The Arena roared without voices, its fury born from the storm itself. Quish and Argorion collided, detonating a shockwave that split the molten floor into rivers of fire. Obsidian shards spiraled into the void, glowing like dying stars as they were pulled into the storm above.
Quish hit the ground in a crouch, crimson arcs flaring outward in a jagged web. He rose in a blur of light, lightning kicking off the air itself as he launched forward. His movements fractured into dozens of after-images—red phantoms darting left, right, circling—testing Argorion with feints so fast they looked like broken reflections across the void sky.
Argorion laughed, cape snapping with each shift of his body. He met the storm with his own—each punch carrying not just force but a distortion in space itself. Every strike rippled gravity, bending the air so violently that Quish's after-images shattered like glass under impact. Waves of golden wind rolled from Argorion's hands, slicing obsidian spires clean in half. The fragments hovered for a breath, then imploded into black dust under the pressure.
Quish twisted through the barrage, lightning coiling tighter around his frame until his body became a streak of pure red. He darted between Argorion's strikes, each dodge a whisper away from destruction. Sparks rained down as their energy tore at the sky, falling like meteors.
They collided again, fists clashing in a blinding flare of red and gold. The impact warped the Arena—stone buckling, fire twisting upward as though the world itself bent to their struggle. A crack echoed into the void, a sound so vast it made the shades of past Protectors lean closer from their ghostly seats.
Their ghost-light pulsed, as their very memories acknowledged the magnitude of this duel. Each impact sent vibrations through the Citadel, a reminder this battle was not for spectacle but inheritance.
Argorion pressed forward, every strike deliberate, unrelenting. Quish answered not with brute force but with rhythm—lightning weaving through the spaces between, strikes landing like heartbeats in the storm.
The Arena howled, storm-clouds boiling, gold and crimson lightning clawing at each other in the sky. For the first time, the duel of Titans had truly begun.
Quish ducked under a vertical slash of molten air, the heat biting through his suit like a second sun. He pivoted across the fractured terrain, crimson lightning sparking beneath his boots as he skidded to the edge of a cliff that hadn't existed a heartbeat earlier.
Another attack followed instantly—a pressure wave so sharp it felt like thunder encased in crystal. The sound shattered the ridge beneath him, forcing him into a backward roll.
"How many powers do you have?" Quish shouted over the roar, crimson arcs spiraling outward as he steadied himself.
Argorion landed on a floating shard of obsidian, perfectly balanced, the yellow edges of his cape snapping in the chaos. His grin widened, bright and unshaken. "More than I can recall," he said, voice carrying effortlessly through the shrieking wind. "Every Protector I've faced leaves a gift. I accept them all."
He raised a single hand. The sky responded.
A tremor pulsed through the void as streams of light gathered overhead, each strand a different hue—emerald flame, violet ice, sapphire storms. They twisted together like a living tapestry, condensing into hundreds of luminous shapes. With a flick of Argorion's wrist, the shapes hardened into blades: translucent, weightless, and infinite, each humming with the resonance of a world long conquered.
Quish's breath caught as the weapons fanned out in a dazzling arc. Some shimmered with heat, others sang in a high, glassy pitch that made his bones vibrate. He could feel the history in them, the echoes of battles fought across realities, the final heartbeats of Protectors whose powers now lived in Argorion's veins.
"You've killed them all," Quish said quietly, the realization cold as the void itself.
Argorion's eyes flashed with something beyond arrogance—resolve, perhaps, or the weight of centuries. "They challenged me," he replied, golden lightning crackling along his arms. "And in this place, inheritance is destiny. Each duel ensures that the strongest carries the strength of all. That is the balance. You can call it, natural selection."
The storm of blades answered with a single, collective note, vibrating through the Arena until the crystalline stands themselves seemed to shiver. Then, like a sudden downpour, the weapons descended—streaks of multicolored light slicing toward Quish from every direction.
Crimson lightning surged in answer, the Arena's molten rivers igniting as Quish skidded backward across a splintered ridge. Crimson current raced through every nerve, sealing the gashes that Argorion's storm of blades had carved into his skin. Torn muscles reknit faster than breath, each spark of lightning fusing sinew and bone before pain could register.
Argorion slowed, blades of pure radiance hanging in a perfect halo around him. His pupils tightened to burning slits as he took in the sight of Quish—unbowed, unmarred. The air quivered with an electric unease.
"You bleed," Argorion said at last, his voice a low, resonant growl, "but you are not anymore, I don't even see the scratch." He tilted his head, studying the faint trails of smoke where Quish's wounds had been. "This place should strip immortality bare. Yet you keep on healing."
Quish's only answer was the steady crackle of red lightning crawling over his frame, each arc a heartbeat louder than the last.
