His hand closed around my head, and I gasped as I focused on his eyes, "Do not be sorry that you will not remember me... I will do it for both of us."

I could see a bit of confusion in the flames of his eyes, but I did not bother explaining, not that he would remember it. It was a weird thing to be pitied by a demon, but I would be foolish to see that a three-horned Narghul Sorcerer was different from the lesser demons, even the two-horned.

Every demon I had seen was filled with nothing but hate and a bestial nature to devour, but Vrakth seemed to have risen beyond those base desires. Of course, push him hard enough, and his true base nature would be revealed, but this showed me that demons at a certain level would begin to control their nature beyond the hatred of all life.

I could not just dismiss any higher-order demon as if they were all the same, or I would be paying a very painful price.

His fingers tighten, and my skull starts to flex. The world narrows to the pressure and the four dimming eyes of the demon. I could feel the cold hand of death reaching for me... and I refused its call as I moved.

My Anima Depth was always regenerating Anima, and I had filled half of my channels again, even after I had spent them to create a storm of threads. Now that I had enough power, I released it all without holding back, all seven thousand nine hundred of my channels erupting as I became lightning Incarnate.’

I did not blink; I became lightning, and I maintained this state for a few moments before I flew through him.

The creature of shadow and corruption that Vrakth had become was a storm of Abyssal power, dense and hungry, but I had been learning to overpower Abyssal powers, especially as I was becoming more Celestial than Mage.

My lightning-state body pierced his shadow-form like a needle through cloth. The corruption tried to cling to me and dissolve me, but my channels were swollen with Anima, and I was converting nearly everything into white-hot lightning with a speck of golden tribulation lightning, and Vrakth’s corruption could not touch that light.

I came out the other side of him, leaving a body-sized hole behind, and rematerialized with my one hand already reaching back.

My hand grew as I activated Titan’s Marrow, each finger swelled to the size of a man’s arm, the marrow in them spending itself in a single, furious pulse. I wrapped those colossal fingers around Vrakth’s head.

His shadow-form had collapsed when I passed through him. He was flesh again, bleeding and stunned, and before he could understand what had just happened, my fingers covered his entire skull, and I squeezed.

His Abyssal shield. already cracked and weakened from our fight, shattered. His shadow crown went dim, and the dark flame around his body guttered and died, as the corruption that had been building in his chest dissipated into smoke.

Titan’s Marrow multiplied the durability and strength of my hand, and it meant that the force I could inject when I squeezed would be able to squeeze metal into molten slag.

Vrakth opened his mouth, but he could not even scream properly, as the pressure on his skull was deforming his head. His horns began to crack before all three of them shattered, and this destroyed the shadow crown behind him.

I did not let go, and I was a Mage, not a brute, and I unleashed Soul-Forge, covering my hand with silver fire as threads poured through my fingertips into his head and through his skull, until I found his heart. The silver flame followed my threads that were wrapped around his heart, and they began to burn.

With the threads wrapped tightly around his heart, I began to harshly withdraw my threads, slicing deep into the heart and pulling it from its position.

So, while squeezing his skull, I was melting his soul and pulling out his heart. Vrakth’s will broke into pieces, and my Soul Forge swallowed his shadow crystal, and I began harvesting his Flame Essence from his heart as his soul was being melted to fuel the growth of channels.

[Cor Telluris — Channels: 7,900 → 8,200 → 8,700]

With a sickening sound, Vrakth’s heart was pulled out of its position, and my threads followed the hole I had made in his torso and brought it out of his body, still beating, and yet, Vrakth did not die.

This was the first time I had taken him to this state, and watched him dying instead of me, and I could appreciate the sheer tenacity in his bones as he pushed against the call of death.

Vrakth’s body should have collapsed, and his soul scattered, but I felt him fighting against my hunger with a fierce resistance, and then something snapped inside his soul that I felt inside my silver flame.

His black blood exploded from his heart and poured from every wound in his body. In seconds, it would have filled a pool, and still more came, until every drop had left him

A broken sigh emerged from Vrakth as his blood began to move. It pooled at his feet, then rose, as it began to shape itself into... a fox?

You could understand my confusion because, as the massive shadow of the being that rose from Vrakth’s blood entered my sight, if he hadn’t named himself Killer of the Moon Fox before we fought, I’d never have known what I was looking at.

Made of blood and shadow, the colour of dried wounds and old night. It was the size of a Khaazim; its fur was liquid darkness, its eyes two pinpricks of red light, and despite its massive shape, when it took a step, it seemed to be floating, and yet the ground cracked and blackened, as if its presence was poisoning the earth.

Above its head, floating in the red air, was a silver half moon. It was a sliver of pale light, but it cast shadows that moved against the direction of the red light flooding the world. The fox’s eyes looked at Vrakth before falling to me.

Vrakth’s body fell to its knees, and his four eyes were dim, but they were not dead. They watched the fox with an impossible amount of longing that I found... disturbing.

"Moon Fox," he whispered, "Why have you forsaken me?"