The battlefield pulsed with a silence more dreadful than screams. Blood soaked the ground like rain from another world, steaming beneath the heat of celestial fury.

  At the center stood Kairyuuha.

  His Cosmic Eyes burned with ethereal fire. The radiant galaxies etched in his irises spiraled like fate unraveling. Behind him, a sigil of immense complexity rotated in the air, the remnants of the Custodians' curse—a spell not just of control, but of subjugation.

  They hadn’t bound his limbs.

  They hadn’t sealed his power.

  They had aimed for something far deeper.

  His will.

  They wanted him to kneel. Not with chains—but by his own choice. To drown him in doubt. To make him fight those he once commanded. To force him into breaking himself.

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  But he hadn’t broken.

  He was still standing.

  The Twelve Loyal Demons—no, Eleven, for Velgrin had been erased—stood before him now. Each of them fully under the Custodians’ influence. Their minds still intact. Their memories untouched. Their hearts still loyal.

  But their bodies? Their instincts?

  Turned into weapons against their master.

  They moved with elegance and pain, hands trembling as they gripped the powers he had once taught them to master.

  Yet they felt nothing.

  Because they weren’t the target.

  The curse was built for him.

  Only him.

  Every fiber of the spell's architecture, every twisting rune and embedded sigil, was calibrated to fracture his spirit. To make him question. To make him falter.

  To make him surrender.

  Kairyuuha’s breath was ragged. Not from exhaustion—but from resisting the surge of invasive whispers clawing at his core.

  > “You have lost everything.”

  “They stand before you now—because you failed.”

  “Submit, and this suffering ends.”

  He snarled, his hand flexing around the hilt of his weapon. Blood—not his own—dripped from his fingertips. All around him, the battlefield was soaked with the remains of monsters that had dared to block his path.

  The Custodians had rigged the battlefield.

  But he was still defying it.

  The Loyal Demons stood tall, their eyes faintly twitching—hints of resistance buried beneath layers of magical manipulation. Zalfus, Sith, Tora… none of them had forgotten who he was.

  But they were already under control.

  He was the only one still fighting it.

  The only one the curse was still trying to crush.

  Because if Kairyuuha submitted…

  All would fall.