The defiance was a spark in an infinite dark. Adam's new power, the Glutton's Avatar, didn't just resist the Void—it consumed it.

With a ground-shaking roar, he charged. Where his violet aura met the entity's shadow, the darkness writhed and dissolved, eaten away by his ravenous energy. For the first time, Adam's attacks didn't simply vanish. His claws, sheathed in anti-void, carved through the entity's form, ripping fleeting gashes that leaked motes of stolen power before they sealed.

'It's working! I can hit it!' But the elation was short-lived. The Void Entity moved. It wasn't fast in a conventional sense; it simply was somewhere else, its movements a series of erased instants.

A shadow-limb lashed out.

Adam blocked, his reinforced scales cracking under the impact. He was sent skidding back, claws digging trenches in the bone-white ground. The difference was staggering. Even with his desperate power-up, he was slower, weaker. But he could fight back. That was infinitely better than being frozen prey.

He wouldn't win a battle of attrition. His body already felt hollow, the cost of the crown's bargain a cold ache in his bones. He needed a plan. His eyes darted to Alice's still form. The tattered remnants of their Soul-Link pulsed with her fading essence. The entity had taken something from her. He had to get it back.

Adam lunged, not at the entity, but towards Alice. The Void Entity shifted, as if to intercept, but Adam unleashed a wide-arcing Stormrend, forcing it to dissipate and reform a few feet away—buying a precious second.

He reached Alice, and his aura, uncontrolled and hungry, instinctively lashed at the void-energy still clinging to her. With a brutal, mental wrench fueled by the Crown's power, he severed the lingering psychic siphon connecting her to the entity. The violent action made her whimper, but the foreign void-tendrils around her dissipated.

His own aura, however, sizzled dangerously close to her skin. He couldn't control it—this all-consuming hunger didn't discriminate.

"Ignis!" Adam roared, his voice layered with the Glutton's echo. In one fluid motion, he coiled his tail gently around Alice and hurled her through the air towards the struggling drake. "Keep her safe!"

Ignis, bleeding and battered, summoned the last of her strength to catch Alice with surprising tenderness, cradling the unconscious panther against her scaled chest. She gave Adam a single, fierce nod.

Adam turned back to the Void Entity, his violet eyes blazing. "You took something from her," he snarled, the aura around him flaring. "I'm going to carve it out of you and shove it back down your throat."

He blurred forward with Mirage Cascade, appearing in three places at once. The entity effortlessly tracked his true form, deflecting his Monarch's Pierce with a casual sweep of its hand.

The force of the parry rattled Adam's bones. He was so slow compared to this thing. Every exchange was a loss, each block chipping away at his borrowed time and strength. Frustration boiled inside him.

The entity seemed to grow weary of the pursuit. It raised both hands, and the surrounding void-energy condensed, not into a blade, but into a sphere of absolute stillness—a Domain of Stilled Void.

The space around Adam instantly congealed, attempting to freeze him in place once more. But the Glutton's Avatar raged against it. The violet aura gnawed at the edges of the domain, creating a narrow pocket of movement. With a monumental heave, Adam tore himself free, the domain shattering behind him like black ice. He didn't stop, using Abyssal Glide to rocket after the entity, which was now retreating deeper into the canyon, its form flickering.

'This can't last. I'm burning up. The crown is eating what's left of me. I have to end this NOW.'

He would bet everything on one strike. His strongest, most precise attack, empowered by this ravenous, self-destructive power. He began channeling mana and the violent violet energy into his horns, focusing it to a single, world-piercing point. Monarch's Pierce, amplified by the Glutton's Avatar. It would be the only shot he'd get.

The Void Entity paused, turning as if to observe his preparation. It was a moment of hesitation, a fragment of a second where its inscrutable attention was fully on the glowing spear of negation forming at Adam's brow.

'There!'

Adam exploded forward. Not with a teleport, but with pure, desperate velocity. The entity reacted, a Voidrend Blade forming in its hand to meet his charge head-on. They shot toward each other, a streak of hungry violet against an ocean of swallowing dark.

And then, the impossible happened.

The Void Entity froze. Its blade wavered. Its entire form shuddered, locking in place mid-motion as if seized by an internal cataclysm. The depthless eye-points flickered with something that looked like… pain? Recognition? Conflict?

Adam, committed to his attack, didn't hesitate. He adjusted his aim and unleashed the empowered Monarch's Pierce not as a melee strike, but as a projected beam of concentrated, devouring force. It lanced through the air and struck the immobilized entity square in the center of its shadowy mass.

The entity didn't dodge. It didn't defend. The violet beam bored into it, and for a second, it seemed to hold, causing the entity's form to distort violently. Then, with a soundless implosion, the beam was gone, absorbed. But the entity remained still, hovering in the air, trembling.

Adam landed, panting, his aura sputtering. He was on his last legs. Wary, he fired a volley of Ember Shard Shots from a distance. The projectiles hit the entity and vanished, doing no visible damage.

The Void Entity slowly turned its head. Its gaze, now fixed on Adam, was different. The overwhelming menace was still there, but layered with something else—a profound, weary intensity. It looked at him, at the cracked crown, and then past him, to where Alice lay in Ignis's arms.

It raised one hand, not to attack, but in a gesture that could have been a farewell, or an apology, or a promise. Its form began to unravel at the edges, not dissipating into the void, but seeming to fold in on itself, fading from reality.

"No!" Adam screamed, fury overriding exhaustion. "DON'T YOU DARE RUN, YOU BASTARD!" He lunged again, trying to use the last dregs of his aura to bind the space, to trap the fading entity. But his power was guttering out, too weak to affect the profound process. His claws passed through fading motes of shadow.

The Void Entity's form became translucent, then transparent. In the last moment before it vanished entirely, its gaze met Adam's one final time. And then it was gone. The crushing pressure in the canyon lifted, leaving only the eerie silence of the Bone-White Canyons and the scent of ozone and blood.

Adam collapsed, the violet aura extinguishing completely. The Glutton's Avatar state ended, leaving him with the cold, permanent void where 20 points of his Vitality used to be. He was gaunt, bleeding from the chest wound, and utterly drained.

He slammed his tail on the ground, cracking the pale stone. "DAMN IT!" he roared into the emptiness, his voice was hoarse. "I'LL HUNT YOU! WHEREVER YOU GO, WHATEVER HOLE YOU CRAWL BACK TO, I WILL FIND YOU! YOU DON'T GET TO TAKE FROM US AND JUST WALK AWAY!"

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