Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 108: Erased [Ko-Fi Bonus Chapter]

Heat and devastation surged outward, cascading into the world as tendrils of orange and black energy tore through the atmosphere. The very sand beneath them shimmered, glowing intensely, its grains beginning to shift state, melting and fusing into glass under the intensity of their clash.

Orvak and Malrik locked eyes.

Red eyes met blue.

A blue katana faced off against a black scythe.

Golden-orange energy flared violently against the encroaching void of black.

Reality wavered between them, time itself seeming to pause, before both figures vanished in a cataclysmic distortion.

At a single, undefined point in space, they met in a world-ending collision. Crimson and black bathed the horizon as their opposing energies exploded outward in a pulse of pure annihilation.

Without hesitation, they moved. Blades slashed with purpose. Their phantoms tore through the battlefield, roaring like beasts untethered, driven by unbending will.

A thunderous detonation echoed as they collided once more, so fierce that the sand beneath them split and scattered in all directions under the crushing weight of their power.

The world blurred into streaks of orange and black, a chaotic canvas of clashing steel and energy, as their weapons met again and again in close, feral proximity.

Malrik’s katana flickered, glitching in and out of reality, like a weapon torn from the fabric of existence itself. In its wake, thousands of crescent-shaped slashes, radiant like miniature suns, erupted into being.

They spiraled and converged, fusing into a single titanic arc of incandescent destruction, a sun-forged slash that towered hundreds of meters into the sky.

With a single, fluid swing of his katana, the monumental crescent surged forward, an embodiment of annihilation, death cloaked in golden flame.

A maddening grin stretched across Orvak’s face.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t dodge.

His black energy pulsed violently, alive, wild and deadly. Like a storm answering a challenge, his form exploded forward, a blur of darkness. He shot toward the descending crescent like a black star tearing through the heavens, embracing devastation head-on.

Orvak’s scythe rose high into the sky, then came crashing down upon the towering crescent sun. His black energy surged outward like a ravenous maw, seeking to consume the solar onslaught. But in a sudden twist, the radiant arc flared crimson, then erupted in a deafening explosion that split the very air.

The blast struck Orvak with cataclysmic force.

He didn’t scream.

He grinned, eyes wild, as pain ripped through him, the sun-forged energy searing his flesh, tearing through his body like a divine punishment. His form was hurled backward, spinning through the air like a broken kite caught in a storm.

But as wounds split open across his frame, black threads surged from beneath his skin, old, eerie, and alive. They danced like serpents, weaving flesh and sinew back into place before falling still, dormant once more.

Orvak twisted midair, crashing down feet-first, his heels carving deep trenches into the sand as he skidded to a halt.

But before he could even lift his head,

A crimson-stained blue katana was already upon him, blazing toward his neck like a predator diving from the heavens, swift, merciless, inevitable.

But Orvak was no novice. His senses and battle instincts had been honed over centuries, refined in blood and chaos. Even wounded prior, his response was near-instantaneous. His arm rose fluidly, and the snath of his scythe intercepted the incoming blade with a resounding clang of steel against steel.

But Orvak wasn’t finished.

He had been wounded twice. That demanded retribution.

A surge of black energy erupted from him, vicious and lethal, like a living storm, racing outward in a wave meant to consume Malrik whole.

Malrik’s senses flared.

Sunlight burst across his body, golden-crimson energy enveloping his frame in an instant. Then he vanished, a blur of radiance streaking across the battlefield.

But the moment he reappeared, Orvak was already there.

Like a phantom, he materialized mid-swing, his curved scythe descending upon Malrik’s neck with grim finality, like a heavenly reaper claiming his due.

Malrik’s katana rose with deadly precision, guided by pure instinct. In a blinding clash, steel met steel, black met crimson, and the world shuddered.

A thunderous blast echoed across the battlefield as their energies collided once more, rippling outward in a deadly pulse that shattered the ground beneath them.

Neither of them took a step back.

Orvak’s curved blade remained locked against Malrik’s katana, both weapons trembling under the pressure of opposing force. But then, just for a moment, a mischievous glint flashed across Orvak’s crimson eyes.

Without warning, the tip of his scythe extended like a spear, fluid and vicious, piercing forward in a blink.

The elongated edge drove into Malrik’s neck.

Crimson blood burst into the air, painting the sky as metal tore through flesh. Orvak twisted his scythe, attempting to drive it deeper, to sever Malrik’s head in a single brutal stroke.

But Malrik had already acted.

With a sharp burst of movement, and at the cost of further lacerating his own neck, he forcefully hurled himself backward. His body streaked across the battlefield, vanishing and reappearing two kilometers away in the blink of an eye.

Orvak slowly lifted his scythe, the tip gleaming with blood. He dragged his tongue across the metal with a savage grin, eyes never leaving his prey.

Malrik didn’t panic.

Injury was no stranger to him, pain was merely part of the rhythm of battle. But even he could feel it now, the invasive surge of black energy, like a swarm of shadowed blades, attempting to flood his system and tear him apart from the inside.

Still, he remained motionless. Unshaken.

His golden-crimson aura ignited around him once more, flaring like a second sun. The searing radiance enveloped his entire being, and within moments, the torn flesh of his neck began to knit itself back together, sunlight sealing wounds that should have spelled death.

But this wasn’t regeneration. Malrik possessed no healing factor. Nor was his katana a holder of a healing ability.

This was something he had forged himself, a technique born of pain and study, a fusion of elemental mastery and biology.

By manipulating sun energy at the cellular level, he could incinerate foreign forces and catalyze rapid tissue regeneration through controlled stimulation. A healing born not from magic, but from mastery.

Malrik’s knees bent forward slightly, his body coiling with intent to move.

But Orvak had already acted.

A pulse of black energy surged across Orvak’s form, vicious, chaotic. In the next instant, it poured outward, sweeping across the entire desert in a wave of obliteration. Everything it touched, sand, air, even light, was devoured into utter blackness, as though reality itself collapsed in submission to its hunger.

Malrik saw it coming.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t activate a technique.

His sun energy simply flared, rising, swelling, until it eclipsed the desert like the dawn devouring night. A divine brilliance radiated from him, so intense it blurred the world into gold. Every inch of darkness it met was scorched away, purified in blinding intensity.

And then they collided.

With an apocalyptic detonation, the two energies, one of unholy malice, the other of transcendent sanctity, clashed in a world-shaking storm. Darkness roared to consume. Light blazed to cleanse. Each force sought to bend the other, to extinguish its rival completely.

When the storm finally receded, silence reigned.

The desert was gone.

Every dune, every grain of sand, erased.

All that remained was scorched, pitch-black earth, twisted and barren under the weight of Orvak’s devastating energy.

Malrik’s katana rose.

He took a single step.

And in that instant, Orvak felt death.

An ancient instinct screamed within him, and he moved without thought, raising his arm to block. But the moment he did, he felt... nothing.

A sharp, wet sound cut through the silence.

Green blood burst into the air as his severed arm spiraled upward, detached and lifeless. Orvak’s mind staggered, his thoughts grinding to a halt. He couldn’t grasp what had just occurred. The speed, it was beyond anything he had seen, beyond anything he had anticipated.

But there was no time.

Before he could shift, before he could react, he felt it again. That same chilling presence of death.

He adapted.

He moved.

His head jerked sharply to the side, barely escaping, but not unscathed.

A blinding slash tore across his face, carving through one eye. Pain flared through his skull as vision turned to blur and blood. He had barely saved his neck.

’How?’ the thought rang in his mind, fractured and disbelieving.