Helios stood over the smoking crater, spear still lodged in the earth. Rourke’s body twitched as he rose from the rubble, molten cracks lining his obsidian hide. His eyes—no longer human—smoldered like twin furnaces.

  Then he spoke.

  “You? It’s your fault! You interfered!” Rourke’s voice gurgled like va boiling through broken stone, yet held the chilling coherence of purpose.

  Helios blinked. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  Only Ansem and the True Darknesses ever spoke once consumed. Heartless, even corrupted hybrids, lost their reason and identity. But this… this thing still retained enough of Rourke’s mind to taunt him.

  “You shouldn’t be able to speak,” Helios murmured, not with fear, but fascination. “You’re not supposed to exist like this. Fascinating.”

  Rourke took a slow, thunderous step forward, molten veins pulsing through his mutated flesh. “And yet, here I am.”

  A grin stretched across Helios’ face. He cpped—once, twice—then broke into a slow, deliberate round of appuse that echoed across the shattered stone of Atntis.

  “Magnificent,” he said, voice ced with mocking reverence. “Truly, I underestimated your resolve. Your strength of will astounds even me, Rourke. I really underestimated you.”

  Kurai looked over in his direction. “Are you actually impressed, or is this another one of your sarcasm sermons?”

  Helios didn’t answer. He stopped cpping, pressed his palms together as if in prayer, and bowed his head toward the lumbering titan.

  “Thank you, Commander Rourke.”

  Rourke’s va eyes narrowed. “What?”

  “I’m thanking you. Here, let me do it again. Thank you,” Helios repeated, lifting his head, face alight with a kind of feverish wonder. “You’ve done something I didn’t even know was possible. You merged Heartless darkness with the energy of Atntis. You’ve created… something new.”

  He gestured to the creature. “A synthesis of destructive darkness and ancient life magic. In a sense, you’ve done what I’ve been chasing. You’ve broken the system's rules, and I adore rule-breakers.”

  Rourke roared and lunged.

  Helios didn’t flinch.

  He grabbed Bríon na Lú’s shaft, now pulsing with concentrated light, kicked the base still buried in the earth, and yanked it upward in a whirling overhead arc.

  Skyfall Arc.

  The spear ignited mid-motion, light wrapping around it like a sor cyclone. When it came down, the explosion resembled a colpsing star—blinding, radiant, and concussive. Rourke was flung backward, skidding across the stone like a meteor grazing the surface of a world it couldn’t burn.

  Helios exhaled, shoulders loose, face glowing in the light he’d just unleashed.

  Then he ughed.

  Not a madman’s ugh. A surgeon’s. A craftsman sees a perfect canvas beneath fwed skin.

  “It’s time,” he said, eyes alight with purpose, “to dissect.”

  Rourke rose again, scorched but undeterred. His molten veins now glowed brighter, fed by Atntis’ core. His arm morphed into a bded whip of magma and bck steel.

  “You’ll die screaming,” he hissed.

  Helios twirled the spear and surged forward, moving in a blur of refracted light.

  Sor Drive.

  He vanished, reappearing in fshes, each step a zig-zag of gleaming afterimages. He struck from the left, then the right, then above—only for each strike to nd against hardened magma hide. Rourke swiped wide with his molten whip-arm, cleaving a trench through the marble, but missed every time.

  Then Helios appeared directly in front of him—spear cocked back, tip glowing.

  Pierce the Dawn.

  He thrust. Rourke caught the spear with both hands, but too te—the light detonated at the point of contact, unching the corrupted commander through a marble column and into a colpsed temple wall.

  “Don’t die yet!” Helios called, voice ced with delighted cruelty. “I haven’t extracted your core and blood!”

  Kurai watched from above, perched on a crumbling spire. She didn’t interfere, although she had gathered enough energy already. Not yet. This was Helios’ arena now—his prey.

  Below, Rourke staggered out of the rubble, his body cracking, steaming. His form was destabilizing. The Heart of Atntis’ energy pulsed inside him like a second heart, one that didn’t want to remain bound.

  “You think you’ve won?” Rourke snarled, voice now yered—his and something else beneath. “You can’t handle what’s inside me!”

  “I don’t want to handle it,” Helios said as he slowly walked forward, each step echoing with radiant force. “I want to steal it.”

  He raised Bríon na Lú.

  Crown of Thorns.

  The spear’s head split, three radiant prongs unfolding like divine judgment. He thrust—not at Rourke, but into the air. Light chains shot outward, piercing the space around his foe, forming glowing rings that slowed the corrupted beast’s movement.

  “You see,” Helios said, “this new energy inside you… It’s not stabilized. That makes it raw. And raw power is my favorite fvor.”

  Rourke broke free with a scream, molten cws sshing at the bindings. “You arrogant—”

  “—Prick?” Helios offered, then threw the spear skyward.

  Gáe Sos.

  It sailed in a golden arc, light warping around it like a halo. Mid-flight, Helios fused with its glow and vanished—only to reappear with it, behind Rourke, spear crackling.

  He plunged it into the beast’s back.

  An explosion of holy force detonated, lifting Rourke off his feet.

  Skuld, watching from above, gasped. “He’s going to set off the volcano at this rate…”

  But Kurai, ever calm, simply muttered, “It doesn’t matter. Did you get what we needed from Kida?”

  Skuld nodded and showed her 10 vials of a glowing blue liquid, which he returned to her inventory pouch after showing them.

  Helios nded, spear spinning into a ready stance.

  Light coiled around his arms like living bands. His feet sparked against the broken tiles.

  “You feel that?” he asked Rourke, who now staggered, barely holding together. “That pull inside you? The instability? That’s your own power rejecting you. So why not let me take it before it rips you apart?”

  Rourke lunged once more.

  Helios grinned and used Shining Echo—each of his strikes now mirrored by deyed light-clones, confusing and disorienting Rourke as he sshed left, only to be hit from the right.

  “I’m going to rip every inch of your corrupted energy out of your body,” Helios whispered, voice so soft it was nearly reverent. “And I’m going to learn from it.”

  One st move.

  Helios threw the spear again—Skyfall Arc, charged this time.

  When it nded, it wasn’t a bst.

  It was a bloom.

  Halo Bloom.

  From the pnted spear, radiant spears of light erupted outward in a spiraling dome—impaling every inch of Rourke’s towering frame. Each shaft glowed, humming with Helios’ fury and joy.

  The beast howled.

  Then, silence.

  Helios approached the smoldering body, his hand outstretched, reaching into the flickering remains.

  He smiled like a schor who had just found the missing page of a forbidden grimoire.

  “Thank you, Rourke,” he whispered again.

  “Now give me everything.”

  Taking out a vial from his inventory pouch and producing a scapel of light, he got started despite Rourke's angry screams.