Every heartbeat echoed like thunder across eternity.
Then — impact.
He struck something solid, though it wasn't ground. It rippled beneath his boots like water yet burned his skin like flame. The air smelled of ancient metal and forgotten blood.
Kael rose slowly, sword still in his hand, his breath steaming in the darkness.
Above him hung no sky — only vast, slow-turning constellations of eyes. Each blinked once, and when they opened, he saw himself reflected in every one.
A whisper cut through the silence.
"You followed me here, Kael Rivenhart."
Kaelen stood ahead, robe billowing like smoke, his staff now transformed into a spear of liquid obsidian. His face was half-shadowed, the other half illuminated by faint crimson light leaking from the abyss below.
Kael leveled his sword. "You brought me here."
"I showed you the source." Kaelen's tone carried neither pride nor pity — only weary truth. "The power you've called yours… it was born in this place, long before you. You wield the remains of the First Sovereign's soul."
Kael's grip tightened. "Then I'll wield it to end this curse."
"By killing me?" Kaelen asked, eyes narrowing. "You don't understand. This place feeds on struggle. If you strike me down, the Abyss will make you its heir."
Kael's eyes flashed. "Then I'll cut the Abyss itself."
A low sound rippled through the void — laughter, but ancient and wrong. The air shimmered, and a figure began to rise from the endless dark behind Kaelen — a colossus of shifting shadow, its form ever-changing, faces blooming and vanishing along its body. The sound of chains rattled in the distance.
Kaelen spread his arms as if to introduce it.
"The Primordial Veil. The First Sovereign's prison… and his throne."
Kael took a step forward. "Then that's my target."
Kaelen smiled faintly — sadness in his eyes. "I knew you'd say that."
Then they moved.
Kaelen thrust his spear forward — Kael met it mid-charge, the collision ringing like struck steel across the infinite. Red lightning burst outward, splitting the darkness into shards of light.
Kael swung upward — Kaelen parried, the shockwave tearing rifts through the void. Each strike they traded distorted the space around them, each sound lingering too long, as though time itself refused to let go.
Kael roared — his crimson aura flaring into wings of pure energy — and drove his knee into Kaelen's chest. The old sorcerer was sent flying, crashing into a floating fragment of broken marble that had no business existing here.
Kael landed atop it, pointing his sword downward. "You taught me strength. You taught me defiance. Now I'll teach you what freedom means."
Kaelen rose, blood at his lips, but his smirk remained.
"Freedom, Kael, is another kind of chain. Even now, the Abyss listens."
And the Abyss answered.
From the void's heart, tendrils of darkness erupted — colossal, writhing like serpents of night. One struck toward Kael — he met it with a slash, severing it in a burst of red lightning — but more followed, endless, countless.
He leapt from fragment to fragment, each strike leaving trails of burning crimson that lit the emptiness.
"Crimson Gale—!" he shouted, cutting through three tendrils in a single, whirling arc.
"Red Tempest!" A downward cleave shattered another that lunged for his back.
The Abyss screamed.
Kaelen stepped into the air itself, his form fracturing into dozens of shadow-clones that swirled around Kael like phantoms. "Show me, Kael," they spoke in unison. "Show me what my mistake has become."
Kael spun his blade, crimson energy spiraling up his arm. "You want to see your mistake?"
His voice deepened, layered with thunder. "Then look."
The runes on his sword blazed scarlet. His aura condensed until it was a single, pulsing flame — small, but unbearably bright. The phantoms closed in —
And Kael vanished in a shockwave of light.
Every copy of Kaelen was erased. The void cracked.
Kael landed, his cloak in tatters, his sword now wreathed in black lightning. His voice was quiet, trembling with resolve.
"I am no one's heir."
Kaelen, coughing blood, whispered, "Then you'll have to kill me to prove it."
Kael's crimson aura surged once more — his eyes burning with molten fury — and he raised his sword for the final clash.
Above them, the Abyss stirred fully awake — its endless eyes opening in synchrony, the very space around them screaming as creation and void prepared to collide.
Their blades met in the center of it all — light against nothing.