Bellowing through a throat soaked in blood, Oakley drove forward like a freight train, dragging Fuankilo’s impaled body with the momentum of a man possessed. The furnace loomed ahead, swollen with molten steel, its surface blistering the air with every breath.
“Let the hammer fall, and remember the name of the man who swings it!” he roared. “I am Oakley Mercury!!”
The spear, still skewering her from lower back to gut, struck the side of the furnace with a sickening, final crunch.
Click.
A mechanical snap echoed through the smog-choked foundry.
And then a detonation.
The second explosion of the night ripped through the room like divine judgment. Though Oakley had released the weapon a heartbeat before the blast, the concussive force still smashed into him head-on, hurling him like shrapnel across the steelworks. He bounced off a support beam, then skidded along the floor in a battered heap, blood streaking the ground behind him.
“Ugh… ngh—”
Half-conscious, he lifted his head.
A hole yawned in the side of the furnace, over a meter wide, melted open by the embedded explosive. From it, incandescent liquid metal burst forth in a glowing torrent, the roar of its release nearly drowning out Oakley’s shallow, rattling breath.
Then came the scream.
Shrill. Piercing. Unrelenting.
It wasn’t the sound of pain. It was the sound of raw, animal terror.
His vision, blurry and blood-slicked, began to clear just enough for him to make out the figure writhing atop the pool of molten steel.
Fuankilo.
Her silhouette was aflame, her skin sloughing off in steaming ribbons. The molten metal had drenched her from above, cascading over her like divine punishment. Her arms flailed blindly, fingers melted to bone, her jaw frozen in a silent scream even as her throat tore itself ragged from howling.
It was a grotesque sight, precisely the one Oakley had gambled everything to create.
Even with her regenerative magic, there was no hope. Not this time. The extreme temperature overwhelmed any healing her body tried to perform. Every new layer of flesh born from magic was seared away the moment it formed. Her body was locked in a loop of suffering, trapped in the flames of her own demise.
The fake blood trail. The planted robe. The decoy corpse. Every piece had fallen into place. Every second had counted.
In the end, it had worked.
Bracing against the wall, Oakley limped closer.
Fuankilo’s lower body was gone, having been destroyed in the explosion. What remained of her torso was being steadily devoured by the lake of liquid fire she’d fallen into.
She was dying, truly dying.
He looked down at her, expression unreadable, jaw tight.
She writhed. Flailed. Smoke wreathed her like a funeral shroud. From within that seething, skeletal mess, her voice—ragged and cracking—tore free:
“I… I don’t want to die!”
Perhaps mimicking Joanne’s trick, Fuankilo hurled a half-melted chunk of her own flesh toward safety—some futile attempt to anchor her soul to a vessel beyond the flames.
It hit the ground with a wet splat, let out a sizzling screech, then blackened into ash.
Oakley took a step closer, each breath labored, but his gaze unflinching.
“This is your reckoning.”
Fuankilo’s world was fire.
The heat—transcendent, apocalyptic—devoured every nerve, every cell, every delusion of immortality. Her regenerative magic, once her absolute shield, now only prolonged the agony. Her body tried desperately to repair itself even as the flames consumed it, one futile heartbeat at a time.
She still clung to life.
Faces floated before her in the inferno, grotesque and warped—faces of the people she had killed. Their mouths twisted with curses, their eyes paralyzed with fear.
So many. So many had begged for their lives. So many had screamed.
And she… had laughed.
She hadn’t cared. Not once. Their terror had never touched her. Their deaths had been a game, a reminder of her superiority.
That’s right, isn’t it?
I can’t die. This isn’t real. It’s just… just another show, right?
“No… no, this can’t be real…”
Her remaining tissue began to blacken and crumble. Protein seared and peeled from bone. The scent of burning flesh hung heavy, suffocating.
She still didn’t understand.
Some part of her—some wretched, prideful fragment—was still laughing because it was impossible. Ridiculous. She couldn’t die. She was special. She was chosen. This wasn’t how her story ended.
But then…
Then came the real fear.
Not a phantom, not an echo, but the primal certainty of death. It split through her like an ax to the skull, and everything—everything—crashed down.
The pain multiplied.
The terror bloomed.
No, no, no, I don’t want to die. Someone help me help me please—
“I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!!!” she shrieked in a voice no longer her own. Her body, disintegrating. Her mind, unraveling.
Oakley, watching it all unfold, whispered, quiet and cruel, “The people you killed said the same thing, didn’t they?”
The words struck harder than the flames.
For the first time in her life, Fuankilo understood.
Each life she had toyed with had meant everything to someone. Each cry for mercy had come from a soul fighting not to disappear. Every victim had been just like her.
And now, she was them.
This was justice.
Her last thought came not with rage but clarity.
“Oh… I see.”
Fuankilo Legacy shed a single tear as her flesh burned away. A tear no one saw.
And in the end, her body left nothing behind.