The capital World continued to come apart beneath them.
The fracture Varek had driven through the planet had already reached the opposite hemisphere. Mantle pressure surged through the opening in incandescent rivers while entire sections of crust separated along faults that had never existed before this battle. Above the dying planet, Biru's Eternal Cradle held everything that mattered outside the destruction. Cities, forests, underground settlements, ships, animals and billions of living beings floated within transparent spheres where consequence itself had been denied permission to finish.
Raiku remained seated.
The True Emperors remained where they had appeared.
None of them moved.
Sereon stood inside the planetary wound.
Varek faced him from several kilometres away.
Dark hovered between them.
For several seconds, nobody attacked.
Dark could feel every injury he had carried into the Dark Empire.
His throat still remembered Suigōraku.
His ribs had been broken in enough places that the black material around his torso had effectively become an external skeleton. His right wrist was being held together by something that was not bone. His shoulder remained partially displaced. One lung functioned because the pressure surrounding it refused to let it collapse completely. Blood loss had left a cold tremor inside his fingers. His vision had begun doubling whenever he moved his head too quickly, and every burst of Ruler's Authority demanded energy his body had stopped replacing properly.
His mind was not untouched either.
Too many false Worlds.
Too many contradictions.
Too many versions of reality forced through the same exhausted nervous system.
Dark looked at Sereon.
Then something inside him opened.
He froze.
Not from pain.
Recognition.
Black veins appeared beneath the skin of his neck.
They reached his jaw.
His temples.
His chest.
A second colour followed them.
Crimson.
The two did not spread like ordinary magic. They surfaced simultaneously across his entire body, as though they had always been there and had merely stopped pretending otherwise.
Dark's eyes widened.
Dark: (thinking) Ryo...
The word did not summon it.
The magic had already answered.
Ryo Magic had belonged to Sukojo long before Dark had learned to survive it. The old forbidden current of the Devourer had entered Dark before, lived inside his body before, moved through his soul before. Dark had torn control of himself back from Sukojo, but removing Sukojo had never meant removing everything Sukojo had changed.
And now something else answered with it.
Something deeper.
Something Dark had inherited without understanding he possessed it.
Dark's heartbeat stopped.
Leona's eyes widened inside the distant sphere containing the capital.
Tier's head snapped toward him.
The systems inside Tier's eyes recorded Dark's body in one state.
Ruined.
Then they recorded him again.
Whole.
There was no frame between them.
No transition.
No measurable process.
Nothing regenerated because regeneration required a damaged state to exist for some duration while repair occurred.
Dark's body simply ceased to be damaged.
The ribs that had been broken were no longer broken. There was no movement of bone returning into place, no grinding alignment and no callus forming over fractures. One observation contained shattered ribs driven into surrounding tissue. The next contained a complete rib cage with uninterrupted marrow, unscarred periosteum and every joint seated exactly where it belonged.
His collapsed lung did not reinflate.
It was already inflated.
The torn membrane around it existed intact, wet with the correct amount of fluid, every alveolus open and exchanging air as though it had never been crushed.
The wound through Dark's throat vanished without closing.
One instant contained a channel where Suigōraku had passed beneath his chin, through muscle, nerves, vessels and the structures around his spine.
The next contained nothing to close.
The severed nerves were continuous.
The damaged vertebrae were complete.
The arteries carried blood without interruption.
His voice box was whole.
His skin had no scar.
The black material that had been holding his neck together suddenly found itself wrapped around healthy flesh.
It loosened.
Dark looked down.
His right wrist moved.
The black reinforcement surrounding it separated from his skin.
The bones beneath were complete.
He opened his hand.
Closed it.
Every tendon travelled smoothly through its sheath.
His shoulder seated itself without a sound because there had never been a moment in which it moved back into place. It was displaced, and then it was not.
The same thing happened everywhere.
Muscle fibres torn apart by Sereon's blade ceased possessing tears.
Blood missing from his circulatory system existed again inside him, carrying oxygen through vessels whose ruptures had been erased.
Damaged organs were restored down to structures Dark had never known existed.
His kidneys cleared.
His liver returned to full function.
The bruising around his heart vanished.
Every irregular beat disappeared.
His eyes changed.
The doubled image of the battlefield became one.
Burst vessels vanished from the whites.
Microscopic damage across the retina ceased existing.
The pressure behind his skull disappeared.
Dark blinked once.
He could see farther.
Not because his vision had evolved.
Because nothing was compromising it anymore.
Then his mind corrected.
Dark's expression changed.
The false Dark Empire Sereon had shown him remained in his memory, but the mental injury caused by processing so many mutually exclusive Worlds vanished. Sensory contradictions stopped overlapping. Events Sereon had forced him to experience returned to their correct order. Memories that had begun fragmenting under exhaustion became whole without losing anything Dark had genuinely experienced.
Names returned to the correct faces.
Distances returned to the correct battles.
False memories were not erased.
They were identified.
Separated.
Filed beside what had actually happened instead of continuing to interfere with it.
The pressure behind Dark's thoughts disappeared.
So did the fatigue that had begun eating at judgment.
His concentration returned.
His emotional control returned.
The raw instability left behind by pain, blood loss and prolonged perceptual warfare disappeared without making him calmer than he naturally was.
It simply gave him his own mind back.
Then the exhaustion vanished.
Not suppressed.
Gone.
The burning in his muscles ceased.
Every depleted reserve refilled.
Stamina returned to its natural maximum.
Mana flooded pathways that had been nearly dry.
Every Power Source Dark carried stabilized.
Energy he had spent returned as though his body had rejected the concept that expenditure should remain permanent.
Dark inhaled.
The breath came easily.
His eyes slowly lowered toward his hands.
Dark: ...
Varek looked toward him.
Sereon did too.
Even several of the True Emperors shifted their attention.
Dark moved his shoulder.
Perfect.
He turned his neck.
Perfect.
Then he looked toward the black and crimson veins beneath his skin.
They faded.
Dark understood enough to hate the answer.
Dark: (quietly) That bastard.
Sereon's eyes narrowed.
Sereon: Sukojo.
Dark looked at him.
There was no exhaustion left in his face.
Dark: Part of him.
Dark's grip tightened around Kyuketsu.
Dark: Unfortunately for you, apparently enough.
Sereon raised Suigōraku.
Varek disappeared.
The first punch struck Sereon in the mouth.
His head snapped backward.
Soul Ryūgu fractured around his jaw.
The second punch arrived four tenths of a second later.
Chest.
The third came two tenths after that.
Stomach.
Six tenths.
Jaw.
Three.
Ribs.
Varek had changed the rhythm.
He was no longer striking as quickly as his body allowed.
He was striking as irregularly as Sereon's reading would tolerate least.
Two tenths.
Six.
Three.
Five.
Two.
Four.
There was enough time between every strike for Sereon to understand another one was coming.
Never enough information to know exactly when.
Sereon blocked the next punch.
Suigōraku bent almost against his chest.
Varek punched again before the blade recovered.
The sword struck Sereon's own sternum.
Dark raised his left hand.
Ryo gathered around his fingers.
No enormous explosion followed.
No transformation.
The magic crawled outward like black-red handwriting across the air behind Sereon.
Dark: Ryo Magic...
Sereon heard him.
His eye moved toward Dark.
Varek punched him in the face for looking.
Dark's fingers closed.
Dark: Gallows Orbit.
The air behind Sereon opened.
A ring appeared.
