ELYSION—3:00 PM
A scorching wind scraped across the land, carrying the hoarse shrieks of Tartarus' legions—a war-trumpet heralding the three Generals of Hell as they marched upon humanity's dream-city...
Elysion.
They halted before its gleaming walls. Thunderous laughter tore the sky's silence. Nekron. Zephiron. Belial. Jagged jaws spread in threat, eyes of hellfire scouring mankind's final bastion.
"Come forth, mortal meat!" Nekron's roar shook stone. Breath-Stealer thirsted at his side.
A choked gasp shuddered through the earth. Shadowmist crept—not from the sky, but from cracks in the ground, from the very darkness cast by the demons' forms. It swallowed the vanguard. Devoured the rear. Erased the living tide of night.
And from the mist's deepest heart...
It crystallized.
Not moving, but manifesting—like a spirit hurled from time's needle, forgotten by eternity yet refusing oblivion. Its body swathed in tattered cloth, color leeched by eons of dust. Above it, a robe white as snow—too pure, too cold—hypnotizing the eye while freezing the soul. The fabrics clung tight, frayed like unhealed scars, as if its form were a wound rejected by reality itself. An alien presence.
An anomaly that strangled the world's breath.
Face? None existed. Only darkness vacuum-sealed beneath the low cowl. No slits for eyes. No ridge for nose or mouth. Just an intimidating void.
In its right hand—
A longsword. Not a knightly heirloom, but a murderer's instrument. Its blade was slender, straight as death's own sundial needle. Unstained—as if it had never tasted flesh from any realm.
Yet those who knew its silence understood.
The blade thirsted.
The hilt—smooth, etched with faint tunes—brutally clashed with its wielder's ragged shroud.
Here stood death's artisan. Killing not from rage or hate, but a duty higher than desire.
Its frame neither towered nor bulged with muscle.
Yet every atom radiated crushing pressure. Earth shriveled beneath its tread. Air froze in its presence. Armorless. Sigilless. Nameless.
Its mere existence outweighed ten legions marching to die.
In its silence echoed ten thousand severed lives.
In its stillness slept unrecorded storms of slaughter.
It was not human.
It was a scattered will—a fragment of destiny escaped from the world's design.
Nekron leveled Breath-Stealer, its black metal hissing fury.
"Who are you? Some white-shrouded ghost pretending frost to bar Hell's legions?"
His laughter—joined by Zephiron and Belial—echoed, met by the jeers of Tartarus' hordes.
The Assassin remained unmoved. Still Cold. Eternal.
Suddenly, Zephiron's hellfire eyes flared brighter.
"Wait... Hah! Just as i recall—so it is you. Ken. The Assassin of Viman'pura."
The Void still stood silent.
"But you err, boy! We are not your prey. Bury you hope of shielding mankind... They are soil, and to soil they return!"
None knew his true origin. None grasped why he manifested here.
But this was certain.
He was Viman'pura's Artisan of Silence.
The Shadowmist Assassin.
And he shielded humanity.
Amid the silence, Ken suddenly raised his sword, tracing the blade with a moon-pale hand—white as luminous snow. He pointed it not only at the three demon generals before him, but at every vile creature of Tartarus daring to face him.
"You vermin!" Nekron snarled, black fire lashing wildly along his blade. "You stand in our way—then dare to threaten? A truly wretched prey."
Without warning, Nekron surged forward. Breath-Stealer swept in a dense black arc—a strike that could level ten human legions.
But Ken… vanished. Leaving only a scattering mist.
Breath-Stealer struck empty ground. A dark explosion erupted.
Boooom!
Something detonated mysteriously—blasting Nekron ackward, snarling in confusion.
Before he could regain balance—mad screams erupted. Not one, but dozens. From the rear ranks of Tartarus. Short, choked cries saturated with pure terror. Creatures collapsed one by one. No clashing weapons. No victory cheers. Only the sound of falling bodies and the hiss of final breaths.
Death without theater. Only terrifying efficiency.
The sole visible trace, a mist-shrouded shadow moving faster than sight, and screams abruptly snuffed.
—Thunder roared.
