The silver road stretched before him, endless and radiant, yet Krish no longer walked it. He sat cross-legged at its heart, wings folded around him, his eyes steady in the calm after fusing the four forbidden elements.
But deep within his core, something shifted.
The balance he had fought for two hundred years to claim began to unravel.
It started with a spark of Thunder, roaring suddenly through his veins. Lightning split across his wings, scattering wild arcs into the void.
Then came Wind, tearing at his body, howling with uncontrollable fury.
Earth followed, his bones trembling as mountains grew and shattered inside him.
Fire blazed in his blood, burning without end, consuming essence itself.
Water surged, drowning his meridians with endless torrents.
Plants bloomed uncontrollably, their roots piercing through his essence like chains.
For a brief moment, he thought it would end there. But the storm was only beginning.
Light burst from his soul, blinding, searing, threatening to dissolve his form.
Darkness rose immediately, swallowing even that radiance, binding him in endless shadow.
Space twisted around him, tearing his wings apart into fragments, pulling his body across infinite distances.
And then—the most dangerous of all:
Time fractured, showing him infinite presents, pasts, and futures at once.
Life swelled, birthing new stars within his chest.
Death surged, smothering them in silence.
Creation wove visions of infinite worlds, demanding he carry their weight.
Destruction tore them all down, ripping at his soul until cracks spread through his being.
Fourteen elements.
Fourteen truths.
All roaring at once within one body.
Krish convulsed, blood turning to lightning, bones into stone, veins into rivers, breath into flame. His wings shattered and reformed with each pulse, unable to hold the chaos. The silver road beneath him broke into fragments, collapsing into a storm of fractured laws.
For the first time since stepping into the Earth-Level Universe, Krish screamed.
The power was too vast, too uncontrollable. It was not a battle with an enemy, nor a trial given by the Universe—it was himself. His body, his soul, his essence tearing apart under the weight of carrying what no existence had ever dared to hold.
Through the storm, the ribbon around his neck glowed faintly, a cool and distant whisper, as though reminding him of something forgotten. But even its guidance was nearly drowned out by the storm of fourteen.
If he failed to seize control now, there would be no rebirth, no recovery—
He would be devoured by the very elements he carried.
The void itself trembled as the bearer of fourteen elements struggled, wings broken, essence collapsing, caught between creation and destruction, between light and darkness, between life and death.