The fight raged on, each clash of aura echoing like thunder meeting crashing waves. Blades of power and bursts of force collided in a fierce dance—neither man giving ground, each attack met with a counter, each counter returned with greater strength.
They were evenly matched.
Yet Adam was faster. Sharper. More agile.
He knew it—and exploited that edge with ruthless precision.
Weapons formed from shadow and darkness shot toward Heinrich at blinding speeds. The air cracked as they passed, some narrowly missing their target. Heinrich ducked, twisted, evaded—then caught one mid-air, whipping it back with smooth, effortless grace.
Adam didn't flinch. The weapon simply dissolved back into his body like ink to water. His eyes locked on Heinrich's. Cold. Calculated. He raised one dagger, the edge gleaming with suffocating darkness.
All around him, the shadows writhed.
From the blackened earth, monstrous silhouettes began to rise—creatures of the dark, summoned from Adam's command.
"Go," he ordered.
They obeyed.
The swarm fell on Heinrich like locusts—claws, fangs, fists, shadows moving with eerie fluidity. Blow after blow came from every direction. Overwhelming.
And yet—Heinrich smiled.
Adam paused, disturbed. There was something wrong about that grin. Too calm. Too confident.
He joined the fray, unleashing a horizontal slash so dense with power it carved the ground open, roaring toward Heinrich like a jet of pure entropy.
One of the shadow beasts bit into Heinrich's shoulder. He barely reacted—then, without warning, let them all pile onto him.
And then—
A flash.
A violent burst of light exploded from Heinrich's body. An eruption so vast it incinerated every shadow creature instantly, reducing them to ash. The darkness slash Adam had launched bent—warped unnaturally—as it neared Heinrich.
Heinrich moved, seizing the very air as if it were a sheet. The space itself shimmered like silk between his fingers.
With a twist, he spun—and the shadow slash was hurled back.
Adam vanished into his own shadow just in time, the redirected attack screaming past him and slicing a distant building clean in half.
He reappeared right in front of Heinrich, a blur.
"Thousand Darkness Cut."
Adam's words barely left his lips when slashes of condensed darkness sliced through Heinrich's body from all sides—dozens, maybe hundreds of strikes in a blink. Muscles split. Blood spilled.
Heinrich gasped, staggering from the pain—but he didn't fall.
His fist flew forward.
Adam met it with his own. A thunderous shockwave rippled outward, shattering nearby windows, cracking the earth.
Fists collided, missed, deflected. A brutal exchange of blows—each man reading the other, punishing mistakes, pressing any opening. Adam landed a crushing kick across Heinrich's jaw, sending him stumbling. Without missing a beat, he grabbed Heinrich's retaliating arm, twisted, spun behind him—and slammed him hard into a cracked concrete wall.
Heinrich groaned.
He was powerful, no doubt—but Adam was more refined. More seasoned. Every strike he threw came with intention, not desperation. A predator—not a brawler.
Adam's next punch landed clean. Dark energy crackled around his fist as he drove it into Heinrich's abdomen with devastating force.
Heinrich's insides twisted from the impact, and he was flung backward—smashing through several already-ruined buildings, fire and rubble erupting behind him.
Adam exhaled—but before he could gather himself, a strange pressure swept in behind him.
A force.
It pulled him.
"What the hell—?"
His body was suddenly dragged through the air. Space twisted around him, the world spinning. He fought against it, but gravity bent sideways, hurling him like a cannonball in Heinrich's direction.
Heinrich wasn't finished. With a snarl, he gripped the air once more—and the burning ruins collapsed downward toward Adam like a hellish avalanche.
Adam vanished into the shadows just in time.
In the silent dark, he caught his breath.
"What is he...?"
"He already knows my abilities... almost every move. I'm the only one playing blind."
He thought back to the moment Heinrich grabbed space—bent it like parchment.
"He's warping space... folding it. That explains the disorientation. The redirection. But those explosions..."
