There was no end to them.
Doubts, memories, and fears began to invade Kane’s mind. He gritted his teeth and ignored the mental attacks.
The sky above cracked again.
Something large emerged.
A shape with three heads, each one murmuring his name. Long limbs, like branches made of stitched muscle, extended toward him.
It moved slowly, but it felt heavier than the world itself.
Kane took a deep breath, and swung his sword.
Sword, O Sword,
Cut mine enemies.
A crack of light burst out. The sky itself split along the line and the creature.
Then, the sky turned over.
One moment, Kane was walking over the air.
The next, the ground tore upward, flipped, and became the sky.
Clouds bled downward like broken water, and the stars spiraled into a screaming eye that blinked only once before it dissolved into teeth.
Kane gritted his teeth and stood still.
The longer the nightmare world spent without its Pillar, the weaker its foundation became.
And it allowed the Nightmare World to use more direct methods to eliminate its targets while ignoring the rules.
The world warped.
All around him, space twisted.
Up meant nothing.
Distance lied.
His sense of direction tried to slip from his grasp like water from cupped hands.
Then came the new wave.
Creatures dropped from the broken sky. They had no shapes or forms.
Kane couldn’t even see them with his eyes.
All he could do was sense them through Intent and Elementals.
The creatures were… suggestions of form, or so Kane felt.
They slithered, floated, jerked, then reassembled themselves into something even less coherent.
Flesh that pulsed with eyes.
Arms that had mouths for joints.
They didn’t walk. They existed.
And they hated him.
Kane moved.
His step cracked the fabric of this twisted, falling reality.
He slashed through the nearest mass, and Severent split it in half. The enemy had no form, but that didn’t matter to Severent.
It would cut everything. Be it soul, physical body, or the conceptual existence.
The ‘existence’ of the creature collapsed into two halves, each half too weakened to exist.
But before Kane could breathe, and attack another one, space folded again.
He blinked—
—and now he was inside a black cathedral where the pews were rows of his own lifeless body. A choir sang in voices that belonged to people he’d killed.
Kane didn’t flinch. He stepped forward. Severent glowed dark violet.
Demon Sword Technique: Steps of Bane
He vanished.
And in the next instant, he reappeared above the barrier where he had been standing before, as if he had never left.
The Nightmare World roared.
Seeing Kane return in an instant, the Nightmare World was angered.
Another swarm of creature – thoughts – descended. This time, they didn’t attack with claws. They spoke.
“You could’ve saved them.”
Kane’s hand trembled for a moment.
The air in front of him shimmered. Then it broke apart like glass.
From the shards stepped two figures. A woman. A girl, who looked similar to the woman but younger.
His wife’s eyes were empty.
“You said you’d protect me.”
His daughter’s voice echoed.
“You’re letting Tartarus die. I could’ve lived again.”
Kane stared at them for a second, burning their figures in his eyes.
Then he drew a line in the air with Severent. The world didn’t cut.
But the feeling did.
Their faces faltered. The figures stuttered.
His daughter became a smudge of color with her voice still echoing.
His wife’s arms lengthened into ropes. Their forms collapsed back into the Nightmare World.
Kane breathed once. Just once.
Then the sky fell again.
He looked up to see an eye wider than a world staring down. It blinked and the world screamed.
A storm of eldritch things surged forward. Long limbs. Shapes like scribbled madness.
Wings made of smoke and thunder. Some didn’t move in any direction that existed.
Kane gripped Severent in both hands and twisted his stance.
Demon Sword Technique: Realm Splitter
He swung wide, and the world cracked.
A clean line split the clouds, the creatures, and the sky itself. Space bent around the cut. For one breath, everything stopped.
And then it fell apart.
But the Nightmare World never ran out. It didn’t care about pain. It didn’t fear loss. It wasn’t alive, not truly. It was fear itself, memory given form, madness uncontained.
It didn’t have to win. It just had to wear him down.
Another shift.
Kane found himself inside a city of bones. Every building was a coffin. The roads were paved with teeth. He couldn’t breathe here, but it didn’t matter.
He vanished—
—and reappeared again, sword raised, as another wave struck from above.
He cut three times.
The first strike tore apart a giant that had no body, only strings.
The second split a laughing cloud of black birds that screamed in his mother’s voice.
The third—
Sword, O Sword,
Cut mine enemies
A massive cross-shaped arc of violet light exploded from his blade, carving a canyon through the storm.
The energy split the creatures into two halves and disintegrated the pieces.
Behind him, the barrier shuddered due to the sheer force of the shockwaves, but it didn’t fall.
Neo was still fighting inside.
Kane couldn’t stop. He had to buy as much time for him as possible.
Another vision flashed. His wife reappeared. Not accusing this time, but begging.
“Please, save our daughter.”
His daughter reached out with hands that looked exactly like his.
“Shut up,” he growled. “Shut up!”
He moved through the illusions. Cut through the guilt.
Each nightmare tried to grab at something deeper. Memories. Regrets. Fears he’d buried so long ago they barely had names.
He struck again.
Demon Sword Technique: Emotion Severance
A pulse of energy spread in a ripple. Every nightmare in several hundred-thousand-mile radius halted.
Their forms cracked, then split as if they’d been peeled apart from the soul outward.
And still… the sky screamed.
The Nightmare World was getting desperate. The ground flipped again. Gravity disappeared. Then returned sideways.
Kane was flung into a desert made of melting clocks and towers of weeping stone.
It didn’t matter.
Kane reappeared at his place above the dome.
He was breathing through gritted teeth.
His coat was torn. His body bruised before he had realized it. Blood dripped from his mouth, but his grip on Severent didn’t weaken.
The world shifted again.
More shapes came. Faster. Uglier. Angrier.
Kane planted one foot forward.
Demon Sword Technique: Nightless Horizon
A wall of sword light erupted behind him and stretched into infinity. It formed a path. A wall. A gate. Nothing could pass through it without being divided.
The nightmares crashed against it, and broke.
But the Nightmare world refused to give up.
From its broken beasts, withered giants with screaming mouths, spiders made of stitched children, serpents of smoke and bone.
Kane moved. Severent flashed.
One cut split ten.
Another shattered sound itself.
Limbs fell. Wings dissolved.
Kane fought them alone, high above a dying sky.
He was tired. His limbs were trembling from being forced to their limit.
But his will hadn’t moved.
This was his stand. He wouldn’t fall.
Not yet.
Not until Neo finished what they started.