Four years passed, but time was meaningless here. What was broken had not been one world, nor one multiverse, nor even the lattice of trillions stacked like glass upon glass. It was all of them. Entire fields of existences, countless frameworks of reality, had been split open during the final clash. What remained was a wound that spanned beyond number.
Where there had once been stars, there were now chasms of silence. Where there had been galaxies, there were ribs of collapsed light, skeletal spirals gnawed hollow by hunger that had never belonged to mortals or gods. Where there had been universes layered upon universes, there were now black deserts, endless and howling, so wide that even eternity struggled to remember how far they stretched.
And beyond those deserts... more.
Existences stacked atop existences, verses atop verses, not in trillions but in tides uncountable, each one a sea of stories, each one its own infinite ocean. Now they bled together, leaking into each other's seams, tangled in fractures that would never mend. Dimensions knotted into dimensions, laws that once held firm dissolved, boundaries collapsed. It was no longer order or chaos—it was something beyond both.
The wound did not stop there. It stretched further. Beyond multiverses. Beyond outerverses. Beyond the places where numbers ended and where even the word "beyond" had no meaning.
This was the new stage.
And in that impossible ruin, a boy stood.
Lucen.
His hair moved as if the void had decided to grant him wind—dark purple streaked with faint silver-white strands that shimmered like fractured starlight. His earrings were not decoration; wide silver hoops that hummed with a resonance too heavy for ornaments, circles that looked like fragments of cosmic engines torn from something larger. His eyes were deep violet, almost black, but within them swam currents that bent the wasteland into clarity. They did not look at the ruin. They looked through it.
He was sixteen. A child. Yet his aura pulsed with strength ten million times greater than what Cosmic had ever been, even in his final cursed form. Power radiated from him in silence, the kind of silence that made whole realities tremble without sound.
Lucen raised his head.
And the world recoiled.
Reality zoomed outward, as if caught in a lens that could not comprehend what it tried to frame. The boy blurred into immensity. First, he dwarfed the shattered planet beneath him. Then the galaxies that had already died. Then the stacked seas of universes, trillions upon trillions, all shrinking beneath the weight of his presence. Still the camera pulled back—faster, wider, tearing through layer after layer, until he towered over existences uncountable.
At that scale, the verse itself was small. The wasteland of entire infinities curled like smoke beneath his gaze.
And yet, in the next breath—he was small again.
Just a boy. Standing at the edge of silence.
He turned his head, eyes narrowing. His gaze cut across impossible distances, skipping over layers of ruin, past broken suns and folded verses, until it found one scar in particular.
The Dark Empire.
Once shattered. Now rebuilt in fragments. Its banners flew again, stitched by hands that refused to yield. Its towers rose again, though cracked and incomplete. Its people endured, their faith unbroken. For four years they had built and waited, raising a throne that remained empty.
Because their Emperor still slept.
Dark—unconscious since the last battle, his body unmoving, his shadow silent, his soul trapped in a silence deeper than death. The fight had broken him so utterly that even his will had not yet returned. Four years he had not risen. Four years the Empire watched and guarded.
Lucen looked upon it. His expression did not change.
Lucen: So this is where he rests. The one who stood against the End.
He stepped forward.
And with that step, the void split, space collapsing behind him as his body blurred into a streak of violet-black light. Faster than creation itself could measure, he was gone from the horizon, streaking toward the Empire.
Toward the sleeping shadow.
Toward Dark.
Lucen's eyes shifted past Cosmic, past the Champions, past the weight of the Empire itself. His gaze pierced into the sealed chamber where their Emperor lay, motionless, untouched by the years. For four long years, Dark had not stirred. His aura had been silent, his throne empty. Yet the entire verse still whispered his name.
Lucen: He has slept long enough.
Cosmic moved before he could take another step. No sound marked his advance. He did not need sound. Shadows bent with him, folding like tides as he blocked the path. His presence thickened the air until even the Hollows shook as though beneath a mountain.
Cosmic: His rest is earned. His time will come again. You will not decide when.
