There was a slash like no other, a slash to end the world.

The world was reduced to two dimensions. Sound lost meaning. Dorian’s vision turned black-and-white. All else was static: static on his tongue, his skin, crackling across his skull.

Before his eyes, one piercing white line met the surging black-and-red of the Inferno.

The line drew up in one smooth stroke. Laws broke. Thick cords of qi were torn apart. The line reached the top, and was done.

For an instant the Galactic Inferno hovered there, that great mass of fearsome qi, still struggling forward, as though unable to believe it had just been sliced in two.

Then it fell apart.

A corona of scalding heat. A rush of shrieking air. One moment Dorian hovered mid-air. The next he was smashed headfirst into the sands, skidding across a dune, flipping on his head once, twice; all about an explosion of qi and Law sundered the world. He was thrust under a mound of sand with the force of a falling comet, and all went dark.

Seconds later he popped out, dragging in breaths, groaning. His body felt as though it’d been scraped raw from the inside, then flayed for good measure. It was a minor miracle his limbs still bent the right way. Spitting out a mouthful he tried to get his bearings. He rubbed sand from his eyes, joints screeching in protest, and frowned. He rubbed some more.

It wasn’t his imagination. The surface of the sands glistened like the top of a frozen lake. That blast was so hot it had turned the sand to glass. To his side whole front face of the Azcan walls was knocked over; its sides struggled in vain to stay upright. Nothing stirred—not a man, not a beast. Fresh skeletons, bones half-melted, were strewn about in heaps. Turgid clouds of stinking dark gas—the meaty parts of bodies sublimed in the blast—floated free into the skies.

Dazed, he gazed out at a land without dunes. A land made flat. A glassland.

At its center, not twenty paces from Dorian, was a stump of a man. No legs. One arm. Half his torso remained; his insides leaked slowly out of him. Jez’s smile was much less kindly now that he did it with no teeth.

He spoke. A garbled mess of syllables came out. He frowned, made a hand gesture. One moment.

And then gold flared at the stumps of his torso. Gold wreathed his sagging gums. Gold qi wrapped his arms, and where it touched fingers grew back, clear-skinned and whole. The start of a leg, bones and thighs and hamstrings and tendons formed before Dorian’s very eyes, lengthening visibly.

Dorian drew in another dragging breath. He gaped. By now Jez had regenerated a tongue and half his teeth.

“Well played,” said the god. This time his grin was monstrous. Genuine, but monstrous. “I hadn’t thought I’d need to resort to that.”

Dorian stared at him. One eye twitched.

“That,” he croaked, “Was stupid.”

“If it is any consolation,” said Jez with an embarrassed smile. “Against any other god you would have won.”

A faint buzzing sound filled Dorian’s ears. “…No,” he said. “No, no, no. I refuse to accept this.”

Jez blinked. “Pardon?”

Dorian waved a trembling finger at him. “You undo that nonsense this instant!”

“Ah. I’m sorry,” the god said gently. “I know this must be quite the disappointment. I…”

He paused. His eyes turned up, unfocused, glimmering gold.

“Oh,” he said softly. He turned back to Dorian. “Please excuse me. I must finish up my business in the Upper Realms. And this task will require the sum total of my concentration. In the meantime I shall have to bind you up. I hope that’s alright.”

Jez had fully healed now. Fully healed. From his body Dorian could sense the same qi aura he’d had as before the bout. It was as though he hadn’t been in a battle at all.

Dorian, meanwhile, was still at less than ten percent of his qi. His body felt like it’d been stung all over by a hive of wasps. He couldn’t resist in the slightest as Jez waved a hand, and a cord of gold thread wrapped his arms and legs and hands. Then drilled into the sands, piercing glass and diving farther, anchoring him to some bedrock layer.

“Don’t waste your time plying the shadow realm. These restraints anchor you in body and soul. You cannot escape them.” Jez shot him one last apologetic glance. “I shall return to finish this shortly. Please, bear with me?”

He sat down in a meditative posture, closed his eyes, and was still.

Far above, a hot gale of humid wind blew gently.

…

What the FUCK.

Dorian started to giggle. Then he started to laugh. Then he started to choke, lungs burning up, and hunched over.

Well, shit! He looked down at the ropes binding him, then at Jez. …What the hells was I supposed to do?!

Jez had that this whole time. He could draw upon an infinite pool of power—at will! Dorian shook his head, bemused. The only limit was his body’s ability to hold it. But what did that matter? Let his body burn up—he could always regenerate it instantly, too, apparently!

