Dawn bled across the sky in soft streaks of orange and gold, but the air around Eryndor felt sharper, heavier — as if the world itself sensed what was coming.
Rein Clark stood across from him, chest rising with excitement, dominion aura flickering like compressed lightning. Eryndor rolled his shoulders once, Storm-energy humming in his veins. Both of them knew the next clash wouldn't be just a friendly continuation.
It was the beginning of something irreversible.
Rein smiled, wiping blood from his lip.
"Ready to stop playing?"
Eryndor smirked.
"Only if you are."
Their auras ignited — Storm and Dominion ripping outward like colliding hurricanes.
The ground cracked.
The air warped.
And then—
BOOM.
They vanished.
A white flash split the arena as they reappeared mid-air, fists already launched. The shockwave slammed into the barrier so hard the elders reinforced it instantly.
Rein's dominion energy spiraled around his body — the mark of the Dominion of Kings, the god of absolute authority. Golden chains of sovereignty wrapped around his arms like celestial gauntlets.
Eryndor answered with the newborn fury of Storm: wind spirals, crackling arcs, and swirling air pressure collapsing and reforming around his limbs.
A perfect 360-degree motion blur — two god-level prodigies exchanging blows faster than the eye could comprehend.
Rein ducked under a spinning heel kick, grabbed Eryndor's leg, slammed him toward the ground—
—but Eryndor twisted mid-fall, condensed a cyclone in his palm, and rocket-launched himself upward through Rein's guard, lightning dancing across his knuckles.
Rein spun mid-air and unleashed a Dominion Burst — golden pressure that cracked the atmosphere like a divine hammer.
Both attacks collided.
The arena trembled.
Students screamed.
Dust and air pressure exploded outward like a nuclear blast wave.
Then — silence.
Just a ringing hum.
Both fighters stood a few steps from each other, bruised, panting, but smiling.
"Not bad," Rein breathed.
"You too," Eryndor replied.
And then something changed.
Eryndor's breath hitched.
His heartbeat thundered.
Ba-dum.
Time slowed to syrup.
Ba-dum.
Everyone blurred.
Rein's expression softened.
"…It's happening," he whispered.
Eryndor staggered, knees buckling — then sat cross-legged instinctively, body entering a trance deeper than meditation.
Storm aura flickered, dimmed — then bent inward as if sucked into his core.
Rein raised a hand and cast a golden barrier around him.
Headmistress Seraphine exhaled a satisfied smile.
"So… the god has chosen."
Kaelus and Darius rushed into the arena, standing protectively around Eryndor.
And then—
Darius froze.
His heartbeat accelerated violently.
He dropped to his knees beside Eryndor, gasping.
"Darius?" Kaelus grabbed him.
The instant his fingers touched Darius—
Darkness swallowed him whole.
Kaelus blinked — instant black void, infinite and silent.
He looked upward.
A massive, impossible celestial body loomed above him.
A giant Black Sun.
It stared without eyes, radiated without light, pulsed with power that erased thought.
Then Kaelus blinked again—
—and he was back beside the unconscious Darius, shaking, pale, terrified.
The audience was in uproar.
Seraphine's eyes widened ever so slightly.
"Two…?"
ERYNDOR'S SUBCONSCIOUS-
Inside his mind, Eryndor drifted in an endless void beneath a colossal black sun that pulsed like a living celestial heart.
He tried to move, tried to think — nothing worked.
So he stopped fighting.
He let it happen.
The void shifted.
A voice rang through existence — deep, ageless, resonant.
"Eryndor Nasarik… Reincarnated soul of Earth…
Do you wish to succeed the Black Sun?"
Eryndor's eyes widened.
"Who are you?"
The silhouette stepped forward — humanoid, yet featureless, made of gravitational shadow and sun-blaze darkness.
"I am Noctareon.
The God of the Black Sun.
The pinnacle of Storm — the form beyond Lightning, beyond Wind, beyond Tempest.
The source from which Darkness itself was born."
Eryndor swallowed.
"Why me? Why am I connected to you? Why is Darius linked too?"
The God's presence intensified.
"The Black Sun chooses souls… not blood.
You are Storm's evolution — the child of the celestial tempest.
Darius is its shadow — darkness born from your light.
You are the moon that shapes the shadow he casts.
Two pieces of a cosmic whole."
Eryndor felt his chest tighten — but not in fear.
In clarity.
"And if I accept…?"
"You ascend.
You awaken.
You become the candidate chosen by the Black Sun itself."
Eryndor exhaled slowly.
"I accept."
Dark light consumed him.
Eryndor's eyes snapped open.
Black-gold energy pulsed from his skin like a heartbeat.
The arena trembled.
The audience went silent.
A glowing sigil — the crest of the Black Sun — burned onto his chest like a divine brand.
Darius gasped awake beside him, darkness swirling around his fingertips — not the same power, but something born from the Black Sun's shadow.
Eryndor rose to his feet, Storm and Black Sun energy merging around him like a celestial vortex.
Rein grinned.
"Well damn… you look fun. Wanna continue?"
Eryndor smirked.
"Bet."
One step.
One breath.
One instant.
They clashed again — but this time Eryndor's fist glowed with Black Sun power.
He struck Rein in the chest — not maliciously, just pure, undeniable force.
The ground cracked into a massive crater.
Rein skid across it, coughing dust, then laughed.
"You win."
Eryndor blinked. "What? I thought—"
Rein raised a hand.
"No. I lose.
You weren't even a god candidate before…
and you still kept up with me.
That was one hell of a fight."
Eryndor offered him a hand.
Rein took it, grinning like a madman.
The arena erupted into chaos — screams, cheers, disbelief, awe.
A new god candidate had just been born.
Elsewhere… Beyond the Human Realm
Two old men sat across from each other in the floating courtyard of Noxis, playing Go beneath drifting petals.
One moved a piece.
The other chuckled.
"So," the first said softly, eyes twinkling,
"he finally awakens."
The second smiled.
"The Black Sun's successor…
The storm that will become a hurricane."
The board clicked once more.
The world shifted.
And the future trembled.