Then another.
Then another.
Dozens of enormous circular markings formed across the space at Sereon's back, arranged at different heights and distances. Black symbols rotated around crimson centres. Inside each circle waited a weapon.
Not copies of Kyuketsu.
Not ordinary swords.
Weapons designed for nothing except penetration.
Long black lances.
Barbed spears.
Narrow execution stakes.
Blades with no handles.
Three-pronged piercing heads.
Heavy needles longer than buildings.
Hooked weapons designed to enter cleanly and become difficult to remove.
Sereon looked back.
The first weapon fired.
Exactly one second after the spell completed.
A black lance entered beneath Sereon's right shoulder blade.
Soul Ryūgu cracked.
The point emerged through the front of his chest.
Blood followed.
Sereon's eyes widened.
Varek punched him in the stomach.
The lance remained inside him.
Another second passed.
A spear struck the back of his left thigh.
It punched through muscle and emerged above the knee.
Sereon stumbled.
Varek's fist struck his jaw.
Three tenths.
Chest.
Five tenths.
Ribs.
Another second.
A narrow black stake entered Sereon beside the spine.
The point burst through his abdomen.
Sereon twisted.
Suigōraku cut backward.
The weapon shattered.
Dark did not stop the spell.
Another circle rotated into position.
One second.
A blade drove through Sereon's calf.
He tried to move.
Varek caught his face with a palm strike and forced him backward onto it farther.
Blood poured down Sereon's leg.
The battlefield acquired a rhythm.
Not one rhythm.
Two.
Dark's spell was exact.
One second.
Every second.
No variation.
A weapon from behind.
Varek existed between those seconds.
Two tenths.
Five tenths.
Three.
Six.
Two.
Four.
Punch.
Punch.
Punch.
Dark had created the clock.
Varek refused to fight on it.
Sereon's eye moved constantly.
Front.
Back.
Front.
Back.
Suigōraku intercepted a spear.
Varek punched his throat.
Soul Ryūgu redirected the fist.
A weapon pierced his lower back.
Sereon shifted into Mizukagami-no-Kamae.
Varek struck before the stance completed.
Sereon tried Mugen Gisō Sekai.
White spread.
A false ocean began replacing the shattered capital World.
Dark's eyes remained on him.
Dark: No.
Ryo surged through Gallows Orbit.
The weapons did not disappear with the battlefield.
The first false ocean formed around Sereon.
A lance pierced him inside it.
The ocean became a city.
A spear entered his back inside the city.
The city became black desert.
Varek's fist found Sereon's face anyway.
Sereon's false Worlds still functioned.
They simply no longer had room to breathe.
Every attempt to establish distance was interrupted by Varek physically taking it away.
Every attempt to redirect Varek left Sereon's back open to Gallows Orbit.
Every attempt to respond to Gallows Orbit gave Varek another opening.
Sereon abandoned the illusion.
Reality returned violently.
Varek was already there.
Punch.
Two tenths.
Punch.
Five.
Sereon blocked.
One second.
A weapon punched through his left shoulder.
He grunted.
Varek's fingers closed around Suigōraku.
Sereon immediately dissolved it into silver.
Varek's hand closed on nothing.
Dark's next weapon entered the back of Sereon's right arm and exited beneath the biceps.
Varek caught the protruding point.
Sereon's eye widened.
Varek looked at the weapon.
Then at Sereon.
He pulled.
The weapon travelled forward.
Back through the wound it had created.
Through muscle.
Through Soul Ryūgu.
Through the front of Sereon's arm.
Varek dragged the entire black spear through him until most of its length emerged between them.
Blood poured from both sides.
Dark saw what Varek was doing.
Dark: ...
Varek gripped the weapon with both hands.
He broke it in half.
The material resisted for less than an instant.
CRACK.
One half remained long and jagged.
The other ended in a rough black point.
Sereon stepped back.
Varek followed.
Sereon lifted one hand.
Influence gathered.
Varek drove the first half into the left side of his chest.
The weapon entered where a human heart would have been.
Soul Ryūgu split.
Bone broke.
The point vanished inside him.
Sereon's mouth opened.
Blood spilled over his lower lip.
Varek drove the second half into the opposite side.
The broken weapon pierced through the right chest between the ribs and buried itself almost to Varek's fist.
Sereon's body jerked.
For a moment, Varek held both pieces inside him.
Dark's Gallows Orbit rotated behind Sereon.
Another second.
A narrow spear entered his lower back.
Varek did not move out of the way.
The point emerged through Sereon's stomach beside him.
Sereon coughed blood between them.
Varek looked into his eyes.
Varek: You spent this entire battle proving certainty was fragile.
Sereon's breathing had become wet.
Varek: Fine.
Varek twisted the weapon buried in the left side of Sereon's chest.
Sereon's fingers tightened.
Varek: I do not need certainty.
He pushed the broken spear deeper.
Varek: I only need one place where you can still die.
Sereon's eye narrowed.
Varek pulled both weapon fragments free.
Blood came with them.
Dark's next aerial weapon struck Sereon between the shoulder blades.
Varek stepped aside only enough to let the point emerge from Sereon's chest.
He caught it.
Again.
Pulled.
Sereon was dragged forward along Dark's own weapon.
Varek's knee smashed into his stomach.
The weapon tore farther through him.
Soul Ryūgu began failing to close.
The white armor across Sereon's torso cracked faster than it could reconstruct.
Several of its eyes burst.
Others closed and did not reopen.
Varek punched.
Sereon's head snapped sideways.
Three tenths.
Another punch.
Four.
Dark's weapon.
One second.
Varek's fist.
Two tenths.
Another.
Six.
Sereon tried to raise Suigōraku.
Dark came from behind him.
Kyuketsu struck the silver blade near the guard.
Sereon's wrist twisted.
Varek punched his forearm.
Bone broke.
Suigōraku left Sereon's hand.
The silver sword spun once through the air.
Then struck the broken ground.
It bounced.
Turned.
And stopped.
Sereon looked at it.
Dark did too.
Varek did not.
His fist struck Sereon under the ribs.
The body lifted.
Varek caught him before he could leave.
Another punch drove him down.
Sereon's knees struck the ruined surface of the Dark Empire.
The ground cratered beneath them.
Dark landed behind him.
Gallows Orbit remained suspended across the sky.
Another second passed.
A black spear descended.
It punched through Sereon's back and buried itself into the planet beneath him, pinning him in place.
Sereon's hands touched the ground.
Blood poured from his mouth.
Suigōraku lay several metres away.
For the first time since the battle began, Sereon did not immediately reach for it.
Varek walked around him.
Slowly.
Sereon raised his head.
Varek stopped directly in front of him.
Dark remained behind.
The arrangement was simple now.
Dark at Sereon's back.
Varek at his front.
No false World between them.
No sword in Sereon's hand.
No distance left to manipulate.
Above them, the Dark Empire watched from Biru's spheres.
The Champions watched.
The True Emperors watched.
Raiku remained seated.
Varek looked down at Sereon.
Varek: You mistook being difficult to kill for being impossible to kill.
Sereon's blood struck the ground.
Varek's right hand closed.
Varek: One wastes my time.
His fist drew back.
Not far.
It did not need distance.
Varek: The other does not exist.
Dark's eyes narrowed.
Sereon looked up.
Varek began the killing blow.
Sereon exhaled.
Everything stopped.
Not time.
Pressure.
Every trace of power Sereon had been containing inside himself released at once.
