dagon didn't look at the hesitation. He looked at the exact point behind the purple-pink eyes where Steve Matsinhe was still there, somewhere, trying to find a surface to hold on to.
"Hey, kid," he said, his voice completely calm.
Pause.
"I'm here now, kid, so try to stay calm!"!