Chapter 28: The Funeral of the World

  (Layla Knoxville's Perspective)

  There was no time for grief.

  Layla Knoxville stood amidst the execution ground, her amethyst eyes, which had always carried a glint of hidden amusement, were now cold as shards of amethyst. In front of her, on that insulting wooden post, was the head of Ulrich Eisingard, the man with whom she had shared cigars, laughter, and plans for decades. Above him, the head of Louis, the President she had sworn to protect.

  There were no tears. When anger reaches its freezing point, it leaves no room for water. It was a dry, burning rage that turned her soul into a blade of obsidian. She inhaled the air polluted with the smell of blood and dust, and the faint scent of ozone left by powerful magic. After sending the children away with a touch of her shadow, she turned to face the one who remained.

  "Layla Knoxville," the clown with the two broken stars said in a disturbingly calm and amused voice. "It is truly an honor to fight the Serpent of Knoxville herself. One of the strongest sorcerers in the world, an 8th Circle Sorceress."

  Layla did not reply. Her eyes assessed him, analyzing his heavy magical aura, and measuring the depth of the darkness and gravity that wrapped around him like a shroud.

  "Since these may be your final moments," the clown continued with a polite smile, "I will grant you the honor of knowing my name. I am Pierre, the humble servant of Saint Antoine."

  The moment he uttered his name, he moved. It wasn't an attack; it was pressure. Layla suddenly felt the world around her grow heavier. The air became thick as water, dust settled on the ground, and the gravity of the entire planet seemed to multiply tenfold, focused directly on her. It was a silent, lethal wave of gravity, designed to crush bones and turn the body into paste.

  But Layla was no ordinary body. She melted in place, turning into a liquid shadow that slipped over the ground, avoiding the focal point of the pressure, then reformed herself meters away from him, a whip of pure darkness forming in her hand.

  "Gravity and Shadow magic," she said in a calm voice, but every word was charged with danger. "A rare and filthy combination."

  Pierre laughed. "And you, Pure Shadows. The living legend. Let's see if the legend is worth all the hype."

  And the dance began.

  It was a battle between two opposing concepts. Pierre was brute, constant force. He launched crushing gravity waves, summoned darkness spheres that swallowed light, and constantly changed the weight of objects around her, attempting to slow her down or crush her. Layla, however, was absolute evasion.

  She transformed into mist, split into dozens of black crows that attacked from every angle, and emerged from his shadow to strike him with daggers of solidified darkness.

  The entire battlefield was his weapon, while she herself was her weapon.

  "Tell me, Pierre," Layla said as she evaded a pillar of condensed gravity that shattered the ground where she stood. "Why are you doing this? Why are you burning a world that can be fixed?"

  "Because cancer is not fixed, Madam, it is excised," Pierre replied, his hands drawing a black circle in the air that absorbed her swarm of crows. "This world is drowning in its corruption, in its lies, in its Five Families who think they own destiny. We are not chaos. We are the punishment. We are the long-awaited purification."

  "You are angry children smashing the game because you don't know how to win it," Layla retorted coolly, and this time, she did not attack. Instead, her shadows faded from around her, gathering into a single point. Then, they exploded.

  Not a sound explosion, but an explosion in existence. Five copies of Layla Knoxville appeared in the square. Each one moved independently, and each carried the same cold, powerful magical aura.

  Pierre's eyes widened for a moment, and he lost his composure for the first time. "Impossible... Shadow Specters... The legend says each copy possesses the full power of the original. Are you using it against me?"

  "Perhaps, perhaps not," one of the copies said with a smile, while the other four attacked him simultaneously from four different angles.

  The fight began to take a new turn. Now, Pierre was not fighting one sorceress, but a small squad of nightmares. He parried a dagger from the right, only to receive a shadow kick in his back. He crushed a copy in front of him with a gravity field, only for another to emerge from beneath him and nearly pierce his heart. The fight was fast, dazzling, and deadly.

  "You are not using a sword," observed the original Layla, who was watching from a safe distance, looking for a weakness. "Unlike the other clowns."

  Pierre gave a strained laugh as he launched a spherical darkness wave that pushed the copies away from him. "Alas, I am incompetent at using those ancient tools. I prefer the purer art."

  "Then how do you infuse magic into your tools?" Layla pressed. "You are all Magic Swordsmen."

  "Taking information mid-fight?" Pierre said with genuine admiration. "You truly deserve the title Serpent of Knoxville."

  He had given her what she wanted. He had admitted they were "Magic Swordsmen." This meant they had all undergone the same ritual, the same process... and that was impossible.

