The world returned with a sound like a pulse — slow, heavy, endless.
Rin opened his eyes.
He was back.
Moonlight dripped through the crystalline ceiling of the Queen's palace, scattering into rivers of blue. His body ached — not the sharp ache of wounds, but the dull exhaustion of something too small holding something too vast.
His breath came ragged, as if every inhale had to drag eternity into his lungs.
His spirit was quiet.
Too quiet.
Then it hit him.
The silence wasn't peace.
It was pressure.
The Codex's power — seven hundred years of condensed instinct — was coiled inside him, buried in the fragile limits of mortal muscle and bone. His thoughts ran centuries ahead of his body. Every idea came before the body could obey.
It felt like living light trapped inside wet clay.
When he moved a hand, frost flickered half a second too late. When he blinked, his vision fractured into afterimages of realities his mind had already processed and discarded.
He was faster than himself — and it was agony.
---
A shadow rippled in the air.
The World Tree stepped forward, barefoot across petals that bloomed under her touch. Her smile was soft and old and cruel all at once.
> "So… someone taught you how to be a god," she said. "But forgot to teach your body how to act like one."
Rin steadied his breath, forcing the trembling in his hands to still. "Then teach me."
The World Tree tilted her head, eyes gleaming like green galaxies. And said while walking "if only our cute little younglin could say please I would have spared with him"
Rin said please, blinked, but before he could say the rest, the ground split into radiance.
Petals scattered — and the palace was gone.
---
They stood in a wide clearing suspended in silver twilight.
Roots arched like ribs over an endless mirror-lake, reflecting the sky upside-down. Each breath of wind carried petals — millions of them — each a fragment of her will.
Sylvanyr extended her hand, a single blossom forming between her fingers.
> "You wish to align your body and soul," she said. "Then survive the storm of what you've become."
She snapped her fingers.
The petals trembled — and the world moved.
---
Rin drew Winter's Touch. Frost crawled across the blade in beautiful fractals. His aura erupted like a glacier cracking under dawn.
Sylvanyr smiled.
Petals surged forward like a tidal wave — shimmering blades that sang as they cut through air itself.
Rin reacted on instinct. He twisted, redirected his blade, and conjured a wall of frost to intercept.
The petals passed through.
Not sliced, not blocked — simply passed through, as if the concept of resistance didn't apply.
A faint sting traced his cheek. Blood, thin and pale.
> "You can't touch me with mortal logic," she said. "Your mana is dense, but still crude. You freeze phenomena; but my petals have concepts and meanings."
The words were almost tender. The storm wasn't.
---
Rin lunged, faster than light could blink. His sword descended, glowing with the essence of Chrono-Frost.
Sylvanyr raised a hand — every petal around them shifted direction at once. His attack was converted into cherry blossom petals under her control.
Before Rin could recover, a thousand petals folded into spears and drove toward him.
He predicted them all. His spirit saw each trajectory — yet his body lagged behind.
Every dodge was a heartbeat too slow.
Every counter missed the moment.
He was living seconds behind his own thoughts.
The petals struck him across the chest, exploding into rings of impact that rippled through his mana field. His ribs screamed.
> "You can sense the future," Sylvanyr murmured, "but your body remains in the past causing your body to bleed in the present."
Rin slammed his blade into the ground.
A shockwave burst outward, freezing hundreds of petals in place.
They hung in the air like stars caught midfall.
He exhaled frost, eyes narrowing. "Then I'll bring the present up to speed."
Then Sylvanyr replied saying "our little boy is growing too fast" as her petals absorb the ice surrounding them
---
Each clash rewired him.
Every time the petals cut, his body adapted — not visibly, but fundamentally. His mana flow quickened, his cells strengthened, his nerves recalibrated to his spirit's rhythm.
Ordinarily, his Adaptation was instant. But the scale of his spirit made it look slow.
He wasn't evolving toward her — he was evolving toward himself.
> "Each scar is a lesson," he thought. "Each failure a correction."
He moved again — and the lag shortened.
His swings grew cleaner, closer to what his spirit foresaw.
The gap was narrowing.
---
Sylvanyr chuckled softly. "Ah, that's better. Now come faster."
She spread her arms — and her body dissolved into three clones, each blooming from her aura.
Bloom. Decay. Eternity.
Three versions of the World Tree stepped forward, each wielding a different law.
One commanded growth — roots bursting from the ground to bind Rin.
Another carried death — petals that corroded ice into ash.
The last controlled stillness — a mirror field where time refused to move.
Rin gritted his teeth and dove through the onslaught.
His Adaptation expanded, veins glowing like constellations under his skin.
He raised his sword.
> "Judgment of Silence!"
The world hushed.
The second clone, "Eternity," froze mid-motion as Rin severed the vibration of her existence. She faded, petals scattering into quiet light.
But the others remained — Bloom and Decay — moving faster, sharper, crueler.
