The battlefield was no longer a battlefield.
What lay before them had already transcended the notion of terrain, of plane, of cosmos itself. The "ground" was a tapestry of dissonant geometries, pulsing between crystalline void and molten infinities. The "sky" was neither above nor below—it bled into every direction, a vortex of collapsing verses folding into one another. Every second, new universes were born and devoured, only to flicker as meaningless motes before vanishing into absolute erasure.
And amidst this chaos stood Leo, calm, motionless, his silhouette carved from a silence that mocked creation itself.
Across from him, the Guardian Deity—an entity that once embodied the sacred order of verses—was breathing in uneven shudders. His wings, vast enough to eclipse omniverses in a single unfurling, trembled under Leo's grip.
But what made him tremble was not the pain.
It was the realization.
Leo had not teleported. No distortion, no ripple, no tear in causality. He had simply appeared, as if space and time were nothing but cheap illusions in his wake. His hand was wrapped around the radiant plumage of the Guardian's wings, and with a motion that seemed insultingly human, he yanked them downward—crashing the deity into the shifting geometry of the battlefield.
The sound was not impact. It was erasure.
Entire sectors of omniversal fabric evaporated as the Guardian's body met the foundation of existence. Realms that had persisted since the dawn of the First Verse dissolved like dew, erased before even memory could grieve them.
The Guardian gasped.
No—he screamed.
It wasn't merely pain. His scream carried the frequency of collapsing divinity itself, a resonance that could strip lesser gods of identity, reducing them into nameless fragments of light.
And yet, Leo remained unfazed. His grip was unyielding, his eyes cold. He stared not at the Guardian's body, but through it, into the very lattice of meaning that defined this so-called "divine being."
The Guardian twitched. His chest convulsed, and then—it erupted.
But not with divine radiance.
Not even with the holy flame that once scorched demons and saints alike.
What spilled from him was something… nameless.
A Transcendent Luminae—a brilliance not of godhood, but of something beyond. It wasn't light anymore, nor was it divinity. This was the Absolare Lucentia: the Afterlight of Forgotten Perfections. It was illumination so dense, so infinite, that to witness it was to lose the very faculty of sight forever.
The battlefield was drowned in it.
Deities stationed across endless verses staggered and clutched at their eyes. Demonic sovereigns shrieked, clawing at their skulls. Even the higher pantheons, those who claimed themselves as the architects of omniversal continuity, fell to their knees in blind agony. Entire orders of existence crumbled simply because this Afterlight had been released without intent.
Gods wept.Demons convulsed.Even Primordial Lords, entities who once claimed immunity to causality, now groped helplessly in darkness.
But Leo…
Leo still saw.
His gaze cut through the Afterlight as though it were nothing but fog. He traced the trembling body of the Guardian, his vision so absolute that not even the raw absoluteness of this radiance could corrupt it.
For the first time in his eternal guardianship, the deity's composure cracked.
"Y-you…" he stammered, his voice a shivering fracture of fear, "y-you still see…? Even this…?"
His voice broke.
"This is not light, mortal. This is not even divinity. This is the Afterlight that blinds eternity itself. Even T̸h̸e̸ ̸O̸n̸e̸s̸ beyond the Sentience Thrones dare not look at this without mutilation. And yet…"
Leo did not answer. His grip loosened. The Guardian collapsed onto one knee, his wings folding inward as though ashamed of their own majesty.
Leo's voice was a dagger of simplicity.
"Run," he said, each syllable carrying weight beyond annihilation."Run—or I will unmake you."
The Guardian shivered. His pride clawed at him, demanding resistance, but something deeper crushed it. Fear. Pure, undiluted fear.
But he still spoke.
Not as a warrior.Not as a god.But as a creature desperate to rationalize the irrational.
"Leo… listen. You do not understand what you are… what you hold. You are not fighting me. You are defying the Five Veils Beyond the Omniversal, the truths even creation refuses to name. We call them the Pentaverse Ascendancies. Each one… each one is so far beyond omniversal scale that to compare them is like weighing dust against eternity. Hear them, mortal:
The Nihilverse – Where even the laws of nonexistence are dissolved. A realm that rejects being itself.
The Echoverse – Where every possibility, every impossibility, screams endlessly, their voices crushing any who enter.
The Obscuraverse – The verse of hidden infinities, where truths devour observers, and observers devour themselves.
The Fracturaverse – A shattered multiplicity, where causality is broken into weapons, and time is enslaved by paradox.
The Lucidverse – The final veil, where all other verses are but dreams in the mind of something that has no mind.
Do you understand, Leo?" His voice cracked, desperate. "Even the Omniversal Thrones kneel before these layers. And you… you are still in your normal form. You haven't even transformed. You haven't ascended. You stand untouched, unawakened. If this is what you are now…"
He swallowed, his fear no longer concealed.
"…then what will you become?"
The battlefield trembled at his words.
For a moment, silence reigned. The Afterlight dimmed, still blinding the cosmos, but to Leo it was irrelevant. His expression never changed. His voice, when it came, was softer than silence, yet heavier than erasure.
"Your verses," Leo said, "mean nothing to me."
The Guardian shuddered, his head bowed, as if struck not by force, but by a truth he could not resist.
And then—Leo released him.
The deity staggered backward, wings shaking, body drenched in Afterlight that continued to poison all existence around him. He looked at Leo once more, not with arrogance, not with duty, but with dread.
The words he forced out were trembling, incoherent, but they carried the weight of eternity.
"You… are not normal. You are impossible. The framework of power does not bind you. The charts, the thrones, the hierarchies—all collapse under your presence. And still… you remain in your Normal Form."
He fell silent. His gaze dropped. The Afterlight still poured from him, but it no longer felt like majesty—it was merely the uncontrolled leaking of something broken.
Leo said nothing.
The void pressed inward.The battlefield held its breath.The gods of all realities trembled at the implication.
To be continued…