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It's a few thousand Cycles after the start when he's forced to kill Mydei for the first time.
Khaslana thinks, out of everything, that might be the part he hates the most. His friends' deaths at his own hands never get easier no matter how many of them fall. Mydei, though, is the worst of them all.
(He doesn't realize yet that this is the first time out of millions. That this cycle that he's locked himself into will not end without outside interference, not until Khaslana himself has been torn to shreds, until he's given up on keeping his physical body intact, until he's pushed almost twenty million Cycles even past that point. That, in a few million more years, he won't even blink as he stabs.)
This first time, Khaslana hesitates.
If he moves, Dawnmaker will finish the job. He's barely brushing Mydei's weak point, that single vertebra in his back immune from his curse of immortality, and could sever that life so, so easily. It would be his forty thousandth Coreflame, the warmth already starting to push far past what could be considered comfortable.
(It'll burn him to ashes, one day. It'll destroy him from the inside out, torch his humanity, crack his skin, burn so bright there won't be a Khaslana left to keep going, and yet he will keep going anyway. It's already starting.)
He can't keep Mydeimos down long enough to debate, though. The newest Demigod of Strife is far too strong for that. Khaslana is tossed aside as easily as if this was a practice battle.
"You're not Phainon," says Mydei. "Phainon wouldn't hesitate."
Khaslana grits his teeth. He has to do this. He has to. The others don't realize that he's doing this to save them. They don't know the Era Nova is false, that there's nothing beyond the end of their world, that he might be their only chance at ever escaping this.
No matter. They don't have to listen. He'll succeed whether or not they're cooperating, because he saw these last Cycles how the friendly route went, and at least once it ended in his suicide. (To this day, he's still not sure which version of himself survived.) The only way for this to end is this.
His sword glances off Mydei's gauntlet again, then is deflected by a burst of crimson crystal, then swings wide. He's not focusing hard enough. He's fought Mydei hundreds of times by now on the training grounds, he's had decades of practice, he should be able to do this.
Dawnmaker splits flesh far too easily. All it takes is one stumble from Mydei, and he isn't hesitating this time. Any other wound would heal quickly enough that it wouldn't matter, but any other wound would still affect him.
The sword glances off Mydei's gauntlets and slips down towards his ankle, easily severing his Achilles tendon. The leg suddenly drops out from under him, and he falls with a sharp oof.
This is Khaslana's one chance to seize the Coreflame of Strife.
They could have had a life together. In the Era Nova, he could have visited that library Mydei had been so proud of. They wouldn't have had to fight anymore. For the first time in his long, long life, Khaslana could have rested.
Instead he stabs downwards. Rest doesn't come to people like him.