There was no gradual rise.
One instant, the ruined capital World still possessed an atmosphere capable of moving normally around him.
The next, the atmosphere was gone.
Not blown away.
Compressed outward so violently that it formed a spherical boundary thousands of kilometres from Sereon before the sound of anything could exist.
Varek's fist stopped centimetres from his face.
Not because Varek chose to stop.
The space between his knuckles and Sereon suddenly possessed resistance.
Real resistance.
Varek's eyes widened.
Dark was thrown backward.
His boots carved across ruined planetary material before the ground itself broke beneath him. Black substance erupted from his back, forming anchors that buried themselves kilometres deep.
They snapped.
Dark continued moving.
Gallows Orbit distorted.
Every circular seal warped outward.
The weapons inside them vibrated.
Then shattered.
One after another.
Dark raised an arm over his face.
Dark: What the fuck...?!
Sereon remained on his knees.
Blood rose from the ground around him.
Every drop.
Every fragment of Soul Ryūgu.
Every broken piece of white armor.
Every strand of silver left behind by Suigōraku.
The pressure continued increasing.
The remains of the capital planet compressed beneath him.
Continents already separated by Varek's impact broke into smaller structures.
The exposed mantle flattened.
Fragments of the planet ceased falling toward the core and began orbiting Sereon instead.
Biru's spheres did not break.
Biru lifted one claw.
Every Eternal Cradle moved farther away.
One's expression changed.
Igor's hand settled on God Killer.
Cosmic remained still.
The True Emperors did not move.
But they were watching differently now.
Enra's eyes sharpened.
Lybel's smile disappeared.
Archanos slowly raised his head.
Raiku remained seated.
His gaze settled completely on Sereon.
Varek forced his arm forward.
The muscles across his shoulder tightened.
His fist moved one centimetre.
Then another.
Sereon still had not looked at him.
His eye remained lowered toward Suigōraku.
The sword lay on the ground.
Several metres away.
Its blade began vibrating.
Not from pressure.
Recognition.
A low silver sound passed through the ruined World.
Dark heard it.
Varek heard it.
Every remaining eye across Soul Ryūgu opened simultaneously.
Sereon's mouth moved.
Barely.
Sereon: Reiki...
Suigōraku cracked.
Not damaged.
Opened.
A silver line appeared through the centre of the blade.
Sereon: Suigōraku.
The sword separated into liquid light.
It did not fly back into his hand.
It spread across the ground.
Across the blood.
Across the broken fragments of Soul Ryūgu.
Across Sereon's shadow.
Then upward through his body.
Silver entered the wounds Varek had created.
Not to heal them.
To occupy them.
The black weapon fragments still buried inside Sereon dissolved where the silver touched them.
Dark's eyes widened.
Sereon lifted his head.
His human eye had changed.
There was no pupil.
No iris.
Only a perfectly reflective silver surface.
The eyes across Soul Ryūgu changed with it.
Hundreds of reflections opened across his body.
Varek's fist remained inches away.
Sereon whispered.
Sereon: Kigen.
Nothing exploded.
That was the first thing Dark noticed.
There was no new wave of power. No enormous column of light. No transformation that announced itself to the surrounding World.
The pressure Sereon had released simply stopped expanding.
Every fragment of the ruined capital planet caught inside it remained suspended where it had been thrown. Rivers of exposed mantle hung in broken arcs beneath the battlefield. Dust ceased drifting. Blood stopped moving.
Then Suigōraku disappeared.
Dark's eyes narrowed.
Not dissolved.
Not broken.
Gone.
The silver that had entered Sereon's wounds, the silver covering his shadow, the silver running through the remaining pieces of Soul Ryūgu, all of it vanished without returning to his hand.
Varek's fist remained centimetres from Sereon's face.
Varek stared at him.
Sereon slowly stood.
The black spear pinning him through the back remained lodged in the broken ground beneath him. Sereon rose anyway.
The weapon passed through his body.
Not because he became intangible.
Dark saw flesh remain on the spear.
Blood remained.
A section of lung.
Fragments of rib.
The damage stayed exactly where Sereon's body had left it.
And Sereon continued standing.
Dark's expression changed.
The wound was still there.
The man it belonged to was not.
A second layer of flesh existed beneath it.
Untouched.
Varek saw it too.
For the first time since he had entered the battle, the Grand Regent did not immediately attack.
Sereon looked down at himself.
The holes Varek had punched through him remained open across the exterior layer of his body. The crushed sternum. The destroyed abdomen. The punctures Dark's weapons had made through his back. Every injury remained physically present.
Then they separated from him.
Not healed.
Separated.
Ruined tissue loosened from healthy tissue beneath it in thin white-red sheets, carrying blood, shattered bone and fragments of Soul Ryūgu with it. The remains slipped from Sereon's body and fell around his feet like the discarded interior of something that had already died.
Underneath stood Sereon.
Whole.
No scar.
No broken ribs.
No ruined throat.
No destroyed organs.
Dark stared.
Dark: What the fuck...
Tier's eyes changed.
Inside the enormous sphere carrying the capital island, several layers of information appeared across his vision simultaneously.
One showed Sereon's vital state before Kigen.
Another showed nothing.
Absolute biological termination.
Then another signal appeared beneath it.
Tier's expression hardened.
Leona: What?
Tier did not answer immediately.
His eyes continued moving through data that should not have been possible.
Tier: They killed him.
Leona looked toward Sereon.
Leona: He is standing.
Tier: I know.
His artificial pupils narrowed.
Tier: That is not what I said.
Another set of figures appeared.
Tier: One continuity ended.
Leona: One?
Tier looked at her.
Tier: One.
His eyes returned to Sereon.
Tier: Whatever we were measuring before was not his immortality.
Tier: It was a layer of it.
Below them, Sereon raised his hand.
Empty.
Varek looked at it.
Varek: Where is the sword?
Sereon's reflective eye settled on him.
Sereon: Here.
Varek looked at his hand again.
Nothing.
Dark's eyes narrowed.
Sereon looked toward him.
Sereon: You wanted Suigōraku out of my hand.
Dark did not answer.
Sereon: Varek succeeded.
Varek's brow lowered.
Sereon: There is nothing left to hold.
A silver line appeared across Varek's fist.
His skin opened.
Varek looked down.
The cut had formed exactly along the surface of his own knuckles.
He had not seen Sereon move.
There had been no weapon.
Blood entered the vacuum and remained suspended beside his hand.
Dark's eyes widened.
A second line appeared across Varek's forearm.
Then his shoulder.
Varek moved.
His fist crossed the remaining distance.
It hit Sereon.
Dark saw the face deform.
Varek felt bone collapse beneath his knuckles.
Sereon's head snapped backward.
Then Varek's own fist opened.
Not voluntarily.
A cut travelled through his palm from inside the contact point and split the hand nearly to the wrist.
Varek pulled back.
Sereon's face was undamaged.
Varek stared at him.
Sereon: You are still thinking of Suigōraku as an object.
Varek's fingers closed around the ruined hand.
Sereon: That ended with Shinkai.
Dark felt something cold touch his throat.
He moved immediately.
A silver line passed through the place his neck had occupied.
Nothing physical had crossed it.
The line remained hanging in space for an instant.
Then vanished.
Sereon looked at him.
Sereon: Kigen removes the final distinction.
Dark tightened his grip around Kyuketsu.
Dark: Between what?
Sereon: Me and it.
