Regnare exhaled...

The scream froze solid.

Every mouth on the creature’s face crystallized at once, expressions locked in eternal agony. Regnare flicked his wrist. The ice daggers elongated, becoming twin greatblades, and he cleaved straight through the creature’s torso.

It shattered.

Then the ground darkened.

A shadow fell over everything.

The skyscraper-sized abomination moved.

Each head roared in turn, lion, ant, shark; soundwaves tearing through space itself. One claw descended, slow but absolute, the pressure alone collapsing mountains kilometers away.

Regnare planted his feet.

Ice surged from beneath him, forming a colossal sigil, ancient, layered, humming with authority. His body lifted, muscles expanding, veins glowing with frozen light.

He raised both blades.

"Onyx!"

"Already done," Onyx replied calmly.

Chains of obsidian light burst from the ground, wrapping around Regnare’s arms, shoulders, and spine, anchoring him.

Regnare swung.

The clash was cataclysmic.

Blade met claw, and the shockwave tore the sky apart. Clouds disintegrated. The land folded inward. Entire regions of darkness were erased outright, replaced by pristine ice fields stretching to the horizon.

The beast staggered. One head was severed mid-roar. Black blood poured like a river.

But the snake moved.

Its coils tightened around the hovering orb, void energy pulsing violently. The core reacted, sensing danger, flooding the battlefield with raw corruption. The remaining beasts convulsed, attempting to regenerate.

Regnare turned.

His breathing was heavy now. Frost bled from cracks in the ice armor he’d created mid-battle. Power roared inside him, clawing to be unleashed fully.

"That core is trying to overwrite this land," he muttered.

Onyx’s smile sharpened. "Then overwrite it first."

Regnare straightened.

The halo behind him fractured completely and then reformed, darker, sharper, and more defined. His blades dissolved into light, reshaping into a single weapon: a massive ice-black greatsword etched with sigils of sin and judgment.

The temperature dropped to absolute zero.

The void core screamed.

Regnare lifted the blade over his shoulder.

"By my Sin," he said quietly, voice echoing like a verdict, "this ends."

And the world braced itself.

...

Regnare moved.

The greatsword of frozen judgment tore through the air, trailing a comet tail of absolute frost as he launched toward the void core. The land cracked beneath his acceleration. The orb pulsed violently, sensing its end approaching.

For a moment, victory seemed inevitable.

Then the corpses twitched.

The severed spider legs spasmed. The shattered slime reformed into writhing chunks. The decapitated titan’s body convulsed.

Regnare’s eyes narrowed.

"...of course."

Void energy flooded the battlefield like a black tide.

The remains of the beasts began dragging themselves together, bone grinding against bone, flesh melting and reforming in obscene geometry. The scorpion’s shattered carapace fused into the titan’s torso. The spider’s snake tails stitched themselves along its spine. The screaming mouths of the slime creature spread across its chest like a living plague.

The three-headed titan rose again.

Except now it had sixteen eyes across its torso, eight tails, claws that dripped corrosive darkness, and from its back erupted grotesque wings made of overlapping void chitin.

The ground groaned beneath its rebirth.

Regnare slowed mid-charge, landing lightly on a slab of frozen earth as the new abomination towered over him.

But the nightmare wasn’t finished.

The surrounding darkness moved.

Shapes emerged, dozens of them.

Void beasts that had been lurking beyond the battlefield finally surged forward, answering the call of the core. Winged felines, skeletal hounds with blade-spines, wormlike things that moved through the air like water.

Hundreds of eyes locked onto him.

Onyx exhaled slowly.

"Well... that escalated."

The new titan stepped forward.

Each step shook the land like a falling mountain.

The mouths across its torso screamed, releasing a sonic blast that shattered glaciers and tore craters into the earth. The scorpion tails lashed out simultaneously, piercing through space with lethal speed.

Regnare vanished.

The tails skewered empty air.

He reappeared above the creature’s head, his sword descending with a roar of ice.

The titan blocked; claw met blade.

The collision detonated like a nuclear blast. Ice storms exploded outward, shredding entire swarms of lesser void beasts in the shockwave. Regnare was hurled back, skidding across frozen ground for nearly a kilometer before stopping.

The titan followed instantly.

Too fast for its size.

A massive claw descended.

Regnare raised his blade, but the second claw came from the side.

The impact slammed him through three mountains of ice he had created earlier. Darkness surged around him as smaller void creatures piled in, claws tearing, fangs snapping.

For a moment, the battlefield swallowed him.

Then everything froze.

Literally.

An expanding sphere of glacial energy erupted outward, flash-freezing dozens of creatures mid-attack. Regnare stepped out of the collapsing pile of ice and corpses, his armor cracked but eyes burning brighter.

He wiped black blood from his lip.

"I was hoping I wouldn’t need this yet."

Onyx tilted his head.

"Second authority?"

Regnare nodded slowly.

The halo behind him changed.

Ice alone no longer flowed through it.

Something darker seeped into the sigils.

Something older... something hungry.

The air grew heavy and oppressive.

Black markings spread across Regnare’s arms, crawling like living ink beneath the frost patterns of his power.

The titan paused.

Even the void beasts hesitated.

Regnare lifted his hand. Frost gathered.

But it wasn’t pure anymore.

The ice had turned black.

Every shard hummed with malignant whispers.

"Curse... and Ice."