The Champions tightened their circle. Igor stood with his sword drawn but lowered, his posture reverent to Cosmic yet ready for war. Biru's restless aura snarled like a caged beast. Sukojo leaned in the dark, silent, his burning eyes betraying only a glint of amusement at the tension.
Lucen tilted his head, his earrings swinging like pendulums of judgment. His dark-purple eyes did not blink.
Lucen: So you would stand between me and him. Even after the curse. Even after all that has broken.
Cosmic: I am not between you and him. I am before him. To reach him, you face me.
The ground cracked wider. Shadows surged, pulling tighter to Cosmic's stance. Even the Champions felt it—the Supreme One's authority was not rule. It was truth. Even if they all combined—Igor's blade, Sukojo's hunger, Vel's fire, every Shadow, every Hollow—they would still not measure to him.
And still, Lucen smiled.
Lucen: You misunderstand me. I do not seek to harm him. I seek to wake him.
Cosmic: Wake is not the same as return. He will rise when it is written. Not by your hand.
Lucen's aura rippled outward. The fractures in the plaza deepened, spreading like lightning across the stone until entire slabs broke apart. Villagers clutched each other in silence, their eyes locked on the boy who seemed larger than the world itself.
Lucen: And if I choose to be the hand?
The void seemed to hold its breath.
Cosmic's shadow deepened, rising higher behind him like a colossal phantom. His voice lowered, steady as stone.
Cosmic: Then your story ends before his begins again.
For a heartbeat, the Empire froze. The Supreme One and Lucen stood face to face, two presences that bent reality simply by existing. The Champions felt their own breaths shorten. Hollows cowered against the stone. Even Sukojo, silent and smiling, narrowed his gaze with interest.
Lucen finally moved—one step forward. The plaza split down the center, violet fire rushing through the fracture like veins of the earth itself igniting.
Lucen: Then show me why you call yourself Supreme.
Cosmic's eyes burned faint silver, starlight cracking across the black of his form. Shadows howled like wolves in unison.
Cosmic: Child... you do not understand what Supreme means.
His voice rumbled low, steady. Shadows stretched from him like an endless tide, curling upward into armies of dark forms that bent toward his will. The Champions readied themselves. Hollows cowered. Villagers pressed their faces to the ground. For four years, he had been the axis of this Empire, the Supreme One above all.
And then Lucen stopped holding back.
It was not loud. It was not dramatic. He simply let the air breathe him in, and the world broke.
The Empire shuddered. Not just the Empire. The verse.
Entire galaxies flickered out like candles snuffed. Multiverses cracked at their edges, their fabrics screaming under weight that had not existed a second before. Outer realms far above existence bent, their dominions shaking as if their thrones had been overturned. Beyond them, deeper than impossibility, entire existences quivered, countless shells stacked upon shells bowing to something that should not belong to a boy at all.
The plaza around him fractured. Stone split open into rivers of violet light that hissed with every breath he took. Villagers collapsed without a sound, their bodies twitching before falling still. Hollows shattered back into the shadow-sea. The Champions staggered, their composure breaking. Igor dropped to one knee, his blade trembling in his grip. Vel's flame vanished instantly, snuffed like smoke. Raz's chest heaved, his jaw clenched against a weight heavier than war. Biru roared until blood poured from his mouth and silence gagged him.
And Sukojo laughed. His grin was wild, his voice sharp.
Sukojo: Hah. At last. Something that feels like me.
Cosmic did not move, but his shadows shook. His frame glowed faint silver at the edges, starlight threatening to fracture. For the first time since his rebirth, his silence carried not calm, but acknowledgment.
Lucen stood in the center, hair stirring though there was no wind, earrings glinting in the violet cracks of the plaza. His eyes burned with dark purple light. He was only sixteen, and yet the trillions of existences around him bent like glass.
Lucen's eyes lifted, catching Cosmic's gaze.
Lucen: Father of the Emperor. Cosmic.
His voice wasn't sharp, not mocking, but respectful in its own strange way. Calm, steady, carrying no hostility.
Lucen: I am not here to harm him. I am here to stand beside him, and to warn him of what has changed while he slept. Four years is a long time. It is time for the Emperor to wake.
