The northern quarter of the city trembled beneath the weight of impossibility. Buildings cracked and splintered as the void-born terror towered above the streets, jagged limbs twisting in ways that defied geometry. Its eyes—void-black, hollow yet burning—swept over Lucien like the gaze of a collapsing star.
Lucien landed lightly on a broken rooftop, aura flaring around him in pale silver and blue. Every step he had taken, every technique honed in The White, had led to this moment.
"Not a monster," he muttered, voice calm, almost detached. "A fragment… a test."
The creature roared, a sound that vibrated through stone and bone. Its first strike was a sweep of fractured limbs, each one distorting reality as it moved. Lucien barely dodged, aura blades slicing through the air, severing strands of void energy before they could strike the city below.
The streets buckled beneath them as he moved. His aura compressed into spears, shields, and tendrils of energy that bent around the creature's attacks. The void-born being adapted, shifting, regenerating with every blow. Each strike became faster, more erratic—like battling an opponent that knew instinctively how he would move.
Lucien grinned faintly. Finally. A fight worthy of The White.
He leapt into the air, spinning, aura trailing like comet tails, striking from multiple angles at once. The creature roared, fractal limbs snapping toward him, but Lucien's aura acted as extensions of his body—anticipating, intercepting, striking, and restraining all at once.
For a moment, the city seemed suspended in time: shattered rooftops, burning streets, and two figures moving faster than the eye could follow.
Then Lucien's eyes glimmered, and he whispered the thought that had never left him in The White:
Time bends, but it bends for those who survive it.
He compressed his aura into a single, impossibly sharp spear, striking at the core of the void-born fragment. The creature screamed, fractal limbs shattering into shards of black light. It regenerated faster than anything mortal, but Lucien's aura followed, weaving a cage of energy around it, forcing it into a corner of shattered stone and warped reality.
The creature struggled, but Lucien's focus was absolute. He struck again and again, every blow precise, every pulse of energy drawn from his soul, his memories, and the echoes of The White.
Finally, with a final compression of his aura, he drove the spear into the center of the fragment. Reality itself screamed as the creature disintegrated, shards of void dissolving into nothingness.
Lucien landed on the streets below, chest heaving, aura simmering down to a faint glow. Around him, the northern quarter was a battlefield of fractured stone and scorched earth.
He looked down at his hands, feeling the residue of the void energy pulsing faintly.
"The White," he murmured, voice low but certain. "It's here… bleeding into the world. And now… it knows I'm coming."
The night was silent, but Lucien could feel it—the echoes of the First World, the fragments of endless void, stirring in anticipation.
He sheathed the fragment in his aura, letting it whisper secrets he barely understood, and looked toward the horizon.
"This is only the beginning," he said. "The Sole Exception does not lose. And the world… will learn fear."