"Shall we continue?"
The words slithered through the air, soft, calm, amused... too amused, an invitation, a taunt, a whisper meant to be heard only by the one who could not answer.
The smile never faded.
If anything, it widened.
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Darkness Angel did not respond..
He could not.
His lips did not part. His voice did not rise. His body.. his very existence refused to acknowledge the question.
Instead, he only looked.
And then..
It came again.
A tide. A massive flood. An unending, unrelenting, unquenchable wave of pure.. Agony.
Not pain. Not suffering. Those words were too small, too feeble to describe what fell upon him.
It was deeper. Greater... Far Greater
It tore through him, ripping apart not just flesh. Not just bone.
His being. His essence.
Everything that was him. His very existence.
And the world, the very dark domain that should have been his, that should have made him untouchable, unstoppable, a force that crushed everything, a law that cannot be defied..... That very domain.. Shuddered.
Cracks splintered through the dark expanse, jagged and uneven, spreading like veins of something dying, something collapsing, something being unmade.
The agony was chaos.
It swept through the darkness angel without mercy, without rhythm, without pattern... no order, no structure, just raw, shapeless, ceaseless destruction.
Darkness Angel buckled.
The ring atop his head flickered, its perfect, unbroken circle now marred by fractures, its dark glow wavering.
His wings.. once vast, once tattered yet enduring, became fragile.
Feathers that had once absorbed the darkness greatest than void now trembled, thin and weak, struggling to exist beneath the weight of something that could not be seen, something that had no form but was heavier than the abyss itself.
The agony was not just consuming him.
It was removing him.
Piece by piece, thread by thread, unraveling his very presence, as if the dark domain world had decided he no longer belonged.
He was slipping.
Falling.
Disappearing.
And then...
It stopped. Everything stopped..
A single breath.
A moment without torment.
A silence that should have been a mercy but instead felt like something worse... an interruption.
The absence of agony was not relief.
It was the anticipation of what came next.
And The Wanderer Who Laughs...
He laughed. An amused laugh..
Not loud. Not sudden.
A chuckle, slow and deliberate, spilling from lips that curved too wide, from a mouth that never lost its grin.
His steps were unhurried.
He moved without sound, without urgency, his form casting no form in the ashen domain.
A predator circling prey that had already fallen.
And as he walked, he spoke.
Low. Mocking. Enjoying.
"Pathetic."
The word did not need to be loud to cut.
"Worthless."
Darkness Angel did not react.
Or perhaps..
He could not..
A pause followed afterwards.
The Wanderer Who Laughs stood still, his grin unfading, his deep yellow gaze never breaking. He watched. Studied. His head tilted ever so slightly, as if considering something deeply amusing.
Darkness Angel lay before him in the empty domain.. breathing, but barely...
And then, with a voice laced with mockery, with something almost like genuine curiosity, he spoke.
"If I continueā¦"
A whisper. A thought spoken aloud..
"If I continue hitting youā¦ breaking your worthless bonesā¦ shattering your very fragile spineā¦"
His smile twitched.
"Wouldnāt it be faster?"
He let the question linger. Let it hang in the air, let it breathe, let it seep into the cracks of the shuddering dark domain.
"Instant death?"
A chuckle. Soft. Delighted.
"No, no, no, no."
He shook his head, slow and intentionally calm..
"I donāt want that."
The smile stretched wider, too wide.
And then..
He raised a hand.
Not toward Darkness Angel. Not toward any tangible thing...
But toward the sky above....
The empty, devouring dark void above.
Fingers curled, slow and smooth..
As if closing around something unseen. As if strangling something unfelt.
"Fast and instant agony isnāt what you deserve," he murmured calmly.
And the dark domain world... answered.
Du! Du! Du! Du!
A sound. A rhythm that had no source, no direction, no meaning.. but was felt.
The domain trembled violently.
Not just shaking... writhing.
As if its very essence, the fabric of its existence, was being crushed beneath something immeasurable.
Dark and light flickered.
Black. Ashen white.
Black again.
Ashen white again.
A pulse. A cycle. A struggle between what was, what is, and what was becoming.
The Wanderer Who Laughs exhaled.
"A slow, thick, andā¦ enjoyable agony will be preferable."
He concluded with satisfaction.
And then..
Mist gathered.
