The sky was stitched with wounds.

  Ribbons of aurora peeled open, colors bruised and torn.

  Amidst the ruin of light in the dark sky, Satan hovered.

  Silent. Detached. A sword in his right hand.

  His gaze fell to the earth with neither worry nor wrath.

  Beneath him, the red-haired swordsman, still bleeding.

  Still on his feet.

  Still holding that golden blade like it meant something.

  Satan moved.

  Not with speed. Not with rage.

  Just inevitability.

  His sword rose.

  The sky dimmed.

  And the clouds buckled inward.

  And then—a swing.

  The arc of that blade didn’t slice just the air.

  It cut through reality.

  The sound came after.

  Like the world realizing too late that it had been split.

  A single red line extended from the swing—

  cutting through the sky, ice, and ocean.

  The horizon cracked open.

  And the clouds split apart.

  The very crust recoiled, trembling under the weight of a strike too calm to be anything but divine.

  The red-haired warrior didn’t scream.

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  He braced.

  And vanished beneath a tidal wall of snow and stone.

  But Satan didn’t chase.

  He simply floated there, his blade humming in his palm—

  as if the strike had been but a suggestion.

  Ash stood alone.

  The battlefield stood distant. Muted.

  A hum beneath her feet.

  Her eyes were locked onto the blade—the ancient weapon.

  It called out to her name.

  Not through voice.

  But through its power.

  A pull from behind her eyes.

  A tightening of her throat.

  As if gravity had chosen her spine to be its anchor.

  The air dimmed.

  Not dark. Not shadowed.

  Dimmed—as if light itself refused to step in.

  She stepped forward.

  Another. And another.

  The wind didn’t stir. Time didn’t move.

  The world around her slowed.

  The blade was beautiful. Elegant.

  It gleamed like something from a story not yet written.

  She reached for it.

  Her fingers trembled.

  Its reflection shone across her eyes.

  Not from fear.

  From hunger.

  The moment her skin brushed the hilt—

  Her knees buckled.

  Her head dropped.

  Her hair fell across her face like a curtain.

  Silence.

  Then she looked up.

  Her eyes shone.

  Not red, but Scarlet.

  No emotion. No identity.

  Something else.

  Ash straightened, her posture too perfect.

  Every movement too sharp, too smooth—

  like a puppet made of porcelain.

  Then she turned.

  And moved.

  She didn’t run.

  She glided.

  And then—struck.

  It was without mercy.

  Without thought.

  Possession doesn’t require permission.

  And the blade had always belonged to something far worse.

  End of Chapter 43 – Embers of Madness