The Hollow Horizon was no longer silent.
Each breath of the wind trembled, warped, and screamed against the fabric of the world. What once was still mist had become a maelstrom of light and logic—a battleground between two existences that should never have crossed paths.
John Merciless floated amid the chaos, coat flaring like black wings, silver hair glinting beneath the fractured sky. Across from him, Seirath Valen stood upon the air itself, bare feet never once touching ground, his expression still and empty. His every movement rewrote the laws of the air around him.
"Let's test your 'balance,'" Seirath murmured. His voice was not sound—it was concept. Every syllable bent space.
John smiled beneath the storm. "You talk too much."
Their circuits ignited.
Seirath moved first. His hand sliced through the air, and Aether Null expanded—a silent sphere that devoured sound, light, and force. Anything that entered it ceased to exist. The mist vanished; the ground below was erased clean.
John stepped once. Just once.
And he was everywhere.
A trail of afterimages shattered into starlike fragments around Seirath as John appeared behind him, blade flashing upward in a motion too fast to comprehend. The strike hit—no blood, no impact, only a soft ripple as Aether Null absorbed it like water swallowing stone.
"Not enough," Seirath whispered, palm thrusting backward. Aether surged in reverse, detonating outward.
John spun midair, coat tearing as he twisted, arm raised—Koketsu blazing open in his left eye. Circuits flickered across his face like lightning. The force of the detonation met his hand and… stopped.
A grin cracked across John's face. "You can't erase what's already been unmade."
He snapped his fingers.
The world pulsed.
Every atom that had vanished in Seirath's last attack reappeared—reversed, inverted, reconfigured. The space between them collapsed into an implosion of mirrored particles.
Seirath was thrown back, his body cutting through the fog like a meteor. He twisted midair, landing effortlessly, unscathed but surprised.
"You mirrored my destruction," he said quietly.
"I calculated it," John corrected. "You delete existence. I assign it new value. If you're subtraction…" He tilted his head, grinning. "…then I'm the equation that never reaches zero."
They rose higher.
The air grew colder, thinner, the clouds parting under waves of pressure. The Hollow Horizon shimmered below, distant now—nothing but light bleeding through fog.
John's circuits flared red, forming intricate rings behind him. Seirath's aura turned silver-white, consuming the horizon.
The first strike was Seirath's: his hand sliced forward, reality folding.
John parried it with a bare palm, twisting the rule of kinetic exchange so force became momentum stored.
Then he countered—his blade cutting through the air at a perpendicular angle, releasing a vertical crescent of compressed logic.
It hit Seirath dead center.
The impact shattered the mist and split the sky.
But Seirath didn't fall.
Instead, the crescent froze midair, reversed direction, and hit John back at double speed.
He didn't flinch.
It hit him—then phased through, as if his body didn't exist in this frame of causality.
Seirath's eyes narrowed slightly. "You're rewriting perception of matter in real time. But that consumes energy faster than existence allows."
John's smirk widened. "That's why I don't use existence."
He snapped again. Koketsu flared like a miniature star. His circuit web expanded in a halo around him—each strand representing a number, a variable, a concept. His voice grew cold, sharp:
"Zero-Sum Drive: Calculation Complete."
Space folded inward.
Numbers replaced light.
And for a moment, Seirath Valen—the man who could erase reality—was caught in an equation.
The impact was quiet. A whisper of implosion, followed by a burst of light that blinded the world. The sky split into fractals; the Hollow Horizon below warped under gravitational distortion.
When the light faded, Seirath's figure plummeted—his coat in tatters, his skin cracked with faint fissures of light. He landed hard enough to shake the mountain.
John descended slowly, like an angel stripped of empathy, blade in hand, eyes glowing faintly red. "Still think you're correction?"
Seirath spat a mist of blood and smiled faintly. "You still think you're above consequence."
Then, before John could move, Seirath raised his hand and whispered a single word—one the world didn't understand, one that didn't belong to any language.
