[Location: Central Park, New York]

Barbaras inhaled sharply as forcefully stopping something down his throat, but—

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

—he roared instead, laughter splitting the night, booming like a war drum.

"Bow? To you? YOU?" Barbaras' jagged teeth gleamed in the moonlight, lips peeling back in a snarl that was half grin, half madness. His hulking frame rippled, veins bulging as crimson aura flared around him like a volcanic eruption. "Don't make me spit, boy. You're nothing but a remnant dressed in borrowed fire!"

The ground splintered under his clawed feet as he lunged forward, each step cracking the stone beneath, Central Park's soil unable to contain the sheer ferocity of his presence. His claws extended, dripping with writhing hellfire, the scent of blood and molten iron filling the air.

But the moment his killing intent surged forward—Zeraphira moved.

Her silhouette cut across the battlefield in an instant, Crimson-red hair flowing like a comet, her blood ruby eyes shimmering with madness and worship. She didn't attack Barbaras—no. She intercepted him with presence alone, her aura slamming down with a sickening sweetness, like a spider web sticky with poison.

"Touch him…" Her voice was silk and razors, echoing with a lust that made even the bloodlust pause. "…and I'll carve every tendon out of your flesh while keeping you alive to hear him whisper my name."

"Yeah… Yeah! Stupid bitch!" Barbaras barked, spittle flying, his voice breaking into a feral growl. His eyes—wild, bloodshot—fixed on Zeraphira as though she were prey and obstacle in one. His claws flexed, molten hellfire dripping in rivulets, hissing as it ate through the stone beneath him. "Stand there, wag your tongue—see if it saves you when I tear your spine out through your teeth!"

Zeraphira didn't flinch. Her crimson hair, alive in the wind of colliding auras, framed her face like a crown of blood and devotion. She tilted her head—slow, deliberate, deranged affection glimmering in her eyes. Her lips parted, and a smile stretched wide, twisted, ecstatic.

"You think you can touch me?" She breathed, her words not for Barbaras, but for Dominic—like a prayer to the only god she acknowledged. "You think you can even look at him without me deciding if you deserve your eyes?"

Barbaras snarled and stomped forward, the ground quaking as his bulk gathered force, every motion promising carnage. Yet his step faltered—just faintly. Not fear. Rage. Zeraphira's aura had tangled around him; her wrath was much stronger than his.

—and how could it not be, it's my monstrous affinity of Wrath that runs through her veins. Stolen from me. Twisted, nurtured, and sharpened in her obsession over the one thing she could never let go of—me.

Zeraphira's laughter bubbled up, high-pitched and broken, like glass grinding against bone. The barrier sealing Central Park trembled under the pressure of her aura, crimson arcs of wrath manifesting like living serpents that hissed and coiled around her figure.

Barbaras' molten fire clashed against it, two primal forces grinding—the berserker's raw, volcanic savagery against Zeraphira's refined, maddened possession. Sparks tore the air, cracking reality like fragile glass.

She stepped closer to me, her body half-turned as if shielding me with her very existence. Her chin tilted up, eyes wide, lips curled in that delirious smile only a yandere could wear.

"See, Darling?" she whispered—not loud, but it reached me like a thunderclap. "Even the monsters born of Hell itself break when they feel my love for you."

Barbaras roared, veins bulging, saliva flying as his rage turned feral. "LOVE?!" He spat the word like it was acid. "No, girl—you're shackled. Your flame isn't yours—it's HIS. You're just a leech drunk on scraps!"

The moment the insult left his mouth, the park itself seemed to howl. Zeraphira's aura detonated outward, a scarlet inferno of Wrath surging with such purity that even my Sovereign Haki twitched, like a predator recognising another predator in its cage.

Her voice broke into a scream, tears of ecstasy and fury painting her cheeks.

"How DARE you call my devotion scraps! Everything I am—everything—I AM BECAUSE OF HIM!"

Her power surged, cutting through Barbaras' crimson blaze, her Wrath blazing hotter, purer—because it was mine, twisted through her obsession, magnified a thousandfold.

"You keep him busy for a moment," I tapped her shoulder, and resumed my walk toward the Champion of War.

I haven't forgotten him. Muramasa trembled in my grip, begging to be drawn, to drink deep of the battlefield and stain the barrier itself crimson.

The Champion of Ares had not moved. His colossal frame stood statuesque beneath the fractured moonlight, and now that he had torn the armour away, his power surged like molten iron through his veins, muscles taut, eyes locked on me with the predator's focus of someone who had never known mercy and now expected none. His aura—once the divine glow of a war champion—flickered, wavering under the weight of something he couldn't measure.

I took a slow, deliberate step forward, the soles of my boots pressing cracks into the broken park earth. Every nerve in my body hummed with the residual pulse of the Lineage Factor. The Primordial Fragment buried in my bloodline was no longer a whisper—it roared, and it demanded recognition.