Dark's expression hardened.
Sereon raised two fingers.
Dark moved first.
Kyuketsu crossed Sereon's neck.
Dark felt it cut.
He felt resistance from muscle.
Bone.
Then release.
Sereon's head left his shoulders.
Dark's eyes widened.
The head turned while falling.
Its reflective eye looked directly at him.
Sereon: Between the wielder...
Dark's stomach opened.
A silver cut appeared horizontally across his abdomen.
Flesh split.
Blood erupted.
Dark staggered backward.
The headless body remained standing.
Sereon's voice continued from it.
Sereon: ...and the Reiki.
Dark's Ryo answered immediately.
The wound ceased existing.
Not closed.
Gone.
Varek moved.
He struck the headless body hard enough to drive it through the planet.
Sereon's severed head vanished.
Then the battlefield changed.
Not into another forged World.
Something worse.
Dark still saw the Dark Empire.
He still saw Biru's spheres.
He still saw Raiku sitting beyond them.
He still saw the True Emperors.
Nothing had visibly changed.
Dark blinked.
Sereon stood beside him.
Dark swung.
Empty.
Sereon stood behind him.
Dark turned.
Nothing.
Varek attacked from the opposite side.
His fist passed through Sereon's chest.
Varek felt ribs.
Organs.
Blood.
Then the sensation changed.
His fist was inside his own coat.
He looked down.
Sereon was ten metres away.
Sereon: Before, I forged the World you perceived.
The silver reflection in his eye deepened.
Sereon: Now I forge the act of perceiving it.
Dark's expression went still.
That was different.
Sereon did not need to replace the environment anymore.
He did not need to make Dark believe the sky was an ocean or the capital was burning.
Sight itself could lie before Dark decided what he had seen.
Touch could lie before his nerves finished identifying contact.
Sound could lie.
Distance could lie.
The position of Dark's own limbs could lie.
His body still existed where it existed.
The World remained what it was.
But every method Dark possessed for discovering either fact now belonged to the same thing he was trying to fight.
Dark: ...Great.
Varek disappeared.
Sereon's reflective eye moved.
Varek approached from the right.
His real fist came from the left.
Sereon turned anyway.
Varek changed direction again.
There was no atmosphere around them now, no pressure cone to betray him.
Only movement.
Physical.
Direct.
Varek's fist reached Sereon's chest.
Sereon caught the wrist.
Varek's eyes narrowed.
Sereon had never possessed the physical strength to stop him like that.
He still did not.
The wrist was not where Varek thought it was.
His actual arm had extended six centimetres farther to the right.
Sereon's hand merely occupied the place Varek had accepted his wrist to be.
Varek understood.
His other hand opened.
He struck with the edge of his palm through the entire volume instead.
Sereon ducked.
The chop missed.
Varek rotated.
Second chop.
Sereon leaned.
Third.
Sereon stepped inside.
Silver opened across Varek's ribs.
Varek ignored it.
His knee rose.
Sereon moved his hip.
The knee still connected.
For the first time since Kigen began, the real Sereon folded.
Varek caught his shoulder.
His fingers closed.
Real resistance.
Varek's expression sharpened.
Sereon's eye widened slightly.
Varek: Found you.
He punched.
Sereon's face collapsed.
The blow launched him from the ruined capital World and through the remains of one of the planet's moons.
Varek followed.
Dark followed Varek.
He did not look for Sereon.
That had already become useless.
He looked at Varek.
Dark: (thinking) Follow the idiot who can hit everything until something complains.
Varek crossed the moon's debris.
Sereon appeared above him.
Dark saw it.
Ignored it.
Varek continued forward.
Dark stayed behind Varek.
The apparent Sereon attacked Dark.
A silver edge passed through Dark's shoulder.
Nothing happened.
Dark smiled.
Dark: Wrong one.
The false presentation vanished.
The real Sereon appeared beneath Varek.
Dark moved before Sereon completed the attack.
Black material erupted from Dark's arm.
Not toward Sereon.
Around Varek.
Six black tendrils spread into an enormous cage surrounding the Grand Regent at different distances.
Sereon's blade appeared from nowhere and cut through one.
Dark's eyes widened.
Dark: There.
Varek changed direction toward the severed tendril.
His fist struck.
Sereon blocked with nothing.
The impact still met resistance.
A silver plane flashed between Varek's fist and Sereon's forearm.
Then shattered.
Sereon flew.
Dark followed.
A black spear formed above his shoulder.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Gallows Orbit had changed with him.
The circles no longer remained stationary behind Sereon.
Dark attached them to himself.
Where Dark moved, they moved.
Sereon's reflective eye narrowed.
Dark: You broke the first version.
Dark lifted his hand.
Dark: So I changed it.
The weapons fired.
Sereon moved through them.
One passed through his chest.
False.
Another through his head.
False.
The third missed.
The fourth was blocked.
The fifth...
Blood appeared.
Dark saw it.
Varek saw it.
Both moved.
Sereon vanished beneath them.
A false World appeared.
Then collapsed before completing itself.
Another.
Collapsed.
Another.
Sereon stopped trying.
Dark and Varek had already learned something important.
Kigen made information less trustworthy.
It did not remove Sereon's need to physically exist somewhere.
Varek began attacking space again.
Not targets.
Space.
His palms opened.
One strike sent a planar shock through everything ahead of him.
Another tore across the vertical axis.
A third came diagonally.
The attacks intersected.
Sereon avoided two.
The third struck him.
Dark's weapons followed.
One entered Sereon's back.
Varek's fist entered his stomach.
The fight began moving again.
Fast.
Violently.
Across the Empire.
Across the World containing it.
Then beyond it.
The first ten minutes of Empire time carried them across three star systems.
The next thirteen minutes carried them farther than the previous hour of combat.
The distance stopped being useful to Dark.
World boundaries passed around him.
Verse boundaries followed.
Some places had ordinary time.
Some did not.
In one Universe, Varek's fist crossed one metre while seven minutes passed in the Dark Empire.
In another, Dark experienced six days between two heartbeats measured by Tier.
In another, an entire local year passed while the distant capital clocks advanced less than a second.
Dark did not notice at first.
Tier did.
A small device buried beneath the base of Dark's skull activated for the first time since the Empire had expanded beyond its original Worlds.
No light appeared.
No announcement.
The device was smaller than a fingernail.
Tier had installed it months earlier after Dark returned from one campaign with his cellular age several hours older than the rest of his body because three Worlds had disagreed on how long he had existed inside them.
Dark had complained during installation.
Tier had ignored him.
The device had one purpose.
Maintain biological continuity.
It compared Dark's cellular progression against the Dark Empire's standard temporal reference and corrected external chronological drift before his body could inherit it.
It did not make Dark immortal.
It did not reverse injuries.
It did not restore power.
It did not protect the mind.
It simply refused to let foreign time decide how old Dark's body should become.
Tier called it a Temporal Integrity Node.
Dark had called it annoying.
Now it saved centuries from appearing on his face.
Varek possessed no such device.
He did not require one.
Time crossed his body and found almost nothing it could meaningfully change.
Sereon required even less.
Every temporal system they entered measured him differently.
None of them succeeded in making him old.
The fight continued.
One hour and eleven minutes passed in the Dark Empire.
Dark had experienced twenty-three years.
At one hour and forty-six minutes, Tier's Node recorded eighty-nine.
By two hours, the number had passed one hundred and sixty.
Dark never saw the number.
