The fog still hung thick as fear itself. Each step into the field sounded like a sentence. Seraphina and Kaine walked side by side, almost wordlessly, their presence perfectly synchronized, even though they hadn't practiced a single movement together. Here, they weren't allies. They were predators temporarily looking in the same direction.
Seraphina analyzed every noise, every change in air pressure, every leaf that moved. The terrain led them to a part of the field where the ruins formed an old neighborhood—destroyed houses, playgrounds corroded by time, a cruel echo of a buried childhood.
She hated that kind of scenery. It reminded her of… herself. "They're close," she murmured, her voice low but firm.
Kaine stopped walking, clenching his fists. "Are you going to go over?"
"No," she replied. "I'll let them find me. Underestimate me. You finish the job."
Kaine chuckled. "Fair enough." They parted silently. Twelve seconds later, the group emerged from the shadows. Ten. Organized. Armed. Three of them wore masks with symmetrical patterns, clearly from some group that had infiltrated the competition for their own purposes. The one in the lead carried a black staff with a curved tip—an Energy Conductor. "Choi Eun-kyung," the leader said, looking at Seraphina. "You've been giving me too much trouble. If I eliminate you, my entry into the order will be easier." She merely looked up and exhaled. "You don't know who you're dealing with." "And you think you're above everyone else? You think you're the one chosen to win this competition?" He twirled his staff and shouted at the others, "Kill her!" Three rushed forward—one with electricity manipulation, another with a short-range time-slowing ability, and the last… a brutal swordsman. But before they could reach her, the sky exploded in red light. Kaine appeared, descending from a rooftop, enveloped in raw energy, and fell like a comet into the middle of the group. The impact cracked the ground. Two were thrown into the air, one broke his spine against a wall. The scene happened so quickly that the others took a while to react.
Seraphina moved at the same time. In seconds, she was in the middle of the fight, her movements lethal, calculated, perfect. Her hands broke throats with clinical smoothness. A kick hit an enemy in the stomach with such force that it sent him flying into a ruined house.
The leader tried to use his staff to restrain them, but Kaine stared at him like a beast restrained only by obligation. "You should have stayed away." he whispered. And he destroyed it with two blows.
The staff fell to the ground, breaking in half. The leader's body hit the wall hard. Silence. Everyone was dead.
Seraphina and Kaine were covered in blood, panting. They stared at each other. Something in their eyes changed. Respect. Fear. Anger. All at once.
"We will still face each other," Kaine said, wiping the blood from his fingers. "Yes. But not today," she replied coldly. They both turned in opposite directions. The silent pact of non-interference continued… for now.
In another sector of the field, candidates were dying in droves. Some were begging, others were laughing deliriously. The Order of Erebus was watching intently as the masked instructor of the third phase walked between screens, adjusting monitors with real-time data on EVP, movement patterns, emotional reactions.
"They are becoming what we want…" one of the analysts murmured. "Wrong," the instructor replied. "They are becoming what we fear. And that is why they are perfect."
A few hours later, Seraphina hid under the shadow of a collapsed house. She was exhausted. She was breathing hard. The energy of the field was draining even her stamina. The field had been designed to tire even the strongest.
She sat down and took off her gloves for a moment. Her hands were shaking slightly. Then she heard a sound: a child crying. Her heart froze.
Impossible. She followed the sound to the basement of the building. There, amidst the rubble... a girl. Fragile, dirty, with eyes too big for her face. "Help me..." the child whimpered.
Seraphina approached cautiously, her eyes filling with something she feared: emotion. "Who are you?" Seraphina asked softly, almost in a whisper. "I got lost… they left me…" the girl said.
But something was wrong. Seraphina activated a hidden sensor on her field bracelet. Nothing, no heat signature, no EVP. "You're not real." The child smiled, a wide, unnatural smile, and then… exploded.
Seraphina flew through the air, slamming into a concrete column. She coughed up blood. The impact was immense. She heard voices laughing.
Other candidates had used some kind of physical illusion to lure her. A trap. But they had missed one detail.
She was no longer hesitating. When she stood up. The veins in her neck throbbed. Her eyes burned with hatred. "You… used a child's face…"
Her EVP began to vibrate. Even without revealing its real power, an invisible aura suffocated everything around it. "...you made a mistake that you will not repeat. Because you will not breathe again." She hunted them down. One by one. None survived. There was nothing left but dust, blood and silence.
