Over Gareun’s shoulder,
a shadow—
slid down.
The cord should have remained.
The knot, hardened like steel,
should still have been binding Roan’s wrists.
And yet.
The cord that had bound him thinned as if being singed,
then snapped without a sound and fell to the floor.
The “Roan” who had been inside it was already no longer there.
The black shape stood like a person the moment it touched the ground.
No head, no face,
only an outline.
The shadow spoke in a low voice.
“At last…”
No one could move.
Their breaths stopped first.
The silence was strange.
It was not that sound had vanished,
but that the pressure of “no sound must be made” had descended first.
Miryeong’s shoulders leaned forward ever so slightly.
Muryeong changed the angle of his axe without raising its blade.
A stance meant to endure, rather than fight at once.
Gareun could not even swallow his breath,
only his Adam’s apple moved once.
Then Rangnan,
as if his throat would tear, shouted.
“Everyone, get down!”
The moment the order fell, their bodies reacted first.
Kallen threw himself flat to the ground,
and Yeonhwa and Taejin lowered their stances as if by instinct.
Miryeong clenched her teeth and drew in Bido,
while Muryeong crouched with his axe raised.
Maho seized Raen’s head and pressed it to the ground.
The shadow raised a hand and said softly.
“Black Lightning.”
From its fingertips stretched not light, but a line.
Black lightning.
Without a sound,
a line that scorched the air as it shot forth.
Its target was Rangnan.
Rangnan kicked off the ground.
He could not let that ominous thing strike anyone.
In that instant,
lightning sparked from his fingertips.
The black line and white lightning collided head-on.
Ziiik—
The sound of something that was not metal burning away.
The collision was not the sound of something being “blocked.”
It was the sound of them gnawing at each other.
Each time the black line tried to swallow the white lightning,
Rangnan split his lightning thinner and drove it in.
If he pushed with thickness, it would be devoured.
Only by burning it thin could a path open, even for an instant.
And so Rangnan’s fingertips were not a weapon, but a heart.
The more they beat, the hotter they grew,
and the more they flared, the more they wore away.
He clenched his teeth not because of the pain,
but because he knew that if he stopped, it was over.
Rangnan’s shoulders shook.
His teeth were clenched,
and his breath tore in his throat.
A night when he could not use Areukwin.
Rangnan was forcibly changing his own spiritual power into lightning,
burning through that black lightning as he pushed it back.
But the pain showed plainly on his face.
It was not on the level of his fingertips going numb.
It felt as though his “soul” was growing hot.
It was then.
A huge fireball plunged down from above.
The air sank once,
then swelled again as if exploding.
The black shape was pressed down by that fireball and slammed into the ground.
The flames did not spread or scatter.
They remained as a single mass,
pressing down on the shadow like pressure itself.
What rose was not the smell of scorching,
but a smell like a soul burning.
Rangnan clenched his teeth and his hand trembled.
The fingertips that had taken the Black Lightning were still numb.
Every time he exhaled,
the inside of his chest was ground hot.
Then Maho said,
“Rangnan. We failed.”
Maho’s voice was low,
yet strangely, it rang out as if cleaving the battlefield.
“At this rate, I’ll kill Roan myself.”
No one could answer right away.
Before anyone could speak,
Maho was standing at the end of the fireball.
That fireball—
it was not mere fire.
Maho’s arm
had become the arm of a massive dragon.
Flames overlapped like scales,
and below the elbow, the shape had taken on “flesh.”
His fingertips were claws.
Giant claws made of fire.
Maho pressed that arm down even deeper.
The ground cried out.
The rock
began to melt.
Stone did not flow like water.
Its surface simply collapsed, seethed black, and sank.
The heat shoved the air aside and tore it apart.
Gareun instinctively retreated.
Miryeong clenched her teeth,
and Bido held his breath.
Raen’s tail swept the ground, trembling.
Maho raised the arm of fire he had clenched.
Inside it—
was Roan.
No, Roan’s “form.”
The black shape had been stripped away here and there.
Scorch marks from the flames.
Not flesh,
but traces of the black membrane itself having burned away.
Maho clenched his teeth.
“Let’s end this. Here.”
It was then.
From the black shape,
a voice flowed out.
A voice too even to seem like laughter
or anger.
“Dark Lightning.”
The moment the words ended,
the air reacted first.
The black lightning—
was not a single line.
Countless thin threads began to spark around the shape.
Like a swarm of insects.
Like living smoke.
And they
clung to the arm of fire.
Chiiik—
It was not the sound of fire burning.
It was the sound of fire being “extinguished.”
Maho’s fire was hot.
But the black lightning was neither hot nor cold.
Instead, it carried the sensation of peeling away “what it was attached to.”
