The place for their final meeting was chosen not by them, but by fate itself. The Plain of Shattered Bells—a giant plateau strewn with fragments of colossal bronze bells, broken in an ancient war no one remembered anymore. The wind howled here like a lost soul, wailing in countless metal cracks. It was an altar ready to sacrifice the last remnants of their friendship.
They stood facing each other. Reiden, his face a stone mask hiding the storm within. And Sorato, in his dark purple kimono, with "Yami-No-Hara" in hand—the blade that had become a vessel for a thousand stolen souls. His violet eyes burned not with fanatical fire, but with a strange, icy calm of a doomed prophet.
"I don't want this fight, Sorato," Reiden's voice was low and thick, like the rumble before a storm.
"But it is inevitable," Sorato replied. "Like the changing seasons. Like the tide. You are the last anchor of the old world. I must free it."
He moved first. Not with a shout, but with a quiet rustle. "Yami-No-Hara" traced an arc, and the space before it distorted, releasing a sphere of concentrated chaos—a technique absorbed from a void demon. The sphere devoured light and sound.
Reiden didn't retreat. His body was enveloped in the glow of a golden dragon. "Lightning-like Awakening." He didn't evade the attack—he passed through it, his body momentarily disintegrating into myriad sparks only to reassemble behind Sorato's back. His fist, clenched into a lightning-fast capsule of energy, descended upon his friend.
Sorato parried, but not with his blade. He activated the absorbed "Wall of Falling Petals"—a technique of absolute defense creating countless barriers. Reiden's blow shattered dozens of layers but did not break through.
"You've gotten faster," Sorato noted, retreating.
"And you've become emptier," Reiden gritted out.
Their battle was an unimaginable spectacle. Reiden was the embodiment of speed and untamed might. He used "Eye of Thunder"—a technique allowing his gaze to generate real lightning piercing space. He used "Tread of the Broken Sky," and with each step, the earth cracked, releasing sheaves of golden energy.
But Sorato was unpredictable. He was a living arsenal. He countered with the technique "Whip of the Phoenix Flame," absorbed from a fire master, sending whips of scorching flame hunting for Reiden. He used the "Dance of Lunar Shadows," creating a dozen illusions, each capable of independent attack. He parried Reiden's lightning with "Mirror of Calm Waters," reflecting it back. Their hand-to-hand combat was virtuosic and deadly—Sorato used absorbed enhancement techniques, his strikes were equally fast and precise, his knowledge of combat styles boundless.
Reiden tried to reach the man, not the monster. He tried to knock "Yami-No-Hara" from his hands, but the blade was an extension of Sorato's will, absorbing the kinetic energy of his blows and channeling it into its bottomless reservoirs.
"Snap out of it!" Reiden roared, deflecting the tentacles of the "Roots of Ancient Evil" technique. "This isn't you!"
"This is the real me!" Sorato shouted back, releasing an avalanche of ice daggers absorbed from northern shamans. "I finally see clearly!"
They soared in the air, clashed, fell to earth, leaving craters behind. The plain cracked at the seams. But neither could gain the upper hand.
And then Sorato retreated. He drove "Yami-No-Hara" into the ground. His face contorted in a grimace of ultimate concentration and pain.
"You leave me no choice, old friend. I tried to free you gently... Now I'll do it by force."
He tore the blade from the earth, and it blackened as if absorbing all the world's darkness.
"Abyss of Eternal Hunger!"
He sacrificed a thousand absorbed Scars. "Yami-No-Hara" couldn't withstand such strain; cracks spread across its surface. What erupted from the blade was not an attack, but absence. A black hole, small but incredibly dense. It didn't attract matter. It attracted the soul. Essence. Reiden's very being.
Reiden felt his "self" beginning to tear apart, his will, his memory, his power—all draining into that void. He couldn't evade. This wasn't a physical threat. Only a force equal but opposite in nature could defend. A force capable not of absorbing, but of canceling.
Gathering all his will, all his pain, all his despair at losing his friend, Reiden raised his hand. The golden energy around him pulsed and then solidified, concentrating into a single point.
"Strike of the Broken Paradise."
It wasn't a blow. It was a verdict. An absolute, irreversible act of negation. He aimed it not at Sorato. He aimed it at the heart of "Yami-No-Hara," at the very epicenter of the created "Abyss."
Two fundamental forces collided.
There was no light. Only sound—the sound of reality tearing. A dozen mountains framing the plain, their peaks, thousand-kilometer spires, instantly disintegrated. Not into dust, but into microscopic, perfectly smooth pebbles, as if erased by a giant invisible file. The air thickened, then cleared, generating a hurricane that swept all bell fragments from the plain.
"Yami-No-Hara" couldn't withstand it. It exploded. Not with fire, but with a cacophony of ten thousand released Scars. The spirits of techniques, monsters, people—everything that had been absorbed momentarily filled the plain with a mad vortex of images, sounds, and emotions, then scattered, finally finding peace.
Sorato knelt amidst this chaos. His blade was destroyed. His power, his cursed gift, was gone. His long black hair was tousled by the wind. He raised his head, and his violet eyes were clear. There was no hatred, no mania in them. Only infinite, all-consuming sorrow and weariness.
Reiden, breathing heavily, approached him. He was exhausted to the limit, every movement a colossal effort. But he stood. He raised his hand, and in it concentrated the last drop of his power—enough to put an end to it.
"Are there... any last words?" his voice broke, and a single, burning tear rolled down his dusty cheek.
Sorato looked at him, and in his gaze was inexpressible tenderness and regret.
"Perhaps... you were right, old friend," he whispered, his voice as quiet as the rustle of withering petals.
The pain on Reiden's face twisted into something indescribable. He didn't scream. Didn't sob. He simply did what he had to do. What no one else could do.
His hand fell.
The blow was swift and painless. Merciful.
The silence that fell upon the Plain of Shattered Bells was the loudest in its history. Reiden stood over the body of his friend, the only person he had ever considered his equal. He hadn't killed a monster. He had killed a part of himself. And the world he had just saved seemed infinitely empty and indifferent to him.
He didn't wear the title of the strongest as a reward. He wore it as an eternal curse and a reminder of the price he had paid for order.