Cosmic studied the boy for a long moment. His silence was heavy, but not hostile. He thought not as the Supreme One, not as the shadow, but as a father. Finally, he inclined his head once.
Cosmic: Very well. Proceed.
Lucen nodded, slipping his hands into his pockets. In that moment the suffocating weight of his presence folded back in on itself, disappearing like a curtain drawn across the sun. The air loosened, Champions caught their breath, the Empire exhaled.
He walked forward, step by step, toward the chamber where Dark lay. But the instant his foot crossed the threshold, the aura returned. Not concealed this time. Not muted. It spread like a tide, filling the room with a pressure that bent the walls and pulled shadows long across the floor.
Dark lay still on his back, eyes closed, his body untouched yet worn from the weight of the years. His chest rose and fell slowly, silent proof of life, but his aura slept as deep as stone.
Lucen stopped in front of him. He looked down, cleared his throat once, and with the ease of someone unbothered by impossibility, reached into the air and pulled a folded sheet of paper out of nothing. He flicked it open and raised it in front of him.
Lucen: Ahem.
His tone shifted, formal but young, like someone forcing himself into ceremony.
Lucen: Dear Emperor Dark. This is a message I wrote for the day you would wake. My name is Lucen. I am sixteen years old. I come from another world, another existence, one further than yours, a place beyond your reach.
He glanced at the paper, then back at Dark's still face. His voice deepened slightly, each word weighted with more than his age should have carried.
Lucen: While you slept, everything expanded. Shou has stretched the verse further, colliding countless worlds together, merging existences beyond number. Boundaries have shattered. What was once impossible is now connected. And with that, new beings have come.
His eyes narrowed, the dark purple glow intensifying as the words seemed to ripple in the air.
Lucen: Beings that threaten to burn this world, to break it, to end everything you fought to protect.
He folded the paper once more, letting it dissolve back into nothing between his fingers.
Lucen: That is why you must wake, Emperor. The world is waiting for you again.
The silence in the chamber deepened, pressing against them like the pause before the first breath.
Lucen leaned closer.
Lucen: Wake up. The 7th True Emperor. Wake...
Lucen: UP!!!!
The word struck like a hammer.
UP.
The chamber cracked with the force of it. The stone beneath Dark's body split outward, jagged lines racing like lightning from where he lay. Shadows, long dormant, writhed as if stirred by the sound alone. The air thickened, every breath pulling like chains dragged across iron.
Dark's fingers moved. Slowly. A twitch, then a curl, then the hand pressed flat against the floor as if testing if the world beneath him was real. His chest rose with a deep, rasping inhale, dust shivering in the silence.
His eyes opened.
Not a glow. Not a burst. Just a steady, blinding white light that cut through the dark like truth. The silence shattered under its weight.
Dark sat up. His hair hung in loose strands across his face, matted by years of sleep and old blood, but his posture was steady, unshaken. The shadows clung to him, bending toward his frame as though gravity itself had shifted.
He did not look at Lucen at first. He looked at his own hands, scarred and pale, tracing the lines as if measuring time. Then he turned.
Their eyes met. Lucen's dark violet gaze held steady against Dark's white fire.
Dark's voice was low, raw from disuse, yet coldly clear.
Dark: Four years.
The weight of it pressed into the chamber. Not pride. Not lament. Just fact.
He rose. Each step grounded, deliberate, shaking dust from the ceiling. The floor groaned under his weight, not because of force, but because the world had forgotten how to bear him.
Dark: Tell me.
His eyes cut into Lucen, steady, merciless.
Dark: What has changed.
The silence after the words was heavier than Lucen's pressure, heavier than the trillions of realities outside. It was the silence of a man who carried every past scar, who knew that waking meant bleeding again — and still demanded the truth.
Lucen held Dark's gaze and let the truth widen slowly between them.
Lucen: It is worse than "more worlds." Every world you knew used to contain a nest of existences. Little realities layered inside the same shell. Timelines that breathed beside timelines. Possibilities that were whole lives. That stacking used to stop at trillions. Now it does not stop.
He looked away for a beat, as if watching something beyond the chamber walls. His voice was steady, quiet and simple like someone reading a weather report about storms that could drown suns.