He was too busy fighting.
Varek punched Sereon through the outer atmosphere of a dead planet.
Dark arrived three local months later.
To Varek, only four seconds had passed.
Dark did not ask how.
He attacked.
Ryo kept repairing him.
Every time Kigen opened his body, Ryo erased the result.
A silver cut divided Dark's eye.
The eyeball split.
Vision vanished from one side.
Then there had never been a wound.
His retina was whole.
The optic nerve was whole.
The blood that had left the vessel returned to where it belonged.
Dark blinked.
Attacked.
Sereon severed three fingers.
They existed again before the separated ones finished travelling away from him.
Dark watched his own discarded fingers float past.
Dark: That's disturbing.
Sereon cut his throat.
Dark's throat remained intact.
Varek punched Sereon through a star.
Dark followed.
Years accumulated.
Not on his body.
Inside him.
That distinction became worse.
At some point, Dark stopped remembering the last time he had eaten.
Ryo supplied energy.
The Node prevented biological deterioration.
Neither thing tasted like food.
Neither felt like sleep.
Dark continued moving.
Three hundred and twelve light-years of actual distance had accumulated across the path of the battle.
That number had nothing to do with time.
Tier tracked both separately.
Three hundred and twelve point eight light-years travelled.
Three hundred and twenty-seven human-equivalent years of local temporal exposure accumulated by Dark.
Dark Empire elapsed time:
Two hours.
Forty-eight minutes.
Nine seconds.
Tier stared at the numbers.
Leona: What's wrong?
Tier did not answer.
Leona looked at him.
Tier: Dark has been fighting for three hundred and twenty-seven years.
Silence.
One turned.
Igor's helmet moved slightly.
Biru's expression did not change.
Leona stared at Tier.
Leona: No.
Tier enlarged the readings.
Tier: His body has not.
Tier: His mind has.
Leona looked toward the distant battlefield they could no longer perceive normally.
Tier: The Node can prevent chronological degradation.
Tier: It cannot shorten experience.
Far away, Dark struck Sereon across the mouth with Kyuketsu.
Sereon disappeared.
Varek followed.
Dark tried to follow.
His body moved.
His mind hesitated.
Only for a fraction of a second.
That was new.
Dark stopped inside the remains of a dead solar system.
There was no planet beneath him.
No atmosphere.
Only broken matter and distant stars.
He floated.
His breathing sounded wrong inside his own head even though nothing was physically wrong with him.
Ryo had restored everything again.
Perfect heart.
Perfect lungs.
Perfect muscles.
Full reserves.
No damage.
Dark felt exhausted.
Dark: (thinking) I'm tired.
The thought arrived without anger.
That bothered him more.
Dark looked at his hand.
It was young.
The same hand.
No wrinkles.
No age.
No evidence of what it had been doing.
Dark: (thinking) I haven't eaten.
He tried to remember the last meal.
The memory existed.
Tier had made sure his mind retained everything.
That was almost worse.
Dark remembered the table.
The smell.
Who had been nearby.
He remembered thinking he would eat properly after the war.
Dark: (thinking) That was three hundred years ago.
His fingers closed slowly.
Dark: (thinking) Two hours for them.
He looked toward the direction Varek and Sereon had disappeared.
Dark: (thinking) Tier's little piece of shit keeps my body here.
Dark: (thinking) Ryo keeps putting me back together.
His jaw tightened.
Dark: (thinking) Neither one makes me feel like I slept.
For the first time in a very long time, Dark did not immediately move.
Dark: (thinking) I don't even remember what being full feels like.
That was not technically true.
His memory remembered.
His body could reproduce the sensation.
Dark meant something else.
Dark: (thinking) I want food.
His eyes lowered.
Dark: (thinking) I want my fucking chair.
A small smile almost appeared.
It failed.
Dark: (thinking) I want five minutes where nobody is dying.
His face went still again.
Dark: (thinking) Five.
A distant World broke.
The flash reached him.
Dark looked toward it.
Varek.
Sereon.
Still fighting.
Of course.
Dark closed his eyes.
Dark: (thinking) I want one conversation where somebody doesn't tell me suffering was necessary.
The smile was completely gone now.
Dark: (thinking) I'm so fucking tired of necessary.
He opened his eyes.
They were steady.
Not refreshed.
Not inspired.
Just still willing.
Dark: (thinking) Fine.
Black material crawled across his shoulders.
Kyuketsu returned to his hand.
Dark: (thinking) Five minutes later.
He moved.
The solar system behind him distorted.
Then he was gone.
Ahead, Varek had Sereon by the face.
The Grand Regent's coat had been destroyed centuries ago by Dark's measurement, though only hours had passed where the Empire existed. His torso was bare now, crossed by scars that had opened and reopened so many times that blood seemed more natural on him than clean skin.
Sereon looked unchanged.
That was not true either.
Something about Kigen had become quieter over the centuries.
More efficient.
The reflective eye no longer glowed.
It no longer needed to.
Varek squeezed.
Sereon's skull cracked.
A silver cut opened Varek from shoulder to hip.
Varek did not release him.
Varek: I have become familiar with this one.
Sereon's mouth moved beneath his hand.
Sereon: Then I should change it.
Dark arrived behind him.
Sereon's reflective eye shifted.
Too late.
Dark's hand touched the centre of Sereon's back.
Dark: Ryo Magic.
Black-red lines crossed Sereon's body.
For the first time in centuries of local combat, Sereon's expression changed before the technique completed.
Dark saw it.
Dark: Found something you don't like?
Sereon: Yes.
Dark smiled without humour.
Dark: Good.
His fingers closed.
Dark: Then all we need to do is break you.
The black and crimson lines already buried through Sereon's back constricted.
Sereon's reflective eye widened.
Not from pain.
Recognition.
The Ryo inside those markings was not attacking his flesh anymore.
Dark had stopped wasting it on flesh.
It sank through the completed Soul Ryūgu, passed the reconstructed ribs beneath it and reached deeper, following the exact place where Kigen had rebuilt Sereon after death. The markings spread over that invisible seam like cracks searching for the edge of a buried shell.
Sereon's body stiffened.
Dark felt it through his fingertips.
Dark smiled.
Dark: There you are.
Sereon moved.
Dark vanished with him.
Not after him.
With him.
For an instant, the two disappeared from the dead system entirely. Dark reappeared across an impossible distance with Kyuketsu already cutting through the space where Sereon's throat should have arrived.
Nothing.
Sereon was behind him.
Silver opened Dark from the base of his skull to the centre of his back.
His spine separated.
Both lungs opened.
His heart lost rhythm.
Dark's body folded for less than no measurable interval.
Then there was nothing wrong with him.
The skin across his back existed unbroken. Vertebrae that had been divided were continuous. The blood that had begun leaving his body was simply back inside vessels that had never ruptured. His heart struck the next beat at full force.
Dark did not even turn toward the blood Sereon had spilled.
Dark: Cute.
Sereon attacked again.
Dark raised one hand.
He did not change Power Sources.
He did not choose one.
That had never been how his body worked when he actually stopped restraining it.
All of them answered.
Gold lit behind the scar over his left eye.
Black Ryo climbed his arm.
Crimson fire moved beneath it.
Green current crawled between his fingers.
Blue frost gathered around his wrist without extinguishing the heat beside it.
His shadow thickened beneath feet that were not touching anything.
Violet fractures flashed through the darkness around his knuckles.
