Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls

Kael didn't move. The silence that followed Exalia's impact against the tree was almost absolute, broken only by the sound of leaves still falling to the ground and the rhythmic dripping of blood from her side.

The demon woman floated back into her lazy pose, slowly spinning in the air as if in a solitary dance. Her eyes were no longer just hungry, they were ravenous. An abyss of desire and destruction.

"This is getting interesting..." she whispered, licking the blood from the corner of her lips with a forked tongue that flickered like a snake.

Kael kept his gaze fixed on her. His hands trembled slightly—not from fear, but from the strength he held within himself, like a dam about to burst.

But then he did something unexpected.

He let out a sigh. Long. Deep. As if he had been holding that breath since the beginning of the battle, since the moment it all began.

Then he said, with frightening calm:

"Ahri. Kill her."

The air seemed to stop.

The forest groaned.

And then... the ground lit up.

A spiral of golden symbols erupted beneath Kael's feet, and a warm, fragrant breeze swept across the battlefield, dissolving the remaining mist of the demonic presence. A figure emerged from the light. Elegant, lethal, beautiful. Almost... divine.

She materialized as if dancing with the world.

Ahri.

Nine tails appeared in a symphony of smooth movements behind her, floating like sheets in the wind. Each carried a spark of celestial power, pulsing with white and gold energy. There was no room for doubt here. She was power. Grace. And judgment incarnate.

"Look... a demon," Ahri said, smiling with lips curved in mischief. Her voice was honey and thunder. 'It's been a while since I've played with one of your kind.'

The demon woman raised an eyebrow. "You brought a little fox to fight for you, Kael? That's pathetic... and cute."

Ahri laughed. An enchanting sound, laden with something ancient and unbreakable.

"Cute is my middle name. My first name is 'natural predator of inferior aberrations like you.'"

The demon's smile faded a little. Ahri walked toward him as if crossing a field of flowers. Calm. Precise. Irresistibly dangerous.

"You know," Ahri continued, 'what you lack in tact, you make up for in sharp tongue. You dare to raise your filthy presence on this plane, thinking you can toy with my Kael?'

She stopped a few feet away from the demon, her tails fanning out in a protective arc behind her. A spectacle of divine light danced at their tips.

"Want to know what happens to insolent demons?"

The demon woman snorted, trying to hide the growing discomfort she felt in the presence of that sacred energy. 'Tsk. You're going to teach me a lesson, little dog of light?'

Ahri blinked. Just once. And then... she was gone.

The next thing the demon felt was a sharp pain in her jaw.

The impact threw her backward, through three trees that shattered like thin paper. She fell to the ground, rolling until she collided with a rock. A trail of golden embers burned where Ahri had passed.

"I always teach lessons," Ahri said, reappearing atop the rock, legs crossed. 'The difference is, no one survives to pass them on.'

The demon roared. The ground around her writhed, cracking with her black aura that now bubbled with rage. Her demonic wings burst out from her back, membranous and covered in pulsing veins. Her body grew, horns protruded from her forehead, and her skin turned red like coagulated blood.

"I WILL TEAR YOU APART, BACKYARD GODDESS!"

Ahri raised an eyebrow.

"Backyard goddess? Oh, Kael... She really is new, isn't she?"

Kael, still kneeling, just smiled with difficulty, wiping the blood from his mouth.

"Take it easy, Ahri. I want her in pieces, but recognizable."

Ahri snapped her fingers.

The world exploded in light.

The forest, the shadows, everything was swept away by a wave of divine energy that collapsed into a golden wall around the two of them. It was as if time had been encapsulated, isolated, sealed.

"Now it's just you and me, darling," said Ahri, walking slowly. "No audience. No escape."

The demon screamed, firing beams of black energy like spears of pain. Ahri dodged with the grace of a ballet dancer, spinning, floating, deflecting the attacks with her tails as if they were mere grains of sand. In an almost imperceptible movement, three of her tails pierced the air and struck her enemy's shoulder, thigh, and abdomen.

Each impact left a mark. Not just a wound—but a seal. A fragment of divine truth.

The demon woman tried to summon a circle of blood to counterattack, but Ahri clicked her tongue.

"Not in my house."

And with a wave of her hand, she broke the circle with pure willpower.

The demon staggered, gasping. Black blood now flowed from her wounds.

"What... are you?"