The Champion staggered back a step, eyes narrowing, spear flexing. He inhaled, preparing to meet me head-on, but I didn't wait.

Muramasa left its sheath with a hiss of black lightning and whispered in resonance only I could feel: "Feed… take what belongs to you."

The sword pulsed, energy crawling along its black steel like veins of living shadow, craving the taste of sovereignty. I raised it slowly, deliberately, letting the Champion see the predatory shimmer in my silver-and-crimson gaze. My aura flared around me, half shadow, half molten light, so dense that the temperature of the air itself seemed to bend toward fever.

"Champion of Ares," I said, voice low, layered with Conqueror's Will, a tremor that wasn't sound but essence. "You stand where you should kneel. But I'll give you the courtesy of a choice."

He laughed, hollow, breaking—cracks of arrogance in the veneer of godlike composure. "A demon… thinks he commands a god's champion?"

I didn't answer with words.

I stepped closer, each movement bending the barrier around us like heat over molten glass. The ground quivered beneath him; even the fractured remnants of Central Park protested my presence. The Lineage Factor flared deeper, the blood of millennia coiling in my veins, and the Primordial Fragment whispered secrets of a power that had existed before demons, before gods, before contracts and stolen hearts.

Muramasa hummed as I adjusted my grip, black lightning snaking along the blade's edge, reflecting shards of moonlight off the shattered ground. The sword wasn't just a weapon—it was an extension of the power clawing free within me, a vessel for the wrath and sovereignty that even Barbaras, monstrous as he was, could not ignore.

I stepped into his space, and the air bent around me, heavy with a will older than divinity itself. Every heartbeat of mine thundered in resonance with the Lineage Factor, every step I took cracking reality's veneer like brittle glass. The Champion's eyes flickered, a trace of unease bleeding into his godlike composure.

He raised his spear, divine runes along its shaft burning faintly, but the moment he inhaled to strike, I let Muramasa sing. Black lightning snaked from the hilt, pulsing along my arm, vibrating in time with the surge of my bloodline. It wasn't just a blade anymore—it was a conductor, a channel for my half-awakened sovereignty.

The Conqueror's Will flared outward like a shockwave of invisible authority. His muscles tensed involuntarily, his mind skimming the edge of panic as centuries of battle instinct screamed at him that this demon prince—this fragment of the Primordial Demon—was no longer a mortal adversary.

I tilted my head, letting the silver flames in my eyes flare, and whispered just loud enough for him to hear:

"Step aside… or be broken."

The air thickened, bending toward me as if reality itself recognised the predator in its midst. The Champion's grip tightened on the spear, knuckles whitening, but something deeper, instinctual, tugged at him. He faltered, just a fraction, and I seized the moment.

With a single forward step, Muramasa sliced through the ambient mana, black lightning tearing a streak across the barrier itself. The sound was less steel on air and more the wail of existence splitting, as if the park itself screamed in protest.

He lunged. I didn't dodge. I didn't parry. I welcomed it. The spear met Muramasa's edge in a collision that echoed like thunder through the enclosed space. Black lightning hissed, crackling across the Champion's divine aura, and for the first time, I felt the thrill of unrestrained battle, the intoxicating clarity of supremacy.

He staggered back, barely, his divine aura quivering under the pressure. And behind me… Zeraphira's laughter tore across the battlefield, a manic symphony of obsession and adoration. She didn't strike—she didn't need to. Her presence alone twisted the Red Claw's rage, kept him focused on her, and bought me breathing space.

The Champion's eyes, golden and sharp, narrowed as if finally measuring what he faced. He was a god-forged warrior, but what stood before him was older than gods, a demon not tempered by millennia of contracts, but awakened in fragments of pure, primordial lineage.

I tightened my grip. Muramasa hummed louder, reverberating through the space, each pulse of black lightning harmonising with my blood, my will, my sovereignty.

And then I smiled. Predatory, wolfish, absolute.

"This… is only the beginning."

The ground quaked again, the barrier around Central Park trembling under the raw output of my presence. Even without my seven hearts, even incomplete, the power clawing through me demanded recognition.

The Champion of Ares raised his spear again, but this time his eyes betrayed the unspoken truth: he had met the storm, and he could feel its teeth before it even struck.

I stepped forward once more, letting Muramasa point toward him like an extension of my will. The Primordial Fragment pulsed in my veins, a heartbeat of ancient dominance that no god, no demon, could ignore.

And in that heartbeat, the battlefield—Barbaras snarling behind Zeraphira, Artemis steady in the shadows—everything paused for a single, infinite moment, acknowledging the arrival of a Primordial Demon reborn in fragments… unstoppable, unchained, and utterly mine.

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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