After Seraphina killed everyone, she and Kaine continued to advance. And as time passed, the darkness grew thicker and thicker. The sky was covered by heavy clouds, as if the world itself was silently watching the brutality that unfolded below.
The sounds of death echoed everywhere. Screams. Explosions. Strangled screams. Everything seemed distant to Seraphina, who continued at a steady pace, her eyes fixed on the mental map of the camp that she had already memorized. Kaine followed her in silence.
They both knew that it wasn't long before they were gone. The survivors were being drastically reduced - less than four hundred were still alive. And most of them were hiding or being hunted.
"We're entering the dead quadrant," Kaine muttered. "The Order's monitoring towers don't work here. Nor do tracking. It's the perfect place for a trap."
Seraphina nodded slightly, not looking at him. Then, a noise… metallic. A creak… like a blade being dragged across the ground.
They both stopped, and from the alley ahead, pieces emerged. Body parts, thrown like trash, as if they had been scattered for fun. Arms, broken jaws, gouged out eyes.
And then he appeared. The figure was thin, but with overlong muscles. His skin was pale, almost gray. His face had wide eyes and a constant smile that seemed… sewn into his skin. He wore a black vest covered in symbols of blood, hooks, blades, bones.
Behind him, three candidates hung by chains, still alive, but completely destroyed. One of them mumbled through his broken teeth: "P-p-please..."
"Silence, my toy." said the man. His voice was honeyed, hideous, grotesque. "You cry so beautifully. Don't ruin all this now."
Seraphina froze for two seconds. Her entire body stiffened. Then she took a step forward. "Kaine..." she said in a sharp voice. "Leave this piece of shit to me, understand?"
Kaine arched an eyebrow at Seraphina's speech and questioned her. "Are you sure?"
"That kind of filthy trash..." she clenched her fists and started advancing towards him. "I'll make sure to send him to the abyss of hell with my own hands." Kaine didn't argue. He just crossed his arms and stepped back.
The man walked towards her, the chains rattling behind him. "Ahhh, a flower. What a rare thing. I wonder if you can scream beautifully too?" Seraphina didn't answer, she just walked with a cold and hateful look.
Then the fight between them began. He advanced like an angry insect. Fast, with spinning claws on his hands. Each attack was a spectacle of brutality, trying to pierce, cut, tear off parts of the body.
Seraphina dodged with technique, but he was unpredictable. One moment he was crawling, the next he was jumping like an animal. His every move seemed more like a psychotic dance.
She was hit twice. One cut on the shoulder. Another on the side of the rib. Then he started laughing at that. "You bleed! That excites me, little girl!"
She narrowed her eyes, swallowing the pain. But there was something wrong, he wasn't using conventional EVP. His body was reinforced by some mutation, maybe an implant. And the energy around him was... erratic. Chaotic. It was impossible to predict his strength or his speed.
Even though she was extremely powerful, Seraphina found it difficult. She tried to launch a decisive blow with her fist wrapped in compressed force, but he anticipated it and threw her against a wall, breaking part of her training armor.
She fell to her knees. As he slowly approached, he began to speak "It won't be quick, my little flower. It will hurt so much that even your soul will cry..."
"Shut your disgusting fucking mouth..." she whispered. He laughed out loud. But stopped. The energy in the air... changed.
Seraphina slowly stood up, blood dripping from the wounds on her hands that she had opened herself, her gaze completely transformed. A small metallic sound echoed as she removed a restraining ring from her wrist an artifact Elysian himself made for the Ruin Remnants, more specifically for the Heralds of the End that restricted the user's EVP, making it always stay below 5% of the original.
"You should be dead by now… no. YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN BORN IN THIS WORLD OR ANY OTHER!" she said, her voice deepening, vibrating with energy.
The ground beneath her feet cracked. Her EVP began to leak like a silent hurricane. The man felt it. His smile cracked for a moment. "What are you…?"
She took a step forward. "I am what comes when the monster meets its end. Just like the end you will soon meet… YOU DESPISED WORM!" And then, with a muffled roar of power… a small portion of Pandemonium's true face was released. With everyone present standing in awe and fear of its power.