Lucen: Those nested existences are spilling into each other. Worlds are not merely colliding. Their insides are mixing. A single planet can contain a thousand, a million, an infinity of internal existences. Rules cross. Magic leaks into laws that should not allow it. Creatures that were stories become flesh. Gods that were rumors wake as predators.
Dark's face was a stone mask. He did not look shocked. He looked measured, listening for the particular chord that would tell him how to respond.
Dark: So a single city could be ten cities at once. A single child could be a thousand children simultaneously. A battle could happen in infinite ways on the same street.
Lucen nodded.
Lucen: Exactly. And the more they overlap, the less stable the edges become. When Shou widened the story, he did not stop at adding worlds. He multiplied the insides of every world until the entire structure was porous. You fought one kind of End. Now there are Ends that do not end, Ends that rewrite the rules as they take shape. They learn from what touches them. They replicate.
Silence thinned the air again. The enormity of it made sound feel small.
Dark: Names.
Lucen's mouth tightened. He could have recited lists. He could have warned with specifics and titles. Instead he chose tone and direction.
Lucen: Names do not matter as much right now as readiness. Some of them are older than Shou's story. Some were written into being last month by versions of authors who no longer care for consequence. Some wear faces that will look familiar to you. Some will try to bend the Empire's people until there is nothing left to hold.
The chamber darkened slightly, not from shadow but from the idea of everything pressing in. Cosmic stepped forward, his voice steady as an old bell.
Cosmic: You speak true. I felt the bleed. The shadows sense it. The Supreme One knows when the architecture of being trembles.
Dark turned toward his father then, something like gratitude and something like calculation moving across his face.
Dark: Then we do not wait for them to break us. We meet them where they leak into us. We seal what we can and burn what must be burned. We will not be a footnote in a thousand borrowed stories.
Lucen smiled, small and unshowy.
Lucen: Good. I already began mapping some of the worst seams. I can show you how to feel them, to find the places where two or three existences are thin. You touch the thin places and you close the hole. You stand in a doorway and you do not let the predator through.
Dark's shoulders loosened for the first time. He half-smiled, not a bright thing, but an acceptance.
Dark: Then wake the Council. Gather the Champions. Teach those who can learn. Teach what they can hold and when to let go.
Lucen's nod was quick. He glanced to the doorway, where shadows gathered like an audience.
Lucen: I can move fast. I can find the seams. But I will not fight alone.
Dark knelt, not an exalted motion but a practical one. He pressed both hands to the stone as if remembering its feel. The chamber hummed, responding—small at first, then building.
Dark: No one fights alone in my name.
Cosmic watched them both. The father in him drew closer to the son, then stepped back as the ruler in him took hold.
Cosmic: Then begin. The Empire will answer.
Outside, distant across impossible space, the world they both knew trembled. Somewhere in the endless layering, an edge quivered — a seam waiting for hands to stitch it closed.
Dark rose. He did not call for spectacle. He did not shout orders to make men move. He stood and walked with the weight of a man whose rest had been long and whose work had only just resumed.
Lucen fell into step beside him. He was still sixteen. He still carried the easy cadence of youth. But now his footsteps matched a history that would require more than a boy's certainty. They moved toward the doorway and the empire beyond, where countless existences waited for someone to guard their borders.
They reached the threshold of the chamber, the shadows parting around them. The Empire outside lay in half-light, fractured skies and seas of glass where the world had never healed. The silence shifted, deeper, different.
Lucen stopped walking. His head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing.
Lucen: Something is coming.
Dark's steps slowed.
Dark: What kind of something?
Lucen's voice was steady, but not careless.
Lucen: Someone. And not like the armies you have faced, not like the emperors who bled before you. Someone greater than me.
Cosmic's eyes sharpened, a flicker of awareness rippling through the Supreme One.
Dark studied Lucen carefully, the boy's purple gaze fixed on a horizon far beyond sight. For a moment, Dark said nothing. Then his voice cut the quiet.
Dark: Duel me.
Lucen blinked once, caught off guard, then his expression flattened.
Lucen: You will lose.
Dark: That is not the point.
Lucen: Then what is?