White flame burned along the back of Kyuketsu.
Gravity folded toward his palm.
Abyssal pressure deepened behind his shoulders.
None waited for the others to finish.
None interfered.
Sixteen different origins occupied one body and behaved as though they had been born there together.
Dark's closed left eye opened.
Gold.
Dark: Linguard Korosu.
The battlefield stretched apart inside his perception.
Not slowed.
Made readable.
Sereon still moved obscenely faster than Dark's physical body. Kigen still presented ten positions where only one mattered. Silver cuts still appeared before ordinary sight could explain what had created them.
Dark simply stopped needing ordinary sight.
His right hand moved first.
Kyuketsu parried a silver edge that had not yet become visible.
His left hand opened beneath it.
Green electricity entered Sereon's wrist.
Not a broad discharge.
A needle.
The current passed directly through the forearm, split along the nerves governing the fingers and detonated inside the muscles controlling the hand.
Sereon's fingers opened.
For less than an instant.
Dark stepped inside.
His knee struck Sereon's abdomen.
Black material wrapped around his shin at the moment of contact, hardened, then grew six hooked blades that punched sideways through Sereon's ribs from inside the impact.
Sereon twisted.
The blades tore out.
Dark's elbow came toward his jaw.
Sereon was already gone.
Dark's elbow hit nothing.
Then Varek arrived.
Sereon had travelled farther than Dark could see.
Varek had travelled farther still.
The Grand Regent appeared in front of Sereon without teleportation, without a portal and without any discontinuity in his path. His body had physically crossed every part of the distance between them.
There had simply not been enough usable time for anything else to matter.
His fist struck Sereon in the chest.
The front of Soul Ryūgu collapsed.
Sereon's back erupted.
The impact did not merely send him away. For the first fraction of the displacement, Sereon's body remained around Varek's fist while the material composing his spine, ribs and organs attempted to obey the momentum before the rest of him had finished receiving it.
Then he disappeared.
Varek went after him.
Dark did not.
He teleported.
The relocation crossed a distance so extreme that entire cosmological structures disappeared behind him without ever entering the journey. There was no travel between origin and destination.
Dark simply existed elsewhere.
Sereon was already there.
His reflective eye met Dark's the instant Dark materialized.
Sereon: Still too slow.
A silver line divided Dark's face vertically.
His left eye split.
His nose opened.
His tongue severed inside his mouth.
The cut continued through his sternum and exited beneath his abdomen.
Dark's body separated.
Then it did not.
His eye returned whole before the severed half completed its first rotation. His tongue was already attached when his mouth filled with the taste of its own blood. His sternum existed intact beneath skin that had never scarred.
Dark grinned.
Dark: Keep doing that.
Sereon's eye narrowed.
Dark had not teleported there to hit him.
A black symbol remained behind after Dark disappeared again.
Sereon looked at it.
Then Dark appeared somewhere else.
Sereon crossed that distance before him.
Silver entered Dark's throat.
Dark restored.
Another black symbol appeared.
Dark vanished.
Again.
A third destination.
Sereon reached it first.
Dark's right arm disappeared from the shoulder.
It returned before the severed limb reached him.
Another symbol.
Dark vanished.
Another.
Another.
Another.
Sereon understood.
Too late.
Dark appeared far beyond him and stopped.
Hundreds of black markings existed across distances no ordinary battlefield could contain, each one planted at a point where Dark had deliberately allowed Sereon to beat his teleportation.
Dark looked across all of them.
Dark: Mugen Korosu.
His hands came together.
Dark: Infinite Darkness.
Every marker opened.
Blackness did not spread outward from Dark.
It arrived from everywhere he had been.
The darkness swallowed stars first. Then planets. Then the boundaries between the locations Dark had seeded. Every reference point Sereon could use to distinguish one destination from another vanished beneath the same endless black.
It was not another false World.
Sereon knew what false Worlds felt like.
This belonged to Dark.
The darkness pulled.
Not in one direction.
Every direction.
Sereon moved.
Hunter Magic was already waiting inside the black.
Gravity seized his right shoulder from one side and his left hip from another. A third vector caught his head. A fourth tore at his spine. Each force had been anchored to a different marker across the battlefield, all of them acting at once.
Sereon forced himself through it.
He was still faster than Dark.
That remained true.
It simply did not help him with Varek.
The Grand Regent crossed Infinite Darkness as though it were empty air.
Sereon's reflective eye shifted.
Varek was behind him.
Sereon moved.
Varek was in front.
Sereon changed direction.
Varek crossed him again.
Sereon went upward.
Varek's hand closed around his face from above.
There was no teleportation to misread.
No sensory jump to exploit.
Varek's physical body had simply outrun Sereon's.
His fingers crushed inward.
Sereon's cheekbones broke first.
The upper jaw followed.
The skull began folding beneath Varek's palm.
Varek: Enough running.
Sereon drove silver through Varek's forearm.
The limb opened from wrist to elbow.
Varek's grip did not loosen.
He pulled Sereon closer.
Then punched him.
Dark's Linguard perception caught the beginning.
It did not catch the middle.
Varek's shoulder moved.
Sereon's face ceased existing correctly.
His fist was already returning before Dark's perception finished recording the first result.
Second punch.
The ribs beneath Soul Ryūgu collapsed.
Third.
Sereon's abdomen opened.
Fourth.
Jaw.
Fifth.
Chest.
Sixth.
The same chest before Kigen finished restoring what the fifth had destroyed.
That was different.
Sereon's reflective eye widened.
Varek saw it.
His next punch travelled an even shorter distance.
Barely the width of Sereon's own hand separated Varek's knuckles from his sternum.
The fist crossed it.
The entire front of Sereon's torso caved inward.
Varek did not chase the body away.
His other hand caught Sereon by the shoulder and dragged him back into the exact distance required for another strike.
His punches no longer looked like a combination.
They looked like Sereon's body failing in different places for reasons the surrounding reality could not display quickly enough.
The left side of his face collapsed.
His liver ruptured.
His throat closed.
His ribs broke outward.
His pelvis shifted.
His skull fractured above the ear.
One restored.
Varek broke it again.
Another restored.
Varek was already inside the next impact.
Kigen began producing alternatives.
Three Vareks appeared around Sereon.
Seven.
Thirty.
The real one never stopped moving.
Sereon slipped through what appeared to be an opening.
Varek physically overtook him and punched him back into the centre.
Dark watched the sequence once.
That was enough.
Dark: Assassin Magic...
His presence disappeared.
Not his body.
Everything that announced the body.
Sound.
Intent.
Magical pressure.
The tiny disturbances produced by motion.
The awareness that someone hostile had entered the same space.
Dark: Silent Nullification.
Sereon's reflective eye moved.
For the first time since Kigen awakened, it failed to find Dark immediately.
A black blade emerged through Sereon's chest from behind.
Not Kyuketsu.
A narrow obsidian weapon made from Assassin Magic, sharpened around something more dangerous than its edge.
Dark stood behind him.
Dark: Black Reaper's Gambit.
The blade pierced deeper.
It did not target the heart.
It passed through the physical organ and continued into the spiritual structure beneath it.
Sereon's body jerked.
Dark twisted the weapon.
Varek punched Sereon in the face.
The force drove him backward along Dark's blade.
Soul Ryūgu tore open.
The assassin weapon remained inside.
Dark released it.
His next spell was already active.
Dark Magic gathered beneath Sereon's feet in a rotating black ring.
