Quish drove forward, every step detonating through the void like a war-drum. Red lightning licked the shattered spires, bending them like stalks of glass in a furnace. His eyes glowed with the pulse of the Core itself, steady and unyielding.
Argorion met him head-on, fists wreathed in golden flame, cape torn into streaks of light. Yet for the first time, the titan's movements lagged behind the storm. Each block came a fraction too late. Each counterstrike carried a fraction less weight.
A new sound joined the howl of the battle—Argorion's breath, rough and sharp, echoing across the Arena's endless expanse.
Quish's next blow landed with a crack that split the black-crystal floor. The golden aura that had once flared like a newborn sun guttered, sparks scattering like dying meteors. The air warped around him, his Primeman strength flickering like a failing engine.
He swung anyway, a desperate arc of blazing light that carved a glowing scar through the sky. Quish twisted aside, the heat of the strike scalding his cheek, and answered with a surge of crimson current that drove the golden giant back a dozen paces.
The Primeman power stuttered. Frost-breath dissolved to mist before reaching Quish. A laser burst blinked out halfway across the void, collapsing into a harmless spray of sparks.
High above, the spectral audience of ancient Protectors leaned forward, their ghost-light pulsing in eerie unison. They felt it—the inevitable tilt of destiny.
Argorion steadied himself on a jut of molten rock, shoulders heaving. The countless powers he'd claimed across eons flickered like failing stars, each gift waning one by one. His cape, once a banner of molten dawn, hung tattered in the scorching wind.
Quish slowed his advance, crimson lightning whispering around him like a living storm. He watched, no triumph in his eyes—only the burden of what this duel demanded.
Argorion lifted his head, golden eyes still fierce despite the dimming light. "Not finished," he growled, voice raw as grinding stone.
Quish's own voice rolled like distant thunder. "Then stand. Show me what remains when the stolen suns go dark."
The void's roar dimmed until Quish could hear the quiet between thunderclaps—a deep, resonant hum that was not the Arena.
It came from him.
A low vibration threaded through his arms, a bass note beneath the crackle of crimson lightning. It wasn't the familiar surge of speed or the regenerative spark that had carried him through every strike. This was older, buried deep, a rhythm that made the bones of his forearms sing as if struck by some unseen tuning fork.
He staggered, just enough to feel it fully. The hum aligned with his heartbeat, then overtook it, a second pulse rising beneath the first.
Fragments of memory flashed like heat-lightning:
The Ampers as they'd studied those early scans:
"Grant's arms… these ridges. Same anomalies as Brakkon's."
The cold glow of the med-bay, X-rays blooming across a wall: faint, twisting striations in his forearm bones that no one could name.
Celestius's greeting—the way the being of stars had used the name Grant Howell, not Quish.
Brakkon again, standing in a half-lit corridor, his own jagged forearms hidden beneath wraps, the unspoken kinship passing between them like static.
The vibration swelled. Quish's crimson lightning bent inward, collapsing toward his core until every arc followed the deeper rhythm. It felt like something ancient reaching through him, something his storms had only ever masked.
The Arena answered. Black-crystal spires shivered, their fractured edges glowing with a muted red, resonating to the same subterranean beat.
Grant Howell. Barrett Howell. Brakkon.
Names and bloodlines and choices.
The pattern locked into place with the certainty of a closing circuit.
Quish clenched his fists, and the strange ridges beneath his skin burned—the awakening. Each ridge pulsed like a buried artery of living metal, a second current threading alongside the crimson storm.
Argorion paused mid-lunge, golden aura flickering as his warrior's senses caught the shift. "What is that…?" he muttered, eyes narrowing.
Quish exhaled, the air around him warping with the resonance.
"I don't know," he said, voice low, the storm under his skin now a living heartbeat. "But it's been waiting."
The hum inside Quish's arms broke into a sharp crack, like stone splitting under impossible weight. He dropped to one knee, lightning searing across the arena floor. His breath came ragged, from the overwhelming rightness of what was about to happen.
With a sound like steel tearing free of its sheath, his forearms split along the hidden ridges. Two long bones pushed outward, wrapped in Luxium, crimson light hardening them into weapons of impossible symmetry. The storm clung to their edges, shaping them into blades that shimmered like living katanas.
The Arena fell silent. Even the molten rivers stilled, as though reality itself bowed to the revelation.
Above, the ghostly audience brightened, every fallen Protector's shade glowing in hushed awe. Some leaned forward, eyes wide with recognition; others pulled back, their light flickering with unease.
Quish rose slowly, arms lowered at his sides, the twin blades humming with the resonance that had been buried in his bones since birth. Crimson lightning ran down their length, splitting into sparks that danced in the air before vanishing like shooting stars. He flexed his grip, and the blades sang, alive.
Argorion's grin faltered. His golden aura flickered once, betraying the first hint of doubt. "You… forged weapons from yourself," he said, voice edged with awe and wariness both.
Quish rolled his shoulders, the storm gathering around him like a mantle. His voice was steady, thunder under silk.
"No. They were always here. I just didn't know it."
He lifted the blades, crossing them in front of his chest. Lightning cascaded between them in jagged arcs.
The echoes of past Protectors burned brighter, their silent gaze fixed on him, like the question of inheritance had just taken on an entirely new meaning.
Argorion lunged, a roar ripping through the void as every power he'd stolen flared at once. Gouts of blue fire fanned across the shifting black crystal. Ice-lances whirled like comet tails. Gravity itself warped in concentric rings, drawing shards of obsidian into a whirling maelstrom around them.
Quish blurred through it all—an incandescent streak of crimson lightning. Every cut sealed the instant it opened, every burn healed before the next heartbeat. He was speed and storm, the hum of the Core roaring in his bones.
Argorion pivoted, hurling a sphere of compressed plasma that could have melted a sun. Quish slid beneath it, twin Luxium blades leaving radiant scars through the air. Sparks rained in their wake like shooting stars.
The collision of their wills became a tempest of color: yellow and red, gold and blood, the echo of countless battles crashing through the Arena. Ghostly spectators leaned closer, their light pulsing in time with every impact.
Quish darted inside the storm. One blade carved a molten arc across Argorion's chest. The second followed, a flash too quick for the eye. The Protector of infinite victories staggered, golden blood spilling in rivulets that hissed and smoked on the crystal floor.
Argorion snarled, calling one last surge of alien force—gravity buckling, the sky fracturing into mirrored shards—but Quish was already there. He crossed the blades, lightning shrieking between them, and drove both through Argorion's heart.
The golden warrior gasped, a sound like a dying star. Crimson and gold currents flared together, wrapping them in a blinding halo.
Quish tightened his grip. With a single, thunderous pull, he tore the blades apart.
Argorion's body split down the center, dissolving into blazing fragments of pure energy. Each fragment streaked into Quish, merging with the crimson storm that raged within him. The inheritance of centuries—every duel, every stolen power—flooded his veins like a tidal wave of suns.
Silence fell. The Arena's molten rivers cooled to glass. High above, the echoes of fallen Protectors bowed as one, their ghost-light dim and reverent.
Quish stood alone in the vast coliseum, twin blades still humming with Luxium fire, lightning coiled around his frame like the promise of a new dawn.