Dark: Understanding. If you are to walk beside me, if you claim threats stronger than yourself are near, then I must know exactly where I stand.
The air between them grew still. Cosmic did not interfere. He only folded his arms, silent witness.
Lucen exhaled softly, tucking his hands back into his pockets.
Lucen: Very well. But you asked for this.
Dark lowered his stance, the floor beneath him trembling as shadows rippled outward like liquid. His aura surged, black fire spiraling around his body, the chamber groaning against the force of it. His eyes glowed white, cutting through the gloom.
Dark: Then let us begin.
He launched forward, the ground cracking under his step. His fist shot toward Lucen's chest, sharp, precise, carrying the weight of all he was.
Lucen did not move.
The instant before Dark's strike landed, the boy's eyes flared violet. His pressure unfolded, silent and absolute.
It was like an ocean collapsing at once.
The air imploded around Dark, his body buckling as the weight of infinite existences pressed onto him. His strike dissolved midair, his knees smashing into the stone as if the ground itself rejected him. His ribs cracked under pressure alone. Blood erupted from his mouth. The chamber itself screamed, walls splitting and melting from the force.
Dark's vision blurred, his body driven into the floor until stone caved inward like paper. The fire around him guttered and tore away, smothered by the sheer density of Lucen's presence.
Lucen never lifted a hand. He simply stood, his gaze calm, his aura crushing every inch of resistance.
Dark's arms trembled against the stone, muscles tearing as he forced himself halfway up. His voice was raw, ragged.
Dark: So this... is the difference.
Lucen's voice was even, not arrogant, not cruel.
Lucen: This is why I said you would lose. This is why I said others beyond me exist. If this alone breaks you, then you understand the scale of what waits outside these walls.
Dark coughed blood, a small, broken smile tugging at his lips despite the pain.
Dark: Good. Then I understand.
Lucen eased his pressure, the air lightening, the cracks in the stone smoking faintly as silence reclaimed the room. Dark collapsed onto one knee, chest heaving, but his eyes burned brighter than before.
The silence did not last.
The chamber's edges trembled. The air folded inward like it was being wrung dry. Even the shadows seemed to retreat. A figure stepped into existence, not tearing through space but simply appearing, as if the world had always been holding its breath for him.
He was human. No wings, no horns, no monstrous distortions. Just a man — and yet the weight of him bent reality harder than gods or demons ever had.
His hair fell in a long, black torrent past his waist, thick and heavy, each strand moving like chains dragged across stone. In the dim violet light of the ruined plaza, streaks of faint crimson shimmered through his hair, not dye but stains, as though blood itself had seeped so deep it became part of him. Strands scraped the floor with every step, leaving shallow cuts on the stone, as if even his hair carried the history of violence.
His face was sharp, jaw defined, cheekbones high. His skin was pale, touched by the ash of a thousand burned worlds. A scar cut down across his left eye, not fresh but deep, permanent, carved like an insult that never healed. His eyes were worse than the scar — pure black, cold, without pupils, but alive, burning with something endless. Looking into them felt like staring down a battlefield that would never end.
He wore a robe of black and crimson, layered and heavy, stitched together from war banners long forgotten. Some were charred, some torn, some soaked with faded stains of battles that no one remembered. The robe hung loose around his body, leaving his chest bare, and that chest was lined with scars upon scars, each one carved straight, deliberate, like someone had written history across his flesh. At his waist, a sash of gray cloth tied the robe in place, frayed and worn, yet still holding as if it refused to break just like him.
His arms were lean, muscles corded tight like steel wires, veins running visible beneath his skin. Around his wrists, he wore broken shackles, jagged metal edges still clinging, each link swaying with a faint rattle when he moved. They weren't decorations. They were reminders — he had been bound once, and yet here he stood, free, stronger than the chains that thought they could hold him.
His feet were bare, skin hardened, scarred, each step echoing louder than it should. With every movement, the ground cracked faintly, not from power exerted, but because the world itself resisted carrying him.
Kaien stood there, tall and unmoving, his robe whispering in the dead air, hair trailing across the broken stone, eyes fixed on Dark. He didn't need weapons. His very being was war sharpened into human form.
