[Sansir]
Veronica looked devastatingly radiant in armor, its polished plates molded perfectly to her form, gleaming with divine craftsmanship that spoke as much of art as of war.
The sword at her hip shimmered faintly, a creation of elegance and cruelty, something meant to both kill and be admired.
Despite my reluctance to bring her along, this had become an experience neither of us could forget.
I watched that woman, Uhana, I believe her name was, slaughter two high-ranking members of the Golden Authority with a grace that bordered on sacrilege.
The air itself seemed to mourn when she was finished.
She looked exhausted, her aura flickering like a dying flame, while Veronica simply watched with quiet fascination.
She didn't interfere. Not out of mercy, but because she wanted to see what would come next.
Satisfied with what I had seen, I extended my hand and cast Uhana back to her homeland, her body vanishing in a shimmer of divine motes.
Veronica turned toward me, her voice carrying the cool judgment of tempered steel. "Was that wise? She could have been healed."
I shrugged, my tone calm, almost indifferent. "She killed two of them. I think we can handle the rest."
She patted my shoulder, shaking her head with that infuriating mix of affection and irony. "No, Sansir. You think you can handle the rest."
Her words stung more than I cared to admit. I frowned, drawing my blade with deliberate slowness. "You've grown bold."
"And you," she said softly, smiling, "have grown soft."
The world seemed to hold its breath between us. I turned away, letting my sword rest at my side. "It all happened in an instant," I murmured. "Time itself was stopped."
Veronica's eyes widened slightly. "Is that even possible for mortals?"
Time is odd, though its many layers are vast, an infinite number in fact, it also has deeper layers. More intimate layers, like most concepts.
Like all magic, you can layer it endlessly, harming beings who are immune to fire with fire, though like all concepts, its more intimate layers transcend each other deeply.
Though as if a fictional story, the higher layers of time were to my time, and much like that, Satire seemed to be a unique case, altering time most bizarrely.
I cursed under my breath at her name, Satire.
To think she was brought back, only to die again. I stepped forward, and in that motion, the air froze. It wasn't the stillness of silence; it was despair given shape.
She appeared before us, bloodied, broken, yet unbowed. Her blade was shattered, her armor fractured, but her gaze still cut sharper than any sword.
Veronica's shriek tore through the air. "She's alive?!"
Satire's voice carried the weight of judgment itself. "You damned fools. I should have ended you both when I had the chance. But it seems you crawled away long enough to be punished anew."
She should not have survived. No mortal, no spirit, no god in their right mind could withstand that kind of destruction. And yet, she had.
Then I saw it. The severance. The impossible act.
She had torn her very essence from herself. Only one who had shattered the tenth wall could survive by such means.
"Are you truly in any position to boast?" I asked, forcing steadiness into my voice. "Uhana must have torn you apart."
She exhaled, her presence thickening, pressing upon reality itself. "That's the thing," she whispered. "I am the Saint of Time, Sansir."
Her wounds vanished. Her body reformed with divine symmetry, as though reality itself dared not deny her perfection.
Her steps warped the air, each one rippling through the continuum of cause and effect.
Veronica trembled beside me, her knuckles white against her blade.
"Stand before me," Satire said, voice reverberating like the sound of creation itself. "And face despair."
Her sword became pure light. In a single motion, she lunged, and my blade shattered as her strike pierced through my chest.
Veronica moved instantly, kicking Satire across the side, a flurry of blows like the rhythm of a desperate song.
Satire didn't even flinch. She swatted her away with casual grace, as though brushing aside dust.
Blood filled my lungs as I gripped her glowing blade, halting its descent before it reached my heart. I roared and pushed her back, summoning my power.
"Dalhans, grant me your light! Grant me your prosperity! Guide me with her untainted lineage!"
A crown of radiance burst upon my head as a sword of bark and brilliance formed in my grasp. I swung, sending a wave of golden divinity crashing forward.
She raised a single hand, and stopped it. Effortlessly.
"You have it," she murmured, her hand resting against my chest. "A Virtue of the Heavens. But yours is… tainted."
Her touch threw me across the battlefield. My blood spattered across glass and sand, the taste of iron and inevitability filling my mouth.
I rose, invoking my Regalia. Its power burned through my veins, drawn from the virtue inscribed at the soles of my feet.
Zadkiel, the denial of action, the theft of all deeds, the mercy of gifts.
When she struck again, I stole the moment from her, erasing the attack entirely.
Any act against me would now be seen as charity, and charity was something my Regalia could never allow.
Power surged within me. Tenfold. A hundredfold. A millionfold. My next strike tore through the field like the sun devouring night. Her armor shattered under the blow—
And yet she smiled.
Time folded. The next moment, her sword was at my throat.
I twisted, narrowly deflecting, driving my blade into her leg, only to watch the wound vanish. Reality rewound, and the pain blossomed in my own flesh instead.
Her elbow slammed into my shoulder, her blade cutting across my brow.
"This is madness!" I spat. "To move faster than even my perception!"
She smiled, the faintest, most dreadful thing. "That is your fate, Sansir. That is your name, is it not?"
Then she was gone. Her strikes came again and again, past, present, and future entwined in an endless recursion of death.
I countered as best I could, but her presence bent the flow of the sequence itself. When I finally thought I'd found her rhythm, she bound me in chains of radiant causality.
Her sword hovered at my throat once more.
"Lord of Time. Brother of Space. God of Sequence. Weaver of Progression."
Her blade sank into me, and she clapped her hands. The world froze.
"I summon the Great Spirit of Time," she said softly, "to seal my enemy within the cycle of all that is lost."
Then I was gone. My thoughts, my life, my every possible self collapsed inward, an infinite loop of memory, drowning in its own becoming.
But even there, within that paradox of erasure, my Regalia responded.
I tore through the current, dragging myself free, only to meet her fist, a meteor of force that sent me sprawling across the fractured earth.
Glass shattered around me. The sky itself seemed to hum with exhaustion.
Satire approached, slow and divine. "There is an end to all things," she said. "And it begins with the slaughter of every little lamb waiting for the blade."
I laughed, blood pooling at my lips. "It's a lie," I rasped. "A lie that crawls closer with every dawn."
Her body jolted. A thin ribbon of blood stained her white robes.
"A gift," I whispered. "A beacon of prosperity. Let me give you all of my pain."
She staggered, but summoned another surge of white light, an ocean crashing upward from nothing. I blocked, but my blade shattered again, my body screaming in pain.
In an instant, she was upon me. Her hand gripped my shoulder; her other pierced straight through my chest.
"Damn you," she hissed. "That ability of yours is… irritating."
I coughed, words slipping between breaths. She leaned closer, her whisper brushing my ear. "But mine is absolute."
My body slowed. My heartbeat fell out of rhythm with the world.
"Lord of Progression: Ragula."
Contrary to the name, the more I resisted, the slower I became.
"All acts against me," she said, her tone like the tolling of an eternal bell, "all progressions that seek to hinder me, end beneath my feet."
Her sword hovered just below my chin, burning brighter than the sun.
And in that brilliance, I saw truth. There was no victory here. No clever twist of fate, no unseen mercy. Only inevitability.
Time itself had rendered judgment.
And its Saint had come to deliver the sentence.