The Thieves of Death

  The city of Chagas sank into a nightmare.

  Ezra’s energy rotted everything it touched—and the monstrous form of Endeavour pulsed on his back like a living curse. Tumors spread like tentacles, flesh boiled, and skin bubbled.

  But Zeke did not retreat.

  He rose from the rubble with blood on his lips, holding his sword in his right hand and his shield strapped to his left arm.

  The sword seemed alive. Rupture.

  “Let’s finish this quickly, Gotier. He’s a Kanji, but he bleeds. And if he bleeds… he dies.”

  Zeke vanished again, but this time even faster.

  Ezra barely saw it.

  A white flash cut across the sky. When he registered it, Zeke’s sword had already struck his shoulder—but it did not penetrate.

  Ezra laughed.

  “Is that all you’ve got?”

  CLANG!

  Zeke’s shield smashed into his jaw with brutal force, sending Ezra flying backward.

  But before Ezra fell, Zeke spun in midair, trapped the sword under his arm, and delivered a double-footed kick to Ezra’s chest, crushing him into the ground and gouging a crater.

  “Shield Skill: Impact Burst.”

  The earth shook as if struck by a meteor. Dust billowed.

  Ezra emerged with blood in his mouth, smiling.

  “You’re good. But I am the end.”

  He touched the ground. The earth rotted in seconds, cracking, blackening, dying.

  Zeke stepped back, but didn’t see the attack coming.

  Ezra appeared before him in an explosion of movement.

  Three punches struck Zeke’s torso, each accompanied by a dry crack. The fourth punch hit his shoulder—and Ezra grabbed Zeke’s flesh with his fingers.

  “Touch… and it decays.”

  The flesh on Zeke’s left arm withered and necrotized, turning black and flaccid. He screamed and used his shield to push Ezra away, but he was already bleeding, gasping.

  Gotier burst forward with his dagger in hand—a beam of steel tearing through space.

  Ezra tried to block with his forearm.

  “Aaaaaagh!”

  The blade sank into flesh like hot butter.

  Gotier spun, drove his knee into Ezra’s side, and slashed diagonally with the dagger. The cut caught the hip, tearing through rotten flesh.

  Gotier’s style was almost bestial—a killer trained with surgical precision. Every movement turned his body into a blade. Fast, sharp, lethal.

  He moved behind Ezra, crouched, fingers on the ground. In a blink, he was above him, spinning, and the dagger came down with the weight of his entire body—straight for the jugular.

  “Black Faith Style: Scars’ Blade!”

  Ezra screamed in pain and fell to his knees.

  Gotier was different. His eyes blazed red. Veins bulged. His face trembled with rage.

  “You… you mentioned my wife. My daughter.”

  He spat blood.

  “And now you’ll pay for every word with a broken bone.”

  Ezra rose, furious, tumors bursting, oozing hot pus.

  Zeke, though wounded, reappeared at Gotier’s side.

  “Gotier… aim for his heart. Rupture is a trap. I’ll distract him.”

  Zeke vanished again, but this time… he left his sword behind.

  Ezra didn’t understand.

  He followed Zeke’s movement—until he felt insane pressure on his right hand.

  Zeke reappeared beside the sword, which hovered in midair—and smiled.

  “Rupture Skill: Convergence.”

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  Zeke activated the skill directly on his hand.

  The air exploded.

  Ezra’s right hand was destroyed—bones shattered, flesh opening like a bloody flower. His scream tore through the sky.

  Ezra staggered. But before he fell…

  Gotier reappeared.

  He took three steps—quick as arrows—and his shoulder struck Ezra’s jaw, lifting the Kanji’s body.

  “Black Faith Style… Celestial Execution.”

  Gotier’s body twisted in midair, and the dagger rose from below, ripping from abdomen to chest.

  Ezra collapsed, blood gushing. But he still smiled.

  “You think it’s over…? Endeavour… is only beginning.”

  The rotten aura exploded outward. The dead bodies began to move, red eyes gleaming, spitting blood. A small army of corpses took shape.

  Zeke fell to his knees.

  “This is hell…”

  Gotier looked around. He was sweating. Trembling.

  But his expression was pure fury.

  “It doesn’t matter. I will end you. Even if it costs me everything.”

  The Awakening of the End”

  Ezra knelt, spitting blood, yet his laughter still echoed—sickly, like an animal that felt no pain.

  The corpses around began to rise.

  Some missing eyes.

  Others without arms, without half their heads.

  All with rotten tongues hanging out and bones cracking as they moved, as if pulled by something invisible.

  “They are mine…” Ezra murmured, his voice echoing like a dark spell. “Part of me. Part of Endeavour.”

  Suddenly, the earth split in two.

  A gigantic tentacle, covered in open eyes and mouths weeping blood, shot from the ground.

  Then another.

  And another.

  The sky seemed to close in. Clouds darkened. The moon vanished behind smoke. The stench of burnt flesh and congealed blood filled Zeke’s and Gotier’s lungs.

  “My God…” Gotier whispered, stepping back.

  In the center of the ruined city stood him.

  Endeavour.

  A shapeless creature over four meters tall. Its face composed of multiple human visages stitched together, all screaming. Its body seemed made of twisted bones, pulsing flesh, and concentrated fury.

  From its arms grew black blades of nails and teeth. Its chest gaped like a maw, where small, weeping souls seemed trapped, screaming in silence.

