"And it's not even the fact that you can blatantly rip away the 'effects.' It's the fact that you were still following the rules of Causality. Every action demands a reaction… so where is the reaction?" Zenith rose slowly, stretching his hands into the void as though plucking something from the marrow of reality itself.
Morgur forced his swollen eyes to lift and lock onto him. Pain burned through every shattered bone, every mangled nerve, yet it was worth it. Zenith needed to see his hatred. If Morgur was to be disgraced, then let his fury sear itself into memory.
A disgrace worth experiencing, he told himself. But I'm not done. The final strike is still necessary to set everything into motion. I may die, Zenith, but my purpose shall live on. His thoughts boiled into a maniacal laughter he could no longer muster with his ruined throat.
"Let me guess… I was to bear the full brunt of my own attacks? Tethering those very 'effects' back to me." Zenith's voice was clinical, fascinated, like a surgeon dissecting flesh with no regard for the pain inflicted. "I see. So the flow of Causality isn't restricted by the concept of time but instead by the concept of Eventuality? As long as these 'effects' eventually play out, then Causality finds no fault in what you've done. Fascinating."
Countless, ethereal, white threads unfurled out of nothingness. Zenith grasped them with deliberate precision and tore them free.
Morgur's heart skipped a beat. The sight of Zenith handling those threads was the one possibility he had prayed to avoid. Terror gnawed at him as though fate itself was mocking his ingenuity.
"I was indeed correct," Zenith continued, his tone now carrying the subtle edge of finality. "Your plan was for me to suffer the full brunt of my own attacks. Not bad, child. But you see…" He sighed, his interest waning. "What you call a battle has been little more than a one-sided beating. And frankly, I grow bored."
He halted mid-sentence, his piercing gaze drifting elsewhere. His eyes narrowed, not on Isabella and Talen, whose positions he had known all along, but at something… new. Something uninvited.
"Another child burning with incredible vitality." His words were low, almost to himself, tinged with faint irritation. "Unfortunate. I really do not have the time to enjoy myself as I'd prefer."
His attention returned to Morgur, who, due to the wreckage of his body, could no longer maintain his facade. His form shifted back, revealing a young man in his early twenties, his short brown hair matted with blood, his bruised features twisted with equal parts defiance and fear.
"I can see your malice, boy." Zenith's voice was sharp yet calm, as if reading scripture aloud. His hands worked the white threads with inhuman speed, weaving them into a tight, glowing orb that pulsed like a divine heart.
With a simple gesture, he stretched his hand over Morgur's broken body and plucked at the unseen strands above it.
Morgur convulsed as his ravaged flesh began to knit itself whole. Bruises faded. Bones aligned. His body reversed into pristine condition, untouched, unscarred.
"What?!" Morgur's voice cracked with disbelief. To halt the consequence of a cause before it manifested, yes, that was plausible. But to reverse what had already been written into reality? That was blasphemy against Causality itself. Something that should be blatantly impossible.
One analogy for Causality was that it was a slate, words could be engraved but couldn't be erased with a regular eraser. What Morgur usually did was stop the words from being engraved in the first place and what Zenith did was quite literally erase the engravings on the slate with a normal eraser. Just simply incomprehensible.
"Do not be shocked. I'm Zenith, after all." His laughter was quiet, unhurried, the sound of inevitability made flesh. He watched as Morgur's rejuvenated body shed its true form and twisted into a new disguise: a pale, slender humanoid wreathed in malice.
"Three… two… and—"
Zenith's count broke off mid-breath. A blur cut through the air like a missile aimed at him. He shifted aside effortlessly, sidestepping the strike with casual grace.
The projectile slammed into the ground with a deafening crack, bursting into a miniature explosion that clawed at the ruins and blanketed the air in dust.
"Nice reaction."
The voice carried youthful thrill, bubbling with unrestrained joy, yet beneath it lurked sharpness. Calculated and performative. His blissful exterior veiled his cold and calculated interior. Performative and calculated indeed.
Morgur turned his pair of serpentine eyes toward the source of the youthful voice. A young man stepped from the haze: skin bronzed, braids cascading down his head, a grin plastered across his face. His brown eyes, however, betrayed his exuberance. They were blades–keen, cold, calculating.
"Nah. You are just too slow, child," Zenith replied with a smile.
And then, there was silence. Three individuals that looked human but were anything but human stood at the eye of the gigantic crater, a vivid scar of what had happened to Fragr.
These three human-like entities stood there, their gazes shifting between one another, each waiting for the first move.
Zenith wore a leisurely look, utterly unconcerned about the threat lingering in the air, ready to detonate at any moment. Morgur still looked shocked, though his gaze remained sharp, most of his caution directed toward Zenith. The third party, on the other hand, bore an elated expression that contradicted his calculating eyes.
"Shall we?" Zenith gave a brilliant smile as everyone burst into motion.
No one was anyone's ally in this brawl. It was a free-for-all.
A massive warhammer appeared in the grasp of the young man with braids, swinging down on both of them with careless ease.
Both Zenith and Morgur evaded the strike with even greater ease. Zenith didn't counterattack, but Morgur did.
Seizing the shaft of the warhammer, Morgur pulled his slender body toward its wielder. At the last moment, he released his grip from the shaft, his free arm stretching out and clasping the young man's neck.
Before the youth could even react, he found himself high in the air, hurled away like a weightless ragdoll.
Of course, Zenith wasn't about to let them have all the fun to themselves. Closing the gap, he drove a powerful kick into Morgur's slender waist, sending him flying in the same direction the youth had been flung.
"Now this is getting boring. Why don't we end this?" Zenith's expression shifted to one of boredom as he sped after Morgur's soaring body.
"You've forgotten about Warwick." The youthful voice rang out, seizing Zenith's attention, but it was too late. Zenith had reacted too late.
A pair of bloody chains shot out from the distance, snaking around Zenith in an instant. They tightened, binding his body with crushing force.
A frown crossed his face as he suddenly felt himself yanked by a power so overwhelming that, for the first time, Zenith was genuinely surprised. His body was pulled uncontrollably forward.
As Zenith hurtled toward him, Warwick launched off the ground to meet him mid-air. Just as they were about to collide, the bloody chains dissolved into a pair of silver gauntlets on Warwick's fists.
There they were… Zenith, soaring helplessly, Warwick closing in, fist cocked back to strike.
"Would've been effective if you were dealing with the average fighter. Unfortunately…" A whisper brushed Warwick's ear as Zenith's approaching figure phased out of existence.
And then, an insurmountable force slammed into the back of his neck, rocketing Warwick downward like a cannonball.
As Zenith plunged down from the air, his perception swept the battlefield in search of Morgur. He found him struggling to rise some distance away. He had transfigured once more, now into the form of the newcomer.
Zenith landed lightly on his feet, a smirk carving across his face as he readied himself to pursue. But just then, the youth's voice rang out like a sonic boom.
"NOW!"
A muted field of utter cancellation swept across nearly the entirety of Fragr. Its power was so absolute that, for a brief instant, everything ceased. Everything.
Zenith froze. The smirk vanished as his gaze dropped to his palm. He clenched and unclenched his fist, feeling only emptiness. His power was gone. He was nothing more than a mortal.
"Impossible," Zenith muttered, a rare sense of vulnerability gnawing at him.
BANG!
The warhammer, once more bound to its bloody chain, whistled through the air and crashed against his skull, bursting it apart like a watermelon and leaving his body headless.
Zenith had been killed.