Not fog. Not vapor. Not something so mundane, so earthly.
Mist.
Rooted... Primal.
Comprehensible, yet incomprehensible.
Shapeless, Formless..
It moved with intent.
It coiled, twisted, molded, took shape... but never fully.
It was a spear.
It was not a spear.
Not too big. Not too small.
Just right.
The Wanderer Who Laughs lowered his gaze slowly...
Darkness Angel laid on the empty domain floor, unmoving, couldnāt move.
His tattered wings twitched, weak, the ashen glow in his eyes dimming.
And The Wanderer Who Laughs.. Smiled.
Wider..
"Why donāt I stab you multiple timesā¦"
A soft murmur, spoken with the weight of an inevitability.
"And then.."
A step forward.
His grip tightened around the mist-forged spear.
"Use the mist to block your wounds."
Another step.
A formless shape stretched across Darkness Angelās broken form.
"Which will also come with a combination of agony and grief..."
He exhaled. A sigh of pleasure...
"Wouldnāt it be marvelous?"
The grin split wider.
"I would love to see it now."
And in that moment...
Agony.
Not a wave. Not a tide.
Something worse.
Something intentionally.
Stab!
The spear plunged deep. Deep into darkness angel...
Darkness Angelās body convulsed. His wings spasmed.. But he did not scream.
Not yet.
Stab!
Again.
Tattered black feathers were torn apart, crumbling into dust.
Stab!
Agony, thick and suffocating, spilled into the dark domain world.
Stab! Stab!
The wounds did not bleed...
The formless mist did not allow them to.
It sealed them shut.. trapping the torment within, forcing it deeper. And deeper into a wound that could not close.
An agony that could not end.
And The Wanderer Who Laughs... He only laughed.
And moments after an unending, unrelenting torment..
Silence.
Not the absence of sound. Not the mere lack of movement.
But something deeper. Something that pressed against the very fabric of existence itself, that made the air feel thick, heavy, unbreathable.
Darkness Angel did not move.
He could not..
Not because his body was broken. Not because the agony had been too much.
But because he was no longer in control.
His own darkness domain.. his own world, the very fabric of his existence, had slipped from his grasp.
And now, he was nothing more than a puppet.. a marionette.
The strings were invisible. The hands guiding them unseen.
But he felt them.
Felt the weight of something beyond pure agony, something beyond suffering.. something formless, nameless, endless.
And so, he did not scream.
Not because he did not want to.
But because the pain inside was far greater than anything that could be put into sound...
The Wanderer Who Laughs watched.
His grin had never faded, not once. Not through the agony, not through the slow, methodical breaking.
And now... even now that all had fallen still... he simply reached out.
A hand, Armored with ashen white exoskeleton armor that shedded the presence of the void, moved through the trembling silence.
And then..
Fingers curled around a throat.
Casual. Effortless. Absolute.
Darkness Angelās form lifted, his body limp, his wings dragging behind him like dead weight.
And then an amused pause..
The Wanderer Who Laughs tilted his head.
Something flickered behind his eyes.. something neither light nor dark, something beyond.
His gaze drifted downward, settling on the darkness angel tattered black wings.
And slowly.. His grin grew wider.
A smile that crawled across his face, twisting at the edges, something more than joy, something more than amusement.
Something wrong.
Rip.
A sound that did not belong in the world.
Darkness Angelās body convulsed.
The first wing.. gone.
Torn. Wrenched. Ripped from flesh soul and existence alike.
His form shuddered.
But he did not scream.
Not yet... Or maybe never.
Rip.
The second.. gone.
Torn from his back, from his essence, from the very foundation of his being.
And then the Wanderer Who Laughs released his grip..
The Darkness Angel Fell...
Fell like something discarded. Like something that no longer served a purpose.
Fell into the silence.
And in that moment...
Everything broke.
The agony did not return.
No.. it became something greater.
A force. A tide. A flood of something untameable, uncontainable, unending.
The Dark Domain shattered.
Not destroyed. Not torn apart.
It unraveled.
It could not hold what had been done. Could not contain what had been released.
In that moment... Nothing remained.. There was nothing...
Not darkness. Not emptiness.
Nothing. An absolute emptiness..
An emptiness so absolute and great that even the Dark Domain itself would have shuddered in fear...