The fight didn’t last minutes.
It didn’t last hours.
It lasted weeks.
Right. Weeks.
From the moment Malik’s blade met Zamharir’s ice, the battlefield around them became their personal arena.
The war raged on in the background—sieges, raids, skirmishes—but their battle?
Their battle was something else entirely.
Every time one of them got close to finishing the other, the fight twisted, shifted, and flipped on its head, dragging them both back into the chaos.
Malik was fast.
That was his advantage.
Not just speed, but movement, instinct, unpredictability.
Zamharir? He was the opposite.
He was steady, methodical, and precise.
His armor of ice made him nearly untouchable to anything but Malik’s Spine Splitter, and his control over the battlefield was uncontested, displaying his much greater experience.
He laid traps without even thinking, turning entire stretches of land into frozen deathtraps.
If Malik stayed in one spot too long, he’d find spikes shooting up to impale him.
If he dashed forward recklessly, he’d run straight into a pre-placed wall of ice waiting to smash him in the face.
Every moment was a puzzle, every move a test of who could outthink the other faster.
That didn’t change even during the times they both slowed down, refilling their Aether Cores back to a usable state.
At first, Malik thought he had the advantage.
His Devil’s Footsteps made him damn impossible to catch, and Mirage Strike let him land quick, deceptive blows.
But Zamharir caught on fast, adapting to his fighting style.
The man was a veteran.
He started predicting Malik’s feints, successfully baiting him into traps and forcing him into places where his speed was useless.
The first week, they fought from dusk to dawn, barely resting, barely speaking.
Zamharir had the patience of a saint; Malik had that, as well as the stubbornness of a devil.
Their bodies wore down, their attacks grew sloppier, but neither could land the final blow.
The second week, the battlefield itself became part of the fight.
Both of them had used every piece of debris and wrecked terrain to their advantage.
Malik turned ruined walls into launching pads, bouncing off the stone and striking from angles no sane fighter would consider.
Zamharir turned the rubble into weapons, freezing them into massive projectiles, creating barriers, forcing Malik to waste Aether dodging and breaking through.
The third week, desperation had set in.
Malik’s body was wrecked.
Cuts, bruises, burns—he’d been pushed to his limit and then some.
Zamharir wasn’t doing much better.
His ice armor, once pristine, was now barely a thing; steam continued to rise from it, originating from the spots where fire had kissed his skin not so long ago.
His heavy breathing was visible in the cold air he was leaking, and his movements were now slower than even the average soldier’s.
They were both running on fumes, both barely holding on, but neither willing to stop.
One moment.
That was all they needed.
One moment where either of them slipped.
Eventually, in the dead of a night nearing the fourth week, on a battlefield covered in frost and ash, Malik saw his ‘one moment.’
Zamharir lunged, thrusting an icicle spear straight at his chest.
Malik dodged just enough for it to graze his ribs.
Pain flared, but he ignored it and staggered back.
Letting his exhaustion show, he faked a stumble, dropping his sword.
Zamharir, just as exhausted, fell for it.
He saw an opening—his first real one in hours—and went for the kill.
But contrary to what he believed would happen, Malik moved forward.
His eyes widened for a split second in confusion.
That was all Malik needed.
“FALL.”
In one motion, he grabbed the hilt of his falling sword, spinning with it mid-air, Mirage Strike activating in full force.
Two attacks, one real, one fake.
But this time, both strikes felt real.
Zamharir reacted, blocking the wrong one.
The real strike hit home.
Spine Splitter carved through Zamharir’s ice armor like it was nothing.
A clean, brutal cut.
A flash of fire and steel.
A single moment that ended everything.
He staggered.
His ice shattered.
He took a step back. Then another. Then…
His legs gave out.
Dropping to his knees, blood spilled from his mouth, trailing down his chin.
He looked up at Malik.
Not with hate. Not even anger.
Something else, something caught between disbelief and… respect.
“You…”
He tried, but the rest got lost in the blood.
Malik didn’t say a word in response.
He didn’t have to.
He just stood there, breathing hard, staring at the man who had nearly killed him a thousand times over.
A man who had fought him, challenged him, pushed him further than he had ever been pushed before… at least in one life.
Zamharir’s body trembled, breath shallow.
And then, with a slow, final exhale—
He slumped forward, burying his face into the ground.
Dead.
The fight was over.
Malik stood there for a long while, silent.
His body screamed, heavy as mountains, his wounds leaked warmth down his sides, and his mind could barely hold on.
He had given everything to this fight. Everything. And he had won. Barely, yes. But he had won. He did. He fucking won.