The man's lips curled into a thin smile. Then he laughed.
Kaien: Haa...
The sound was low, guttural, dragged from deep in his chest. He stopped, holding it there, forcing the silence to stretch until it hurt.
Kaien: ...aaa... aaa...
The syllables came slow, heavy, broken apart by pauses that sank like iron into the room. He stopped again, letting the echo fade, letting them wait. The waiting was worse than the sound.
Then it started again, deeper.
Kaien: ...aaa... haa... haa...
The laugh rose, still slow, still cruel, drawn out like he was savoring the tension. Each pause felt deliberate, each restart like a blade pressing into the skin before drawing blood.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa... haa... haa...
It was not wild. It was not loud. It was controlled, cold, precise. By the time it faded, the silence left behind felt strangled, like air that could no longer breathe.
His voice followed, steady and absolute.
Kaien: My name is Kaien.
Kaien: The First Scourge.
And as he spoke the title, the cracked floor split wider, as if the world itself remembered that name and recoiled. His aura spread outward in silence, slow and suffocating, pressing down on Dark's shoulders, forcing Lucen's breath shallow, and warping Cosmic's shadow as though even it feared him.
Kaien's black eyes locked on Dark, endless and cold.
Kaien: Emperor Dark, haa, haa... aaa...
His smile widened again. The laugh rolled out once more.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
And this time it wasn't just a sound. It slithered into bone, into marrow, dragging the weight of forgotten wars behind it.
Dark's jaw clenched. His fists tightened until blood seeped from his palms. His body trembled, not from fear, but because his muscles strained against an invisible weight crushing him into the stone. His breath came ragged, each inhale burning as if smoke filled his lungs.
Cosmic's form flickered at Dark's side, shadows breaking apart at the edges, his voice quiet, almost a whisper.
Cosmic: This presence... it eclipses even me.
Lucen staggered back half a step despite himself, eyes wide, sweat beading along his brow. He was sixteen, stronger than Cosmic a thousandfold, yet even he felt his knees grow heavy. The pressure coiled around him like chains, pulling, pulling, daring him to kneel. His aura sparked once in defiance, violet light flaring from his eyes, but Kaien's laugh drowned it out.
Kaien's smile lingered as if carved into stone. His long black hair shifted slightly, brushing the ground with a sound like blades against bone.
Kaien: Haa... haa... aaa... The Emperor. The boy they whisper will end all evil. The one even shadows bow to.
He tilted his head, the black pits of his eyes narrowing on Dark, drilling into him until every scar on his soul seemed to ache.
Kaien: Haa... haa... aaa... And yet here you kneel, already broken by a laugh.
The words were not shouted. They were calm, slow, each syllable stretched to grind the humiliation deeper.
Dark forced his head up. His teeth were bared, blood sliding down his chin, his body screaming against the pressure.
Dark: I... will not kneel.
Kaien's smile twitched wider. He leaned forward slightly, his aura spilling heavier, crashing into the ground until cracks raced outward from his bare feet.
Kaien: Then stand.
The pressure doubled.
The plaza groaned as stone split and caved. The very air shook, trembling like glass ready to shatter. Shadows bled upward from the cracks as though the world itself recoiled from him.
Lucen's hand shot out, steadying Dark before he was crushed completely. His voice, strained but firm, cut through the crushing silence.
Lucen: He's the first. The First Scourge. Stronger than me. Stronger than any of us.
Kaien's laugh returned, slower, dragging longer this time, echoing with the weight of centuries.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
He took one step forward.
The stone split beneath his heel, a jagged crack racing outward. Dust shook loose from the ceiling. The chamber grew heavy with iron in the air, like the taste of old blood.
Dark's body strained against the weight pressing down on him. His lungs burned. His jaw tightened as he forced his voice out.
Dark: Who are you?
The figure stopped. His hair — long, black, endless — dragged against the floor with the sound of blades scraping. He lifted his head just slightly, his black eyes locking onto Dark's. Cold. Empty. Certain.
Kaien: Kaien.
He paused, let the silence choke the room, then spoke again.
Kaien: The First Scourge.
The words were flat, final. No explanation. No need. His smile pulled wider, small and sharp, and then came the laugh.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa... haa... haa...