FUCK!

He kept giggling.

All he could do was throw up his hands. Not his real hands. Those were bound. He was exasperated, amused, nearly hysterical. He couldn’t even bring himself to be mad.

…

From the distance he could faintly hear the sounds of human wails. He heard far more roars of beasts. The fleet forms of dragons drifted over the far side of the Oasis, spraying fire and bursts of Law.

Probably they were so deep in the Oasis already that they’d been shielded from the blast. Good for them!

At least now his Soul Contract could hardly fault him. It specified he defend Azcan to the best of his ability. The best of his ability right now was nearly nothing. What was he supposed to do? Wiggle aggressively at those dragons?

Speaking of—the longer this went, the fewer sparks of qi flew up, the softer the human cries got. High above, a dragon roared its displeasure in the distance. It sent down a shower of Fire-Laws…

***

“Hold, you gormless fucks, hold!” screamed Guild Head Thon. A web of blue qi shimmered in charged air, streaming from dozens of Sticks held aloft. They held up a translucent blue dome. Dozens of wide eyes watched as a line of shining red touched the tip of the dome. It was surprisingly gentle. There was a crack.

Crag frowned at the crack. Eudora Azcan gasped at it. Her father, missing an eye and an arm, fell to a knee, head bowed. Lin cried out, shivering as she braced behind a shield Artifact. She knew it wouldn’t save her. She clung tight to it anyways, hoping despite it all, eyes squeezed shut. She couldn’t stop the tears.

Then the dome blew open, and hellfire fell from the heavens.

***

There was a string of sharp bangs. Flashes of scalding light and voices, high and desperate, crying out. Dwindling. Then one last awful crash, and all was still.

…

And then…silence.

Dorian felt a bond within him break. His Soul Contract. His eyes widened.

Wait.

A Soul Contract could only be broken by one side: the contractor. His contractor was the peoples of the Oasis! All of them.

Which could mean only one thing. They’re all dead. The Oasis Lord, Lin, princess Eudora, The Rat-King, Crag, Martial Elder Kal, Guild Leader Thon…

To his surprise he felt a tinge of regret. Just a tinge. A bittersweet realization followed.

If he was to defend Azcan to the best of his ability, and Azcan was gone, what was there to defend? The contract was voided. The contractors were gone.

I guess that’s one way to get out of it? He snorted, giggling more. Fail utterly!

He kept giggling, and giggling. Then the giggling tamped down. Then he was silent. And at last he arrived at the rather depressing conclusion that he was at last, finally, totally, utterly done.

Nothing he could conjure now could hold up to that dumb cheat. Next life, priority number one was to avoid Jez at all costs.

He sighed, and waited for the end.

And then his eyes shot back open. He was struck by an awful piercing feeling, like a limb of his was being slowly sawed off by a blunt knife. But it was hardly physical; it was mental. In the realm of the Soul.

He sat bolt upright. His face went bone white.

What had Jez said? He had some business in the Upper Realms to finish?

…Hadn’t Houyi gone to battle the man to stop him from cutting down the Tree of Eternity? The Tree which upheld the Zenith Realm itself?! And by extension the Unstuck Space?

The Space which held all of his godly possessions—including his main body?!

He committed suicide. No hesitation; he went instantly. Triggered his soul to fly free. A buried spell of the Ninth Order, a spell of Godking origin, shone deep within him with Laws of Fate and Time and Life, Great Laws incomprehensible to his current form. Laws wielded by the highest gods. There was a flash of qi and emerald light; His eyes rolled back. His body slumped forth.

His soul streamed up from his body, seeking its origins the way a moth seeks flame—

CRACK.

In the space of his spirit there was a severing. He was overwhelmed by a pungent feeling, something like nostalgia. He felt like a very old man whose younger years receded quickly from memory, fading away, winking out, until nothing but empty space filled the gaps. No. NO.

The flame was snuffed out. His soul, floundering, snapped back to his tied-up body.

His eyes snapped open once more, wide and bloodshot, and he gasped. He found himself trembling.

The horrible implications hovered above him.

Two things must have happened. He would not have believed either one—not in ten millennia—had he not felt it in his very soul.

The first was that he could not feel any connection to himself. He was cut off from the Unstuck Space; the return spell was broken off.

Which could only mean one thing. Jez had gone through with it. Somehow that insane bastard had done it.

It meant one more thing, too.

His brother had fallen.

And at last his mind circled around to the grim conclusion slowly, shiftily, like a prisoner being marched to his hanging.

If I die here…now…

…That’s it.