Reality screamed.
It was instantaneous. John's chest erupted—blood spraying in a perfect spiral as Aether Null tore through his core. His circuits went dim, his body falling backward through the sky.
He hit the ground hard, dust scattering. His sword clanged once, embedding into the shattered floor.
Seirath stood over him, quiet, empty.
"It's over," he said. "Balance restored."
He turned, walking away, steps echoing softly across the ruins. The wind howled, carrying ash and silence.
But Then… Laughter.
"Ahahahaha… ahahahahahaha—"
Seirath froze.
The laughter was low at first. Then louder. Then hysterical.
He turned slowly.
John Merciless was standing.
Blood still stained his chest, but the wound was gone—skin smooth, circuits brighter than ever. His head tilted back, black hair glowing under the broken sky. His laughter echoed like the sound of cracking glass.
"Impossible," Seirath muttered. "You were dead."
John's grin widened, wild and radiant. His eyes shimmered with mania, dopamine flooding his brain like fireworks. He spread his arms, staring up at the distorted heavens.
"You thought you killed me? Ahahaha! Oh, Seirath, you did!" he shouted, voice ringing with delight. "You really did it! You actually killed that version of me."
Seirath frowned, circuits flaring faintly. (What is this? He's high? Delirious?)
John stepped forward, still laughing, his boots cracking the broken ground. His voice turned sharp, teasing.
"If you hadn't pulled that move, I'd have never pulled it off!"
He floated upward, body lying back horizontally in the air as if he were reclining on invisible clouds, one hand stretched lazily outward, the other resting on his chest.
"What did you do?" Seirath demanded.
"Oh, nothing major," John said, still laughing softly. "Just a little adjustment in the logic field. When you killed me…" He gestured casually at himself. "…I used Zero-Sum to offset my death as a variable. Subtraction needed balance. So it found one."
He snapped his fingers. His shadow moved—standing behind him, identical, eyes glowing.
"I just… moved the sum."
Seirath's expression finally shifted—slight confusion, genuine this time.
John tilted his head, smiling lazily. "You erased me from existence. So I gave the universe something equal to erase back. I call it the 'Death Feedback Principle.' Fancy name, right?"
"You're insane," Seirath said flatly.
"Insanity," John said, spinning midair lazily, "is just what happens when your logic surpasses the universe's comprehension speed."
Seirath growled—a low, primal sound—and shot forward, Aether Null coiling around his fist. The ground disintegrated in his wake, light vanishing into black. He struck—straight for John's heart again.
But this time, the hit didn't land.
The air rippled. Seirath's punch slowed mid-motion, frozen. His pupils dilated.
John's voice was soft in his ear. "You can't erase what's been already rewritten."
He vanished, reappeared behind Seirath, fingers brushing his shoulder. "You see, Seirath, you only destroy what you can understand. I imagine what doesn't exist."
His eye glowed brighter than before—Koketsu's inner ring rotating, the next stage of activation near.
Seirath tried to move—but his circuits resisted. Aether Null flickered, unstable.
John leaned close, his tone almost playful. "Your logic ends where mine begins."
Then he vanished again—faster than teleportation, faster than light.
The next instant, Seirath was slammed backward into the ground, the air cracking open with the impact. His body skidded across the floor, tearing through metal and stone, before slamming into the base of a broken pillar.
John stood above him, smiling.
"You thought I was high," he said, tilting his head. "But I was calculating."
Seirath lay there, circuits flickering, his face calm despite the defeat. John hovered above him, laughing softly again, his blood now gone, his coat untouched.
He looked up toward the sky, voice faint but amused.
"Do you know what I love about logic, Seirath?" he asked.
"It always adds up… even if the universe has to change to fit it."
He turned away, leaving the battlefield of light and silence behind.
And as he walked into the mist, Koketsu flickered once—its pupil narrowing into a vertical slit, glowing faintly.
The second stage had awakened.