The chamber seemed to pulse with a life of its own, shadows stretching unnaturally, walls bending subtly under the oppressive weight of the Arch Demon Mage's aura. Wads and Reiyell had moved with calculated precision, but the moment the mage acknowledged them as threats, the air changed. Energy hummed violently, each footstep now resonating like a drum in a hall of steel.
Wads' grip on the chain connecting them tightened. Even tethered, he moved with a fluidity borne of months of training, his gravity manipulations warping the space around them, subtly redirecting energy from the mage's attacks. Reiyell's cryomancy flared in tandem, her ice forming into blades and jagged shields with surgical precision, deflecting attacks that should have shattered them. Yet each strike from the mage was heavier, sharper, calculated with a precision that no ordinary enemy could achieve.
For the first time since they entered this hall, Wads and Reiyell felt the raw magnitude of the threat. The mage's staff carved arcs of distorted air, each swing bending the very laws of gravity, each pulse radiating a weight that made the floor quiver. Wads adjusted, manipulating the localized gravity around them, trying to slow the kinetic onslaught, but the force was relentless.
Reiyell's ice clashed against the mage's invisible wards, her breath short. "He's… he's not just strong—he's rewriting the battlefield itself," she said, her tone calm but strained. Her eyes, the vibrant indicolite and sapphire mixture, glimmered as she formed a frozen lattice around her sword, preparing for her next strike.
Wads' mind raced, threads of probability stretching, snapping, and reforming in rapid succession. Every possible outcome ran through his consciousness at once, a kaleidoscope of calculations in seconds. Gravity Lattice pulsed around them, shifting trajectories, slowing attacks, redirecting energy, but he could feel the mage probing, testing, anticipating. Every second was a life-and-death negotiation.
The Arch Demon Mage paused momentarily, his eyes narrowing as though focusing on a single detail in Wads' movements. A faint, almost imperceptible gasp escaped his lips, and he muttered something under his breath—a phrase partially lost in the chamber's oppressive hum. Only he could hear it, but the words carried weight.
"So… you're the chosen one…" The sentence hung in the air, jagged and fragmented, almost like a prophecy half-uttered, the implication cutting through the very foundation of the hall. Wads did not hear it, but the mage's focus had shifted, a flicker of recognition flashing through his terrifyingly controlled expression.
Wads adjusted his stance. "Now," he muttered, almost to himself, threads of Seer igniting, probability warping around him. The locket around his neck glimmered faintly, a pulse of energy resonating through him. A cold certainty settled in his chest. He activated the locket's hidden potential.
Time slowed. Wads' perception fractured—Chrono-Tilt desynchronizing his flow from reality itself. A fraction of the chamber's seconds became an eternity in his mind. Gravity bent around him, threads of probability converging, shaping reality toward the outcome he meticulously planned. Every action, every reaction, every attack and counterattack bent subtly to his anticipation.
The Arch Demon Mage's aura flared violently, sensing the shift. The locket's energy painted the battlefield in unnatural hues of silver and black, and the mage staggered slightly, eyes widening. Only he knew the significance of this artifact. The air itself seemed to quake under Wads' manipulation.
Reiyell, refusing to be overshadowed, pushed beyond her limits. Frost surged from her fingertips, coalescing into an intricate lattice of ice and energy around her and Wads. Absolute Zero—the pinnacle of her cryomancy—manifested in a targeted zone, freezing even the magical currents that the mage tried to manipulate. The air cracked and shimmered as reality itself paused for the briefest of moments.
The Arch Demon Mage countered, unleashing the full spectrum of his diety-level power. Gravity bent and twisted around him, fire and shadow intertwining with the sheer force of his will. The chamber shook, dust and stone spiraling in a whirlwind of impossible physics. Wads' gravity distortions held, but the strain was immense, every thread pulling at his consciousness. Reiyell's ice flickered but held, forming a radiant barrier of glacial precision.
Wads' eyes fractured into clock-like visions, silver threads stretching outward. Omniscient Shade activated—probability itself bending toward the events he envisioned. Each step he took, each shift of his hand, each pulse of energy, orchestrated the battlefield with meticulous calculation.
The mage's staff slammed into the floor, cracking stone as the chamber groaned. A pulse of energy radiated outward, warping light and space. Reiyell dodged and countered, launching an ice blade, but the mage's aura twisted, redirecting the strike harmlessly to the side. Wads saw the split-second gap, a minor miscalculation in the mage's defenses. He adjusted, threads of Seer predicting the optimal trajectory, gravity bending to propel him forward, and struck.
The battle escalated beyond comprehension. Wads activated Aetherial Eclipse—his ultimate, reality-shaping ability. The ground cracked, floating shards suspended in midair. Gravity lost coherence, objects and energies were tossed, twisted, accelerated unpredictably. Shadows lengthened and contorted, light fractured into impossible angles, and time itself seemed to waver around them. Wads' will dictated the battlefield; matter and energy warped, all aligned toward the outcome he had determined.
The mage was caught off-guard but not unskilled. He unleashed torrents of energy, attempting to resist, but Wads' calculation and the locket's latent energy combined to bend the very laws of cause and effect. Probability threads snapped, aligning the world to Wads' chosen result.
Reiyell pushed forward with Absolute Zero, freezing energy, momentarily halting even the mage's manipulation. Ice crystallized midair, glowing with her indomitable precision. For a fleeting moment, the chamber was still—no motion, no heat, no sound, only the glimmer of frost and the suspended reality orchestrated by Wads' eclipse.
Then, reality snapped. The mage staggered, energy distorted and broken by Wads' perfect alignment of cause and effect. He raised his staff in a final, defiant surge of magic, only for it to falter against the impossible, godlike precision of Aetherial Eclipse. Wads' power consumed the space around him, every variable locked, every outcome resolved, and the Arch Demon Mage fell, his form dissolving into fragments of warped energy, leaving the chamber trembling in the aftermath.
The silence that followed was deafening. Reiyell's chest heaved, her ice-form dissipating slowly, her hands trembling ever so slightly. She looked at Wads, eyes wide with shock and awe, the reality of his power settling in. He had bent reality itself.
The mage, even in his final moments, looked at Wads with a mix of fear and admiration. "Beautiful… terrifying… out of this world…" His voice faded, the last vestiges of power dissipating, leaving nothing but echoes.
Wads, overexerted beyond anything he had endured before, finally slumped, consciousness slipping away. Gravity, probability, and time snapped back to their natural course, leaving him weak, floating slightly in Reiyell's grasp as she caught him instinctively.
His last awareness was of her voice, laced with concern and something unspoken, calling out to him: "Wads… wake up…"
And then, darkness.