The fight roared like a delayed thunderstorm.
Their blades did not merely cut through matter: they tore through possibilities, pierced futures, ripped memories from the fabric of the world. Everywhere their weapons passed, stars extinguished and were reborn, as if reality itself was gasping under the strain.
Bakuzan held firm. He felt every muscle, every nerve, but it was not brute strength that kept him — it was the cold determination of a carefully calculated design. He knew Isissis had not yet deployed all his artillery; he also knew the god was amused. A nearly cruel smile flickered for a moment on Isissis's lips, like a child teasing a toy he thought fragile.
They separated with a choreographed movement; the space between them had become a multi-dimensional battlefield. Bakuzan knelt, rested on his two crossed blades, and let out a long, measured breath. On his chest, the marks Satan had engraved pulsed like an additional heart.
— Perhaps… he thought, this is the perfect moment.
He slowly raised his head, his black eyes locking with Isissis's. The god had the insolent calm of beings who know they hold laws between their fingers. His voice, when it came, was both soft and sharp.
— Tell me, Black Grief, how do you plan to balance all this? whispered Isissis.
— If I use forces from Madhurya, I'll pulverize you in a heartbeat. Elementary.
Bakuzan gave a dry smile. He answered without revealing the full extent of his plan:
— You're arrogant. Too sure of yourself. You think you're the alpha and omega of the narrative; yet you are not immune to a reversal. You'll be less cocky when I absorb you.
Isissis exploded into laughter that tore the fabric of the place; the murmur of his voice vibrated through worlds. A hundred tones, a hundred nuances; each carried a bit of the whole universe.
— You? It will take more than bluster, he said, amused.
— I am the ego of the forces of Madhurya. Even the idea that I could be absorbed only makes sense because I consent to it. You're boasting in front of the one who can redefine your very being…
His words were both a challenge and a caress. He planted the spear of light into the diamond ground, and the air around them shrank under the authority of this gesture.
Bakuzan felt the echo of Isissis's words like a cold blade. It was exactly what he wanted to hear. The time had come to light the fuse he had carefully placed.
He straightened up, his shoulders becoming blocks of shadow. His breath turned into a rhythm, an ancient war cadence. The marks on his chest opened, not to plead, but to invoke: glyphs detached in spirals, transforming into shadow filaments that searched, waited, searched for the crack in Isissis's ego.
— Very well, said Bakuzan in a low, controlled voice. If you refuse out of pride, I will provoke absorption by the sheer force of my provocation.
— I call the confrontation of essence. I call the duel where one captures not only skin or breath, but the very idea of standing.
Isissis narrowed his eyes, measuring for the first time the cold precision shining in the Deviant's gaze.
Bakuzan immediately felt the cold of danger lurking beneath the skin of the world. This duel was no longer just a clash of weapons or energies: it was the collision of existential statuses. He and Isissis both belonged to the meta-conceptual order — and yet, between them, no equality existed.
Isissis was not just a meta-conceptual being; he was the very incarnation of that force, the consciousness that personifies Madhurya when it asserts itself. Where Bakuzan remained an extraordinary singularity, Isissis held the key to the frameworks that authorize existence. In other words: there was no common arbiter, no neutral rule to lean on.
Bakuzan understood the implications in a flash. In the ecosystem, an ordinary meta-conceptual being can influence, deny, reshape — but cannot erase another's being at their own level without consequence. Lower entities — evolving mortals, great mortal beings, super-mortals — could be brought down to simple mortals or shadows by powerful forces; they could lose their attributes, be humiliated before reestablished causality. But in front of Isissis, this reading crumbled: he alone, as the ego of Madhurya, cut through all categories. Mortal, myth, deviant, deity — nothing escaped his judgment when he chose to assert his will.
Isissis smiled, and in his smile Bakuzan heard all the certainty of a world that knows itself master of its own laws. His voice became heavy, muffled, like stone waiting for collapse.
— Since you sought absorption from me… very well. I will pay you back in kind. I will suck you in, Black Grief, reduce you to dust, to scattered concept. You will become once more what you truly are: a fragment without reach.
Bakuzan let pass a slow, measured smile, like placing a final piece on a gaming table. His provocation had worked — Isissis had shown himself, proud, quick to accept the bet. All that remained now, thought Bakuzan, was to play the role the god expected: appear vulnerable, offer space, invite predation. Beneath this feint of surrender, his glyphs and preparations stretched into invisible traps, ready to seize the god's ego the instant he believed he was swallowing him whole.
— Very well, murmured Bakuzan, voice calm like a hidden blade. Go ahead. Swallow me.
And let him do it with the pride of one who believes he destroys — for it is in that very pride that cunning finds its fault.
