Balance, as a concept, has a hundred faces depending on where you look. But one way or another, people always end up using it. Kings who lean too hard on mercy invite chaos into their lands, so even they must learn to weigh punishment with compassion. Too much chaos drives the world mad, but too much order—without a dash of chaos—turns people into nothing more than wind-up machines.
If you live only for yourself, loneliness will swallow you whole. But if you live only for others, you'll end up abandoning yourself. So why not take the middle path—accept Balance and do both?
To Jayden, Balance was a strange and slippery thing. Even as the Liege of Balance himself, he wasn't arrogant enough to claim he fully understood it. It wasn't just some rule; it was a supreme law, one that corrected the world not through punishment but through consequences.
He looked at the beast in front of him, eyes sharp with disgust. Around it, he could feel the Balance itself tearing, reality straining just to hold the thing together. That could only mean one thing—the beast had shattered too many natural laws, disrupting Balance itself. And for someone like Jayden, sworn to uphold it, that was basically the same as wearing a giant tag that read: Please kill me.
But even that wasn't the real reason his body thrummed with killing intent. Sure, the beast's existence was offensive enough to make him itch for battle. But deep down, the real reason was far more petty.
His fun had been interrupted.
He was going to show himself sooner or later, sure — but being forced out like this was annoying as hell. He might've spared the thing if it had at least kept its promise. It would've made a fine punching bag for his star performer once she got stronger. Instead, it had dragged him out without so much as a courtesy text, and for that it deserved to die.
He could already feel it slipping past his time-constraints — fair enough, time was one of the weaker laws in his toolbox. Turning to Kelly, a warm, curious smile cut across his face. Watching his personal actress do the impossible again never got old.
With a satisfied sigh Jayden snapped his fingers. Space around Kelly folded in on itself, isolating her from the ruined world so the aftershocks of whatever came next wouldn't snuff her out. Things were about to get very, very messy.
Jayden stretched out his hand and a long silver lance seared into being, runes crawling along it with a surreal blue shimmer. He walked through the air with lazy, swaggering steps, each footfall blinking in and out of reality as he closed on the struggling beast.
"I changed my mind," Jayden drawled, eyes narrowing until they glowed a hard crimson, his voice chiming through the ruined silence. "You don't accept my mercy, so I'll give you something better — a cold, humiliating death. I'll tear you apart and keep you alive long enough to watch lowly creatures pick at what's left, handing them scraps whenever they beg for more."
His voice came back louder, rolling around the ruined world. "Hah — the irony. Trash like you was just trash to me a few days ago, and now I actually have to walk over just to end you. That makes me… far madder than before. You're in very, very big trouble, little boy."
Jayden stopped in front of the beast, a lazy, warm smile curling his mouth as he stroked Myrrhvalen's face like a pet.
"Destroying you just like this is boring," he said. "It's way more fun when you lift those weak paws up in defiance. Then the despair hits — that mouth-watering, delicious despair when you finally see it's all pointless. Imagining that taste might actually make this worth it. So struggle, beast. Give me a performance that might make me… go a little easier on you."
The moment he finished, the time-constraints around Myrrhvalen snapped free. The beast's eyes glittered with a vicious light as it lunged, jaws snapping toward Jayden.
Space buckled from the force; nearby rocks crumbled into dust under the aftershocks. But Myrrhvalen was frustrated — it didn't get the familiar grit of blood and flesh on its teeth. Then a voice from above confirmed its suspicion: that irritating human — arrogant as hell, and the sort of creature few beasts would ever take seriously — was still very much alive.
"Such unrefined manners," Jayden's amused voice boomed from above, like he was watching a comedy. "I expect some elegance from you — this barbarity is unbecoming and lacks decorum. Be creative, little beast. Give me something visually pleasing. Make it beautiful."
Myrrhvalen snarled. Its three cord-like tails, tipped with barbs, began to lengthen until they ran from one horizon to the other. "Human, I will destroy you!" it spat.
Before the words finished, the tails twisted and lanced toward Jayden like sonic blasts.
Jayden blinked in and out of space, moving with lazy precision to avoid getting tangled in those barbed whips. He could feel the faint law of annihilation humming on them, so even he kept his guard up.
Then something changed. The moment he tried to step through space to escape, a resistance bit at the edges of reality, as if the space itself had been locked. Myrrhvalen — who'd held still the whole time — smiled. It was the smile of someone whose plan had worked; the smile of a predator ready to take the prize.
Right in front of Jayden, another Myrrhvalen folded into being as if it had been there all along. It opened its jaws, and instead of razor teeth what poured out of its depths was something far, far worse.
