Their Dominions clashed against each other like two impossible realities trying to occupy the same space. The air itself seemed to scream. Khorn's Dominion carved through the landscape with fire and magma, turning snow to steam in an instant, while James pushed back with something far more brutal, the Dominion of raw, unrelenting power.
From his back, numerous golden hands emerged, each one as real as flesh but glowing with divine light. They moved independently, clashing against Khorn's wall of flames with such force that the sound alone made the earth shake.
Doom!
The impact echoed like thunder across the entire region, rolling over hills and through valleys. Two separate worlds were trying to exist in the same place, and the divinity radiating from both of them was warping everything around them. The snow didn't know whether to melt or freeze. The hills couldn't decide if they should crack open or remain whole. Reality itself was caught in the middle, bending and twisting under the pressure.
Khorn could feel it, the slow, inevitable push. She was losing. Deep down, she'd known from the start that she would. James was stronger. He'd always been stronger. But that didn't mean she was going to give up. Not while there was still something left to give.
"Haaaa!!!" she screamed, throwing everything she had into the clash. She stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, even as her own body began to break apart under the strain. Her skin was cracking. Her bones were groaning. Every breath felt like swallowing shards.
But it wasn't enough.
It never could have been enough, no matter how hard she pushed. No matter how much she poured into it. James's Dominion kept ramping higher and higher, those golden fists of his pushing with the kind of strength that could shove the sun itself out of orbit.
He knew exactly what she was doing. He'd seen it before. Khorn had always been like this, standing her ground until the very end, no matter the cost.
But it was him who'd taught her what resilience truly meant.
Even as his own skin began to peel away from the heat, revealing muscle and veins beneath, he didn't flinch. He could end this right now if he wanted. One miracle. That's all it would take. But when he looked at her, really looked at her, he saw the way her body was deforming, crumbling under the weight of her own divinity. Part of his mind was screaming at him. Don't. Don't do it. Because if he used that miracle, she wouldn't just lose. She'd be erased entirely.
But if he didn't use it, he would lose. And he couldn't afford to lose. Not now. Not when his lord, the one he'd been searching for, the one he'd been waiting for, was finally standing right there in front of him. Aron might disappear again. He might run. He might vanish for another hundred years.
'I'm sorry, sister,' he thought, his breath coming in ragged huffs. Then he began to charge, using his miracle.
'Char—'
But before he could finish, something cracked.
Not the ground. Not the air. Something deeper than that. Something fundamental. Their Dominions, both of them, twisted violently, as if an unseen hand had reached in and grabbed them by the throat. And standing between the two of them, completely unaffected by either world, was a single individual.
His eyes were glowing gold.
'My lord?'
James's thoughts barely had time to form before Aron moved. He swung both arms outward, one toward each Dominion, and slammed them with enough force to shatter the illusion of their so called Power.
Boom!
Cracks appeared in the air like breaking glass. Reality itself bent under the brute force of the blow, and both Dominions collapsed in on themselves. Fire and light and raw power rained down in glittering fragments, falling around Aron like snow.
"...James," Aron called, his voice cutting through the silence that followed.
"..." James said nothing. He couldn't. He didn't know how. Aron was standing right there in front of him, and James had spent so long imagining this moment, rehearsing what he would say, how he would confront him, but now that it was real, the words wouldn't come. Not a single one.
Meanwhile, Khorn let out a shaky breath, her entire body sagging with relief the moment she saw that familiar golden hair. "Finally..." she whispered, and then her eyes rolled back and she collapsed.
Aron moved fast, rushing forward and catching her before she could hit the ground. As he cradled her, he noticed the dark, glowing cracks spreading across her face like spiderwebs. They pulsed faintly, almost alive.
"Always burning bright," he murmured, his voice soft but pained. He placed a hand over her chest and invoked his right over her divinity. Golden light flowed from his palm into her body, seeping into the cracks and forcing them to stop spreading.
"Zureil, was it?" he called out, and the angel appeared beside him almost instantly, materializing out of the air.
"Could you do me a favor?" Aron asked.
The angel looked down at him with an expression that was equal parts serene and stern. "Angels don't do favors," Zureil said. "We do what is right, and never the wrong." But even as he spoke, he was already reaching down to lift Khorn from Aron's arms.
