_____________________________

  Zayn’s killing did not slow.

  It kept accelerating. He no longer fought like a man.

  He moved like something unchained, thrown into a pit of endless prey and told there would be no end.

  Thousands kept falling, yet the enemies surged forward in restless, screaming waves, a living tide desperate to drown him.

  Zayn roared, but his throat kept breaking. Animalistic bursts tore from his throat-ragged, wet, feral. His skin steamed with the blood of the dying demons.

  He burned, burned through the enemies in a way no mortal body was meant to endure. Flesh clung to his knuckles, finger bones visible beneath torn skin from the relentless assault.

  His feet sank with every step, no longer touching earth but wading through a thick slur of entrails and shattered bone.

  Each stride left a crater behind him.

  The horde kept surging.

  Tusks stabbed towards his head and Zayn redirected it into another demon's chin.

  Blades screamed for his shoulders. He dodged just enough to let them cut something else.

  Silhouettes collapsed inward, merging into a single black mass trying to smother one blood-soaked figure under sheer weight.

  But Zayn weaved. He stayed inside the demon bodies, deep inside their weapon range, forcing hesitation, forcing collisions to let them strike each other.

  Blades hit jaws.

  Horns pierced allied skulls.

  His battlefield weave was terrifying.

  As if killing billions was something he had already learned long ago.

  From a distance, it looked like a wave failing again and again to drown a storm.

  From the human lines, courage fractured with every step he took.

  A mother sobbed openly:

  “Please… come back… you can’t fight forever..”

  A priest prayed violently. “This is madness…”

  Mothers clutched their children tighter, whispering reassurances they did not believe.

  One woman crouched low, wrapping her body around her daughter.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Stay behind me,” she whispered. “Don’t look.”

  The child peeked anyway.

  “Mamma… why does he look like that?”

  “He was the elder brother who gave me chocolates…”

  “Who brought me home when I was lost at the carnival, do you remember?" The child's voice was soft.

  “Mom?...Will we see him again?”

  The mother did not answer.

  Aditi stood frozen in the crowd, as if her soul were slowly leaving her body. Memory pulled her somewhere else.

  She watched him move.

  The way he weaved through bodies.

  The way he never slowed.

  The way his breath beat like a hammered drum.

  “A street after school.” Her vision blurred.

  Her father’s car rolled forward, gravel crunching beneath the tires.

  She remembered turning once and seeing a boy running behind the car, weaving through alleys to stay ahead of the vehicle.

  Every day.

  She used to laugh about it later, tease him for it.

  “Why do you always run like that? Were you trying to outrun life?”

  And he would shrug, breathless yet stubborn.

  “To see if you reached home.”

  And he always did.

  He always reached before the car.

  Now, watching him on the battlefield, something cold slid down her spine.

  He still moved the same way, the same relentless pace, the same refusal to stop.

  The same boy that never accepted enough as an answer.

  Only now, instead of racing a car, he was trying to outrun death itself.

  To save others, the people who never cared that he was hurt.

  The people who never knew he even existed.

  The realization hit her harder than the screams. He hadn’t changed and he never will.

  This was the same boy who ran until his lungs burned just to make sure someone else was safe.

  Only now, there was no home to reach.

  No one, waiting at the end of the road.

  Only a path that would not let him leave alive.

  Her lips parted, but no sound came out and for the first time, she understood something unbearable.

  He wasn’t fighting because he wanted to win.

  He was running towards death because he didn’t know how to stop caring for others.

  Bhumi took a step forward.

  Her pride collapsed with each drop of blood she saw.

  “Seven years,” she whispered bitterly.

  “I thought I was fooling him.” her voice cracked.

  “I cheated but I promised I wouldn’t be like Aditi. I promised I wouldn’t hurt him like his parents did.”

  “But I kept doing it again and again every time he forgave me.”

  Her hands trembled.

  “He was dying, he was sick…but always one call away - Always.”

  “And now… now he’s walking so far ahead of us that none of us can ever pull him back.”

  “I never knew… never…This rage is beyond me.”

  Zayn inhaled with each killing strike, and it felt as if he drank the air of the entire plane.

  Then he roared, like the thunder god himself had descended.

  A sound so vast it crushed lungs and rattled bones.

  Birds fled from broken forests miles away. Soldiers dropped their guns and spears clamping hands over their ears.

  Even demons at the front staggered, confusion flickering in crimson eyes.

  “No man’s throat should hold that kind of force,” a soldier whispered in terror.

  Aditi stumbled. “That voice, It can’t be him!”

  “ZAYN! STOP! YOU’LL DIE BEFORE YOU SAVE US!”

  The roar faded yet its echo did not.

  Zayn blurred forward.

  His fist drove inside two demon’s chests and tore their hearts out and hurled them like clay jars.

  Knees drove skulls to the mud crushing them.

  He tore through the line after line, hundreds at a time, blood spraying across his chest.

  Demons answered with their war-cries, but every time Zayn roared back, their voices hesitated.

  His roar wasn’t sound. It was dominance.

  And above all, he was forcing his voice through the battlefield like a curse, trying to drown a trillion voices alone.

  An elderly woman screamed as blood arched into the sky when Zayn uprooted a demon’s skull from its neck.

  “That is no man!”

  “That is a slaughter-god!”

  Bhumi clutched her coat.

  “Stop, Zayn!” she cried.

  “You’ll lose yourself! You’ll burn alive in it!”

  He did not hear her nor any of the other mortal cries.

  His eyes were wide. Teeth bared as he bit into a demon, clawing for its eyes.

  He ripped an arm free. Blood sprayed across his face.

  His roar deepened, as he pushed it until it stopped sounding like sound at all.

  It became pain forcing its way out creating beastly and cackling noises, trying to escape his throat.

  Finally a bloody mist burst from his mouth, unable to match the volume against an army of trillions.

  Blood mist gushed out again as his larynx tore apart completely but he pushed his roar harder and louder.

  Blood kept gushing but he was forcing his roar beyond any reason.

  Demons froze mid-charge seeing this.

  Fear made their frontlines hesitate to exit their ranks and continue their assault.

  “He’s tearing himself apart,” soldier whispered,

  Another dropped to his knees.

  “If this is what fights for us.”

  “What happens if he turns against us?”

  The asuras, being war-beasts by nature, were now faltering before one man.

  They had never known fear like this.

  Aditi screamed, trying to stop him:

  “Zayn! Stop! You promised the boy!”

  “You promised him the sunset!”

  Bhumi whispered hoarsely through empty tears:

  “No… he isn’t killing himself.”

  “He’s killing them.”

  “Alone.”

  High above, seated on a throne of blackened bone, the Devourer leaned forward.

  His generals snarled, eager to join the battle and tear the human apart.

  He raised one claw and silence spread in his council hall.

  Below, Zayn roared again, red mist jetted from his mouth as he kept fighting.

  The only thing left, felt by demons and humans alike, was fear.

  Not of death, but what would happen next.