Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls

The floor beneath Kael's feet cracked with a dry thud, like glass shattering under the weight of a silent but visible fury. The hall shook, not with thunder, but with a strange wail, a groan of rage that vibrated in every stone, in every stacked bone. Everything seemed as if it would just explode.

Augur saw Kael fragment into thousands of splinters of black and gold light, like an eclipse tearing through the sky. The runes on his body burned brightly, impossible glyphs appearing and writhing, as if an ancient pact was being broken before the prophet's eyes.

Fear, something Augur hadn't felt for decades, dug into his chest, freezing his breath for an instant.

"Do you really think you can defeat me, blinded by your rage?" his voice came out shaky, the hand that held Sylphie's core trembling almost out of control.

Kael disappeared in a dark breath.

The impact came without warning.

A horrible crack echoed... Augur's collarbone broke with the brutal force, snapping into fragments, as a blade, the Chillrend sword that Kael hadn't used yet ran through him from the shoulder, opening a tear that exposed flesh, muscle and bone all the way to his hip. The air escaped violently from his lungs with a ripping sound, a scream that was lost in his choked throat, a guttural noise of pain and shock.

The throne snapped, bursting with the weight of the fallen body.

Kael held it as if it were a sack of meat, his other hand tearing at the exposed ribs, ripping away chunks of raw flesh, leaving the ribs bare, poking into the light of the hall, exposed like a cage of bones around the beating heart.

"You... don't... understand... what you're doing..." Augur gasped, each word a titanic effort between coughs of hot blood, trying to summon spheres of energy that trembled unsteadily in front of him, exploding in sparks that burned his skin.

Kael was thrown backwards hard, part of his face charred, his skin peeling off in black flakes, but his eyes still burning with an indomitable flame.

Then came the laughter. A harsh, inhuman sound, so sharp that it seemed to tear the air around him. More terrifying than any scream.

"You call that magic?" Kael snarled, his voice now a mosaic of distorted voices, voices choked with agony and hatred. "This is pure will. And mine... it doesn't bleed. It won't break."

He raised his hands, and shadows exploded from the corners of the room like crazed vipers, coiling around his arms. The darkness merged with his flesh, turning him into a living armor of a warrior covered in black thorns, twisted leaves and pulsating matter that seemed alive.

"Let's see how much you can take, Prophet."

Vines emerged from the ground.

Living vines. Thorny. Sacred. the vines grabbed him. With monstrous force, they pulled him down.

A horrible sound exploded... the crack of his vertebrae coming apart, like dry lashes that made him scream a cry of pain so piercing that it seemed to tear at his very spirit.

Augur's legs were ripped from their joints like rotten fruit squeezed, the flesh tearing apart in a viscous roar of hot blood that gushed out in

The cruel blessing of the World Tree manifested itself with primal violence. Golden and black roots erupted from the ground like the fingers of an enraged deity, breaking walls, tearing the ceiling, piercing the fabric of space and time. Each crease burned ancient runes, symbols of purification and destruction.

Augur tried to escape, trying to rise into the air, but thick jets, staining the hall's sacred symbols with a black, sticky liquid.

The prophet roared in despair, his eyes bulging in absolute horror, his voice breaking into incomprehensible screams, interspersed with coughs of blood that splattered hard around him.

"You... used her..." Kael advanced with heavy steps, the gravity around him like a dense field that crushed the air. "You dared to touch a girl's soul... with fear in her eyes... just for your filthy experiments."

Augur tried to raise his voice, to cast a silence spell to silence the man in front of him, but his mouth opened in a deaf and hoarse scream as a shadow came out of his throat, turning his tongue into a sharp stone. It then exploded into thousands of crystalline shards that pierced his mouth and throat, causing him to scream again - an almost animal sound, full of despair and acute pain.

"He won't talk anymore." Kael lifted him up with a hand... not delicate, but like someone picking up a rag doll... Augur's mutilated body dangled, as if it were nothing more than useless flesh and broken bones.