He didn’t know if what he felt was pity. Or regret. Maybe just relief. Didn’t matter. The man was dead. And Malik was still standing.
With a sigh, he turned, picked up his sword properly, and walked away.
The war wasn’t over. No… it was far from over.
But at least now, one less monster stood in his way.
Malik finally took a breath.
A real breath.
For the first time in weeks, his focus wavered from Zamharir, and he looked around.
…His stomach sank.
They were surrounded.
What the fuck?
They had been winning, hadn’t they?
The militia had been pushing forward, pressing the ‘rebels’ further back, starving them, breaking them. Every battle, every push, had been in their favor…
So how the Hell had it come to this?
He saw it now… only now.
The platoon he had come here with was locked in desperate combat.
They had been the predators before, but now they were the ones scrambling, fighting not to win—but to survive.
They had been flanked. Completely.
Reinforcements shouldn’t have come… Black made sure that no carrier owl made it through.
So, it came to the age-old question. Who told on them?…
Was it that farmer worried for his draft beasts?
The one who heard them sneak about?
Perhaps.
That was the only way he saw this happening.
Well, in any case, the reason could be figured out later.
These men needed his help.
“Fine.”
Malik, ignoring the fresh pain lancing through him, gripped Spine Splitter and stepped forward.
The world swam for a moment, but he shoved it aside.
He could collapse later. Right now, he had work to do.
His first strike came like a storm.
The ‘rebels’ didn’t even see it coming.
One moment, they were pressing into the struggling soldiers; the next, a wall of fire carved through their ranks.
After that, the demon didn’t even slow down a moment, flashing from one side to the next, leaving nothing but scorched corpses in his wake.
To the right.
He hit them hard, fast, making them scramble, making them shift their forces left.
They needed to counter his attacks, needed to stabilize.
But before they could even adjust—
“Get to the other side! Flank him!”
To the left.
Malik crashed into them again, tearing apart their formation, forcing them to shift.
The entire battlefield moved at his will, his blade dictating the flow.
Every time they adjusted, he flipped them again, never giving them time to breathe.
Indeed, the madman was flipping the fucking army.
He kept vanishing and reappearing like a curse.
His flames whipped around him, a blazing halo of death, a devil cloaked in fire.
He crashed into their flank again and again, spine-splitting swings tearing men apart.
One ‘rebel’s’ head went flying. Another screamed as his legs were burned clean off.
“WHO THE FUCK IS THAT?!”
“He’s just one man!”
“HE’S NOT JUST A MAN—”
Before the next scream could finish, it was silenced. Smoke swallowed the sound.
What remained was just charred meat and blood in the sand.
Some tried to hide.
He hunted them down.
Some tried to fight.
He burned them alive.
One ‘rebel’—a kid who couldn’t have been more than twelve—dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, hands raised, eyes wide.
“No—please, I—”
Fwoosh.
Gone. Just ashes on the wind.
Malik didn’t have mercy. Not tonight. Not here. Not now.
He felt every wound on his body, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. Every step forward was another corpse left behind, another scream cut short, another rebel turned to ash.
The ‘rebels’ broke.
First in twos, then in dozens.
They ran. They fucking ran. Screaming. Crying. Throwing down their weapons.
One was yelling for his mother as he tripped on a corpse and slipped in blood.
Another curled into a ball, sobbing and begging for the flames to go away.
“Retreat! RETREAT!”
Their lines had entirely collapsed.
What had been an overwhelming ambush not so long ago turned into a massacre, and now?
A complete and utter defeated retreat.
The militia’s soldiers couldn’t believe it.
They had a monster like that in their midst?
Malik, meanwhile, just stood in the middle of it all, surrounded by death.
The heat around him had melted sand into something lava-like, making him a walking, talking volcano, or perhaps just a tiny piece of Jahannam.
His sword was half-buried in that lava, steam rising from it.
He leaned on the hilt, head bowed, chest heaving, sweat and blood dripping down his face.
Malik didn’t know what was keeping him standing.
Though, it was probably just the usual, his sheer unbridled insanity.
Above him, the Twelve Moons looked down, casting their light on him.
And they weren’t the only ones looking.
The soldiers were staring too.
“What the fuck was that…?”
“Holy shit…”
“H-He flipped their whole damn army…”
Then, one voice—they didn’t know whose—resounded the loudest.
“Kitten… Night of the Kitten.”
At first, it sounded like a joke.
A fluke, perhaps.
A reminder of what the ignorant once called him.
But the name stuck to all those who had heard it.
And, just like that, a blood-soaked legend was born.