Red, scorching flames, steeped in the law of undying fire, spilled out like a living thing.
They swallowed Jayden and snaked far into the distance.
The world melted.
Rocks ran like molten slugs. The air boiled. The sky turned a raw, angry red as heat bled from the ruined land. But the fire didn't stop — it burned with the same savage intensity, in the air and on the ground.
Myrrhvalen laughed. The beast's voice rolled across the waste. "What is your arrogance worth when you are the one dead and I am alive? Turn to ash in my flames, you puny human. In your next cycle, don't overestimate yourself. What a waste — I thought I'd taste you, but there's nothing left. I can't even gorge on your bones; you die with no legacy inside me."
"How curious," Jayden's voice came from farther off, laced with mocking praise. "You used your three naughty whips to lure me straight into a trap where your clone was already waiting. Simple plan. Ruthlessly effective."
"Impossible," Myrrhvalen stammered, its huge eyes widening like tiny suns. "How are you still alive after touching undying flames?!"
Jayden drifted through the smoke toward the beast, one eyebrow hiking up. "You still don't get it, do you? Or maybe you're pretending not to. Undying flames only work in the hands of someone truly strong. In your hands It just tickles."
Myrrhvalen laughed, the sound grating and a little maddening. "How is this possible? I've already climbed to the summit of power in the mortal universe! Even if you're from the so-called Immortal Land, that Being would suppress you down to my level. No — you're bluffing. You must've slipped away with space law before the flames touched you!"
Jayden sneered, his ruby eyes burning into a violent crimson. "You misguided fool. Even a slumbering king is still a king. And honestly? Our little game is getting boring. So let me show you just how pitiful you are, playing god while you crawl with mortals."
He snapped his fingers. For a moment, silence. No world-shattering blast, no catastrophic destruction. Which only made the tension worse.
Then it happened.
Not an explosion. Not fire. Something quieter, crueler.
A soul attack.
Myrrhvalen felt himself yanked into his soul plane, the pull so overpowering that resistance was a joke. The soul plane was the cosmic reflection of one's true soul— a place shaped by the core of the soul, peaceful or wrathful depending on the being, with its nature tinted by bloodline.
Myrrhvalen's soul plane was chaos incarnate. Fire raged and combusted in every corner, tendrils of insidious darkness crawled across the void, and a river of boiling blood stretched endlessly over the ground.
A soul plane was supposed to be sacred, accessible only to its owner. That belief shattered the instant Myrrhvalen saw the human boy strolling toward him, calm as ever, his feet carrying him across the boiling river as if it were solid stone.
"I was right about you," Jayden said, voice even, almost disappointed. "A soul this filthy should've been erased long ago. You're disrupting the Balance. I might've been able to hold myself back before… but now? Now it's impossible."
A new kind of fear gripped Myrrhvalen. Not the fear of claws, fire, or even death. It was fear of something unknown, forbidden — the kind of terror no beast could ever prepare for. A soul plane wasn't something you just waltzed into… yet this man walked through it as casually as if it were a park.
But Myrrhvalen wouldn't simply wait to be executed. With a guttural growl, the beast lunged, determined to rip the boy apart. If there was ever a place to crush him, it would be here — in his soul world, where the advantage should've been his.
Jayden watched the beast's rampage with something closer to amusement than concern. He let out a quiet, wistful sigh, and whispered one word.
"Judgment."
The plane froze. Fire no longer burned, rivers no longer boiled — even Myrrhvalen was locked in place. It didn't feel like time had simply paused… it felt like time itself had collapsed.
Then everything shifted.
Towering figures stepped into existence, armored in diamond-like plates that shimmered with cold brilliance. Each one carried a massive golden axe, its surface etched with strange, living patterns. They looked as if they had been forged from steel — metallic, unyielding, yet undeniably alive.
At the far end, Jayden sat on a high throne, reached by an ascending flight of stairs. A weighing scale balanced lazily in one hand, while his head rested on the other as if the whole ordeal bored him. On either side of his throne floated two fairy-like girls, their multicolored wings beating in perfect rhythm, scattering faint motes of light across the still plane.
Two of the armored giants loomed at Myrrhvalen's sides, axes raised high, waiting for the order.
Then Jayden spoke. And it wasn't just his voice. It was the voice of the plane itself, of the world, of Balance incarnate.
"Let the Balance Rite begin."
The two fairies opened their mouths, speaking as one, their voices weaving together in flawless rhythm, word for word, without a single break.