Augur's despair was palpable, his eyes still glowing with a mixture of fury, fear and sheer terror... a cornered beast about to be torn apart. His breathing was labored, each inhale a struggle to fill lungs that were burning under deep wounds.

And then, with a slow, cruel movement, Kael smashed Augur's body against the wall. A deafening sound of bones breaking once again, followed by an explosion of blood and chunks of flesh that spread like red paint on a blackboard.

The Prophet wasn't dead - not yet.

But his scream, an echo of agony, slowly died away in the silence that followed.

The eyes carved into the wall - all of them open in a maddening way - began to ooze blood. A hot, thick blood that dripped from the empty sockets like cursed tears. The entire sanctuary was breathing pain, suffering and screaming in silence, a living prison in agony. The matter that formed those stones, those bones, reverberated the weight of curses. Echoes of pleading prayers, made by Augur's countless victims, now turned against him - a chorus of torment that made the prophet's skin crawl in agony.

Augur's body was broken into pieces that shouldn't support life - bones shattered, flesh torn, exposed organs pulsing with desperate weakness. But he wasn't dying. The blood that gushed from his wounds seemed insufficient to end the beast he had been, a monster who would not surrender even in the face of his own destruction.

His mind, however, was beginning to crumble.

In desperation, he tried to fuse himself to the fragmented mirror, to the dark, cold surface of the throne, seeking refuge, trying to escape the torment.

Kael wouldn't allow it.

With a snap of his fingers, the vines - black, twisted, thirsty - crawled into Augur's empty eye sockets. The flesh shattered as the roots invaded his eyeballs, tearing his sight away forever.

An animal scream erupted from Augur's throat, a deep, savage sound, tearing at his soul and reverberating through the hall in a wave of pure despair and horror.

His mind was a bloody mess, pieces of memories and consciousness shattered, getting lost in a fog of pain and madness.

But Kael wasn't finished yet.

He raised his hands and, from the shadows, fashioned a weapon. A black, pulsating spear, born of pain and vengeance - the Spear of the Last Eclipse. It was a skill he had recently created with Exelia's help.

Forged from the core of Kael's own suffering, enchanted with the darkness that filled his heart at that moment. Made of Rancor and Anger.

For a moment, Kael held it as if measuring the weight of the condemnation.

Then, with ruthless precision, he drove the spear through Augur's open heart.

The prophet's body bent in an impossible arc, a writhing of agony that tore through the silence with the sound of bones and cartilage crunching. But he didn't die.

Not yet.

He was sealed.

Kael approached slowly, his face covered in blood, sweat and soot. He leaned his forehead against what was left of Augur's torn face - his eyes glazed with pain and hatred met Kael's, burning like dead coals.

"You won't die yet," Kael murmured, his voice low, almost a cruel whisper.

"You'll feel everything she felt. You'll cry everything she cried."

He drove another blade, cold and sharp, into Augur's open belly. He turned it slowly, drawing out a torn, almost agonizing scream that mixed physical pain with the horror of a fate worse than death.

"And then... when you beg me to end it..." Kael whispered with deadly malice, "...it will still be too soon."

The hall collapsed around them. Walls cracked, ceilings collapsed. The entire tower, a cursed cathedral, collapsed under the weight of centuries of suffering and unleashed violence.

Kael stood amidst the rubble, like a gloomy statue, covered in blood, black thorns and soot. Three deep cuts crisscrossed his face, blood running like red veins down his pale skin. But his eyes... ah, his eyes burned with the fire of a dead star, a core of incandescent fury that seemed capable of melting everything.

He slowly opened his hand.

And there, floating in the air, was Sylphie's magical core.

Almost lifeless, trembling, but still... pulsating.

With extreme care, Kael picked it up - the brutal aura surrounding it dissolved into a heavy, dark silence.

For a brief moment, his eyes threatened to fill with tears.

Almost.

The sky above Azalith opened up in a streak of bloody light and rain fell on his face... "I want to destroy this world..." he muttered.