His eyes narrowed.
"They're not natural. I can't even sense them before they hit. If I get caught in one—I might not heal from it."
Adam's jaw clenched.
"I don't have time. I need to end this. I have to."
Images flashed in his mind—Victoria. His comrades. His son.
"If I fall here, they all die... I may never see my boy again. Never hold him again. Never make things right."
He forced the sorrow down, shaping it into resolve.
"No. I won't lose."
He burst from the shadows like a bullet, materializing before Heinrich, crouched low—his palm pressed to Heinrich's abdomen.
"Abyssal Crush."
From the surrounding darkness, chains erupted—snaring Heinrich's limbs, locking him in place.
A second wave followed—darkness surging, swirling, compacting around Heinrich like a tidal wave of ink.
A sphere.
The shadows condensed into a pitch-black sphere, suffocating and silent. The light vanished from within.
Heinrich struggled—but even his voice was consumed.
"No point resisting," Adam said coldly, watching from afar. "That sphere crushes everything inside—sound, objects, even space itself. Your bones, your breath—all of it."
The pressure began to build.
The sphere compressed violently, gravity warping inwards. The space around it twisted unnaturally, like the beginning of a black hole.
Inside—the silence was absolute.
Outside—Adam's gaze didn't waver.
He knew better than to hope it was over.
But he also knew this was his last chance to win.
And he would not let it slip away.
But to Adam's surprise, the dark sphere began to expand.
That wasn't right.
Its very nature was to compress inward, to crush with immense gravitational pressure. But now, the shadows that had once curled inward were pushing outwards, growing, pulsing like a living heart.
Adam instinctively leapt back, a cold flicker of dread creeping into his chest.
"What the hell is he doing in there...? How is he even alive inside that pressure, let alone moving...?"
The sphere swelled further—larger, wider, more unstable. The ground beneath Adam trembled violently, cracks spiderwebbing beneath his feet. And then—
It began to float.
Defying gravity, the colossal sphere slowly levitated into the air. A quiet hum filled the space around it, building toward something catastrophic.
Then it cracked.
Veins of light ruptured the black surface. From within the fissures, radiant energy bled out like molten gold. The fractures deepened, spread—and then, in a blinding instant, the sphere imploded.
A burst of energy erupted outward.
The world screamed.
Flames, dust, and air were torn to shreds. Entire structures were destroyed. Adam braced, wrapping layers of darkness around himself in a cocoon of raw defense, shielding himself from the onslaught.
When the light faded, Adam lowered his guard. His eyes narrowed.
And there—floating in the shimmering haze of destruction—stood Heinrich.
Levitation. Arms spread. His tattered white cloak fluttered, not from wind—but from the subtle warping of space around him. His presence gleamed in the ruined battlefield like a celestial being among chaos. A false angel wrapped in divine illusion.
Adam clicked his tongue.
"What a show-off," he muttered bitterly. "It's getting on my damn nerves."
Heinrich met his glare with a grin, clearly savoring the irritation in Adam's expression. The smile wasn't mocking—it was taunting. He knew exactly what he was doing. And he loved it.
Adam had enough.
With a flex of will, he used the surrounding shadows like extensions of his own mind—gripping the shattered remains of a nearby house, and hurling the massive debris toward Heinrich.
It moved like a meteor.
Heinrich didn't blink.
A translucent shimmer wrapped around him as space thickened, forming a barrier. The chunk of building smashed through him with a thunderous crack—but Heinrich didn't move. The debris shattered on impact with the distortion.
Adam, already moving, wasn't finished.
As the last piece of debris crumbled, he raised a hand—and from the battlefield's scarred earth, enormous spikes of darkness burst forth. Jagged. Relentless. Rushing toward Heinrich.
But something was wrong.
The spikes slowed. Not in speed—but in time. They stretched forward... but never reached him. As if stuck in an invisible maze.
Adam's eyes narrowed.
