THE AWAKENING OF A TAINTED SOUL

Hanz's sclera brimmed with red Kantar as he stared down Marcel's towering demonic form, his eyes burning with determination. But deep down — maybe just a gut feeling, maybe instinct sharpened by countless battles — he knew the truth: this wasn't a fight he could win unless he cut loose completely. Unless he took the back seat and let his demonic instincts take the wheel.

His knuckles clenched so hard his blade threatened to shatter in his grip. Teeth gritted, he glanced at Shu through his peripheral vision.

"You know what you gotta do, Hanz. You gotta let me out — wholly. No more training wheels. Look at your opponent. Our brother isn't someone you pull punches with."

The demon within him spoke with dark excitement, glee threading through every word.

Hanz considered it — and immediately shoved the thought aside. It could only go two ways: go all out and still lose, or beat Marcel and end the contract binding his demon, freeing it to rampage once again.

With pure resolve, he looked into his inner world and spoke calmly. "No deal. We may have been partners a while, but I still don't trust you."

He pressed his hand to his face. Dark Kantar spread from his palm, hardening into a black human skull mask lined with white. In a voice gone low and demonic, he whispered, "Tainted Transcendence."

Dark Kantar erupted from the ground beneath him, swallowing him whole. Marcel watched, patient, a fiendish grin splitting his demonic features — darker, more grimacing than before.

"That's it, brother," he said. "I'll crush you at your best. Only then will I be able to show you what true hopelessness looks like — give you a taste of what I felt, spending all those years under their control."

The dark Kantar cleared, and a new figure stepped out of it. Two long, curved black horns rose from a skull mask that now covered his entire head, sweeping backward before curling to sharp points — nothing like the mask from before. Two distinct white vertical lines ran across the eyeholes. His hair, once barely shoulder-length and spiky, now fell to his waist, long and flowing. His tracksuit jacket had evaporated entirely in the heat of the transformation, baring a chest gone charcoal-black to match the mask and horns. At its center, a massive hollow socket, ringed in white markings that bled down toward his abdomen. His feet had turned ash-black, clawed, bone-like.

He unleashed a roar that seemed to reach the heavens — the roar of a predator — and locked eyes with Marcel.

Marcel studied the new form, curiosity flickering across his face. His power's still nowhere near mine, he thought, but that look... that's not any demon or hybrid I've ever seen. A memory surfaced, and his murmur carried a note of disbelief. "Yeah. That's right. It's from that book. But that would mean... he can't be."

Before he could finish the thought, Hanz was already moving. His blade materialized in his fist, and before Marcel could even blink, Hanz appeared in front of him, clawed hand driving into his face and flinging him clear across the desert.

Marcel caught himself mid-flight, landing on his feet, and charged. Hanz moved so fast he seemed to vanish — then reappeared directly in front of him, sword swinging for his neck. Marcel dodged with ease, not realizing the strike had been a feint until he felt something punch into his abdomen: a Kantar construct, driven in from the blind side.

He barely flinched. A single decisive blow cracked across Hanz's mask, hurling him skyward.

"You're still holding back, brother!" Marcel snarled, rage bleeding into his voice. "Unleash your demon — show me what you can really do!"

He appeared above Hanz in an instant and slammed him into the ground, cratering the sand on impact.

Marcel hovered above the settling dust, wings fully spread, waiting for it to clear so he could see Hanz's broken form. When it did — there was nothing there. He stared at the empty crater, shock and delight warring on his face, until a voice curled from behind him, dark and layered and scratching at the air.

"Expecting to see something?"

Before he could turn, his left wing was already gone — sliced clean at the joint. He fell. Hanz was waiting for him on the ground below, blade angled to pierce straight through.

Marcel smirked even as he fell. "No creativity." He compressed a sphere of destructive Kantar in his palm and dispersed it into a beam, catching Hanz directly, the force hurling him back several meters.

Marcel landed hard, stumbling to one knee — his left foot severed clean at the ankle. He turned, startled, to find Hanz standing behind him instead, tone even, almost conversational.

"You were saying something about creativity?"

Marcel spun back toward where he'd thrown Hanz moments ago — just in time to watch that Hanz dissolve into scattering motes of Kantar. A clone.

Marcel laughed, low and menacing, as his wing and foot regrew in an instant. He rose, stretching out an arm and curling his fingers around empty air — until, a heartbeat later, a massive greatsword formed in his grip. Dark blue scales ran the length of the blade, split by a single vertical line that pulsed with green light.

He looked at Hanz, his voice dropping to something final. "I'm done with games."

He closed the distance in an instant, blade swinging. Hanz dodged at the last possible moment and tried to counter — but Marcel's sword met his effortlessly, shattering it on contact. Without missing a beat, Marcel drove the blade through Hanz's abdomen, the tip punching out the other side. Hanz's mask shattered completely. Blood spilled from his mouth.

Marcel's voice was flat with certainty. "I told you, Hanz. I will kill anything that stands in my way. Including you."

He pulled the blade free. Hanz dropped, defeated.

Hanz woke in his inner world — the black-and-red expanse that lived behind his eyes — standing before his demon. The look it gave him bordered on sarcasm, and something rawer underneath. Hurt.

"You should have cut loose," it said, its tone oddly even, controlled. "We could have won this."

Hanz let out a laugh — hollow, humorless. "Every time I've ever let you loose, it ends in a killing spree. Last time was against Hannah. You almost killed her. Left her too weak to even defend herself — against us and against Marcel. If Shu hadn't shown up when he did, we'd be dead. And it would've been goodbye, timeline."

