Ice dripped like rain.
The empty land beneath them was silent—too silent—except for the faint sound of dark blood falling from the body of the clone. Seraphina's eyes gleamed under the dim light, her blade already coating itself in frost. The color drained from her pupils, leaving behind the pale stillness of something far beyond mortality.
The sword became one with her body. Her senses sharpened, her vision splitting into countless futures, each thread of time playing out and dying in the same breath. She was no longer reacting—she was dictating.
In the distance, the air itself grew heavy, suffocating, as if the world had been submerged beneath an ocean of petals. Sylvanyr was unleashing her true form. The walls, the floor, the horizon—everything became layered in a storm of cherry blossoms.
Sylvanyr grinned—a beast unchained yet utterly composed, focused on stabilizing the fabric of the dimension as if holding a dying world together with her will alone.
---
TSSHH–K.
Time hiccuped.
Seraphina stood a step closer—her blade already buried to the hilt in the clone's chest.
Time breathed again. Blood caught up.
TSSHH–K.
Another step. Another thrust. The wound appeared a heartbeat late, as if the world itself had to remember that pain existed.
TSSHH–K. TSSHH–K. TSSHH–K.
A storm of stillness. In the space between pulses, she carved the clone open a dozen times—neck, ribs, spine, through the blindfold and out the crown. When the second finally finished arriving, the body wore every injury at once.
The clone regenerated and dashed forward at insane speed—
TSSHH–K.
By the time he looked ahead, she was already in front of him, her blade driven through his eye, the wound frozen with her indestructible ice.
He leapt back, a manic grin stretching across his face, excitement flickering in his single remaining eye. The gashes across his body twitched, veins pulsing with dark energy. He raised his sword and laughed—a sound like a war god roaring through broken heavens.
Their blades met.
Steel clashed against steel, each swing carrying killing intent that could split reality itself. The clone's strikes were wild, violent storms meant to crush everything before him. Seraphina's movements were precise, serpentine, beautiful in their brutality. Every cut had purpose; every motion carried the discipline of a thousand lifetimes.
Each wound she inflicted tore his body apart—black blood spraying and freezing midair, joining the falling snow. But before death could claim him, his regeneration stitched the ruin back together.
> He died.
He lived again.
And died once more.
Seraphina smiled faintly—a ghost of gentleness amid the slaughter.
> "Don't disappoint me, Void… I'm not done yet."
The clone lunged again—faster, stronger. Each death stripped away more of his fear, more of his reason. Every resurrection made him more monstrous, his laughter more feral.
---
The clone staggered back, blood running down his chin. He looked up at the Queen—and smirked through crimson teeth.
A shadow poured from the crack in the sky.
It didn't fall. It arrived.
Like a verdict.
The air inverted. The arena dimmed. The clone's aura warped as veins webbed black beneath his skin. Something older and infinitely hungrier settled inside his frame.
When he spoke, two voices overlapped—the clone's strained tone, and the quiet, sovereign drawl beneath it.
> "Although i didn't put much effort into this clone, it's body… is sufficient."
Void had possessed his own clone.
Seraphina's grip tightened around her sword.
He lifted one finger. The stone beneath her feet forgot it was solid and bled into ash.
---
Void's blade tore through her shoulder—deep, deliberate. But she didn't move. She didn't bleed. She couldn't. Seraphina was indestructible, her body beyond the reach of destruction itself. She countered instantly, her blade driving through his chest, blood splattering across her armor like an afterthought.
Void collapsed—only to rise again, reborn in the same motion.
Each time he fell, the world pulsed brighter—like a heart feeding on their violence. The battlefield trembled under their rhythm.
To Rin, watching from afar, this was no simple duel. It was a lesson.
---
They leapt apart, silence thickening between them.
Void dismissed his blade with a flick of his hand, letting it dissolve into darkness.
> "Playtime is over."
He rose into the sky.
The clouds had gathered above Sylvanyr—rolling, dark, electric. The man floating there wasn't human anymore. He wasn't even flesh. He had become a concept.
He was Void.
Through the clone's body, his gaze burned with calm cruelty. His voice was the absence between words.
> "You all speak of peace… but you know nothing of the void that exists within me."
His words carried no rage, only truth—an oracle's quiet condemnation. His hands spread apart, and the sky began to fracture.
---
Below, Rose and Rin stood at the edge of the Queen's domain.
Even the wind refused to move.
Then—
> "Endless Void."
A ring of frost exploded outward from Seraphina's boots, rewriting the world in a single motion.
Indestructible Domain.
The ground, the air, the sky—all became crystalline law. The rules of existence bent, calcified, and froze in place. Deletion struck like a tsunami—and died on contact.
But outside the domain, the world collapsed.
A pulse of invisible force erupted from Void's hand.
Reality erased.
Air erased.
Time screamed and folded in on itself.
Mountains disintegrated beyond dust. Towers twisted and disappeared like smoke. The oceans split open, erased from memory.
Rin and Rose sprinted across the frozen horizon, diving into Seraphina's domain before the tide of nothingness reached them.
Everything else vanished—homes, stars, laughter, and history—devoured in a single breath.
From above, Void hovered motionless, his cloak snapping in the storm of his own divinity. The expanding sphere of destruction mirrored the hollow inside him.
> It was the end of the world.
But even he knew—so long as Sylvanyr and Seraphina lived, Rin would not die here.
---
When the erasure subsided, there was nothing left.
Only fragments of the world's laws floated in the hollow—ruins of reality adrift in a void large enough to cradle a universe.
Void lowered his hand. The light in his eyes dimmed slightly, his voice a whisper carried on wind that no longer existed.
> "This… is peace born from silence."
---
Then—color.
The sky glowed. The void healed itself.
Petals began to fall.
At first, they drifted softly—harmless, beautiful. But then the motion changed. Their descent sharpened, deliberate, alive.
For a long moment, the petals had been repairing—mending cracks, restoring balance—but now they turned predatory.
That was when Rin understood.
Sylvanyr was no longer fixing the world.
She was joining the battle.
A single petal descended.
Then a thousand.
Then a million.
They formed a path of light across the broken air.
And from a horizon that hadn't existed a breath ago—Sylvanyr stepped forward.
Barefoot. Ageless. Eyes like green galaxies swirling with judgment.
A single nod to Seraphina—two queens acknowledging the same war—and her gaze turned to the man who dared to call himself Void.
> "You've pissed me off."