"He's warping space again... the distance between us—it's no longer real."
Before he could adjust, Heinrich moved.
He wrapped himself in space and launched like a cannonball—propelled by folded dimensions. In a heartbeat, he was there, gliding past Adam with a howling burst of wind.
Adam reacted on instinct. Daggers in hand. He slashed.
Heinrich evaded the first, and let the second cut deep into his hand.
He didn't even flinch.
With a cold smile, Heinrich leaned close.
"Don't vomit on me, will you?"
Then, in perfect imitation of Adam's earlier move, Heinrich twisted Adam's arm, locked it, spun behind him—and hurled him.
But Adam never hit the ground.
His body stopped mid-air—then snapped backward violently.
"Urgh—!" Adam gasped. He wasn't being thrown. He was being pulled.
The force behind him was unnatural. Bone-crushing. Inescapable.
Space itself was collapsing behind him—pulling him in like a dying star obeying its master's call.
Though Adam had a few rough theories about Heinrich's strange ability to "warp" space, he lacked a full understanding of its true mechanics. It wasn't just manipulation of the space around him—Heinrich's control went far deeper. More abstract. More dangerous.
Heinrich, on the other hand, understood Adam completely. Thanks to Percival—an enemy Adam had clashed with in the past—Heinrich had been briefed in full detail on how Adam's powers worked. Every strength. Every weakness.
But Adam knew almost nothing about Heinrich's.
The ability was called Deviating Expansion*.*
At a glance, it might appear as simple spatial manipulation—but the truth was more terrifying. Heinrich didn't just bend or stretch existing space. He injected his own conceptual energy into space itself, reshaping it with artificially constructed forces.
"Deviating Expansion" allowed Heinrich to create and channel two opposing forces: positive spatial energy and negative spatial energy. These energies, unlike natural space, were synthetic—born of his will—and behaved according to his intent.
Positive space expansion mimicked the accelerating expansion of the universe: it stretched distances, warped perception, slowed motion, and rendered objects virtually unreachable. It was how Heinrich could displace incoming attacks or bend the position of his body to appear untouched.
Negative space compression, on the other hand, functioned like a gravitational singularity: it crushed, collapsed, and imploded. It folded distances into zero, breaking objects and momentum with cataclysmic intensity. It was how Heinrich redirected attacks, crushed incoming matter, or warped space to yank enemies out of position.
But the true terror came from combining both.
When Heinrich poured negative space into a stable spatial field—then flooded that same zone with positive energy—it created an unstable polarity. The opposing energies tore at each other, warping, twisting, and ultimately collapsing into chaotic instability. This chain reaction was what Heinrich dubbed:
Fracture Bloom.
It wasn't just destruction—it was reality folding in on itself.
One could compare it to stretching a rubber sheet too far, then compressing it in the center. Eventually, the stress ruptures it, violently releasing the built-up tension in a localized explosion of space.
And right now—Adam was headed straight toward one.
Heinrich's right fist glowed faintly, subtly distorted like heat rising from a desert. Space rippled around it—his knuckles surrounded by a shell of compressed negative energy.
As Adam's body flew closer—too close—Heinrich moved.
A blur.
His fist blurred forward.
Space collapsed inward as his punch connected.
"Fracture Bloom," Heinrich whispered.
"Spark of Light."
The world warped.
There was no sound—just the sensation of pressure and disintegration.
Then—
THUNDERCLAP.
That was the only way Adam could describe it. A sound so violent it skipped straight past the ears and slammed into his skull.
A burst of radiant energy erupted from his abdomen, exploding outward in a cascading spatial rupture. The sheer heat and force of the impact tore apart the air.
Adam's mind went blank. His vision flickered, blurred, like a dying candle. He tasted blood—thick, coppery—as it spilled from his mouth in choking gasps.
Heinrich floated there, smiling.
Calm. Confident. Victorious.
The battle had changed again—and Adam was now the one on the brink.