The battlefield was no longer just a place. It was a scar across the world — skies torn open, land split apart, oceans drained into void cracks that bled colors too unnatural to name.
And in the center of it all… the Outer God waited.
He didn't raise a hand. He didn't need to. Around him, like planets orbiting a star, a thousand beings gathered — creatures that had once been kings of realms, emperors of dimensions, devourers of worlds. Now, all of them bowed to the will of something greater, their forms warped by chains of void fire.
The twelve stepped forward together. Their presence alone bent the chaos into silence.
Lucien tilted his head, studying the horde. His cape rippled in still air. "One god. A thousand slaves. This feels… uneven."
Kairo chuckled, cracking his knuckles as time shimmered faintly around him. "Uneven for them."
Ashveil's voice came like velvet shadow. "I almost pity them. Almost."
The Outer God said nothing. His form shimmered, half in reality, half in something deeper, eyes burning like fractures in existence.
Lucien exhaled and stepped off the ground. His first move wasn't toward the god. Not yet.
Instead, he walked into the horde.
The first of the thousand roared, a behemoth of stone and fire, its steps collapsing the battlefield. Lucien didn't even raise his hand. He slipped forward, Phantom Step, and the creature's head simply wasn't attached anymore.
Another lunged from behind, claws like mountains. Lucien didn't turn — he only shifted his weight, letting the claws pass through an afterimage. His fist struck backward, Dimensional Strike Amplification, and reality cracked around the blow. The beast disintegrated.
By the third, he was smiling.
The Revenants and Mirrored Six burst outward, scattering into the thousand. Kairo froze entire legions in stasis before Ashveil tore through them as shadows. Veythar's cataclysms split mountains, Zarynth drowned minds in illusions, Nyros erased screams into silence. Their mirrors lit the battlefield in balance — light weaving through shadow, truth severing falsehood, healing binding the broken ground, time rewound to deny defeat.
But Lucien… Lucien was different.
He moved among the horde like a phantom, every strike rewriting the field. He didn't dodge out of necessity — he dodged because he wanted the fight to last longer. He killed without looking, turned his back on charging enemies only for Kairo to casually erase them in passing. At times he simply stood, cape flowing in windless air, while entire battalions broke themselves trying to reach him.
And when he grew bored, he let the White Revenant State surge. His body blazed with that impossible void-light, and for a moment, the horde stopped — because every one of those thousand beings felt it.
They weren't fighting a man. They were fighting inevitability.
Lucien looked up at the Outer God, brushing dust from his sleeve as if he'd simply been sparring. "Enough warm-up. Your turn."
The Outer God finally moved. With a single gesture, the skies split in half, and the weight of his power fell across the battlefield.
Even the awakened twelve faltered under it.
The true fight was about to begin.
And as the world groaned under the clash to come, the narrator's voice cut through the silence:
"The White may be the source of all voids… but what source birthed the White itself?"