"Aim a red arrow at my heart," Noor challenged, his voice eerily steady. "If you strike me, then you haven’t been claimed by senility and frailty. If you miss... I will leave the judgment to you. I promise I won’t move an inch. And I assure you, this is the real me, not an optical clone."

A broad, wicked smile spread across Hugo’s face. He dipped his brush into the crimson paint, swiftly sketching a razor-sharp arrow in the air.

"With the utmost pleasure," he purred.

Noor glanced at his watch and let out a quiet sigh of relief.

Hugo drew back the painted bowstring, taking aim. But as he focused, Noor seemed to fracture into five shadowy silhouettes before snapping back into a single form.

The General’s head swam.

Now the five Noors were back, spinning around him in dizzying, endless circles. Hugo’s heart seized, his chest tightening with a profound, unfamiliar panic. Had he lost his mind? Had he suffered a traumatic brain injury? Or was he simply no longer capable of facing a fierce, cunning opponent like this boy? Were his battle wounds finally taking their toll on his sanity?

The questions battered his mind, contorting his face into a mask of dread.

He abruptly canceled the arrow. Plunging his brush into the green paint, he hastily slathered it over his own head and face, desperate to heal whatever hidden fracture was distorting his vision.

All the while, Noor’s mocking laughter echoed around him, the boy covering his mouth with a hand to barely hide his gloating.

Mustering his confidence, Hugo forged another arrow and took aim, certain the glitch in his brain was fixed.

But his vision only splintered further.

"Die, you cursed demon!" he roared, releasing the projectile.

The arrow tore through the air, whistling just past Noor’s head and embedding itself deep into the backrest of the plush chair.

Noor offered a slow, deliberate clap.

"Well done. That was close," he taunted softly. "But you missed. My heart is quite far from where your arrow landed."

The General completely unraveled. In a fit of frustrated rage, he painted dozens of arrows at once.

Noor knew then that he had succeeded; he had shattered the man’s self-doubt.

Suddenly, a heavy iron cage dropped from the ceiling, slamming down over the General and crushing the red projectiles he was about to launch.

Hugo loaded his brush with pink paint, scoffing.

"Do you truly think a cage like this can hold me, boy?"

He smeared the acidic pink substance across the iron bars, which immediately began to sizzle and melt.

But as the metal gave way, Hugo realized the very room was warping around him.

The walls shifted.

Broad, brown wooden benches sprouted behind him, resembling a courtroom gallery. Before him, a massive wooden dais rose from the floor, bearing a wide magistrate’s desk flanked by several tall chairs.

Noor’s attire morphed into the flowing black robes of a judge.

The boy grasped a heavy wooden gavel and slammed it against the desk.

"This court sentences Hugo—murderer of thousands of innocent children and defenseless civilians—to death by execution," Noor’s voice boomed with unnatural authority.

The spectral figure of Lalla appeared before the melting cage.

"Murderer," she whispered, her voice carrying a chilling sorrow. "For what sin did you kill me?"

To his right, the phantom of Meshdal materialized.

"Butcher. Criminal," the man accused.

Hugo’s features contorted in sheer terror. He stared wildly at the dissolving bars and frantically scrubbed them with more acid, desperate to break free.

Then, Malha appeared inside the cage with him.

"I wanted to live," she said, her eyes hollow. "I deserved to live. Why did you steal that from me?"

Hugo shrieked, spinning around and striking her with his fist, but she burst into vapor like a mirage.

He whirled on the judge’s bench.

"Fight me like a man!" Hugo bellowed, his voice cracking. "Stop with your filthy tricks! You know who would win if you faced me man-to-man!"

A voice whispered right behind his ear.

Noor materialized inside the cage.

"But I gave you the chance to strike my heart, and you failed, you senile old fool."

Noor vanished just as a massive dark sheet draped over the cage.

But the bars had melted enough for Hugo to squeeze through. He lunged out, shoving the heavy fabric aside—only to find himself plummeting into an endless void.

He screamed.

Rushing up to meet him was a pit of razor-sharp spikes.

Reacting on pure instinct, he jammed his brush into the yellow paint and fired a sticky rope upward. It caught onto something unseen, jerking him to a halt mere feet above the deadly spikes.

He gasped for breath, his heart hammering against his ribs, and began to haul himself up the rope.

His vision was a chaotic, swimming mess.

The sheer terror and helplessness paralyzed his ability to think rationally. He no longer knew what he was fighting. Phantoms lurked everywhere, the world constantly shifting and breaking around him.