An absorption duel began. Bakuzan released his dark, dense, oppressive mana, while Isissis exploded around him in a burst of bright, pure, burning mana. The two forces clashed, intertwining in an invisible crash, each current seeking to overwhelm the other, to sabotage the very substance of its opponent.
Isissis, his voice resonating like a choir of hundreds of tones: "Black Grief… you will disappear into your own challenge!"
Bakuzan remained silent, playing his role perfectly. He observed every fluctuation of Isissis's energy, every pulse that might betray an opening. In his mind, a fleeting thought: I really hope Satan… won't stab me in the back…
Isissis's mana grew, devouring and engulfing even Bakuzan's flow, enveloping the diamond planet suspended in the void. Every particle, every law, every concept, every duality, every notion and even nothingness itself were absorbed in a cataclysm of pure energy, melted into causal zero notion, absolute and utter silence. Amid this storm of absorption, Bakuzan was also sucked in, swallowed into the merged light and shadow, leaving behind only a breath suspended in nonexistence.
Isissis stood in the center of the reconstructed void, his majestic silhouette bursting like a thousand suns. A laugh burst from his throat, resonating in the silence of all dimensions: "That was yet another victory… boring. Even the most powerful Deviant weighs nothing against me, it's a fact."
As Isissis savored his triumph and the void slowly took form again around him, an intimate resistance surprised him: like a cold ring closing around a vital organ. A reverse, slippery pressure eating away from inside the certainty of his victory.
He brought his hand to his chest, paled under the light of the twin suns burning in his eyes.
— What is… What is this? he murmured, voice like a crack in stone.
A bitter taste rose in his throat; he spat, feeling his own essence turning inside out, as if the interior of his being tried to reject an invader. His features twisted in incomprehension, then panic.
— No… it's not possible… Black Grief? How…? I must… get rid of this! he hissed, like someone trying to extinguish a fire under their skin.
The light that inhabited him, at first flickering, rose in a howl: — Noooonnn!
Then, in a terrible and beautiful instant, the logic of the duel broke. The absorption was reversed: the absorber became the absorbed. The hand that ate was eaten. The flow that swallowed was swallowed.
Isissis's body fragmented into thousands of shards of meaning and symbols; his silhouette collapsed into a leaden silence. Where the god dominated one heartbeat ago, there was only the fall — and, at the center of the fading verbal chaos, Bakuzan reappeared, panting, staggering, but alive. He collapsed, dizzy, like a man coming back to himself after a long drowning.
Before he touched the ground, a massive shadow sprang from the darkness of the void. Nihlorgue — the dragon of the Void — seized him. Its shadow jaws delicately wrapped Bakuzan's body, not to devour but to protect. Its voice, deep as an ancestral tomb, resonated against the remains of Isissis:
— You succeeded, master…
At that moment, the mist reformed into a familiar figure: Satan. She appeared, white hair flowing, triumphant smile on her lips.
— We succeeded, or rather I succeeded, she corrected with silky pride. I hacked the essence exchange.
Nihlorgue tightened his grip around Bakuzan and locked eyes with Satan, cold anger piercing his shadowed features:
— You… I forbid you from approaching the master.
Satan crossed her arms, amused, as if teased on her home turf.
— Oh, what a warm welcome. After all I've done for him, this is the gratitude? I'm flattered his "pet" watches me so jealously.
Nihlorgue did not move an inch; his voice remained low, sharp:
— I'm grateful for the help… but I also know the danger you represent. Your acts do not compel trust.
Satan giggled, a crystalline and cruel sound. She approached and, in an almost tender gesture, took Bakuzan from the draconic hands.
— Don't be hostile for now, she said to Nihlorgue. You have good reason to be afraid — even I sometimes would struggle to trust myself. But for the moment, your master is my interest. As long as he wins, I stay loyal.
Nihlorgue fell silent and watched Bakuzan who still breathed, weaker but stable. The marks of Isissis, now contained, crackled like embers under the Deviant's skin. It was a heavy synthesis, something unstable to contain.
Satan laid Bakuzan on the ground and looked at him with strange frankness.
— Listen well: if one day, Black Grief loses control, if his anger and composure vanish, Isissis may remember. He could recover his essence and try to reclaim his place.
Nihlorgue's question came, dry:
— How to avoid that?
Satan shrugged, her smile taking on a more serious tone:
— Simple. Black Grief must not believe himself greater than what he can bear. He must avoid challenging entities that combine the power of Isissis and other united forces. As long as pride remains measured and strategy in place, Isissis's memory will remain locked away.
Nihlorgue remained mute, weighing every word. Around them, the void breathed softly — temporarily soothed — but the threat of a return lingered like a shadow, lurking, ready to feed on a misstep.