"Balance cried out when you denied her. Death reached for you, but you turned away, clutching the hand of darkness instead. What should have ended was twisted, stolen, made into something it was never meant to be. Every breath you've taken since is a theft, every step a weight pulling the scales apart. You are neither living nor dying, only a wound that bleeds into the world. Myrrhvalen, your judgment is death — for it has found you beloved."
The scales in Jayden's hand shifted; one pan dipped. He stared down at Myrrhvalen's frozen form and murmured, "May Balance find justice."
The towering beings — huge enough to dwarf even a colossus like Myrrhvalen — brought their golden axes down in unison.
Though the beast couldn't move, it felt everything: the hot stab of anger, the cold slide of helplessness, the sickening closeness of doom.
"Puny human! What gives you the right to judge me? How can a being of my power be judged like a dog by—" Myrrhvalen's roar dissolved into a choked sound. He never finished. The axes fell; his head was severed in a clean, instant strike. The soul plane shivered, then collapsed into nothing.
Back in the ruined world, Jayden looked at the corpse before him with complicated eyes. He'd promised to keep the beast alive while he carved it apart for lesser creatures, piece by piece. Somehow, he'd let it get… a little out of hand.
With a sigh, Jayden bent down, touched the corpse, and sent it into his personal space. Maybe when he got back to a real world, he'd toss the trash into some random forest as a little "charity" for the monsters there. The flesh of a beast that was basically the human equivalent of a starborn deity would be enough to turn an entire forest into the breeding ground for an apocalypse.
Hmm… now that was an interesting thought. Which world would make the best stage for such an experiment? The idea alone made his lips twitch.
Before he could mull it over further, his gaze flicked toward his star performer. She was staring at him from miles away, but he could see her as clearly as if she were standing before him. And for a brief, stolen moment, even Jayden felt his breath catch.
He hadn't seen many who were that beautiful — and coming from him, that was saying something. His own mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire Cosmos.
Kelly's hair had grown longer and silkier, falling in glossy waves past her shoulders to her waist. It gleamed a radiant purple, shimmering in the ruined light. Her eyes had deepened into an enchanting, dangerous violet that could hold anyone's gaze too long. Her body, once fragile and mortal, now looked divine — glowing like polished jade, filled with a supple grace that could seduce any man in the Cosmos without her even trying.
Jayden felt something indescribable swell in his chest. He smothered it quickly, hiding it beneath the warmest smile he could manage as he walked toward his star performer. She looked just as glad to see him — why else would she be staring at him like that, as if she couldn't wait to run into his arms.
Oh, he has missed her so much.
***
When Kelly snapped out of her trance, she half expected to find the beast still looming over her, those insidious eyes drilling into her, only for the fight to spiral into one of the most absurd life-or-death battles she'd ever face.
But none of that was what she saw.
Instead, the beast was already dead, its massive body sprawled across the ground. And in the distance, faint but unmistakable, was a silhouette she knew too well. She could've recognized that shape anywhere — that was what happened when someone's image burned so deep into your mind it became an obsession. The kind of obsession born not out of love, but out of wanting to kill them so badly it haunted you.
Yet, the moment her eyes landed on Jayden, the feeling that welled up inside her wasn't hatred or wariness. It was relief.
And that alone startled her.
Because how could she feel relief when staring at the one person she wanted dead more than anyone else? How could she feel safe — safer than she'd ever felt before — in the presence of him?
But she did.
And for the first time, Kelly let herself breathe out the exhaustion she'd been holding in.
She saw him waving from the distance, gliding toward her midair as though the air itself bent to his steps. He blinked in and out of existence, each stride collapsing space until, in the span of seconds, he was standing right in front of her.
That irritating smile was plastered across his freakishly handsome face, paired with the kind of smug grin she'd sell her soul just to wipe off. His white shirt hung open, baring the sharp contours of his chest and those infuriatingly well-sculpted abs.
Before she could scowl, he tilted her chin up, the lightest touch sending heat rushing to her cheeks. Then he bent low, lips brushing the edge of her ear as he whispered,
"You gave me the most thrilling performance I could ever ask for, my superstar. You deserve a reward."
Kelly's first instinct was to drive her fist into his perfect gut or lace into him with one of her sharper comebacks. But instead, to her own horror, the words that slipped out were soft.
"I want to rest."
Her knees buckled, and she collapsed against his chest. His warmth swallowed her as exhaustion finally won.
"I feel tired…" she mumbled, already half-asleep.
Strong arms wrapped around her waist, lifting her with ease. He patted her head gently, his voice low and maddeningly tender.
"Rest well, my superstar. It's been hard on you."
Her lips twitched, half-ready to curse him out for those words — but she was too far gone. So, for the first time in what felt like forever, Kelly let herself drift into peace.