Dark: Impactful Blackhole.
The void opened.
Sereon's lower body dropped toward it while Varek's fist drove his upper body in the opposite direction.
For a moment, the two forces stretched him between them.
Kigen corrected.
His torso split.
A new layer appeared beneath it.
Dark saw the transition.
So did Ryo.
The black-red marks covering Sereon's back surged.
They entered the newly exposed layer before it had finished becoming the outside of his body.
Sereon: Tch.
Dark heard it.
Dark's eyes sharpened.
Dark: There.
Sereon looked toward him.
Dark: You can keep replacing the body.
The Ryo marks turned inward.
Dark: But every time you do, you show me where the next one starts.
Sereon moved.
The blackhole collapsed behind him.
Dark teleported ahead.
Sereon crossed the location before Dark's blade could reach him.
Dark expected it.
His left hand had already been pointed somewhere else.
Dark: Shadow Magic...
The darkness surrounding Infinite Darkness changed.
Weapons emerged.
Not dozens.
Not hundreds.
An entire sky of them.
Black spears formed point-first around Sereon's path. Curved blades appeared behind them. Needles the length of towers rotated between enormous execution stakes. Some possessed barbs. Others were smooth enough to pass through flesh without losing speed. A few carried hooks designed to make removal worse than entry.
Dark: Funeral Rain.
They fired.
Sereon outran the first field.
The second had formed ahead of him.
He moved around it.
A third opened below.
Sereon crossed sideways.
Varek met him there.
Punch.
Sereon went backward.
Straight into the weapons.
Three spears entered his back.
One emerged through the abdomen.
Another burst through the right side of his chest.
The third caught beneath the shoulder and broke through the collarbone.
Varek caught the point coming through Sereon's chest.
His fingers closed around Dark's weapon.
Dark saw him.
Dark: Don't.
Varek pulled.
Sereon came forward along the spear.
The weapon tore through another half metre of his body.
Varek broke it in half.
Dark stared.
Dark: Seriously?
Varek drove the broken half back into Sereon's chest.
The jagged end entered beneath the sternum.
Varek: Improve your weapons.
Dark: They worked before you fucking snapped one.
Sereon moved between them.
Silver exploded outward.
The act of seeing became hostile.
Dark saw Varek standing where Sereon was.
Varek saw Dark.
Neither attacked.
That hesitation lasted almost nothing.
Sereon used it.
A cut appeared across Dark's abdomen.
Another opened Varek's throat.
A third divided Dark's left arm.
A fourth entered Varek's eye.
Dark's arm restored.
Varek ignored the eye.
Sereon crossed away.
Dark's hands separated.
Dark: Abyssal Convergence...
Silver lines rushed toward him.
Atom Magic formed a transparent field across his skin without waiting for instruction. The first silver cut touched it and disintegrated into particulate light before reaching flesh.
At the same time, Hunter gravity compressed the space around Dark's spine, Shadow Magic built four extra arms behind him, Ryo remained attached to Sereon's immortality seams, green electricity gathered beneath his nails, black flame crawled through Kyuketsu, white fire occupied his left palm, and a violet fracture spread through the empty space ahead.
Dark never dismissed any of them.
He simply added more.
Dark: Void Reflection.
Sereon's next silver strike entered the Abyssal field.
The direction inverted.
The cut returned.
Sereon's reflective eye widened.
Silver crossed his own cheek.
Blood appeared.
Dark was already moving.
One shadow arm carried Kyuketsu.
Another formed a short spear.
The third dragged a chain of black material behind it.
The fourth held nothing.
Dark's real hands did something else.
His left palm released green current.
His right sent white fire into it.
The two powers did not cancel.
They braided.
Green lightning travelled inside white flame until the attack resembled a burning nervous system stretching across the void.
Sereon moved around it.
Dark snapped his fingers.
The current forked.
Not toward Sereon.
Toward every weapon from Funeral Rain still embedded in the surrounding darkness.
The spears lit.
Sereon understood one fraction too late.
Every weapon became a conductor.
Green current erupted between them.
The space around Sereon became a cage of intersecting electrical lines.
One touched his calf.
The muscle locked.
Another struck the neck.
Soul Ryūgu spasmed.
White fire followed the current into both contact points and burned inward through the channels the electricity had opened.
Sereon's body jerked.
Varek arrived.
Elbow.
The strike entered the jaw from below.
Sereon lifted.
Varek's hand caught the back of his head.
Knee.
The face collapsed against it.
Varek turned his hips.
He did not throw Sereon.
He threw himself around Sereon, keeping the grip, changing sides faster than Sereon's body could complete the previous motion.
Another knee entered the spine.
Then a chop.
The edge of Varek's palm struck across the lower ribs.
Soul Ryūgu opened.
Bone beneath it separated.
Varek changed the chop into a grab and seized the exposed ribs.
Sereon's eye widened.
Varek ripped.
Three ribs came free in his hand.
He dropped them.
Varek: You repair too much.
Sereon coughed blood.
Varek struck him again.
Varek: It has made you careless with what you lose.
Sereon disappeared.
Dark teleported.
He appeared in a region so distant that Infinite Darkness no longer visibly connected it to the place they had left.
Sereon was already passing him.
Dark did not swing.
A violet line flashed from his fingertip instead.
It struck empty space behind Sereon.
Nothing happened.
Sereon continued.
Then his right leg moved in a different direction from the rest of his body.
His reflective eye widened.
The violet fracture had not cut him.
It had split the transfer of force through the space his leg crossed.
His hip continued forward.
The knee inherited a different vector.
The ankle another.
For a single instant, Sereon's own speed attempted to tear the leg apart.
He corrected with Kigen.
Varek reached him before correction completed.
A hand closed around the ankle.
Sereon looked down.
Varek swung him.
The first rotation crossed a dead Universe.
The second passed through the remains of a stellar network.
On the third, Varek released.
Sereon vanished.
Dark looked toward the direction.
He teleported ahead.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
He moved again.
Sereon passed the destination before Dark finished orienting himself.
Dark: (thinking) Yeah, yeah. Faster.
Dark vanished again.
This time he appeared with both hands already touching one another.
Dark: Ryo Magic...
Sereon passed him.
Dark smiled.
The spell did not need Sereon to remain there.
Dark: Judgment Severance.
The region Sereon had just crossed locked.
Not time.
Not movement.
The space itself acquired a verdict.
Every trace Sereon had left inside it, blood, silver residue, displaced energy, fragments of Soul Ryūgu, all of it became connected by a crimson-black network that followed him beyond the point where the technique had been cast.
The marks snapped toward his body.
Sereon's head turned.
The lines caught him across the chest.
Dark closed his fist.
The judgment tightened.
A layer of Sereon's reconstructed torso began separating from the one beneath it.
Sereon: Enough.
Kigen released.
Silver flooded Judgment Severance.
The red-black network shattered.
Dark's eyes widened.
Sereon crossed the distance between them.
His hand entered Dark's face.
Dark saw nothing.
Then memory disappeared.
Not all of it.
One piece.
For a second, Dark did not know who Varek was.
He knew there was a man somewhere nearby.
Ancient.
Strong.
Annoying.
The name was gone.
Dark's expression changed.
Sereon saw it.
Sereon: Your body is not the only thing I can cut.
Dark stared at him.
Then the missing memory returned.
Not gradually.
Ryo restored the broken sequence inside his mind the same way it restored flesh.
Varek.
Edrassan.