  In that moment of distraction, Layla found her chance. All the copies merged with the original, focusing her power into one swift attack. She breached Pierre's distracted defenses, embedding her hand, which had transformed into a blade of cold shadow, into his shoulder.

  But he was waiting for her. In the same moment, he did the same, embedding a claw of darkness and gravity into her abdomen.

  They both retreated, bleeding. Pierre's wound was deep, but Layla's was worse. She felt the strange darkness he had injected into her body trying to tear her apart from the inside.

  "Alas," Pierre said, gasping. "You are fighting a losing battle from the start. My magic destroys, and yours... consumes."

  He was right. Layla used her shadows to consume the damage, to devour the foreign magic in her body and heal the wound. But she felt her life force draining with it. She wouldn't last long in a battle of attrition.

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  Suddenly, Layla laughed. A hysterical, loud, and mad laugh. A laugh no one had ever heard from her before.

  "Then," she said, her eyes gleaming with a dangerous light. "I must destroy you with a single attack."

  Shadows stretched from everywhere in the square, like black snakes emerging from the ground, wrapping around Pierre's arms and legs, pinning him in place. He screamed as he tried to activate his gravity, but the shadows were consuming his magic.

  Layla looked at the sky, then at her reflection in a pool of blood. "My time has come. I have become an old hag. I will leave this world to the young." Then she looked at Pierre with a sad smile. "My bears... kill my enemies."

  Pierre's face paled. "Don't tell me you're going to do it... the forbidden technique..."

  All the shadows in Lutetia gathered. From every alley, from beneath every stone, from the heart of every living thing. The shadows flowed toward the square, and the sky turned pitch black. It wasn't an explosion. It was a silent void that swallowed everything. Light, sound, the air itself.

  "Explode."

  The void swallowed the entire square, collapsing into a single point, then exploding outwards in a wave of pure nothingness.

  When the dust settled, all that remained of Pierre was his charred right hand. And on the ground, Layla Knoxville lay, her body shattered, on the verge of death.

  She laughed faintly, coughing blood from her mouth. "That damned... Philip... will he cry at my funeral?" A thought flashed in her eyes. Deo, Clara, Alessandro, Kairo, Isabella... her children. "That damned fool Philip didn't confess his love to me even after more than ten years..."

  She looked at the empty sky. "I'm going... to you, my bears."

  And she closed her eyes.

  (Alessandro's Perspective)

  Adrenaline was the only thing moving his legs. He was running, every breath burning his lungs as if he were inhaling crushed glass. Behind him, the sounds of explosions and the screams of the burning city chased them like a relentless monster. He carried a massive weight,

  not just the weight of fear, but the literal weight of two bodies. He carried Eva and Leonardo, one on each shoulder, his muscles screaming under the pressure, but he did not stop. He had to get them out of here. This was his promise to Deo.

  "We have to go back!" Clara screamed, tears wetting her ash-smeared face. "We have to help Deo and Kairo!"

  "And what are you going to do, you fool?!" Isabella snapped back in a hoarse, harsh voice, pulling Clara by the arm to keep her moving. "That clown is stronger than all of us! That bastard sacrificed his life so we could live! Grow up, Clara! Life isn't pink!"

  Isabella's words were like slaps, but they were the truth. Clara fell silent, only letting out muffled sobs as she ran.

  "Where are we going?" I asked, my voice strained under the weight of my two friends' bodies.

  "There's a secret garage for my family here," Isabella said, pointing to a narrow alley. "It has an armored car. We'll take it and head to the nearest palace, your family's palace, Alessandro."

  They finally reached the alley, and Isabella pressed a hidden stone in the wall, opening a heavy metal door that revealed a dark garage. Inside, a large, black armored car stood. I sighed in relief for a moment, gently setting Eva and Leonardo down.

  But the relief was an illusion.

  From the depths of the garage shadows, a hysterical laugh emanated. A broken, distorted laugh, filled with pain and hatred. A person emerged from the darkness, and the blood froze in my veins.

  He was a clown, but he was a nightmare incarnate. His body was a mixture of old scars and horrific burns. One of his arms was twisted at an unnatural angle, and half his face was burned, his left eye constantly weeping a blood-like fluid. He was crippled, shattered, but the aura emanating from him was terrifying. On his chest, two broken stars.

  The disfigured man gave a theatrical bow. "Alas, the Magic Swordsman is not here. I am Jack, the servant of Saint Julian."

  "To the car, quickly!" Eva screamed, pushing Leonardo and Clara toward the door of the armored car.

  Jack looked at her, slowly tilting his head. "I hate loud women."

