The tear in the sky widened.
Not with thunder, not with flame—
but with silence.
A silence so vast that every heartbeat felt blasphemous, every breath an intrusion. The air bowed. The ground trembled. Even the monsters born of the abyss pressed themselves flat, quivering under the weight.
Jaylin's knuckles whitened around his sword hilt. His voice was a rasp, almost swallowed by the void:
"This… isn't just the abyss anymore. Something's watching."
Vemy felt it too. The shadow wrapped around him groaned, the armor-chains bending like reeds before a storm. The presence pressing through the tear wasn't just strong—it was infinite. It made even the colossus look like dust clinging to eternity's boot.
The cloaked figure lowered his hood at last. His face remained hidden in shadow, but his grin stretched wider, as though he had waited centuries for this moment.
"Do you feel it, vessel? That pressure? That hunger? It does not see you as prey or enemy. To it, you are a spark." His tone turned sharp, cruel. "And sparks are meant to be snuffed."
The tear bled light—blinding, absolute. Each fragment of brilliance burned like a blade, lashing across the battlefield. Jaylin shielded his eyes, his aura sparking under the strain. His knees buckled.
"Vemy—if you stand under that thing alone, you'll be crushed!"
But Vemy did not kneel.
His claws dug deep into the fractured stone, his body screaming against the weight, but his spirit—his defiance—roared louder than the silence above. Shadows flared, chains cracking, reforging.
The abyss did not consume him.
He dragged it higher.
It licked at the god-light, not retreating but clashing, hissing like oil against fire.
For an instant, the battlefield split in two—one half drowned in divine brilliance, the other chained in abyssal dark.
The cloaked figure spread his arms, laughing as the rift above widened further. "Yes! Struggle, vessel! Let us see if a mortal heart can stand between gods and the void!"
Jaylin forced himself upright, voice sharp with fury. "He's not just a vessel—he's Vemy!"
And with that, he threw himself forward, sword blazing, cutting through the gravity pressing down on them both.
Vemy's voice thundered across the silence, equal parts man and abyss:
"Then let heaven and hell look down on me—
and see who breaks first!"
The tear screamed. The god's shadow fell.
The battlefield was no longer ground, but a crucible.