Grand Regent.
Dantero bringing him.
Every interaction returned in its proper place.
Dark's eyes narrowed.
Dark: You really picked the worst time for that shit to start healing too.
Sereon struck again.
Dark's sanity split for an instant.
Three hundred years of battle became impossible to order. Yesterday appeared before childhood. The Dark Empire became older than Dark. Cosmic became a stranger. Leona's face lost meaning.
Then everything slammed back into place.
Memory.
Identity.
Sequence.
Self.
Dark stumbled once.
Not from physical injury.
That one had hurt differently.
Sereon moved to finish it.
Varek's fist entered the side of his skull.
Sereon vanished.
Varek stopped beside Dark.
Dark looked at him.
Dark: Varek.
Varek: Yes.
Dark: Just checking.
Varek looked toward where Sereon had gone.
Varek: Focus.
Dark: I am focused.
Varek: You asked my name.
Dark: Shut the fuck up.
Varek moved.
Dark went with him.
This time Dark stopped trying to race Sereon completely.
He let Varek do that.
It changed everything.
Sereon crossed a dead World.
Varek overtook him and struck from the front.
Dark appeared where the impact sent him.
Kyuketsu cut across Sereon's back.
Sereon moved before Dark could make the second cut.
Varek was already waiting.
Punch.
Dark teleported to the new line.
Black Reaper's Gambit entered the ribs.
Sereon escaped.
Varek physically passed him.
Palm heel.
Dark appeared beneath.
Green current through the spine.
Sereon corrected.
Varek chopped the shoulder.
Dark's shadow arms seized the exposed side.
Varek punched the opposite one.
They stopped fighting beside one another.
They began using one another.
Varek created displacement.
Dark weaponized destination.
Dark broke posture.
Varek destroyed structure.
Dark filled escape lines with magic.
Varek made Sereon take them anyway.
Sereon forged a false Dark.
Varek ignored it and struck every body-sized region in front of him with a single sweeping backhand so violent that the true Sereon was exposed by the one place blood appeared.
Dark teleported into the blood.
Kyuketsu was already there.
Sereon's abdomen opened.
Black fire entered the wound, but Dark did not release Infernal Blackout.
He used something else.
The flame changed.
It turned almost colourless at the centre.
Dark: Flame Magic...
Sereon's reflective eye moved.
Dark pressed two fingers into the open wound.
Dark: Empty Pyre.
The fire did not burn outward.
It consumed heat from the tissue around it.
Sereon's abdomen froze from inside while white-black flame remained buried in the flesh. Ice formed through blood vessels. Frost travelled over Soul Ryūgu. The exterior burned while the interior temperature collapsed.
Kigen began correcting both states.
That was the point.
Dark added a third.
Blue frost erupted from his shadow and climbed the opposite side of Sereon's torso.
Not the same cold.
This one crystallized moisture, blood and silver residue into rigid branching structures that locked the repairing armor in place.
Sereon's eye widened.
Dark: You wanted complicated.
Varek appeared.
Dark teleported away.
Varek's fist hit the frozen section.
Everything shattered.
Flesh.
Soul Ryūgu.
Ice.
White fire.
The entire side of Sereon's torso exploded into fragments.
Varek went through the opening.
His hand entered Sereon's chest.
Fingers closed around the spine.
Sereon stared at him.
Varek pulled.
The spine came out.
Not cleanly.
Vertebrae tore free one after another while nerves, muscle and strips of flesh followed them through the wound. The structure came out through Sereon's front in Varek's hand.
Dark stopped for half a second.
Dark: Jesus Christ.
Varek threw the spine away.
Sereon's body folded.
Kigen activated.
A new spine began existing beneath the missing one.
Dark saw the seam.
Ryo reached it.
The black-red marks already buried inside Sereon surged violently and wrapped the forming vertebrae before they completed.
Sereon's body stopped.
Dark's expression changed.
Dark: Varek.
Varek looked.
Dark pointed at Sereon's back.
Dark: Again.
Varek understood.
His fist struck directly over the forming spine.
The new vertebrae shattered before Kigen finished integrating them.
Sereon's body dropped.
Another layer attempted to answer.
Ryo was already inside it.
Dark felt something crack.
Not bone.
Something much larger.
A sound passed through Sereon that did not belong to the battlefield.
Thin.
Distant.
Like a glass structure breaking somewhere infinitely deeper than the body containing it.
Sereon's reflective eye widened.
Dark went still.
Varek stopped for less than an instant.
Something separated from Sereon.
No visible shell.
No spirit.
No aura.
Yet both men felt it.
One complete answer to death had just failed.
Not all of them.
Not even enough to count against what remained.
One.
One of Sereon's innumerable continuities had been forced to end without another version of that same layer replacing it.
Blood left Sereon's mouth.
His expression finally changed.
Not irritation.
Not amusement.
Not analysis.
Recognition.
Dark stared at him.
Then smiled.
Dark: There.
Sereon looked toward him.
Dark's sixteen Power Sources were still active together.
Gold behind one eye.
Ryo through both arms.
Shadow moving independently at his back.
Gravity bending around his hands.
Green electricity crawling over his fingers.
White flame and blue frost coexisting along Kyuketsu.
Abyssal darkness rotating behind him.
Black material building weapons around his shoulders.
Violet fractures blinking through the space near his feet.
None had gone away when another appeared.
Dark had simply kept adding.
Dark rolled Kyuketsu once in his hand.
Dark: That's one.
Varek stepped beside him.
Blood covered both fists.
Sereon's body began rebuilding again.
Slower this time.
Only slightly.
Varek looked at him.
Varek: Then break the next one.
Dark's smile disappeared.
His eyes became cold.
Dark: Gladly.
Sereon straightened.
Kigen opened across his reflective eye.
The battlefield changed.
Dark and Varek attacked before it could finish.
The first thing Sereon lost was the space around his own body.
Dark's left hand turned palm-down, and the ruined expanse beneath them answered before he spoke. Gravity did not simply increase. It divided. Separate points of attraction formed around Sereon's shoulders, hips, knees, spine and skull, each pulling along a different axis with enough force to make the fragments of distant Worlds curve toward him from directions that should not have shared a centre.
Dark: Gravity Magic...
Sereon's reflective eye shifted toward him.
Dark's fingers bent.
Dark: Celestial Burial.
The field closed.
Sereon's right shoulder was dragged upward while his left hip was wrenched down. His legs were pulled apart along opposing vectors, and the force around his skull changed direction twice before his neck could compensate. Kigen immediately attempted to resolve the contradiction by altering what Sereon perceived as his own orientation, but Dark had not placed the spell inside Sereon's senses. The gravity existed whether Sereon accepted it or not.
Dark did not wait to admire it.
His shadow spread behind Sereon and climbed upward without a surface, thickening into six enormous black arms. Two seized the legs already fighting Dark's gravity. Another locked around Sereon's waist. A fourth closed over his sword arm even though Suigōraku no longer existed separately from him. The remaining two formed blades at the wrists and drove inward from opposite sides.
At the same time, green electricity crawled from Dark's fingertips and entered the shadow limbs.
The current reached Sereon through every point of contact.
His muscles contracted.
His hands tightened involuntarily.
The completed Soul Ryūgu opened dozens of pale eyes across his body, and several of them shut the instant the electricity passed beneath them.
Dark had three different magics acting on him before the first spell had ended.
To Be Continued...
End Of Arc 4 Chapter 17. pt1