The moment Damien's voice echoed — "World Formation: The Myriad Worlds" — the cosmos itself convulsed, as if the very fabric of existence had been gripped by an unseen hand and twisted beyond recognition. What had once been the endless, unbroken void of space suddenly fractured, shattering like a mirror struck by divine force. Cracks laced through the emptiness, splitting reality into kaleidoscopic fragments before drawing them back together in a reformation so vast it defied comprehension.
From those shards, a new threads unfurled — infinite, wild, and terrifying in its beauty. Countless fragments of reality spun themselves into a boundless panorama, an ever-expanding mosaic of impossible terrains. Lands stitched themselves together with no concern for logic, skies bled into seas, and new suns blazed into existence, hanging motionless in alien constellations. There were mountains crowned with eternal flames that never flickered, valleys lashed by ceaseless lightning storms that howled with wrath, and plains so barren, so completely void, they stretched into forever with not even a whisper of wind to accompany them.
It was chaos incarnate, and yet it bore a strange harmony. Shattered, yes — but still whole. Half-formed, incomplete — yet imbued with a radiance so otherworldly it was almost unbearable to witness.
Khai's face, a mask of unshakable resolve forged in the fires of grief and rage, finally betrayed a crack. His jaw clenched with silent tension, and in the depths of his usually unreadable eyes, a flicker of disbelief — no, horror — passed like a shadow.A world formation… and from someone who hasn't even transcended? It shouldn't be possible. This defies every law I know. And yet… it's real. It's here.
The truth was undeniable. He could feel it with every breath. The power he once wielded — once vast and unrelenting, a roaring sea of strength — had been reduced to a mere trickle, like a stream drained dry beneath a scorching sun. The flow of energy around him, once responsive to his will, now defied his command, slipping through his grasp like smoke. Nearly all of the world's essence — a staggering ninety-seven percent — bent in unwavering obedience to Damien. The remnants left behind, the scraps of energy untouched, were barely sufficient to keep his limbs from collapsing beneath him.
And the dragons… ancient beings forged from elemental fury… they, too, felt the weight of Damien's dominion. Their fire and lightning, once cataclysmic forces that shook the heavens, now flickered like dying embers beneath the suffocating pressure of this conjured paradise.
At the center of it all stood Damien — no longer the boy who had once gazed up at Khai with awe and reverence. He stood calm, unmoving, utterly composed. His presence didn't dominate the world; it was the world. His very breath seemed to ripple through the skies, syncing with the heartbeat of creation itself. The air around him shimmered, not from heat or magic, but from sheer, incomprehensible authority.
The red dragon roared first — a defiant, furious cry that shook the earth. He refused to bow, refused to yield to this new reality. From his gaping maw, lava surged forth in a molten tide, hot enough to reduce stars to cinders. The fire blazed a furious path, screaming toward Damien with the fury of a sun unleashed.
But as the inferno neared him, the flames wavered. They flickered. They dimmed. And then, as if they had simply lost the will to burn, they vanished — snuffed out like candlelight before an oncoming storm.
Damien lifted one hand, fingers barely raised, and the fire surrendered itself to nothingness, devoured by his will before it ever reached him.
"Your fire burns," Damien spoke, his voice soft — not mocking, but impossibly certain. "Because I allow it to burn. Remember that."
The red dragon's immense form trembled, his once-impervious crimson scales now reflecting a glimmer of something foreign — fear. A fear he had not felt in centuries.
The silver dragon, unwilling to accept such domination, unleashed his fury in turn. With a snarl of defiance, he collapsed himself into pure lightning, his form becoming a streak of blinding light that tore across the battlefield faster than conscious thought. In any other realm, such a strike would have split continents, annihilated anything in its path.
But here… Damien simply looked.
The lightning hesitated mid-strike. It bent, twisted under an invisible pressure, like a bow pulled too tight. The silver dragon was forced to revert to his true form, crashing to the ground with a sputter of sparks, coughing arcs of lightning as though they were blood.
"You dare…" he hissed, his voice cracking as static danced across his scorched scales. But even as he spoke, the strength to resist drained from him, leaving behind only pride — fragile and breaking.
Then came Khai.
Unlike the dragons, Khai's attack carried the weight of more than raw power. His blow was born of pain, of unbearable grief, of wrath stewed in silence and sharpened by loss — the blood of his sister staining every motion. He gripped his speartighter, the weapon shivering in his grasp, not from his hand, but from the pressure of Damien's newly-forged reality pressing against it, trying to reject it outright.
He roared, slashing with a fury that could split worlds. Thousands of blades of pure energy erupted from the swing, slicing through the air in luminous arcs, each one a condensed scream of mourning and vengeance.
But the sky — Damien's sky — rippled. Clouds of stormlight gathered and surged, swallowing the blades as if they were no more than falling leaves in a gale. The attacks dissolved harmlessly into glowing sparks that rained down without purpose.
Khai froze, his mind struggling to grasp what had just happened.He decided. He decided my attack wouldn't cut him. He just… denied it.
Damien's voice followed, quiet yet absolute. A voice that did not shout to be heard."In here… your strength is not your own. It is mine to give. Or to take."
And then — for the first time — Damien moved.
He extended a single finger toward the false heavens above. A star — impossibly distant yet unmistakably present — collapsed upon itself. Its light, its fury, its entire being converged into a singular point of destruction, and then launched downward in a blinding beam of annihilation.
It struck the red dragon with a howl of cosmic fire. The beast's roar of agony echoed through every corner of the world as his scales shattered and his blood boiled under divine judgment.
Damien's fist clenched, and the very land of the Myriad Worlds responded. Colossal spires of jagged stone surged from the earth, rising like the fingers of titans. They crashed into the silver dragon, pinning him beneath their weight. He screamed, lightning bursting wildly from his form, but it was no use — the stone held firm, unbreakable, immutable in Damien's realm.
And then Damien turned to Khai.
His brother. His blood. His final challenger.
Khai tried to steel himself, tried to bury the rising fear. But his hands trembled around the halberd, and no effort of will could still them. This was no longer a battle. It was a reckoning. There was no gap in power wide enough to describe what stood between them now.
This… this was divinity. And Damien was its embodiment — judge, executioner, and creator of the stage upon which they fought.
Still, Khai held his ground. The halberd shook, but he planted his feet, staring into the storm. His voice was quiet, controlled — but behind the calm, his heart cracked like ice beneath pressure."You may control this world, Damien… but you'll never control me."
For a moment, just a fleeting heartbeat, Damien's eyes softened. Regret passed over his expression like the last warmth of sunlight before a cold night. It was the look of a man who mourned what he was about to do.
Then, his aura surged.
The world responded like a living thing. Suns collapsed. New mountains tore upward from the ground. Skies reshaped themselves in kaleidoscopic waves, and the very horizon trembled beneath his will. Damien's silhouette stood tall against the storm, backlit by the chaos of creation itself — a god enthroned in the sanctuary of his own making.
And Khai… Khai, for the first time in his life, felt death press in. Not as a possibility. Not as a threat.
But as an inevitability.