Not of cutting flesh,
but of tearing away the ground to which flesh was attached.
The air emptied once,
then filled in belatedly.
In that instant, it did not look as though Maho’s flames had wavered,
but as though the place where the flames could stand had disappeared.
Bido saw it and understood.
This was not a fight of endurance.
If they endured, the side that wore away first would lose.
Maho’s face twisted.
The pain was not heat.
Not the pain of flesh burning,
but the feeling that his insides—
his soul—were being torn apart with a numbing sting.
The black lightning wrapped around the dragon’s arm.
Up the claws,
up the wrist,
up the elbow.
The scales of fire went out one by one.
Maho clenched his teeth and endured.
He could endure.
He was a dragon.
His level was different.
But—
the method was different.
Dark Lightning did not pierce fire, nor did it burn fire.
It simply erased the “place” where fire could cling.
Maho’s arm of fire
gradually lost its form.
The claws blurred,
the scales went out,
and the enormous arm—
tried to return to the size of a human arm.
Maho exhaled low.
“…Damn it.”
The form of Roan held within the arm of fire
took advantage of that gap and writhed again.
The black membrane sprouted once more.
As if filling the places stripped away by the flames.
But Maho’s face—
in an instant, turned into a mass of fire.
A shape took form.
The face of a dragon with its jaws open.
As its jaw opened, the air tore first.
“Ha…”
A sound that could have been breath or a sob.
And from that mouth,
an enormous flame poured out.
Boom—!
The blaze was not fire that spread.
It was fire rolling forward as a single mass.
It was weight itself.
A fierce heat spread through the surroundings.
The first thing to choke was everyone’s breath.
Not their skin,
but their eyes and throats seemed to burn first.
Kallen braced a hand against the ground and clenched his teeth.
Yeonhwa covered her face with her arm.
Taejin swallowed his breath and stepped back.
Miryeong grabbed Bido’s shoulder and pulled him back.
“Lower your head.”
Muryeong crouched as if to block the heat with his raised axe,
and Aseullo took one step back.
The flame struck Roan directly.
The black shape shook first.
The shadow was not burning,
but being stripped away.
Chiiik—
The black threads of Dark Lightning vanished within the flames as if snapping,
and the darkness was torn away layer by layer.
The stone floor melted down.
The rocks collapsed and seethed black.
Then—
the flames began to subside.
Maho’s face
slowly returned to its original form.
It was not that the fire was going out,
but as if its strength were draining away.
Maho dropped to one knee.
Thud.
As though even drawing breath was difficult,
his shoulders trembled once, heavily.
The flames completely settled.
Inside them—
was “Roan.”
Half of the right side of his face.
His right leg.
And his left arm.
In the places where the black membrane had peeled away, hot afterimages remained.
Burned marks.
Through those scorched gaps—
human skin could be seen.
By contrast, the side that had not been stripped had grown darker.
As though the shadow clung to the flesh,
forcibly maintaining a human shape.
And above his head—
the black shape had gathered and transformed into the shape of a horn.
A curved outline like a ram’s horn.
A single horn, attached only to the side that had not been stripped away.
That shape raised its head ever so slightly.
Gareun instinctively stepped back.
Muryeong’s axe trembled low.
Miryeong tried to pull Bido even farther behind her.
It was then.
“…Maho.”
It was a voice.
Not a sound as dry as metal,
nor as hollow as a shadow.
Roan’s own voice.
Maho lifted his head where he knelt.
The lingering heat of the fire still made his breathing heavy.
Roan slowly turned his head.
And looked at Bido.
The moment Bido received that gaze,
his body reacted first.
There was no time to consider whether it would work or not.
He gripped the cord of his sword,
and swallowed once.
“I’ll block it.”
Red light rose once more in Bido’s eyes.
A feeling as if the surrounding air were being thinly tightened.
Mireukwin was about to unfold again.
And yet.
Bido felt it.
The things he had locked away
being severed one by one.
As if fine threads at his fingertips were snapping with soft “tuk” sounds.
Roan’s lock was being torn apart.
Bido’s breath caught.
“Ah…”
In that instant, Roan’s eyes
shed their empty darkness.
In its place, violet spread.
A deep, cold color,
like moonlight and yet unlike it.
Space—
distorted.
The ground beneath Roan’s feet shook first,
and the surrounding air crumpled as if folding in on itself.
Within it, Roan’s form blurred as if being sucked away.
All of it happened in an instant.
Bido took one step forward.
Too late.
Roan
vanished.
All that remained was the lingering heat of the flames,
and eyes of red light that had been unable to do anything.
And only the sensation of locks severed and fallen away.
Bido’s red light
trembled as if groping through empty air.