Nothingness quivered.
In the hollow dark before creation, two forces collided — not men, not gods, but concepts given form.
Kaiser stood firm, a silhouette carved from density itself. His presence bent the void, making emptiness feel heavy. Each motion carried the weight of a collapsing idea, the essence of Strength in pure form.
Across from him, Savitar shimmered — not glowing, but displacing. His outline blurred, never still, a distortion of Momentum itself. He existed only through motion; standing still was death to him.
No words were spoken.
Only intent.
Then Kaiser moved.
The void buckled.
Each step slammed against the fabric of nothing, sending ripples through the endless black. He swung a fist wide — a strike not of light, but of mass, the raw will to dominate.
But Savitar was already gone.
He slid through darkness like a cut through water, leaving a trail of displaced reality. Every after-image rippled the air, each motion faster, sharper, more impossible.
Kaiser's punch met only silence.
"Still too slow, brother," Savitar's voice whispered, coming from everywhere and nowhere.
Kaiser didn't respond. His jaw clenched, muscles tensing so tight the void itself groaned. He charged again — heavy, deliberate, unstoppable. Each movement tore at the boundaries of stillness.
Savitar countered — a blur flashing past. His arm vibrated, not with energy, but with sheer velocity — the friction of existence trembling at his command. He struck, hand phasing through darkness, and drove it into Kaiser's chest.
A soundless impact.
Kaiser staggered. The concept of weight itself trembled around him. Savitar grinned, breathless, proud.
"Strength collapses when speed cuts through it."
But then — resistance.
Savitar tried to withdraw his arm… and failed.
The void around them pulsed red, the colorless dark somehow tightening.
Kaiser's chest flexed. The muscles constricted, trapping Savitar's hand in an unbreakable lock. It was as though the fabric of resistance itself had closed around him.
"Speed…" Kaiser's voice rumbled, low and primal, "…is motion without consequence."
His hand shot up, gripping Savitar by the throat. The instant contact was made, movement itself stopped.
For the first time since the birth of awareness, Speed was still.
Savitar struggled, thrashing — his body tearing streaks through the dark, space bending from the sheer effort — but the grip held. Kaiser's pressure grew, collapsing the very silence between them. The void screamed.
Savitar's form shuddered.
For a heartbeat — if such a thing existed yet — the universe hesitated between movement and stillness. Then the hesitation shattered.
His entire body began to vibrate, each particle of divine essence oscillating faster than thought. The tremor wasn't visible — it was felt, a distortion so violent that the nothingness around him began to fracture, like black glass trembling under impossible frequency.
Kaiser's grip tightened — the void quaked — but it couldn't hold what refused to exist in one place.
Savitar phased through his grasp.
In an instant, he was gone. Then everywhere.
Circling Kaiser.
A storm of momentum incarnate.
Each strike landed before its echo could exist — fists colliding from every conceivable direction. Pressure rippled through the dark, each hit a blunt wave tearing through the density of Strength itself. Kaiser's body trembled beneath the relentless barrage, fractures of divine will spiderwebbing across his frame. His chest caved slightly, internal force folding inward, reality itself trying to compress around the wounds.
Then—
Kaiser exhaled.
It wasn't breath. It was a blast of presence, a compression wave birthed from raw willpower. The gust rippled outward, warping the void like a collapsing horizon.
Savitar, mid-sprint, hit the resistance.
The wall of invisible pressure caught him like a hurricane meeting its own mirror. His steps faltered — just for a flicker of a moment — but that was all Strength ever needed.
Kaiser moved.
The Primordial leapt, shadow expanding in the endless dark, his fist descending with the certainty of a falling world. The impact missed — barely. Savitar spun his body, contorting mid-air, switching angles with impossible precision. He twisted his torso in a blur, repositioning his center of gravity by swapping the direction of his left arm — a motion beyond mortal logic — and the blow screamed past him.
But not cleanly.
A shockwave burst.
Kaiser's knuckles grazed Savitar's forearm — a touch carrying infinite density. The bone cracked, then splintered, then snapped — the sound vibrating across the void like thunder that never learned how to fade.
Savitar recoiled, clutching his ruined arm, the fluid of divine energy dripping into the nothing — evaporating on contact.
Kaiser landed with a soundless quake, dustless, airless, but heavy enough to make even the darkness ripple outward.
They locked eyes — concept meeting concept.
For the first time, Speed had faltered. Strength had bled.
The void itself seemed to hold its breath.
Savitar's form blurred again, but this time the blur wasn't merely fast — it was conceptually impossible.
He ran.
Not just across the void. Not just across nothingness.
He ran beyond infinity itself.
The horizon — or what could even be called a horizon in the still, boundless void — twisted, warped, and folded around him. Each step didn't just move him forward; it bent the idea of motion, the definition of distance, and the rules of existence.
For a heartbeat that was longer than eons, he circled the infinite loop. Then again. And again.
He wasn't moving in circles. He was lapping infinity infinitely, surpassing not just the bounds of space but the boundaries of what speed could ever be.
Every pass amplified him, each lap stacking momentum on a plane of physics that did not yet exist. Pressure built in the nothing, a coiling storm of force so extreme it warped the concept of mass itself.
And then — when the infinite laps converged into a singularity of intent — Savitar became a living spear of pure kinetic inevitability, charging toward Kaiser with the force of all conceivable motion condensed into one point.
The void shuddered.
The laws of reality wept.
Even Strength had never felt anything like this.
Kaiser braced, his muscles tensing against the impossible, the infinite, the absurd. He was the Primordial of Strength, yes, but Speed had broken the rules that Strength relied upon.
And in that split moment, the battlefield — if it could be called that — became a stage for the impossible:
Concept versus concept.
Strength versus speed beyond infinity.
Savitar surged forward, the culmination of infinite loops converging into a single, unstoppable strike. The very nothingness seemed to ripple with his motion — a force that should have shattered all, yet there stood Kaiser, a mountain of Strength made flesh.
Kaiser inhaled deeply, drawing the void itself into his form. He concentrated infinite pressure, infinite mass, into his body — every sinew, every fiber, every drop of primordial essence coalescing into a singular point of unyielding resistance.
As Savitar's strike collided with Kaiser's amassed might, concept met concept. Time fractured, distance bent, and the infinite notions of Speed and Strength clashed with cataclysmic resonance.
For a heartbeat — or perhaps a trillion — the collision froze reality. Both Primordials reeled under the force.
Kaiser bled his own essence, crimson rivulets of raw Strength pouring from his being, each drop echoing like a dying star.
Savitar's body of pure concept shattered from within, circuits of velocity tearing apart. He could no longer move, no longer vibrate, no longer exist as the limitless speed he had been.
Kaiser lifted his fist, intending the final, decisive blow — to end Savitar where he stood. But the strain of holding infinite mass and pressure exceeded even his godlike endurance. His body faltered, systems failing from the sheer weight of pre-creation force.
And yet… his fist still moved.
It swung, hitting Savitar squarely on the head.
Then, without warning, Kaiser collapsed. His entire being failed at once, the mountain of Strength falling directly onto the broken form of Speed.
Yet the impact of Kaiser's fist — even in collapse — was enough to knock him out entirely.
The infinite struggle ended.
Two of creation's mightiest forces lay broken, concepts of Strength and Speed reduced to raw, shattered forms.
For a moment, the nothingness itself seemed to breathe, acknowledging the ruin left in the wake of forces that predated time itself.