Argorion stepped forward, cape snapping in the heated wind, his grin fading into something sharper. "Fascinating," he murmured, and the molten dunes trembled with the weight of his words. "Every Protector here is meant to stand mortal in the Arena—one life, one chance. But you…" A golden spark flared across his shoulders, dancing along his countless weapons. "Your powers keep you from dying."
Crimson arcs pulsed brighter around Quish, the scent of ozone thickening as the void itself seemed to lean closer.
Argorion's gaze hardened, curiosity giving way to a warrior's hunger. "Then we test what even eternity can't kill."
He spread his arms wide, calling every blade back into a whirling constellation of light. The Arena darkened as the stars themselves dimmed, leaving only the violent glow of yellow and red lightning locked between them.
Quish's silence remained unbroken, but the message rode the thunder in his veins: I do not fall.
Black-crystal dunes heaved upward, then shattered under a surge of invisible weight as Argorion pivoted, one hand slicing the void. Gravity thickened to a crushing tide, every shard of obsidian dragging toward a singularity that bloomed beneath Quish's boots.
Quish burst free in a red flash, the well collapsing behind him with a thunderclap that rippled across the stands of silent specters. Crimson lightning trailed his movements in searing ribbons, each step scoring the air with luminous scars.
Argorion answered with a sweep of his arm and the heavens ignited. Raw plasma arced from nothingness, white-hot ropes that hissed like molten suns. The temperature spiked; stone bled into glass.
Quish ducked and blurred, after-images spinning like mirrored echoes. He countered with a full-body surge, crimson current coiling into a whip of living electricity. It cracked across the void, striking Argorion's chestplate of light hard enough to shear a distant spire in two.
The impact only stoked the giant's fury. He laughed—a bright, fearless sound—and raised both hands. New powers flared in a kaleidoscope: cyclones of diamond dust, shards of frozen lightning, a thunderous quake that split the arena floor into a maze of molten chasms.
Quish leapt the rifts in a heartbeat. His own storm answered, the red glow around him sharpening to a cutting edge. Every strike fed the next: a kick that detonated in a shockwave, a punch that left a lingering crimson sun in the air.
The Arena adapted, as if compelled to match their escalating might. Dunes became glaciers; glaciers erupted into oceans of flame; then all of it folded inward to a sky of fractured mirrors, each reflecting the combatants in infinite, violent motion.
Spectral Protectors leaned forward from their silent seats, their ghost-light throbbing in rhythm with the duel. The void itself seemed to breathe, expanding with each collision.
Quish and Argorion met at the center of the chaos, red and gold a single blinding flare. Sound collapsed into a deep, resonant hum—the heartbeat of a multiverse holding its breath—while their storms clashed and merged, feeding on each other, driving both warriors toward a scale of power the Arena had not witnessed in eons.
Argorion landed lightly on the jagged summit of a spire that hadn't existed a breath ago, the black crystal still steaming from the last upheaval. His cape snapped once in the heat shimmer, a streak of gold against the endless dark. Though his chest rose and fell.
He raised his gaze to Quish and spoke, his voice a low thunder that rolled across the void.
"Then face the greatest champion my Sphere ever knew."
Argorion extended one gloved hand, palm skyward, and the Citadel's silence deepened. The echoes of ancient Protectors stilled as if the entire Arena leaned closer.
"Primeman!"
The single name struck like a gong. The air quaked. Light speared outward from Argorion's body in solar bursts, each flare a miniature sunrise. Muscles corded with radiant strength; his outline shimmered until he seemed carved from the heart of a star. The void itself brightened, caught in the gravity of his new form.
Quish felt the surge before he saw it—the sudden tidal pull of a legend reborn. Primeman. Earth-88's undying emblem of hope, now coursing through Argorion's every motion. The Arena reacted in kind, its fractured mirrors bending to cast a thousand reflections of the glowing titan, each one wreathed in fire.
Crimson lightning shrieked along Quish's arms, answering instinctively. Sparks skittered across the arena floor and flared into pillars of red light. The charged air pressed against his chest like a living heartbeat, demanding he rise higher, faster, fiercer.
Argorion's golden aura blazed until it drowned the stars. He stepped off the spire and the black crystal beneath him liquefied, trailing molten ribbons through the void. "Show me," he called, voice ringing like a war-drum, "if the Core's protector can stand against the first and final hero of my multiverse."
Quish lowered his stance, eyes burning crimson, the hum of the Omniverse coursing in every vein. Lightning gathered at his back like unfurled wings, the promise of a storm without end.
Golden fire met scarlet tempest as their gazes locked—a single heartbeat of impossible stillness before the next collision.
The Arena trembled. Reality itself seemed to draw breath.
Then the void erupted, the clash of two titans reverberating beyond the Spheres, and the multiverse held its silence as the battle for eternity began.