It grabbed her by the throat and snapped her neck with a slow, excruciating twist.

Something inside Kaiden shattered.

Wrath tore free.

It wasn't just a surge… It was an eruption. A cataclysm.

Rage flooded his system so violently that his vision went red, then darker, blood vessels rupturing as his eyes bled. His burned lungs dragged in air that tore them apart. His teeth cracked under the force of his snarl.

The demon turned back to him, satisfied.

Kaiden's charred lips peeled back.

"I'll… kill you…" He rasped, voice ruined, every word dragged through scorched flesh. "I'll butcher you. I'll torture you until you're nothing but an empty husk."

The demon laughed.

Then it killed him.

…

Kaiden woke screaming.

Air slammed into his lungs as he jolted upright, hands clawing at nothing, heart hammering so violently it hurt. His body was whole again. Unburned. Unbroken.

But the memory was still there.

The heat. The helplessness.

The screams.

The battlefield reset.

The red orb opened.

They fell again.

Luna. Aria. Nyx. Bastet. Calypso.

Alive.

Unbroken.

Kaiden knew they hadn't truly died.

But it didn't help.

Not even a little.

His hands shook as he clenched them, nails biting into his palms. His chest felt tight, wrong, like something poisonous had settled there and refused to leave.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

The Original Sin, the titan with seven arms, stood in the distance, unchanged. Unmoving.

Kaiden's lips curled back in a snarl so full of hate it surprised even him.

"I'll never forgive you for this," he growled, voice low and venomous.

Heat surged.

The demon materialized once more.

And Wrath…

Oh, how Wrath howled.

Not restrained.

Not contained.

It rose inside Kaiden like an endless, screaming tide, darker and deeper than anything he had felt before.

This time, it was as personal as it ever got.

The demon attacked again.

Fire first, always fire, aimed past Kaiden, toward the girls. Every time. Every reset. A deliberate choice. A lesson it wanted to hammer into him.

Kaiden intercepted it again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, his body paid the price. Muscles cooked from the inside as he forced himself into the path of annihilation. Skin split. Blood boiled. His heart screamed under the strain of forcing movement through damage that should have ended him instantly. Vitality kept him conscious long enough to feel it all.

Each time, he defended.

Each time, he failed anyway.

Sometimes the demon slipped past him with a feint and burned one of them before Kaiden could reposition. Sometimes it grabbed him first, crushed his spine, tore his legs free, then calmly walked past his writhing body to finish them one by one while he watched, screaming, choking on blood and smoke.

Reset.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Kaiden started seeing double, such was the brutality of his rage.

The knowledge that it wasn't his real girls did not help one bit. If anything, it made it worse. Because it meant the suffering was deliberate. Curated. Replayed. A spectacle engineered by a universal aberration, a cosmic freak, that wanted an answer carved out of his soul.

What will you sacrifice to win?

Kaiden's answer never changed.

Never them.

Even if they weren't truly his. Even if this was only a construct. Even if it meant failure after failure, death after death.

'My answer will never be that I'm willing to sacrifice them.'

Wrath loved that.

It fed on it.

Kaiden's breathing grew ragged between resets. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth as he snarled through clenched teeth, spit flecking the scorched ground. His hands shook constantly now, from restraint failing under the sheer volume of rage compressing inside him.

His veins stood out black against reddened skin. His vision pulsed. His thoughts fragmented into violent shards, into memories of screams, of fire, of helplessness looping endlessly.

The demon burned them again.

Kaiden howled.

Something in his chest tore.

Wrath didn't surge anymore.

It flooded.

Everything.

His body started burning from the inside out, from power ripping through tissue that couldn't withstand it. Steam rose from his skin. Blood leaked from his nose, his ears, his eyes. His teeth ground together until enamel cracked, pink froth spilling from his mouth as animal sounds ripped free of his throat.

He wasn't thinking.

He was enduring.

Reset.

Again.

Kaiden stood hunched forward this time, shoulders twitching, breath coming in harsh, wet pulls. And he was already moving.

The battlefield hadn't finished forming when he launched.

Pumped to the physical peak and then beyond with nothing but overwhelming wrath, he was airborne before the demon existed, body twisted into a killing arc, fist drawn back on pure instinct, rage moving him faster than thought. The demon began to materialize, but it was too slow.

Kaiden's fist connected the instant its head finished forming.

The impact was apocalyptic.

The demon was driven into the ground hard enough to collapse the battlefield beneath it, shockwaves ripping outward as Kaiden landed on top of it. He didn't stop. He didn't hesitate.

He beat it.

Fists descended like a storm, having no rhythm, no restraint, no technique left. Just all-encompassing, merciless brutality. Armor shattered. Sigils imploded. Molten flesh sprayed as Kaiden roared wordlessly, foam and blood flying from his mouth as he struck again and again and again.

A thousand blows.

Then a thousand more.

The demon died somewhere in the first dozen.

Kaiden didn't notice.

He kept punching.

Even when the body stopped resisting. Even when it stopped existing as anything but fragments and ash. Even when his hands were stripped to bone, flesh torn away by his own power.

He kept going.

Wrath howled its approval, limitless and feral, as Kaiden pounded the crater where the demon had been, striking long after there was nothing left to hit.

Long after victory.

Long after sense.

The thing that rose from the crater was barely recognizable as Kaiden anymore.

Steam rolled off his ruined frame, skin split and glowing from heat that hadn't fully bled away yet. Blood ran freely down his face, mixing with ash and spit, his eyes wild and bloodshot, pupils blown wide as Wrath continued to churn without restraint.

His chest heaved in harsh, animalistic pulls, each breath scraping his throat raw. His hands trembled from the violent excess of power still clawing to be spent.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

And he saw it.

The titan.

The Original Sin stood exactly where it had always stood, vast beyond comprehension, seven arms hanging in eternal judgment, its form a mockery of life. It had not moved. Had not flinched. Had not even acknowledged the carnage Kaiden had unleashed moments earlier.

Something inside Kaiden snapped completely.

A sound crawled out of his throat, low, broken, feral.

"You," he snarled, voice shredded, lips pulled back from bloodied teeth. "You thought that was okay…"

Wrath answered instantly.

Power surged, just raw, unfiltered annihilation pouring through every fiber of his being. The ground beneath his feet ceased to exist as he launched himself forward, a red blur ripping across the battlefield toward something that dwarfed mountains.

He did not hesitate.

He did not think.

He did not care that this was something cosmic, something ancient, something so far beyond him it shouldn't even register his existence.

Kaiden leapt.

Wrath screamed as he climbed impossibly high, body tearing itself apart just to reach the titan's head. Space warped around him under the sheer violence of his ascent. He twisted midair, drawing back everything he had left, and drove his fist forward with absolute intent.

The strike landed.

It should have shattered worlds.

Instead…

Nothing.

No recoil. No fracture. No ripple.

The titan's head did not shift by even a fraction. The blow vanished against it like a raindrop against a continent.

Kaiden rebounded hard, body screaming in protest as power fled him all at once. Wrath drained away like a severed tide, leaving only exhaustion, pain, and a hollow ache that ran deeper than his bones.

As he began to fall, weightless and spent, words formed inside his mind.

Not spoken.

Not heard.

[An acceptable answer.]

[Rewards…]

He didn't even read those.

Kaiden's vision dimmed, the battlefield peeling away beneath him as gravity reclaimed what fury had briefly stolen. His body went limp, tumbling into darkness, into a depthless void.

But his eyes stayed open.

Locked upward.

On the titan.

His lips moved one last time as consciousness slipped, voice barely a rasp, but carrying more hatred than any scream.

"I'll kill you."

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