Moonlight had betrayed him.

The Enix had cast him aside.

He had fought for illusions his entire life.

He should have remained a simple artist, painting for the people. Art was the weapon of the oppressed, and he had been oppressed during the era of the monks. He had devoted himself to painting the suffering of the Franks under their rule, until they hailed him as the "Artist of the Revolution."

But he had hungered for more.

He wanted immortality in the annals of history, so he joined Darleon’s army, gained his unique powers, and began his crusade to conquer cosmic civilizations.

And now?

Now he was doomed to die a hideous death on this primitive rock. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

What a miserable fate.

No.

He would never accept this.

Not before he had his revenge.

Suddenly, the deadly spikes below began rocketing upward toward him.

Panicking, Hugo scrambled up the rope with desperate speed. He crested the edge, hauling himself out of the death pit and collapsing onto his stomach, panting heavily.

When he looked up, Noor was standing over him.

"I painted one final masterpiece for you," the boy said quietly.

Hugo lifted his head.

Looming before him was a massive canvas depicting him plunging a red blade into his own chest, committing suicide. The painting captured a profound, pathetic despair on his face, while the corpses of dozens of Ghlizan children surrounded him, pointing and laughing in cruel mockery.

Hugo staggered to his feet, shrieking in denial. He furiously painted a jagged red blade and leveled it at Noor.

"This never happened! Do you think you can smear my glorious history, you lying bastard?!"

He unleashed a barrage of red arrows at the boy.

But the projectiles phased harmlessly through Noor’s body, struck an unseen wall behind him, and ricocheted back with lethal velocity—burying themselves deep into Hugo’s own chest.

The optical clone vanished.

The real Noor stood on an elevated theater stage, looking down at him.

"And so the performance concludes," Noor announced to an unseen audience, "with the General taking his own life, consumed by remorse for the atrocities he committed."

A phantom audience of Ghlizan children erupted into applause.

Noor clapped his own hands once, and heavy red curtains swept closed.

Hugo crashed to his knees.

The phantom arrows had somehow become real, piercing his heart and lungs. He clawed at them, but the agony was blinding.

Grinding his teeth, he gathered the last, desperate dregs of his strength. He plunged his brush into every color on his palette, one after another, until all seven hues swirled together in chaotic unity.

"I will not die alone!" he unleashed a final, bloodcurdling roar.

Noor heard the threat and spotted a blinding, kaleidoscopic glow radiating from behind the curtain.

Instantly forging a thick defensive wall in front of himself, he bolted for the building’s exit.

But the entire structure erupted in a cataclysmic explosion.

Everything shattered and collapsed.

Noor leaped desperately, dodging falling debris, trying to alter the architecture of the building with his imagination to carve out an escape route.

But the searing, rainbow-colored shockwave chased him down.

It slammed into him with the force of a meteor, shattering his bones and launching him violently out of the collapsing structure, reducing the entire building to dust in its wake.

Noor hit the ground.

His ribcage felt like powdered glass; every ragged breath was a battle.

He lay crumpled in the dirt, blood streaming from every pore. The excruciating agony of his shattered bones dragged him to the edge of unconsciousness—his nervous system was simply not designed to withstand such catastrophic trauma all at once.

He let out a silent, ragged sob, tears streaming down his face from the sheer, unendurable pain.

General Hugo had never been an easy prey.

He truly was the Commander of the Third Army.

Facing a man of that caliber came with brutal consequences.

Noor wanted to scream, but the blood welling in his throat choked the sound.

Moments later, his overloaded nervous system shut down, and he plummeted into darkness.

Hugo would never know that Noor had nicked him earlier with a dart laced with a powerful hallucinogen.

The General had been immensely powerful, and he died powerful, but he perished oblivious to the fact that his mind had been chemically and psychologically hijacked.

Noor had systematically dismantled his blind confidence, his pride, and his arrogance.

Hugo died never knowing that Noor was not an Enix, that Moonlight hadn’t betrayed him, and that the Franks High Command still believed in his ability to conquer Ghlizan and defeat the Prince.

History would forever record the confrontation between Noor and General Hugo as undeniable proof of a singular truth:

Illusion kills.

As Noor lay senseless in the dust, a quiet set of footsteps approached, stopping just behind his broken body.

"You endured all this agony, destroyed your own body and soul," a calm voice murmured over him. "For what? Revenge? Justice? Or in a desperate attempt to reclaim the dignity that was stolen from you?"