The Broken Halo

Simon had found the crimson book beneath Blackwind Valley during the Shadowgrave Clan’s trials. It had rested inside Hell’s Sword Daemon’s spatial ring, alongside the mask, the black book about the chaos plane, the Chaos Wraps, and the Chaos Blade.

He had spent six minutes skimming it and thought he understood what he had gained. Months later, he learned how arrogant that had been.

He had even planned to combine his previous life’s sword techniques with the art, disguising its origins. Yet understanding where a blade moved was not the same as understanding why the movement worked. He could not properly perform the original. How was he supposed to improve it?

The concepts were difficult enough. His body was the greater problem.

Hell’s Sword Daemon had created the art for a full-blooded Daemon. The constitution of that race could endure forces that would destroy an ordinary demon from within. Simon was only a half-Daemon.

His strength could briefly reach that of a Demon Lord, but that did not give his muscles, bones, and pathways the structure the sword art required. Reinforcing them harder only delayed the damage.

Now he stood before a god, preparing one of the techniques he had never completely mastered.

The Death Heaven Owes.

His demonic energy changed direction.

It travelled from his Demon Heart through his back, divided beneath his shoulders, then returned through different pathways instead of flowing directly into his arms. Each flow crossed another without merging.

Inside his Sea of Consciousness, black water rose. Simon drew mental energy toward his eyes, feeding it through the pattern established by that circulation. The broken rings around his pupils remained still.

This was not Hollow Sky Eye. The sword art demanded its own perception and sight.

At first, the God of War remained the same in Simon’s eyes. Then faint lines appeared across the borrowed body, flickering whenever Simon tried to focus on them. One touched the throat. Another passed beneath the damaged breastplate. A third crossed the remaining wrist.

These were Death Lines.

They were not marks waiting upon every living creature, nor promises that whatever he cut would die. They showed possible paths of severance, where flesh, structure, and circulating power could be broken together.

Seeing them required mental energy. Holding them while the target moved required more. Giving those possibilities an actual edge required the sword.

The stronger the target, the harder all three became.

Simon’s first line vanished beneath the weight of the god’s presence. Blood gathered at the corner of his eye.

’Again.’

He adjusted the circulation, narrowed his attention, and refused the countless uncertain paths around the body. His mind could not hold them all. He needed only those he could complete.

A thin black flame climbed the Chaos Blade.

Then it disappeared.

The crimson edge dimmed with it, leaving a sword so completely black that its outline seemed cut out of the afternoon. The fire had not been extinguished. It had been drawn inward.

The God of War’s gaze lowered to the weapon.

A drifting scrap of cloth passed Simon’s shoulder and divided without a sound. Dust split along a straight edge beside his boot. Beyond the trench, a human reached toward the strand of hair that had fallen across his face, then stopped when he realised it had been cut.

Simon had not swung. The disturbance around the blade was escaping before he could contain it.

[Do not mistake seeing a Death Line for possessing the strength to cut it.]

Lilith had told him that during practice.

Her father had not named the technique because Heaven obediently killed anyone he pointed at. Death was its principle, not a guarantee. Everything that stood whole could, with sufficient understanding and power, be severed.

The sword art forced the swordsman to find how.

Simon remembered the words written within the crimson book.

’Heaven promises every living thing a death. When Heaven delays its payment, my sword collects the debt.’

A black line appeared across the space before the god’s throat. A crimson border trembled along it, barely thicker than a hair.

It was not visible to the everybody, but the God of War could see it because of Simon’s poor proficiency with the technique.

The God of War shifted his head slightly. The death line turned with him, and his brows drew together.

It had not followed automatically. Simon’s mental energy strained to maintain its position, changing the planned cut before the movement was complete. A second line crossed the god’s chest. A third stood diagonally beside his remaining arm.

THUD

Simon’s heartbeat sounded painfully loud.

The distant cannon fire seemed to sink behind a wall. Nearby, falling grit touched the road without a sound, and the wind moved his torn clothing in an unnatural silence.

His right wrist cracked.

The god looked back at him.

”You are tearing yourself apart. I’m curious... What in the world are you planning on doing?”

Simon did not respond because he could not.

His sword remained low, but his body was already carrying the strain of several attacks. One strike prepared an upward cut. Another demanded a downward strike. A third loaded his waist for a horizontal turn.

Those preparations pulled against one another inside him. A Daemon’s constitution could hold them together.

His could not.

The Chaos Wraps tightened around his wrist before his joints failed completely. More strips compressed his forearms and shoulders, holding muscle against bone as blood worked its way between them.

UnholyRegeneration began repairing the damage. The next loaded movement tore it open again.

Four Death Lines.

Then five.

One crossed the waist of the god’s borrowed body. Another cut through the pressure gathered around it, seeking a path through the protection rather than pretending it did not exist.

The god’s faint amusement disappeared.

He was beginning to sense that this was not an ordinary attack

Simon’s fingers threatened to loosen. The wrappings held them against the hilt, and black fire emerged between their overlapping layers in narrow threads. The threads passed onto the sword.

A moment later, the Death Lines darkened.

This was why the weapon and its wielder mattered. Perception supplied the path. The body prepared the movements. The blade held their force until they could be released together.

Simon could not substitute one part for another.

[When my father used it, enemies did not count the death lines he produced.]

Lilith’s voice returned from another lesson.

[They looked around and found the world broken wherever they might stand.]

Simon remembered asking how many Death Lines her father could make.

She had laughed back then.

She told him that he could make as many as he wished to make.

A sixth death line formed behind the god’s shoulder. The seventh crossed the stone beneath his boots and rose toward the knee. Simon tried to hold another possibility, but pain drove through his skull, and he abandoned it immediately.

Seven.

That was everything he could bear.

A Demon Lord overhead drew back. He could see the fractures around the god, yet searching the air between them and Simon revealed no familiar sword wave.

”What is that?” he whispered.

The human facing him had forgotten to answer.

Simon no longer listened. Blood ran over the sword’s guard, and his shoulder felt as though someone was pulling the arm from its socket. Behind the pain lay seven paths, each demanding a different stroke.

He had once worried that someone might recognise the sword art.

Now he needed to survive performing it.

He had enough strength left to begin. There was no certainty he would possess enough to finish.

’Then finish before it runs out.’

He stepped.

The Chaos Blade rose from beside his hip. His waist turned before the upward stroke released its force, carrying the edge horizontally. His shoulders reversed, his knee bent, and the sword descended along a third angle.

The remaining motions followed so closely that watching eyes could not separate them.

Seven images occupied the trench.

One still held the blade low. Another had lifted it overhead. One knelt beneath a horizontal stroke while another stood twisted at the end of a thrust. Each position appeared complete, yet all seemed to occupy the same moment.

They were not clones, nor seven attacks travelling one after another.

The movements had occurred in sequence, but their releases had not.

For one suspended instant, the sword held every completed cut.

Then the images overlapped.

The seven Death Lines closed around the God of War.

His pupils contracted into pinholes when he felt his instincts warn him.

The danger was no longer something that interested him or something he could ignore. It was at his throat, his heart, his remaining hand, arriving along paths already established around him.

”You-”

His left foot moved.

For the first time in this exchange, the god braced himself.

The crossed spears upon his chest blazed crimson. Aether surged through Darius’s restored body, refined beneath the god’s Will, and his remaining hand rose with its fingers spread.

An iron-grey barrier enclosed him. Crimson bands crossed its surface, reinforcing it as the god poured power into the defence.

His expression had lost every trace of disdain.

The seven black cuts struck the God of War’s defence at once.