Amon vanished. He moved without warning.

He simply disappeared from his position like he had never been there.

Kazriel's eyes snapped to where he had been standing a fraction of a second ago.

His instincts screamed.He spun around. Amon was already in front of him.

The distance between them, which had been dozens of meters, had collapsed in less than a blink. The speed was nothing like before. It was not like Vetaal's movements. Nothing like anything Kazriel had witnessed in this entire fight with Vetaal.

It felt like the young man just teleported bear him.

Kazriel reacted on pure instinct alone. His spear came up fast, purple flames erupting along its entire length, roaring and blazing with destructive heat. The flames screamed like they were alive, hungry, desperate to burn and destroy whatever came near them.

The black sword came down.

BOOM!

The collision was not just a clash of weapons. It was two forces of nature meeting head on.

Even though they were in air, the shockwave exploded outward in every direction. The ground beneath them cracked and shattered. Despite not being there.

Chunks of stone and earth were hurled through the air. The gray sky above them rippled as if the very atmosphere had been struck.

Kazriel was shot backward.

His body cut through the air at tremendous speed, flying back dozens of meters before he caught himself, wings snapping open wide to arrest his momentum. He hovered in place, his spear still clutched in both hands, his golden eyes wide.

Kazriel's eyes were wide.

He looked down at his own hands. The force from that single strike had traveled through his spear, through his arms, into his entire body. His palms were vibrating. His bones had felt it.

From a single strike. From one swing of that black sword. Vetaal's strikes were nothing compared to this strike.

He did not have time to process it further.

Because Amon was already there.

He came through the air like a black shooting star, darkness trailing behind him in long smoky trail, his pitch black wings cutting through the gray sky, his black void eyes locked entirely on Kazriel with an expression that was equal parts madness and absolute clarity.

The black sword swung again.

BOOM!

Kazriel brought his spear up and blocked. But the force was enormous. He was pushed back again, grinding through the air, his wings beating hard to hold his position. The purple flames on his spear clashed against the black sword and for the first time, they did not simply devour what they touched.

The darkness on the blade pushed back against the flames.

It did not extinguish them entirely. But it held them. It fight against them.

Kazriel could not believe what he was seeing.

Amon did not stop. He did not pause to breathe or recover or think.

He attacked again and again. Nonstop.

Each strike came faster than the last. The black sword moved like a blur, slashing from different angles, high and low, left and right. Kazriel was forced to move constantly, deflecting, blocking, sidestepping, retreating.

He was retreating from Amon. The realization hit him like ice water. He, Kazriel, was being pushed backward by the very boy he had been beating into the ground moments ago.

CLANG!

BOOM!

CLANG!

The clashes rang through the air in rapid succession. Each impact sent shockwaves rippling outward. The ground far below them continued cracking and breaking apart just from the force of their collisions sending pressure down through the atmosphere.

Amon moved through the sky with terrifying freedom. The darkness covering his body seemed to make him part of the air itself, fluid and unpredictable.

His movements had no pattern Kazriel could read. No rhythm he could anticipate. One moment he was directly in front, the next he was above, then below, then to the side, the black sword always swinging, always threatening.

And he was laughing.

"HAHAHAHA!"

It was a wild, reckless, burning laugh that echoed through the gray sky like it belonged there.

Inside his body, Vetaal's voice cut through the chaos.

'Boy. Boy, listen to me. You need to calm down. Whatever is happening to you right now, you need to control it. Pull your mind back. Think clearly.' He tried to calm Amon.

Amon heard him. Somewhere beneath the burning fury, he heard every word.

He was not out of his mind. He knew what he was doing, he was in control...and he was enjoying it very much.

'Vetaal,' he said, his voice eerily calm beneath the madness in his movements, 'I am going to kill him.'

'You are losing yourself—'

'I am going to bring death upon him.' Amon declared with wide smile this time.

Vetaal went silent for a moment. Then slowly he started to laughed inside. 'Hahaha! Boy you are crazy and what's with your powers? They are literally forcing my powers to be yours completely...making you use them however you want...actually your powers looks so obedient'

Amon didn't replied to him neither Vetaal spoke anything further.

Above them both, the fight continued to escalate.

Kazriel had recovered enough to go on the offensive. His expression had shifted. The shock was being buried beneath focus, calculation, the composure of a warrior who had survived centuries and countless battles. He could not afford to keep being pushed around. He could not afford to keep defending.

He needed to end this.

He raised his free hand and his energy detonated outward.

It was enormous. A vast, cascading surge of power that gathered and compressed above him in an instant, pulling the gray clouds apart, illuminating the sky with violent purple light. The temperature spiked.

The air shook. The sheer weight of the mana he had released pressed down on everything beneath it like a physical force.

Then it fired.

A massive beam of concentrated purple destruction tore downward through the sky directly at Amon. It was not just large.

It was overwhelming, wide enough to swallow several men at once, blazing with the same purple flames that had been burning Amon's body just few

minutes ago, but amplified a hundredfold.

The sound it made was not an explosion. It was a continuous roar, deep and consuming, like the earth itself was groaning.