Ahri smiled. A sweet smile, but one that hid a death sentence. "I am the one who destroys demons when the stars fall silent. The light between the shadows. The steel between the words." Her tails rose like serpents, ready for the final blow. "I am the nightmare of your nightmares."

With a sweeping gesture, the nine tails moved at once, surrounding the demon in a vortex of light. Rays of divine energy crossed the space between them, weaving a prison of heat and judgment.

The demon screamed, trying to escape, but it was useless.

Ahri closed her eyes. And murmured an ancient prayer, forgotten even by the gods themselves.

"For every darkness that rises, a light remains. May you dissolve into truth."

The nine tails shot into the prison of sacred energy. A flash illuminated the entire forest like the sun of a new world. A scream—long, grotesque, and inhuman—echoed through the trees, reverberating as if reality itself were screaming in agony.

And then... absolute silence.

When the light finally dissipated, the trees swayed slightly around, as if breathing a sigh of relief. The ground where the creature had once floated was empty. No body, no bones. Just a patch of dark dust scattered like soot and a faint smell of burnt sulfur in the air. The temperature had dropped. Even the wind seemed hesitant, as if it didn't want to break that sacred moment.

Kael, still kneeling, forced his body to rise. His legs trembled, but he stood up as if he had always known he would have to continue. He looked around, his expression hardened by doubt.

"Where did she go?" he asked, panting, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his hand.

Ahri had her back to him, her tails slowly returning to their calm form, floating in a tranquil ballet of light. She turned slowly, her golden eyes half-closed, still analyzing the void ahead.

"She ran away," she said, in a tone that was a mixture of disappointment and dark admiration. "But I hit her."

She smiled, one of those crooked, slightly mischievous smiles that only she could give—as if she had left a threatening note on her enemy's soul, written with heavenly fire.

"She won't forget anytime soon. Not even if she has a thousand years to try."

Kael stared at her for a moment. Then she let out a brief, dry, exhausted laugh.

"You had fun, didn't you?"

Ahri shrugged, her tails billowing behind her like restrained flames.

"A little. The look on her face when she realized I wasn't all glitz and curves... was priceless."

[Not far away]

In the heavy silence of what remained of the forest, the black mist condensed into a dark, thick, and twisted shadow. Like a corpse rising from the grave, the demon woman reappeared in her "palace" — a twisted place, carved from twisted bones and pulsating walls of living flesh, hidden beyond human perception.

Half of her body was consumed by golden burns, her skin cracked and steaming as if scorched by hell itself. The other half was a grotesque deformation: melted flesh, twisted limbs, eyes that should not exist, bleeding a dark, viscous liquid. Still, her eyes burned with an insatiable flame of hatred and resentment.

She fell heavily onto the sticky floor, the muffled sound of bones breaking under the weight of pain echoing through the hall. Her breathing was irregular, a mixture of whispers and muffled growls, but the beast inside her would not surrender to defeat.

"Damned..." she muttered, her teeth clenched, her trembling hands clenching into bloody fists. "Damned are all who dare to challenge me..."

With a hoarse voice that seemed to come from a bottomless abyss, she began to recite a series of ancient, cursed words, full of venom and despair. Curses as old as the night, with names that no living tongue should utter.

She cursed the light that had hurt her, cursed the air that suffocated her, cursed the ground that supported her and the heavens that denied her power. Curses of eternal pain, of blood that would never stop flowing, of bones that would never heal, of flames that would burn forever.

And as the words came out, a dark energy began to emanate from her body. The deformed flesh twisted and regenerated, the wounds slowly closed, covered by a putrid, black glow that seemed to feed on its own corruption.

The fire in his burns did not diminish—on the contrary, it grew, like embers rekindled by the breath of the curse. The burned skin did not heal as before, but became a shield of iron in black flames, resistant to the touch of time or sacred magic.

Her burning eyes opened fully, now boiling with a fury that was not merely human. It was the fury of a being who had been wounded, humiliated, but who promised to return stronger, more dangerous.

She whispered as she rose, staggering but steady, like a beast ready to roar.

"I will rise. No matter the price. No matter the blood I have to drink. No matter the curses I have to bear."

She looked at the living walls of the palace pulsing around her, as if the place were breathing with her, sharing her thirst for destruction and revenge.

"I'm going crazy..." she murmured, her voice laden with a dark promise...