Caelum's breathing came in gasps. "Brother?—"
"But she falls because of you." Dante stopped an arm's length away. Close enough to smell his fear. "And I choose nothing for you. No mercy. No restraint. No gentleness."
His hand moved to his right glove.
"I am the Reaper." His fingers found the edge. "I am the monster every soul fears. I am what walks in your nightmares and whispers in your final moments."
He pulled the glove off.
Slowly. Deliberately.
Let Caelum see his bare hand. Let him understand exactly what was coming. Let terror have time to sink in.
The skin was pale—almost normal—Except for the way reality bent away from it. The way the air avoided contact. The way the stone cracked where his fingers passed.
This was the hand that had harvested countless souls over millennia. That could drain life with a touch. That had earned him the name every soul whispered with terror.
"You took her from me."
His bare hand reached out.
Caelum tried to scream.
Dante's fingers closed around his throat.
"Now let me show you what happens when you steal from the Reaper.”
He let his true nature rise fully. Let himself be exactly what he was born to be.
Caelum's light started to dim. Slowly. Because Dante wasn't just killing him.
He was erasing him.
Every soul's essence Caelum had harvested. Every piece of magic, memory, consciousness. All of it flowing into Dante's hand, being drawn out like poison from a wound.
Caelum's scream lasted three seconds before his voice gave out.
Dante didn't stop.
He felt Caelum's stolen power flooding through his palm. Felt the souls Caelum had consumed crying out as they were torn free—thousands of them, finally released from their prison of peaceful oblivion. Finally allowed to feel again, even if what they felt was the agony of their captor's destruction.
Let them feel it. Let them know their torturer burns.
Caelum's features cracked. Skin splitting, form fragmenting as the magic holding it together was torn away.
His eyes went dull. Awareness fading like candles snuffed out one by one.
But still conscious enough to feel it happening. Still aware enough to understand that this was worse than death. That this was erasure.
Dante squeezed harder.
Caelum's mouth moved. Forming soundless words. Maybe begging. Maybe apologizing.
Dante didn't care.
The harvesting intensified. Every second stripping away more until there was nothing left.
Just a shell. Empty. Everything that had made him a Death Lord—gone.