His demon's expression cracked further, hurt bleeding into something closer to fury, its voice rising, barely controlled.

"My job as your Kantar spirit is to protect your dumb ass. You're too naive. Too innocent. Somebody has to do the heavy lifting. Those people at the orphanage wanted us dead — they looked at us like freaks. Hannah could've killed you if I hadn't cut loose. I do everything — everything — to keep us safe, and all you ever give me back is disdain. And now, because of your precious restraint, Shu is going to die."

Something in Hanz snapped. He drove a fist into his demon's jaw.

"Shut up. You think I don't know that?"

Another hit, beneath the ribs.

"You think I don't know the world might end because of my mistake?"

A third, into its chest — this one heavier with exhaustion than anger.

"Why does everything have to depend on me?" Another hit. "I didn't ask to be born." Another. "I didn't ask for a psychopath for a twin brother." One more. "Why does I have to be the one holding the timeline together?"

His demon took every blow without flinching, letting Hanz burn through it all — until finally, calmly, it spoke.

"Hitting me won't fix anything."

It shoved him off with almost no effort, rising to its full height.

"The world handed you a mountain of responsibility — boohoo. Keep moving. You're not the only one carrying the world's fate on his shoulders. There's a kid out there, barely a teenager, shouldering the exact same weight — and unlike you, he doesn't have the luxury of time to grow into it. The longer we stall, the stronger Shun gets. So take your own advice for once and keep moving, you piece of shit."

It shoved him again, harder.

"Accept who you are. You're a time anchor — the one who keeps the timeline whole. You're the one chosen to guide the destined one to victory. But before any of that, you have to accept yourself. You're a half-demon. Son of a Demon Lord. Son of the Wolf King — the first werewolf to ever exist, father of every monster that came after. Accept your inner demon." A pause. "Accept me."

Hanz stared at it — and for the first time, really saw it. A mirror image of himself. Same form, same features, everything inverted into black and white. Not a monster. A reflection twisted by circumstance, never once acting out of malice — just trying, in its own broken way, to protect him. And all Hanz had ever done was shut it out.

He let out a shaky breath. "That's right... I've never even asked for your name."

The demon smirked. "No. You haven't."

Hanz's grin came slow, playful, and he landed a light punch on its arm. "That was the point — you were supposed to tell me, idiot."

The demon blinked, caught off guard by the tone. He'd seen Hanz talk like that before — to Shu, to Hannah, to Tobi — but never once directed at him. It took a moment to recover before grinning back, dark and jagged but honest.

"Is that so. Well — in that case, my name is Itzal."

Itzal's expression softened, something rawer surfacing beneath the usual bravado. "Honestly, it feels strange saying it out loud. Twenty-one years alive, and I've never once said my own name."

Hanz just smirked and extended a hand. "Well, Itzal. I'm Hanz. Nice to meet you."

Itzal stared at the offered hand a beat too long before taking it, sliding back into his usual cocky drawl. "What's with the formal introduction? I already know everything about you — we're one and the same." A pause, his grip lingering before he let go. "...Nice to meet you too."

Itzal straightened, clapping his hands together. "Alright, enough with the bromance. We've got a twin brother to put down."

Hanz frowned. "How? He shattered our weapon. Only Shu can fix it, and the Shu we've got right now is twelve years old and doesn't even carry our version of the staff yet."

Itzal's smirk widened. "Time for a lesson on soul weapons. A soul weapon is the physical manifestation of a person's soul — for Shu, the Enkairadion forged the staff. For Marcel, that greatsword he's swinging around. Hannah... well, Hannah's Hannah, I doubt any weapon could fully capture that. But us?"

He stretched out a hand. A mass of dark Kantar spiraled into his palm, condensing under his grip until it took shape — a greatsword, its silhouette unlike anything conventional. The tip curved into something between a blade and a hook, and the body of the blade was hollow, split by a long vertical gap running its length.

Itzal held it out. "Take it. This is your true power. Our true power. With this, we can go all out — but only if you trust me."

Hanz reached out and closed his hand around the hilt. He nodded once.

"Yeah. I trust you, Itzal. Let's do this. We're not letting Shu go without a fight."

Back in the real world, Marcel stared down at Hanz's unconscious body. A flicker of disappointment crossed what could be seen of his face beneath the demonic transformation.

"That was barely a warm-up," he scoffed. "You're weak."

He turned toward Shu, closing the distance with slow, unhurried confidence. "This one's barely conscious. Doubt he can even form words." A shrug. "Doesn't matter. Makes him easier to deliver to Shun."

He seized Shu by the leg, hoisting him up without effort, wings tensing to lift off — when a sound broke the stillness behind him. From where Hanz's body had lain.

Marcel turned sharply — and found Hanz standing. His demonic form had shifted: white flames now licked at his ankles and wrists, and seven more flames hovered behind him in a slow-turning ring at his back. In his hand, the new greatsword — pure black, almost featureless but for its rigid silhouette. It could have passed for a simple Kantar construct, but Marcel's eyes caught the truth: the black was absolute, swallowing every trace of light that touched it.

Hanz's voice came out low, bellowing, unmistakably demonic.

"I won't let you take him, Marcel. You'll have to go through me first."

He vanished — and reappeared directly in front of Marcel, blade already swinging. It severed the arm holding Shu clean at the shoulder.

"And you'll find," Hanz said, "that I'm not as easy to put down as last time."