CHAPTER 171: The Crucible of Chaos - Part VIII

CHAPTER 171: The Crucible of Chaos - Part VIII

The red sky bathed the shattered street in bloody hues. Amid the smoke and rubble, Fénix and Darem faced off in a duel that transcended the physical. Each was the embodiment of an opposing will, a dogma of steel.

Fénix charged first, a whirlwind of pent-up fury. His fist connected with Darem's jaw with a dry crack. But Darem barely staggered. A sinister smile formed on his lips.

"Lightshredder!" he roared.

In 3.09 seconds, his bayonets became a silver whirlwind. Hundreds of cuts appeared on Fénix's torso and arms, a bloody mosaic of pain. Flesh opened, but before blood could gush forth, the muscles contracted, sealing the wounds with unnatural speed.

"You think that will stop me?" Fénix spat, his voice a roar over the whistle of steel. "I learned to dance with death, Darem. My regeneration is no longer a reflex, it's a choice. And I choose to stay alive!"

Darem increased his speed, his arms a blur. The bayonets pierced shoulders, thighs, abdomen. Fénix ignored them, advancing through the pain as if it were rain. With a brutal movement, he caught the twin blades and, with a crunch of metal, shattered them between his fists.

"Insufficient!"

A brutal headbutt cracked Darem's nasal bones. Both fell to the asphalt, staining it scarlet. They rose in unison, wounded beasts but far from defeated. Darem shook new bayonets from his sleeves.

"Fun, Fénix! But that was just the appetizer."

The deadly dance began again. Darem, a master of anatomy, plunged his blades into precise points: tendons, muscle junctions, arteries. Fénix's blood spurted in dark jets. A powerful hook sent Fénix flying across the hood of a sedan, deforming the metal on impact.

Darem panted, expecting to see the end. But Fénix rose from the pile of scrap. His hands, with terrifying calm, began to pull the bayonets from his flesh as if they were annoying splinters. Each wound closed after the metal passed, leaving only new skin and phantom scars.

"It can't be..." Darem's voice lost its arrogance for the first time, becoming a thin thread of disbelief. "The first time, a single blade to the neck took you out!"

Fénix spat out a blood clot.
"The first time, I didn't know what it was to burn in hell and emerge from the ashes. Now I do. If you really want to win, Darem, you'll have to cut off my head. As long as I breathe, I'll be your nightmare."

Fénix's fury exploded then. He lunged at Darem, a rain of fists that sought not precision, only catharsis. He struck his face again and again, breaking bones, opening flesh.

"Why do you serve him, Darem?!" he shouted between blows. "What lie did he sell you to make you crawl like his dog?! You're just a broken toy on his shelf!"

Darem attempted a desperate counterattack, but Fénix dodged the bayonet and an explosive left hook sent him back to the ground. Fénix fell upon him, mounting him, and his fists became hammers of flesh and hate.

"So long...!" —punch— "I held back against everyone...!" —another punch— "But with you... with you I let loose!"

Tears of rage and pain streaked Fénix's bloodied face. Each impact was a name, a face, a life taken.

"Do you know how many died in Berlin, Darem? On October 31st, your 'hell day'?" —punch— "And in the Crucible?" —punch— "Rivers of blood, and you... you're the channel!"

The blows ceased. Darem's body lay motionless, his face an unrecognizable mass of bruises and torn flesh. Fénix, panting, stepped away, believing it all over.

Then, a broken voice, a whisper from the abyss:
"All this pain... has a greater purpose."

With superhuman effort, Darem's shattered hand moved toward his chest. From an inner pocket, he pulled out a small, rusted object. A nail. Ancient, corrupted by centuries.

"Antigen's final discovery..." he coughed, spitting out a tooth. "The nail... of the Christ."

Before Fénix could react, Darem, with a last reserve of strength, drove it into his own chest. A wet and grotesque sound filled the air. Blood gushed, but then the impossible happened. Darem's shattered flesh began to mend. The bones of his face realigned under the skin, the bruises faded as if time were rewinding. He rose, not with the effort of a wounded man, but with the fluidity of something supernatural. His eyes were no longer human. They shone with a cold, ancient light.

Fénix took a step back, horror overriding his fury.
"What... what demon are you?"

Darem did not respond with words. The bayonets he held, the remnants of his broken weapons, began to burn. Not with the normal fire of combustion, but with a black, cold flame that distorted the air around them.

The air crackled with the supernatural energy emanating from Darem. The black flames of his bayonets cast dancing, grotesque shadows on the rubble. Fénix remained on guard, every muscle tense, feeling the rules of combat had just changed drastically.

Suddenly, from Darem's torso, right around the crucifix nail, thick dark protuberances sprouted. They weren't fleshy tentacles, but something worse: twisted branches of an ancestral tree, black as night, covered in thorns that shone with the same spectral fire as the bayonets. They extended with serpentine speed, wrapping around Fénix's right arm with brutal force.

"What?!" Fénix yelled, feeling the thorns pierce his flesh and bone with a clairvoyant pain that wasn't just physical. It was as if his own arm were being consumed by corruption.

With a roar, Fénix flexed his muscles and unleashed an explosion of strength, shattering the thorny branches in a rain of black fragments and burning splinters. But to his horror, the fragments on the ground writhed and, like snakes, returned to Darem's body, instantly regenerating into new twisted branches that rose, ready to attack again.

"What... what was that?" Fénix panted, clutching his already healing arm, where a residual feeling of cold and putrescence remained.