  He was faster than lightning. In an instant, he was in front of Eva, and his black sword appeared in his hand. He turned and cut off Eva's head in a swift, blurry motion, then Leonardo looked at his sister's head and screamed and grabbed his own head.

  Jack laughed hysterical laughs, laughs of joy, then cut off Leonardo's head. The two severed bodies fell to the ground, and the heads rolled on the cement floor, stopping right next to my feet.

  Everything happened so fast that my mind couldn't process it. I froze in place, my eyes wide with absolute horror as I stared at the empty faces of Eva and Leonardo.

  "No..." I whispered.

  Isabella screamed in blind fury and launched a wall of fire at him. Jack ignored the flames, which seemed like a warm breeze, the disfigured smile never leaving his face. He grabbed Isabella by the neck and lifted her into the air.

  I was still frozen. This entity... this monster... was leagues stronger than me. It wasn't a battle; it was an annihilation.

  "My son, as a warrior, the most important thing you have is protection. Protecting your friends, your family, and those close to your heart. Our family motto is 'We Protect.' Remember it, and live by it."

  My father, Gabriel's, words echoed in my mind like thunder. I looked at the bodies of Eva and Leonardo, and at Isabella choking, and at Clara who was crying desperately while fallen on the ground, and at her belly and my nephew, and I remembered my promise to Deo. At that moment, something broke inside me.

  "Isabella!" I shouted, my voice strange and torn. "Protect Clara!"

  I looked into my heart, and felt the blood boil in my veins like lava. "I will protect... Father."

  "I PROTECT!!!"

  A massive power I didn't know I possessed exploded from me. I felt my muscles tearing and regrowing, my bones cracking and shifting. My body became larger, stronger, and my eyes ignited with a silver light. It wasn't a beautiful transformation; it was a desperate scream from my soul. I lunged at Jack, who looked at me with some interest as he tossed Isabella aside.

  "Oh? What is this?"

  I attacked with everything I had. Every punch echoed like hammer blows, but Jack parried them with his twisted hand easily, as if facing an angry child.

  In the back, Clara was crying as she moved with the injured Isabella toward the car. She saw Alessandro fighting a losing battle. She knew it was his end. And suddenly, she felt something move in her belly. It wasn't a kick; it was a cry. A silent, powerful cry from the entity growing inside her, a cry to protect his mother who showed him infinite love.

  A thick black shadow swallowed Clara and the injured Isabella, and when it faded, they were gone. His son protected his only mother.

  I didn't pursue them. I wasn't close enough.

  Jack and I remained alone.

  Jack laughed. "They ran away. They left you to die. What loyalty."

  I did not reply. I kept attacking, tears streaming heavily from my eyes. I was fighting for Eva, for Leonardo, for my promise to my father.

  "Annoying," Jack said boredly.

  His black sword moved in one motion.

  I felt a sharp coldness pierce my waist, and then I felt nothing. I looked down, and saw the upper half of my body sliding off the lower half. I had been cut in two.

  I fell to the ground, life draining from me rapidly.

  Ah... I'm going to die. Sorry, Father. I wanted to make you proud of me... Sorry, Eva, Leonardo... I couldn't protect you...

  In the last flicker of my consciousness, I saw my father's face smiling at me with pride. Then the darkness swallowed me.

  (The Meeting Room)

  The room was quiet. Five people sat around a round obsidian table.

  The first, Saint Antoine of Mercy, was a small child with blond hair, building a tower from small bird skulls carved from ivory. He smiled innocently and said: "Pierre failed. Layla Knoxville killed him, but she also died. He was a good servant."

  The second, Saint Julian of Pride, was a mass of muscles and scars, laughing as he tore a piece of raw meat with his teeth. "Jack had too much fun with the children. Send me an amusing report."

  The third, Saint Louis of Laughter, was wearing a full clown suit, shuffling a set of Tarot cards. He pulled a card and laughed. "Oh, the Tower of Death! Looks like Lutetia is having a wonderful night!"

  The fourth, Saint Philip of Poverty, looked completely out of place. He resembled a beggar who had accidentally entered a royal court, his gray beard long and unkempt, his clothes simple and worn. He was cleaning his dirty fingernails with the tip of a rusty knife.

  Without raising his eyes from his task, he spoke, his voice hoarse and laced with something that might be boredom, or perhaps a deep grief he was trying to hide. "Layla's death is confirmed," he said in a strained voice. "The loss was... expected."

  The fifth, Saint Corvus Van der Wood of Emotion, sat in the shadow, his face obscured. His silence was heavier than any words.