The world was blind.
The Black Sun devoured the sky. The moon and sun had locked together in an unholy crown, their collision birthing a darkness that stretched across the heavens. Shadows fell unnaturally long, bending and twisting, as if they themselves wanted to escape what was coming. The air felt heavy, as if the entire world was holding its breath, waiting for the end.
At the cliff's edge, Rei sat. His Blade of Resolve rested across his lap, the steel reflecting the dim half-light. His breath was calm, his eyes steady on the heavens. The storm that had once boiled in his chest was quiet now. He wasn't here to rage. He wasn't here to tremble. He was here to wait.
The sky ripped open.
It wasn't lightning. It wasn't flame. It was something worse. A jagged wound tore the heavens apart, and from it came a streak, blinding, merciless, faster than thought itself. It fell like a star hurled by the hand of a god, straight toward him.
Rei stood, his hand closing around the blade's hilt.
The "star" struck.
The mountain vaporized under the impact, stone turned to dust, the cliff collapsing in a roar that shook the horizon. Villages miles away cried out as the ground beneath them trembled like it might split open.
And at the center of the collapse, Rei stood.
His feet dug into stone. His muscles screamed. His arm was braced against a fist the size of his head, the knuckles pressing against him with the weight of annihilation itself.
He looked into the Elder's eyes. Steady. Cold.
"I've been expecting you."
The Elder's lips curved faint, cruel. His other hand lashed forward, clamping Rei's skull in an iron grip. In a blink, Rei's head smashed into the rubble, stone groaning under the force.
But before the Elder could drive deeper, Rei's Enso erupted.
The air screamed. His fist tore upward like thunder, smashing into the Elder's jaw. Shockwaves split the broken cliff, cracks spiderwebbing out for miles. At first the Elder didn't move. Then his heels slid back. Step by step, Rei forced him until his body crashed into a boulder that split beneath the force.
Dust bled around them.
Rei's voice cut through, sharper than steel.
"Where are the others? I know there are two more. Where are they?"
The Elder rose, brushing the dust from his shoulder as though nothing had touched him. His gaze locked on Rei.
"You're different than before. Stronger. But…" His head tilted, studying Rei like an insect. "You don't feel like the one who killed him. That power… it wasn't this."
Rei's grip on his blade tightened.
"I asked once already. Where are they?"
The Elder's eyes hardened. "You think you ended him? Impossible. Even at half strength, he could never fall to such a flimsy power. So tell me, boy. What are you hiding?"
He unclasped his cloak. It hit the ground heavy. Then his shirt. Beneath was a body that mocked human limits, muscles carved in unnatural density, veins bulging with something more than blood, strength sculpted too perfect to belong to man.
"I am Xeran," he said, his tone flat, final. "Remember my name in death."
Rei's chest tightened. His skin prickled with unease. Deep inside, Raga stirred, ecstatic, trembling with laughter that never reached his lips.
Xeran spread his arms. The shadows bent to him. The Black Sun crowned his figure in darkness.
"This is the hour of decay. Everything rots in this hour. And you," his grin split wide, "will rot first."
Rei didn't wait.
Flash Step. God Speed. He was gone. His blade blurred like lightning, reappearing behind Xeran, the Blade of Resolve carving into his side.
Steel pierced flesh. Blood sprayed.
Rei ripped the blade free. Again. Again. His strikes were relentless. So fast the mountain itself quaked under their rhythm. The air fractured, the sound of each cut booming like thunder.
But Xeran didn't flinch.
He only turned his head slightly, eyes sliding toward Rei, cold, unbothered.
Rei vanished again, reappearing a hundred meters back, his chest heaving, his knuckles white around the hilt.
Xeran pressed his palm to the wound. The flesh writhed, twisted, shriveled, and was gone. The blood dried. The cut closed. His skin layered itself anew.
"My power is decay," Xeran said. His voice rolled across the dust. "What you cut, I shed. What you tear, I erase. My body is endless layers of life, each rotting, each replaced. Your blade can't reach me."
Rei's stomach dropped. This was no trick of time. This was something worse. Something that refused to stay hurt.
His thoughts cut sharp. If I can't kill the body… then his body is the weapon.
Rei's gaze locked on Xeran's hands. Massive, unyielding, the tools of his destruction. If I can't kill him… I'll take the weapon. His grip tightened on the Blade of Resolve. I'll slice the hands off.
Xeran smiled. "You look like you've realized something. It won't matter."
He moved.
The world didn't blur, it shattered.
His hand clamped Rei's throat, and before Rei could react, his body was already tearing through mountains.
Every crash was a bomb. Valleys caved. Peaks split in half. Forests vaporized to ash. Rei's bones screamed with each impact. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His vision blurred with red.
Pinned against a jagged wall, coughing blood, Rei felt the Elder's grip tighten like a vice. The smirk on Xeran's face widened.
"This… is a good one."
Rei's lungs burned. His ribs cracked. His vision swam. But his thoughts cut sharp again. The hands. If I can cut them, he loses his weapon. Doesn't matter how many layers he has if he can't swing them.
