"...You're fun," Taufik said, his voice almost fond, "but even the most fun thing must meet its end"

His katana vanished, dissolving into nothing. The shadows around him shivered, not in fear, but in reverence, as if even they knew what was coming.

The temperature plummeted. It was not the chill of winter, nor the creeping frost of night, it was the absence of heat, the point where warmth itself ceased to exist.

Dewdrops formed in the air, glistening like silver tears, moving with purpose, drawn toward him.

The rivers of magma hissed once, then solidified into black glass. Not because they cooled, but because their fire had met its natural predator.

Taufik looked at Malphas.

And Malphas shuddered.

Not from cold. Not from fear.

But because, in Taufik's eyes, he saw something every living thing recognizes without needing a name.

... The End.

"T... This-" Malphas began, but the words faltered in his throat.

"...This is the End," Taufik said simply. And then… he vanished, swallowed by a veil of drifting dew.

"!!!"

Malphas' instincts screamed.

Every molten vein, every ancient instinct, every particle of his being told him that if he did not act now, he would cease to be.

"...Here"

The voice came from behind him.

Taufik emerged, not as the Ruler of Shadows, but as something colder, purer, and infinitely more final.

White as falling snow. Silent as a burial shroud.

Absolute as... Death itself.

When he appeared... The world forgot to breathe.

When he appeared... Then the end is absolute.

---

The molten rivers froze in mid-flow, their glow dimming to dull embers suspended in glass.

The clash of armies, the screams of dying titans, all faded into nothing.

Even sound itself bent away from him.

Malphas felt the pressure pressing into his molten flesh, seeping into the cracks of his armor, unmaking the flame at its source.

His cleaver, his sun-forged fury shivered as frost traced its jagged edge.

Taufik advanced. Slowly. Without stance, without haste.

The certainty of a falling guillotine.

Each step etched a perfect circle of frost into the stone, the rim lined with silver dew that refused to vanish.

"This… form," Malphas growled, forcing his body to flare brighter, desperate to reignite the heat that was being stolen from him. "You dare bring Death… to the Sun?"

Taufik said nothing.

He extended one hand. The dew swirled toward him in streams, gathering, condensing, sharpening.

In his grip, it became a scythe, impossibly thin, impossibly white, a flawless edge that severed not flesh, not stone, but the concept of warmth itself.

Malphas roared. His molten form erupted into a supernova, the sky tearing open with waves of fire that could burn gods to ash.

But when the light cleared…

Taufik was already behind him.

The dew fell. The scythe moved.

And with it… so did the Sun.

One strike. One breath... One death.

... Then silence.

The cleaver slipped from Malphas' fingers, striking the obsidian ground with a sound too small for the end of an age.

His molten body stood frozen mid-stride, horns still dripping magma that no longer fell, flames caught in a perpetual, motionless wave.

A thin silver line traced diagonally across his form, a mark so fine it could have been mistaken for light.

But there was no light here anymore.

The frozen battlefield groaned.

First came the cracks, not in the ground, but in Malphas himself.

Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across his molten armor, leaking not magma, but dim motes of fading gold.

They drifted upward like the last embers of a dying fire.

His voice, when it came, was a whisper. "...I see"

Then the Tyrant of the Ashen Conquest exhaled, and with that breath, his furnace-heart went dark.

The frozen shell of his body crumbled inward, molten stone turning to brittle ash, collapsing into nothing that even shadow could claim.

No roar. No final curse. Only the quiet surrender of a sun that had burned too long.

---

The silence held.

Even the Shadow Legion and the molten remnants of the Tyrant's army stood motionless, as if the death of their masters had stolen the will to move.

Lembuswana lowered his head.

Basukhi remains silent.

Kl'lara's skeletal ranks turned their empty gazes toward Taufik, awaiting command, but none came.

Taufik stood with his back to the place where Malphas had fallen, the white scythe still in his hand.

Dew traced its edge, falling and vanishing before it touched the ground.