The ground beneath him began rotting while simultaneously freezing, cracks spreading outward like veins across the battlefield.

"This is new for me, too," he admitted quietly.

Then he slammed his sword into the earth.

"Cursed Glacial Dominion."

Reality screamed.

A continent-sized wave of black ice erupted outward like a blooming apocalypse.

Everything it touched froze and was cursed.

Void beasts locked in place, their bodies crystallized in jagged prisons of dark frost. But the curse didn’t stop there. The ice crawled inside them, infecting their existence, devouring regeneration, unraveling the void energy that sustained them.

They began to rot while frozen.

The titan roared and charged.

It tore through the spreading field, brute force shattering layers of cursed ice as it lunged for Regnare.

Regnare stepped forward to meet it.

Now the battlefield felt different.

The titan swung both claws.

Regnare’s sword rose.

When they collided, the cursed frost surged up the creature’s arms like venom.

The beast screamed.

Its regeneration faltered for the first time.

Regnare’s eyes glowed brighter.

"Now we’re fighting properly."

And behind the titan, the void core trembled.

...

The void core trembled. That single reaction told Regnare everything he needed to know.

The curse was working.

The massive abomination roared in fury as black frost spread through its fused body like veins of death. The screaming mouths across its chest shrieked in a hundred discordant voices while the snake-tails whipped wildly, shattering glaciers and cursed ice alike.

But every time the creature broke free, the curse followed like a shadow that refused to leave.

Regnare slid backward across the battlefield, his boots carving long trenches through frozen ground as the titan charged again. Each step from the abomination collapsed hills of ice, its monstrous claws tearing through the cursed field with brute force.

It swung.

Regnare ducked beneath the first strike. The second claw followed immediately, aiming to crush him into the earth.

He stepped forward instead, his sword flashing upward.

CRACK!

Black frost erupted along the titan’s arm, the curse spreading deeper this time, eating through its void regeneration like acid through paper.

The beast roared louder.

The surrounding swarm surged again, hundreds of void creatures rushing toward Regnare from every direction, trying to overwhelm him while the titan pressed the attack.

Onyx watched from a distance, arms crossed.

"Ah... they’re desperate now."

Regnare exhaled slowly.

Then he moved. His blade spun in a blinding arc.

Cursed ice exploded outward like a hurricane of swords, slicing through the charging beasts. Bodies froze mid-lunge before shattering into cursed shards that dissolved into black dust.

The titan struck again. Regnare leapt.

A claw the size of a building slammed into the earth beneath him, creating a crater that swallowed entire glaciers.

Midair, Regnare twisted his body and slashed downward.

The sword carved through one of the creature’s massive wings.

The cursed ice detonated across its back, cutting off a wing.

The titan staggered.

Now the curse surged fully through its body, black veins crawling across every fused limb, every screaming mouth, every monstrous eye.

But it still refused to die. Instead, it began gathering void energy.

A massive sphere of darkness formed above its heads, swirling with destructive pressure that made the entire battlefield tremble.

Regnare landed lightly on the frozen ground. His gaze lifted toward the sky.

"Fine," he muttered.

"If you want scale..."

Power surged through him. The cursed frost halo behind his back expanded.

And then...

His body lifted from the ground.

Wind exploded outward as four massive dragon wings burst from his back.

Two white as winter storms, two black as cursed midnight. Their sudden appearance cracked the air with divine pressure.

The void beasts froze. The titan hesitated.

Regnare shot upward.

He pierced the clouds in seconds, climbing higher and higher until the battlefield below became a tiny scar of darkness in a vast white wasteland.

Onyx looked up and grinned.

"There it is."

Far above the battlefield, Regnare stopped.

The wind died around him.

For a single quiet moment, the world held its breath.

Then he turned downward.

His wings folded.

Both hands gripped the sword.

The blade pointed directly toward the titan far below.

Energy began pouring into it.

Ice, curse, draconic force, and Wrath.

All of it compressed into the weapon until the blade looked like a falling star waiting to be born.

Regnare whispered one word.

"Skyfall."

And then he descended.

The sky split.

He dropped like divine judgment, spinning as he fell, the sword blazing with black-and-white frostfire. The rotation accelerated his descent until he became a spiraling meteor of cursed ice.

The titan looked up too late.

The impact came like the birth of a catastrophe.

Regnare pierced straight through the void sphere, shattering it instantly before continuing downward. His blade drilled through the titan’s skull, through its fused torso, through every screaming mouth and writhing limb.

And into the void core beneath it.

For half a second, everything froze. Then the battlefield detonated.

A colossal pillar of cursed ice erupted skyward, swallowing the titan and the core in a spiraling explosion of black frost and white lightning. The shockwave expanded for kilometers, erasing every remaining void beast in its path.

When the light faded...

A vast frozen crater remained.

At its center stood Regnare, his sword buried deep into the shattered remains of the void core.

Cracks spread through the orb, then it disintegrated into ash.

The cursed frost across the battlefield slowly dissolved as the void energy sustaining the invasion collapsed.

Regnare exhaled slowly. Behind him, the four dragon wings faded back into light. He hadn’t used his real dragon wings in this fight, or else the result would have been very different.

Onyx walked toward him across the frozen wasteland, clapping slowly.

"Well," he said with a crooked smile.

"That was unnecessarily dramatic."

Regnare pulled his sword free from the shattered core.

A faint smirk crossed his face.

"...Dad does it better."