Rin countered the decay petals with a new maneuver — "Cause Severance." He cut the cause, not the action. The corrosion stopped mid-air, dying before it began.
Sylvanyr laughed softly, the sound like rain.
> "So the little frost-born remembers his lessons."
---
The battle became something divine.
Each motion was a painting — frost trails against falling petals.
He swung his blade, and the lake below them turned to crystal.
She spun, and the crystal bloomed into trees of light.
Frost dragons roared from his slashes, dissolving under her control as petals reformed from their vapor.
It was a war of gods painted in silence and beauty.
Rin's body screamed. His mana circuits burned.
And yet — he was winning the invisible war within himself.
Every second, his movements synced more perfectly to his thoughts.
Every adaptation, every near-death reflex, every correction aligned him closer to equilibrium.
> "Your Adaptation works faster the closer your body comes to your spirit," Sylvanyr observed, voice calm amidst chaos. "Keep going. Let your body remember the experience."
---
Then she raised her hand.
> "Petal World."
Reality folded.
The garden expanded infinitely, petals filling every horizon. The air shimmered like glass, and the sound of heartbeats vanished.
Rin stood alone in an infinite void of floating flowers — each petal pulsing with her consciousness.
> "This is one my domains that i created on a whim," she said softly. "Everything here obeys me. Even your frost will bloom if I will it."
She raised her hand, and all the petals turned.
They fell.
Rin's blade trembled once — and then stilled.
He exhaled slowly, frost spiraling outward.
> "Chrono-Frost Severance."
The petals froze midair.
Not from cold — from the absence of cause.
Every movement, every momentum was suspended.
He stepped through the storm like a ghost between frames.
Sylvanyr blinked, watching as he crossed her domain unscathed, or that is what he thought.
When the last petal shattered into frost behind him, Rin stood before her — blade drawn, eyes cold and clear.
> "I can't kill you," he said quietly. "But I can reach you."
---
Sylvanyr reformed her body with a slow clap.
Her expression was soft — proud, maybe even amused.
> "You finally stopped lagging behind yourself."
"Your spirit and body now move as one, however you haven't reached me yet neither are you close to me in my prime."
She launched her foot forward with the speed of lightning. Rin expected the power to be blockable as she was coming at a slower speed than prior, however the impact was immediate, and Rin felt the crushing force slam into his ribs. The sound was like the shattering of brittle stone, the force of the blow twisting his torso as his bones splintered beneath the pressure. It was a brutal strike, a precision-guided attack that tore through his defenses as if they were nothing.
Rin's body was sent hurtling through space, the pain in his ribs sharp and relentless, but there was no time to dwell on it. He was being flung beyond the reach of time and space, propelled with speeds so great that the very air seemed to burn around him. Faster than light, faster than the mind could comprehend, Rin was ripped from the world he knew and thrown into an unknown realm.
As he barreled through the void between dimensions, his surroundings blurred into a chaotic streak of colors and distorted realities. His body felt weightless, like a ragdoll tossed by a tempest, as he hurtled toward an unknown destiny. The force of the travel itself threatened to tear him apart, but it was nothing compared to the devastating collision that awaited him.
Rin slammed into the new dimension and back to her petal realm with catastrophic force, the ground cracking beneath the sheer impact. A shockwave rippled outward, sending tremors throughout the very fabric of the realm. The earth itself split open, forming a massive crater that swallowed the area around him. Energy surged like a storm, wild and untamed, as the shockwave continued to spread, shaking the very foundation of the dimension.
Rin's body lay at the epicenter of the destruction, the air thick with the echoes of his arrival. His ribs screamed in pain, but he gritted his teeth, determined not to fall unconscious and began to adapt. His body wasn't healing — it was remembering how to be unbreakable.
Rin collapsed to one knee, chest heaving. The frost around him pulsed once — and sank into stillness.
[ System Notification ]
Alignment Complete — Spirit and Vessel Synchronization: 100%
Sylvanyr knelt beside him, her hand hovering above his head like a benediction.
> "You didn't adapt to me," she said. "You adapted to what the current you was meant to be as a result of your hard work. Inorder to fight void hits like this should be a norm because he is just that strong."
Her smile was faint — fond.
> "Congratulations, kid."
---
High above, the Queen watched from her observatory, eyes half-closed in thought.
Rose leaned against the rail, arms crossed.
> "How is he doing?"
"Barely. It seems that she didn't go hard on him," the Queen replied. "But survival is all gods need to start a legend."
---
As Rin rose, the battlefield dissolved into petals and light.
His breath steadied, his steps firm — no longer trailing behind thought.
His aura shimmered like dawn frost under starlight.
He looked up.
The horizon split.
A faint crack opened in the air — silent but endless.
Dark energy leaked through, thin as smoke but ancient as death.
The Queen's gaze sharpened.
Rin's hand found his sword again, the frost along its edge whispering like old friends remembering war.
> "Then it's time," he murmured. "For the real battle."