He did not look victorious. He did not look relieved.

He simply looked… inevitable.

Slowly, the scythe dissolved, streams of silver drifting back into the air, scattering like stardust. The cold that had stolen the warmth from Hell itself began to fade, though the air remained still and heavy.

Taufik finally turned, his gaze sweeping over the ruined plain, the armies, the frozen rivers, the jagged cliffs torn by their clash.

And with a voice that carried no emotion, no triumph, only truth, he spoke:

"...I've killed the sun," Taufik said, his voice carrying a terrible stillness that swallowed even the clash of battle. "So honor your master... by dying together"

His gaze was unwavering, his tone absolute, like a verdict already carved into the bones of the world. "...Die"

The word left his lips not as sound, but as a decree.

One by one, Malphas' warriors froze mid-breath.

Their grips loosened, weapons slipping from trembling hands, not out of surrender, but because the concept of resistance had been erased from reality itself.

Even inevitability bowed before this moment, before The End, the quiet conclusion to all stories.

The steel had not yet kissed the earth when it dissolved into drifting ash.

The soldiers followed, first their armor flaking away like burnt paper, then their flesh, then their names, until nothing remained to prove they had ever stood there at all.

Taufik stood motionless, watching the scene before him, forcing his breath into a steady, deliberate rhythm.

This form… he rarely invoked it.

Every time he did, it felt as though a piece of himself was quietly slipping away, dissolving into the void without ever returning.

Death was not an enemy to him, she was a companion, almost a lover, a wives, whose presence he had long since accepted.

He did not fear her embrace; in truth, he cherished it. Yet, whenever he called upon her power, his Concept of Death, an unease gnawed at him.

It was not the fear of dying, but the fear of forgetting. Forgetting that he was once human. Forgetting the warmth of being merely Taufik, and not a god, not a vampire, not some Absolute entity.

He feared that one day, when the last fragment of his humanity slipped away, he would not even remember what he had lost.

This was not a weakness, it had never been a weakness.

It was a reminder.

A reminder that even an absolute being has something to cherish, something worth holding close. Because if he lost that… then what meaning would his existence have?

Every action he had taken, every battle he had fought, was not for some grand purpose like saving the world.

It was for something far simpler, yet infinitely greater... because he had something to protect.

A family.

That's all.

--------

Taufik remained in that state for a long time.

His three companions did nothing but wait.

An hour passed.

Then two.

Then three.

No one could tell how much longer it might last.

The shadows had withdrawn into the Shadow Realm at their master's silent command.

The skeletal army had sunk back into their tombs, their hollow eyes dimming to nothing.

Kl'lara, Lembuswana, and Basukhi stood without speaking.

Waiting.

Waiting for Taufik to open his eyes.

To steady his breath.

To gather the fragments of his memory from wherever the Death-form had scattered them.

At last, his eyelids lifted.

The suffocating presence from before was gone, replaced by the quiet, familiar weight of just… Taufik.

"My lord, are you alright?" Kl'lara asked, her voice tinged with a worry she could not disguise.

Taufik studied her for a long, unreadable moment before answering.

"…I'm normal"

"Huh? That's a weird answer," Lembuswana muttered. Then, with a shrug and a toothy grin: "…But who cares? So… we continue?"

"…We continue," Taufik said.

And with those words, the Fourth Circle, Jahmoras, the Pit of Wild Flames was conquered.

But it was far from over.

Beyond lay three more circles, each deeper, each crueler, each forged to break those who dared descend.

At the bottom waited the last circle… the place where the journey would end.

The place where Taufik believed the Seven Deadly Sins themselves awaited.

A place not of fire, nor shadow, nor ice, but of something worse.

The air around them seemed heavier at the thought, as if the hell they walked through already knew their path.

And so, with the ashes of Jahmoras cooling behind them, they began their march toward the Fifth Circle.

....

...

..

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from the six infinity stones, I just want one... the power stone (:v)