  Ezra merged with the monster, his flesh dissolving into the creature’s dark veins.

  “This is true hell!” he shouted, his voice layered over Endeavour’s. “And you two will be the sacrifice!”

  Zeke stepped forward.

  His left arm still necrotic. His eyes steady.

  Gotier, sweating, wiped blood from his eyes with his forearm.

  “We won’t beat this like this…”

  Endeavour moved. Fast. Too fast.

  The first tentacle struck Zeke. He raised his shield, but was flung away, crashing through what remained of a wall and vanishing in the dust.

  The second tentacle lashed at Gotier. He spun like a living blade, slicing the deformed limb in two, but took a direct kick from the monster to his chest.

  A dry crack. Broken ribs.

  Gotier fell to his knees, spitting blood. But he rose.

  “I… am not done yet.”

  He charged at full speed. His eyes pulsed with the rage of loss. His dagger gleamed—incandescent.

  “Black Faith Style… Crimson Penance!”

  He landed three direct strikes on Endeavour: to the neck, torso, and leg.

  Black blood exploded from each cut.

  But the monster did not fall.

  It roared with dozens of voices—and the air around shattered like glass. Gotier was hurled against a wall, breaking the structure and collapsing unconscious for a moment.

  All seemed lost.

  Until…

  Zeke rose.

  His body trembled. His arm burned. Yet he was smiling.

  His shield lay broken in pieces.

  He ran his hand along the Rupture sword—and it glowed a different hue. Gold and red.

  His gaze turned to the monster.

  Then he spoke, with the voice of one bearing a hidden past.

  “Gotier… I am not just a warrior.”

  He pointed the sword.

  “I am from Kugutsu Island.”

  The wind stopped.

  “And I will show… what a true Kugutsu is.”

  On his chest, a sealed mark shone—a scar in the shape of an ancient spiral. The ground trembled. The Rupture seal opening.

  Golden light emerged from his flesh. The air vibrated. Stones floated.

  Endeavour seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  Zeke drove the sword into the ground and spread his arms, eyes burning white.

  “Awaken… Karura.”

  An ancestral roar echoed. An unknown power emerged.

  The chapter ends in silence.

  Only the sound of a heartbeat is heard. Strong. Deep.

  Zeke will awaken his Kugutsu.

  The smell of death saturated Chagas’s air.

  The city’s ruin was shaped by chaos. Destroyed houses, crushed bodies, blood seeping through stone cracks. Ezra remained at the center, grinning with blackened teeth, tumors throbbing on his putrid skin like hungry hearts. The energy emanating from him was alive—sick and unbearable.

  Zeke stood firm, eyes fixed on the foe, body bleeding, but his soul… unmoving, solid as rock. Gotier knelt behind him, spitting teeth and blood, breathing with difficulty. The silence that fell among the three was not ordinary—it was the prelude to calamity.

  Then Zeke closed his eyes.

  And the memory came like lightning.

  Kugutsu Island—Fuba Clan—The massacre.

  The moon was the only witness that night. Children wept silently, women prayed in despair, and the men, faces beaten, already knew their fate. A circle formed in the village center, and within it lay a baby with empty eyes on a raw silk blanket. Zeke.

  The clan’s members—five hundred in all—joined hands. Each began to chant, bodies trembling, skin drying, eyes losing color. Pale, golden energy escaped from their mouths, veins, hearts. They were literally disintegrating.

  One by one, they fell like autumn leaves, until silence reigned once more, this time permanently.

  In the center, the child breathed alone. Yet now he shone.

  Zeke opened his eyes. Within them lay centuries of pain, memories of a forgotten clan, and the will to destroy all that prevented his people from existing.

  “I was not born,” he said, voice low, gravelly. “I was forged.”

  Ezra stepped forward mockingly.

  “Give up, dog of the king?”

  “Harden your soul now, Kanji. You’ll need it where I send you.”

  Zeke dropped the sword.

  The ancestral symbol of the Fuba clan gleamed on his chest. The ground beneath him trembled. The air grew dense as molten iron. The clouds parted—but not for light; for the darkness born at the heart of that battlefield.

  Then the world split.

  Behind him, the earth tore like living flesh. A chasm opened, spewing a grotesque mass of pure demonic energy.

  From the abyss, a creature crawled out, moaning, spewing vapor and decay.

  Zeke’s Kugutsu.

  A monster of abyssal proportions. Its face composed of dozens of human visages glued together—some weeping, others smiling, all alive and constantly shifting. Its body a shapeless mass of bulging muscles and bones, with multiple arms, each wielding a black weapon: sword, scythe, chain, spear, shield.

  Its triple legs rooted into the ground like poisoned roots, absorbing everything around. The creature bowed slightly, as if awaiting command. Zeke stepped forward.

  Ezra shuddered for the first time.

  Gotier, between blood and broken teeth, laughed.

  “So… that was what you were hiding from everyone…”

  Zeke pointed at the Kanji.

  “This is the Fuba clan’s Kugutsu… the last.”

  “Born from the pain of five hundred, created to kill a king…”

  “But today… it begins with you.”

  The sky exploded in black lightning. The creature roared—a deep, distorted sound that made the earth weep. Zeke charged, and the Kugutsu with him—a specter of war, a nightmare made flesh.

  And amid the destruction, Zeke screamed with ancestral fury:

  “I AM FROM KUGUTSU ISLAND! AND I WILL SHOW WHAT A TRUE KUGUTSU IS!”