The city lay in ruin. Smoke and dust choked the streets, yet at the center stood Aurelius Valen, calm, unshaken, absolute.
Lysara hovered before him, wings torn, aura flickering. She could feel it: the power of a mortal bending reality itself.
"You… how…" she struggled, voice breaking as the World Authority pressed against her divine essence.
"I am Aurelius Valen," he said simply. "I do not kneel. I do not beg. I do not fear."
---
A wave of invisible force erupted from him, rolling across the city like a tsunami.
Trees bent and splintered. Rivers trembled in their beds. Even mountains shivered at the pressure. Soldiers watched, awe-struck, as the emperor reshaped the battlefield with a mere step.
Lysara tried to counterattack. Divine energy streamed from her hands, slicing reality itself, but Aurelius's aura met it, absorbing, redirecting, and twisting it back into strands of pure power.
Every strike she threw failed. Every attack she imagined would succeed was already rewritten by the emperor's authority.
---
Above, in the heavens, the thrones shifted uneasily.
"His authority… it bends the laws we set," one god murmured.
"He is not mortal, not by any standard we recognize," another admitted.
"The World Emperor has claimed dominion not just over men, but over the very rules we enforce," a third whispered, voice trembling.
---
The clash escalated further. The very air around Aurelius glimmered with invisible threads of control, stretching into the horizon. Lysara realized she could not attack without risking the collapse of the mortal world itself.
And yet, she could not retreat.
Her duty—the will of the heavens—demanded confrontation.
Aurelius took another step. The ground beneath him cracked, and the city seemed to kneel, stones splitting to form patterns of authority.
"I offer mercy," he said quietly.
"To the gods, to the Abyss, to all who threaten this world: step back, or be erased."
Lysara's eyes flared with anger and awe.
"You… you are impossible."
Aurelius's lips curved into a faint smile.
"I am inevitable."
The tremors spread beyond the city.
Rivers shifted. Mountains split. The skies above fractured under the pressure of two titanic forces colliding.
And from the distant horizon, greater divine forces began to awaken, sensing the disruption caused by a mortal who dared to claim the world.
This was only the beginning.