Aron nodded, pointing off in the direction of the volcano they'd visited earlier. "Please hurry," he said, and there was genuine worry in his voice now. "She doesn't have much time."
The angel gave a single nod. His wings flared out behind him, and with one powerful beat, he was gone, taking Khorn with him. The air filled with a gust of wind, and then there was nothing.
Just James and Aron.
Lord and herald.
Father and son.
The snowy world stretched out around them, silent and still.
"I taught you many things," Aron said quietly, his eyes locking onto James's. "But attacking your own family wasn't one of them."
James glared back at him, his green eyes burning with an anger so raw it felt unreasonable, uncontainable. Aron didn't know exactly what had led to this fight, but he could piece it together. Seeing Khorn's condition, it was obvious, James must have tried to come after him, and Khorn had stepped in to stop it.
Aron turned fully to face him now.
The battlefield was quiet. Not peaceful, exactly, but hushed, like the world itself was holding its breath. Snow drifted slowly from a sky still fractured with the afterglow of divinity. Aron's golden eyes burned, not with dominance, but with something sharper. Something that cut deeper.
"Do you hate me that much?" he asked. His voice was steady, controlled, but the anger beneath it was impossible to miss. "Enough to kill your own sister?"
For a moment, James didn't respond. Then he took a step closer, his fists clenching so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Yes," he said, and his voice was rough, like something torn from deep inside him. "I hate you that much."
Finally, he'd found the courage to say it.
Aron's expression didn't change. He just stood there, watching him. Then he raised one hand and crooked a finger, almost casually.
"So what are you waiting for?" he said. "Come."
James didn't reply.
He couldn't.
Instead, divinity poured out of him in violent surges, his entire body trembling as he forced out the last remnants of power he'd stolen and hoarded. Cracks split across his skin again, glowing lines of strain spiderwebbing over muscle and bone. The Olympian miracles inside him screamed, unstable and corrosive, eating away at him from the inside out.
"I warned you," Aron said quietly. "If you draw any more from that source, it will kill you."
James laughed, a raw, broken sound that didn't belong to anything human. "Then I'll die," he snarled. "And I'll drag you down with me."
He vanished.
The impact came instantly.
James's fist crashed into Aron's jaw with impossible precision. Not wild. Not sloppy. Every strike landed exactly where it would hurt the most, guided by the cruel certainty of accumulated karma. Aron staggered backward, but he didn't strike back.
They clashed again.
And again.
And again.
James moved like a storm that had been unchained, every blow sharpened by hatred, every motion fueled by the desperate, aching need to end something, anything. Aron matched him step for step, speed for speed. But he never once attacked.
He only blocked.
Only redirected.
Only endured.
There were hundreds of moments, hundreds of clean, perfect openings, where Aron could have ended it. Five hundred and sixty distinct chances, each one calculated in the back of his mind, where a single decisive motion would have torn James apart completely.
He didn't take any of them.
Instead, he let the blows land.
Each punch struck with terrifying accuracy, drawn in by Aron's already-fractured karma like iron to a magnet. Bone cracked. Blood spilled. His golden glow began to dim, staining red as his body absorbed the punishment.
"Tell me," Aron said, spitting blood into the snow as another fist drove deep into his ribs. His voice was hoarse but steady. "What do I need to do... to make you hate less?"
James roared in answer and hit him harder.
"I don't want you to forget your rage," Aron continued, staggering but somehow staying upright. "I just want to know how to lessen it."
"After I kill you," James screamed, and his voice was breaking now, cracking under the weight of everything he was feeling, "then I'll have peace!"
Aron didn't dodge the next strike.
He took it, and in the same motion, placed his hand gently against James's chest.
Golden light flared outward, not violently, but softly, like the warmth of sunlight after a long winter. Where Aron's fingers touched, the toxic Olympian divinity recoiled, burned away, purified. Cracks in James's body sealed themselves without him even noticing. His wounds closed. His breathing steadied, against his will.
"What are you doing?!" James snarled, trying to pull away.
"Trying to redeem myself..." Aron answered, his voice rough and tired. Another punch smashed into his face, snapping his head to the side. " And you as well.."