Raga stirred again, whispering in his chest, laughing. Yes. Cut him. Tear the weapon. Tear the hands that strike you.
Rei's blade flared, God Enso surging. His muscles screamed as he forced his arm free, slicing upward. The steel kissed Xeran's wrist, sparks and blood flying.
Xeran's eyes widened faintly as flesh split.
Rei roared, twisting his entire body into the cut. The Blade of Resolve howled.
Bone cracked.
The Elder's right arm tore free at the elbow, crashing to the ground like a fallen tree, shattering stone beneath it.
The shockwave rattled the land. Rei dropped to his knees, coughing blood, his body trembling from the effort.
But he had done it.
He had cut the weapon.
Xeran looked at the stump. His flesh writhed. The wound rotted, layers twisting, skin reforming. But the arm didn't return. His eyes narrowed, cold fury flashing for the first time.
"Enough."
He spun. His left leg crashed into Rei's chest like a meteor. Gravitas shattered under the force. Rei's body flew like a cannonball, carving a crater miles wide before collapsing in a heap of rubble.
Blood poured from his mouth. His chest rattled with broken ribs.
Xeran's voice rolled across the wasteland, a promise of ruin.
"You think cutting an arm changes anything? My body is decay itself. You cannot erase me. But I…"
His fist clenched, his voice dropping into finality.
"…can erase everything."
The ground darkened. The air thickened. The very trees shriveled, rivers dried to dust, stone cracked and dissolved. Life itself withered. The wave spread outward like a plague consuming the earth.
The Withering Dominion.
Rei forced himself up, planting the Blade of Resolve into the ground. It alone remained untouched as everything else, mountains, forests, rivers, dissolved into ash.
The Elder's voice was thunder. "Decay reaches all. No matter where you stand, no matter how fast you move, it will claim you. And when my fist lands…" He raised it, rot crawling across his arm. "…you will be nothing."
Rei's chest heaved. His body bled. His mind screamed.
But his eyes stayed sharp.
He thought again of the hands. The weapon. I can cut more. I can slice it again. Even decay can't replace what's gone.
The Elder blurred forward, fist raised.
Rei's blade rose to meet him.
And the hour of decay thundered on.
---
Rei's lungs burned. His ribs ached. His body screamed to collapse, but he forced his legs steady on the blade he had planted into the ground. The Blade of Resolve trembled faintly beneath him, a lone pillar in a wasteland stripped bare by decay. Everything else had rotted away, stone, trees, even the wind felt thinner.
Rei's chest heaved as he steadied his stance. His eyes never left Xeran.
"I can still fight."
Xeran tilted his head, his lips stretching into that cruel, steady smile.
"You can stand. That is not the same."
Then he was gone.
God speed. No warning. No blur. One moment he was standing across the ruined field, the next he was in Rei's face, his fist already raised. Rei knew it now, if that fist, if any part of Xeran's body connected with his flesh, his very being would unravel into decay.
Rei's pupils tightened. Instinct screamed. He twisted his body mid-air, dodging by the width of a breath. His leg whipped backward in the same instant, striking the Elder's back to push himself further away.
The impact landed, but it was like kicking stone. The recoil shook Rei's leg to the bone.
Xeran's laughter was soft, cold, dismissive.
"Futile."
A thin tearing sound split the air. Rei's shirt disintegrated into black dust, collapsing off his frame as if it had aged a thousand years in a heartbeat. Rei's neck seared, Xeran's fingertips grazing him.
The mark was small, almost nothing, but decay bled outward instantly, skin blistering, flesh darkening, the edges of his being fraying into dust. Rei's body wanted to vanish. His vision blurred white as if he was being unstitched from existence.
His knees buckled. For the first time, he felt the abyss of nothingness pull at him, cold and inevitable.
No.
The rot crawled up Rei's neck, black veins spiraling under his skin, his body unraveling like ash on the wind. His knees shook, the edges of his vision turning white, as though existence itself had chosen to erase him.
Then the world stopped.
The decay froze mid-spread, locked in place as if terrified to move. The air thickened, trembling, and Rei's shadow twisted unnaturally across the broken stone.
From within him, something uncoiled.
Black lines erupted across his arms, burning through his skin like living scars, racing up his chest, across his face. His veins pulsed not with Enso but with something hungrier. His pupils vanished into black, his voice deepening until it no longer belonged to him.
Rei's lips parted, but it wasn't Rei who spoke.
"I decide what dies."
The voice rumbled like a blade dragged across stone. The battlefield itself seemed to recoil.
Xeran's eyes narrowed, his composure flickering. The decay around them pulsed, but even it hesitated, rot itself held back.
The black lines thickened, crawling like roots, searing symbols into Rei's skin. His body jerked once, then stilled. Rei's presence dimmed, swallowed whole.
Raga had taken the throne.
"Not you. Not decay. Not time. Not the void." His words slammed into the air like a decree. "I am the end that chooses. I am the scale that breaks. I am the hand that writes death."