It forked downward from the heavens like vengeful roots—a blaze of searing hatred, striking deep into the ranks of Tartarus. Blinding violet light. Flesh-shredding heat. Bone-shaking tremors. Chaos.Hysterical screams blended with roars that dissolved the infernal formation.
Amid the dazzling illumination of lightning and the frantic dance of mist and shadow—a silhouette moved.
It slipped through the curtain of chaos.
Its motion was not a dash, but a displacement—as if cut from one moment and spliced into the next.
Unreadable. Unfathomable.
Straight toward the three generals, still stunned by the lightning's wrath.
—SHINNGG—
A clear sound cut through the thunder!
Like a strand of silk splitting within a storm.
Ken stood with his back to them.
Three paces ahead.
His sword once again upright at his side,
the blade still clean, cold, and blinding.
Nekron, Zephiron, and Belial froze.
Their hands clutched at chests, stomachs, thighs—where their flesh had been parted by impossibly precise cuts. Thick, black blood, boiling like asphalt, oozed slowly. Not a spray, but a drip full of humiliation. Their fire eyes widened—not from pain, but from disbelief.
"How…?"
"Who…?"
The assassin did not look back. Did not care.
The shadowmist began to embrace him again, veiling his form—as though the world was unworthy of witnessing him longer.
A single message was carved in the rhythm of their bleeding.
Elysion is not yours.
_ _ _
Belial writhed upward from his pool of blood—his jagged, massive form rumbling like a storm from a volcano awakening. His roar was not mere anger, but a vow of vengeance that would carve Elysion's name into the walls of Hell. His right hand—large as a tombstone—clawed the air, sucking shadowmist into him like a demon lung inhaling despair.
The mist did not fully vanish—but it parted enough to tear the dark veil…
And reveal him.
Ken...
Ken stood ten paces before them. Silent. Unmoving.
His face remained shrouded in an abyss of darkness even the earth dared not peer into.
"What is he waiting for?!" Zephiron hissed. Embers in his joints glowed until his bones burned. "I am sick of this! He treats us like dust beneath his feet!"
Without warning—
His twin blades, A Somber Wind, roared through the noise. Zephiron blurred forward, his body becoming a tornado of fire and metal that tore through the mist in its path—leaving a vacuum in its wake as if the very air had been ripped apart.
Right before Ken, he spun—
His twin blades crossed like hell-forged scissors—
—Ssst!
Ken… shattered.
Dissolving into gray dust, merging with the mist that reached for him.
KLANG!
A sudden clash of metal thundered, tearing through the silence—shaking the ground under every creature on the field.
Belial's warhammer—large as a bull's head—met Ken's slender blade. The impact sent violent tremors and a shower of burning sparks, forcing even Zephiron to stagger back from the shockwave.
"That... was a shadow?!"
Zephiron stood frozen. His hellfire eyes flared. His demonic blood boiled with humiliation.
"You slippery bastard!" he roared, his voice ragged with fury devouring reason.
"You think you can toy with me again?!"
Ken did not answer.
He dipped low—a tenth of a second—just as Belial's hammer crashed where his head had been.
Foul wind tore at his white robes.
—a soundless, precise motion.
Ken's hand flashed to a fold in his garment. A dagger—no longer than a finger—gleamed cold.
—THUKKK!—
A dull sound, like a butcher's blade piercing a rotten gourd.
The dagger plunged into Belial's navel—right through a crack in his blackened hide—choking his hot breath.
It did not stop.
Ken twisted the hilt. Slowly. Deliberately—like a musician performing his sonata amid the world's chaos.
—KRRRAKK—
Flesh, muscle, and entrails tore open horizontally—
Each tear was a melody.
Each extinguished life, a rhythm in the
death sonata he composed.
Thick blood gushed out.
Viscous hell-fluid mixed with black lava scorched the fertile soil below—killing all life in an instant.
Belial screamed—a deafening roar—
His body swung backward like a falling tree
Ken withdrew his dagger.
The silver blade was clean.
It gleamed with a holy light.
No black stain. No smoke. No trace.
As though hell's blood was too unholy to touch the pure metal he wielded.
It declared—without words—that every weapon he carried was no mere killer.
It was judgment, unstained.
_ _ _