The air between Rayon and Ka'dros warped again, twisting like thin glass under pressure. The ruin around them cracked and groaned, unable to withstand the collision of two concepts that were never meant to coexist.
Ka'dros stood with his back straight, chest rising slowly as the void behind him pulsed. Every breath he exhaled shimmered with rippling gray distortions. His eyes were two dim pits swallowing the faint light around them.
The Vessel of Oblivion.
And Oblivion itself—the Primordial End—was stirring through him, awakening fully for the first time in centuries.
Rayon rolled his shoulders once, cracking the tension from his neck.
"Alright," he murmured. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Ka'dros tilted his head, voice breaking into a cold hush.
"You are strange, Black Primordial… You shouldn't exist. Nothing should be able to resist Oblivion."
Rayon smirked. "Then start resisting."
Ka'dros extended his hand and the entire space behind Rayon flickered into ash-gray emptiness.
Oblivion wasn't destruction.
It wasn't decay.
It wasn't death.
It was erasure.
The undoing of anything that ever was.
A pillar, half-melted by earlier attacks, was caught in the wave. It didn't break. It didn't dissolve. It simply stopped being, vanishing without dust, without sound, without memory.
Oblivion erased cause and effect itself.
Ka'dros stepped forward as the ground vanished behind him.
"All things return to nothing. All things collapse into me."
Rayon exhaled as Erethon's presence stirred across his spine.
Explain it, Rayon thought.
Erethon answered, voice cold, ancient, and absolute:
"Oblivion erases existence…
But Black Resonance is not existence—nor essence."
The words vibrated in Rayon's bones.
"Black Resonance is the echo left behind after all things end.
It is the final vibration that persists even when existence collapses.
It is the last tone of a universe before silence."
That was why Erethon feared nothing.
Why Rayon's nature could not be erased.
Ka'dros could swallow matter, time, memory, even soul—
—but he could not swallow what remains after everything has already ended.
Rayon grinned as a black shimmer rippled across his knuckles.
"So my resonance… counters your void?"
Erethon corrected him:
"It cancels it.
Devours it.
And if you focus it enough… it can tear Oblivion itself."
Rayon's grin sharpened. "Oh, that's fire."
Ka'dros extended both arms and reality collapsed inward, a vortex of gray emptiness ripping toward Rayon with impossible speed.
Rayon planted his right foot, twisted his hips, and—
BOOM—!
He punched.
But this wasn't a punch of flesh.
The moment his fist moved, Black Resonance coated it, a vibrating sheath of obsidian light, like a silent sonic boom trapped within itself.
It hit the Oblivion wave—
—and the world snapped.
Silence.
Then a deep, sub-bass THUMMM like a planet exhaling.
The void ripped open.
A hole tore inside the wave of erasure—an ugly, unnatural jagged wound—like Oblivion itself was being eaten.
Ka'dros' eyes widened.
"What—"
Rayon lowered his fist, smirking. "Yeah… I felt that."
He turned his fist over slowly, admiring the flickering black coat.
It wasn't energy.
It was vibration.
Pure destructive resonance tuned perfectly to Erethon's frequency.
The echo of annihilation weaponized.
Rayon cracked his knuckles. "Think I'll coat everything in this."
Ka'dros staggered backward. For the first time, fear's shadow touched his voice.
"Impossible… No mortal… no vessel should harm Oblivion…"
"You're right." Rayon stepped forward. "I'm not supposed to exist."
He appeared in front of Ka'dros in an instant.
"And yet," Rayon whispered, "here I am."
Ka'dros swung, claws coated in gray nothingness carving a crescent of erasure through the air.
Rayon leaned back an inch.
The attack grazed his chin—and erased a thin scar off his skin instead of flesh.
That alone told Rayon everything:
Oblivion was adapting. Learning him.
He didn't give it the chance.
Rayon snapped his leg up into a roundhouse kick—
—and coated the entire limb in Black Resonance.
When his shin connected with Ka'dros' ribs, the effects were immediate:
Ka'dros screamed.
Not from pain.
But because the Primordial inside him screamed.
Oblivion recoiled, a chunk of gray mist being ripped away from Ka'dros' body like flesh carved off bone. The void behind him flickered violently, destabilizing.
Rayon blinked.
"Oh… that works better than I thought."
Erethon's voice rumbled, darkly satisfied:
"Yes. Keep striking. Remove Oblivion piece by piece."
Ka'dros fell to one knee, clutching his side as the gray aura shuddered violently.
"S-STOP! YOU'RE TEARING IT—YOU'RE TEARING HIM—"
Rayon appeared behind him in a blur, fist already coated in that shimmering black layer.
"Hold still."
He drove his fist into Ka'dros' spine—
—and another chunk of Oblivion peeled off like charcoal smoke.
Ka'dros choked, blood spraying the ground.
"PLEASE—WAIT—!"
Rayon didn't.
He grabbed the man by the jaw, forced his head up, and looked him dead in those gray eyes.
"You shouldn't have hunted Nexus.
You shouldn't have touched the Black Dragon's mate."
He lifted his other arm.
Black Resonance concentrated around his hand, thicker, heavier, almost humming.
"This is what happens when you bother my people."
Ka'dros tried to speak—
To beg—
To scream—
But Rayon didn't give him the chance.
He drove his hand forward—
—straight through Ka'dros' skull.
A shockwave rippled outward as obliteration and resonance collided one final time.
Ka'dros' body convulsed violently, the gray aura shattering as the primordial inside him shrieked in a soundless void-cry that cracked the earth.
Then—
SILENCE.
The Vessel of Oblivion collapsed in Rayon's grip, body disintegrating into harmless dust.
No void.
No erasure.
No lingering danger.
Black Resonance had erased Oblivion itself.
Rayon flicked the dust off his hand and exhaled calmly.
"Next."
His eyes sharpened.
There were more primordial vessels out there.
And now he knew:
He could kill them.
He could tear out primordials.
He could ascend further.