Lucien emerged into the arena exactly as the Council had promised him—a world that was sewn together by fractured time and a unsteady space. The ground beneath Lucien his boots rippled like oil upon water. It was a translucent surface that winked between solidity and void. All around him, nothing obeyed logic and reality: gravity pulled him sideways and then dragged him down to his knees, and pillars of light floated without bases. The sky above was stitched from midnight and dawn, interwoven with the blood-red glare of ruptured stars.
But he stayed calm and inhaled slowly. The air tasted of ozone, fear, and something burning deep within himself. The ring Kisuke had given him the night before glowed faintly at his chest, pulsing like a heartbeat in time with the arena's pulse. Some cosmic metronome had started, counting down the moment the final hunter would appear in front of him.
Lucien's companions—Rylen, Jason, Emiluna,Karu, Ayumu, Cho, Kagetsu, Lisa, Kisuke—for Lucien it was a suprise too see them. They all stood at the boundary line, their forms flickering like ghosts through layered realities. Even they seemed ephemeral, caught between different lifetimes. They nodded as one. Lucien saw unity in their eyes, but they could not follow him inside. His trial was solitary.
Then a big tear in the shimmering void cracked open above the battlefield arena. From that breach poured innumerable motes of light and darkness, swirling and condensing until they formed a single figure. It took Lucien several seconds to register the shift that happened: The Sovereign Warden, Seryx, had arrived on the battlefield.
He stood tall—almost 7 feet in height—with a silhouette that flickered between a perfect human form and something fractal, geometric, and utterly alien. His skin was shining in metallic obsidian that absorbed light like an abyss. From one of his shoulders sprouted around a hundred floating blades that hummed with temporal energy, each one echoing Lucien's own past movements, as if taunting him.
Seryx raised his right hand—rather, he became a pale hand, his form dissolving into motion blur. Then he reassembled in a dozen spatial copies of himself. Lucien's eyes narrowed; the Council's warning echoed through his mind: defeat the hunter that was forged from yourself, or fail and die.
Seryx spoke to Lucien. His voice sounded like the voice of a devil. It was many voices layered: laughter, childish, sorrow, command, void."You fear me not for my strength, but for what I reflect. I am your potential, broken. I walk forward so you see the path you refuse to tread."
Without further warning, Seryx struck the ground with his obsidian fist. The whole arena fractured beneath Lucien's feet. Lucien leapt back and almost fell for a second, flame spooling across his palms. As he landed, he realized it immediately: the attack had passed through time and space. It looked like he'd taken no damage at the point of contact—but the pain ricocheted through every joint, every muscle and every nerve. The damage displacement manifested instantly: the strike hadn't hit him, but his entire body registered the blow like a broken chord reverberating across flesh.
Lucien gasped, his vision blurring. He almost passed out but before he could steady himself, Seryx vanished. At one point he stood inches from Lucien's shoulder; the next, he was twenty paces behind, slicing air with spectral blades. It felt impossible—until Lucien activated his Purgeflame Pulse, carving arcs of white flame through the chaos. Seryx reacted with Mirror Echo—each strike that Lucien threw at him was copied and projected back at Lucien's weaker side.
But Seryx had more to show. He faded from sight entirely—turning invisible—before Lucien could even process what was happening Seryx reappeared in Lucien's peripheral vision. A flicker of light, a whisper of cloak; then his hand plunged into Lucien's chest. Lucien felt nothing at the moment Seryx made contact. Then warmth bloomed under his arm as Seryx manipulated the blood itself—their shared lifeforce pulsed in sync. Lucien staggered onto his knees, tasting copper on his tongue. But Seryx was already gone, slashing through space to re-emerge at Lucien's flank.
Seryx's next display of power was incomprehensible. Lucien had never seen this before. He had never seen this kind of speed and power. He slipped through causal boundaries using Temporal Mirage: alternate versions of Lucien—older, younger, darker, soulless—swarmed him like living visions of fears. Each projection struck with delayed force: Lucien would feel the blow trivia seconds later, echoing across time like ripples in a pond.
The arena bent and cracked with each strike. Columns grew inverted, waterfalls climbed into the sky, time fluxed into knots. Lucien pivoted to his left, using every ounce of training and preparation—his hands glowed in cosmic light, his boots burned with static energy. He is used his X-ray lasers and his telekenesis. He summoned all he'd learned from Division V. Still, each hit he delivered was mirrored back by Mimic Pulse—his own techniques turned against him, stronger, faster, colder.
Seryx's regeneration defied reason. Wounds Lucien knew should have incapacitated the hunter closed in an instant like they never even happened. It was as if each strike merely registered a memory and then healed—healed into something sharper, smarter.
Lucien staggered back to the ruined center of the arena, fists humming with energy. Using his first regeneration. The ring pulsed at his chest like a drumbeat—steady, unyielding. He inhaled through grit between his teeth. "If you are me," he called out, voice echoing across the fractured world, "then prove it—let me see your beginning!"
Seryx paused mid-stride. The blades around him slowed down aswell. For the first time that Lucien got in here, there was stillness in synthesis with Lucien's heartbeat. Seryx's mask-like face flickered, revealing ghostly glints of Lucien's own reflection—his doubt, his fear, his anger.
"This isn't about destruction or killing each other," Lucien whispered. "It's about defiance."
He thrust his palms forward. A white sphere of searing flame formed between them—Soulfire Pulse, born from choice not power, from sacrifice not obligation. He unleashed it as the hurricane of his conviction, a single command sculpted from identity.
The Pulse struck Seryx's mid section. For a single heartbeat, something true and human coursed through the hunter's obsidian shell. It cracked—tiny fractures of light resembled tears—before Seryx's regeneration sealed them. And still Lucien did not relent.
As the hunter rose again, Seryx's mask split open. From the crack spilled light—fragile, human, defiant. A quiet voice rose in harmony with the explosion:
"You are not the true God of Vengenace. You are a mere human."
Seryx collapsed to one knee, head bowing in front of Lucien just as dozens of mirror-shadows of Lucien overloaded the arena's vision. Athick fog of possibility clouded time itself.
Lucien stood tall for the first time amid the shards of broken floor and warped pillars. Around the ring at a distance, Division V watched in complete silence. The air around Lucien crackled with his white flame, the ring on his chest pulsed with steadfast purpose, and time itself seemed to snap back into resonance.
Lucien's next breath carried the gravity of worlds. He adjusted his glove, tensed his leg, dialed his soulfire deeper.
And then—silence.