It rolled out slow, dragged from deep in his chest, stopping and starting, making every second ache. By the time it ended, the silence around it hurt worse than the sound itself.
Dark's fists shook, blood dripping from his knuckles.
Dark: Scourge... of what?
Kaien tilted his head, strands of hair sliding across his scarred chest. His eyes never moved from Dark's face.
Kaien: Of everything.
The laugh slipped out again, low and slow.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
And this time, the floor cracked deeper, as if the world itself remembered what that name meant.
Lucen stepped forward. His aura snapped back to life, violet fire streaking around him, splitting the air. His voice was sharp, steady, cutting against the weight of Kaien's presence.
Lucen: Enough.
The plaza shuddered as his power surged outward, colliding with Kaien's aura. Cracks spread beneath both of them, the floor splitting like glass under pressure. Lucen's eyes burned dark violet, his earrings glinting with each flicker of light.
Lucen: You call yourself the First Scourge. Then fight me.
Kaien's smile widened, just slightly. His long black hair shifted across his chest as his head tilted, eyes narrowing on the boy who dared to step forward.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
The laugh dragged low, mocking, cruel, but there was something sharper in it now — interest.
Kaien: A child. And yet your breath shakes the stone.
He stepped forward again. The air screamed. Lucen's violet aura cracked for a moment before flaring brighter, his will holding steady.
Lucen: Sixteen is enough.
With that, he vanished. The stone beneath his feet exploded as his body blurred forward, fist cocked back, wrapped in violet light. The strike roared like thunder, smashing straight toward Kaien's chest.
Kaien didn't move until the last instant. His bare hand rose, fingers closing around Lucen's fist with casual precision. The impact sent a shockwave ripping through the plaza, pillars crumbling into dust, stone lifting and then crashing back down.
Kaien's grip tightened. His black eyes gleamed with cold amusement.
Kaien: Too young. Too certain.
He swung once, hurling Lucen across the chamber. The boy crashed through a wall of broken stone, dust and rubble raining over him.
Yet before the dust settled, violet light burst from the wreckage. Lucen rose again, blood sliding from his lip, his eyes burning hotter.
Lucen: I said fight me.
Kaien's laugh echoed slow, rolling through the cracks in the stone.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
He opened his arms as though welcoming the boy's defiance.
——
Kaien: Strike me then, I am wide open for you to strike.
Lucen walks forward, brushing the dust off his shoulders as he smirks a bit.
Lucen surged forward, faster than Kaien expected. His fist roared with violet fire, smashing through the layers of black aura shielding his brother. The strike connected with Kaien's jaw, snapping his head to the side. For the first time, Kaien actually slid back, boots grinding lines into the fractured stone.
Lucen didn't stop. His body blurred again, flames bending around him like wings of pressure. He slammed his knee into Kaien's gut, then twisted with a hook across his face. Kaien staggered half a step, blood beading faintly at the corner of his mouth.
Lucen: You feel that? I'm not a child anymore.
Kaien's smirk faltered, just enough to show something beneath it.
That was the opening. Lucen's hand shot up, gripping Kaien by the skull. He forced him down, driving him into the cracked stone, violet flames bursting from his arm as he pressed. Dust and heat swallowed them, the air shrieking with the strain of two overwhelming auras clashing in one point.
Lucen: You call yourself the First Scourge. But right now, you're beneath me.
The stone cracked deeper under the weight of his hold. Kaien's hair spilled across his arm, black eyes glaring up from between his fingers. For a moment, silence crushed the plaza.
Then Kaien chuckled. Low. Slow.
Kaien: Haa... aaa... aaa... haa haa haa...
His voice was steady, calm, colder than the grip on his skull.
Kaien: Impressive. Truly.
His aura surged, black flames curling around Lucen's wrist like chains.
Kaien: But you don't understand.
The air dropped, colder, heavier, until even the violet fire sputtered. His black eyes sharpened, pupils thin, cruel, and absolute.
Kaien: I'll give you one second.
The pause was deliberate, sharp as a blade across the silence.
Kaien: Move.
To Be Continued.
End Of Chapter 1.