Location: Veldt's Throat – Mist Corridor Basin
Time: Morning, Year 8002 A.A.
The basin seemed to inhale.
At first it was a whisper in the bones of the valley, the kind of tremor one might mistake for distant thunder or the idle grumble of the world at rest. But no—this was different. It was intimate, deliberate, a low murmur that traveled up from the soles of one's feet, passed through the marrow, and settled heavy in the chest. The ground did not merely shake; it breathed. Every stone, every tree, every living creature felt it in the secret places of themselves. It was as though the Mist Corridor Basin had at last stirred from a thousand-year slumber and remembered its own name.
Adam had spoken.
"Kaynok."
It was a name, but not like names as men give each other. This one was older, shaped in the deep places of the world, a word less spoken than uncovered—like brushing the dust off a buried relic to reveal what had always been. His voice did not shout, nor did it strain; it was soft, steady, unyielding. Yet the sound carried like a crack of lightning across eternity. It was not heard in the ear but known in the marrow.
The effect was immediate, terrible, and holy.
The stone underfoot resonated as though stricken by an unseen bell. A clear, metallic hum thrummed through the cliffs and into the ribbed walls of the basin, setting loose a groaning choir of forgotten earth. The trees on the ledges above shivered violently though no wind dared blow. Birds fled in panicked spirals, their wings a frantic scatter of black across the morning's veil of mist. Even the air seemed to grow taut, stretched thin by the reverberation of a word not meant for common use.
It was as if creation itself recoiled at being reminded of something it had long conspired to forget.
Karadir Boga opened his eyes.
For a moment, there was no warrior there—only something ancient and wounded, like a volcano torn open after centuries of silence. The molten gold of his gaze burned outward with a sudden violence, blinding, alive. It was not the steady light of conviction, nor the measured glow of strength. It was restless, writhing fire—an inner furnace stirred into rage by the unveiling of its true name.
His body reacted before his mind could master it.
His back arched with a slow, wrenching contortion, every muscle seizing as though trying to contain an ocean of molten stone. Thick cords of sinew shifted visibly beneath his fur, which itself darkened, shade by shade, until it was no longer the simple color of beast-born hide but the blackened crust of cooled magma. From beneath that darkening coat came pulsing lines of light, veins of fire traced not in the wild patterns of flesh but in sharp geometry, angles cut like the marks of some ancient stonemason. The glow was not natural—it was too precise, too deliberate. It marked him not as one alive, but as one bound.
The fissures of light burned white-gold, a fire that seemed older than the stars themselves. They curled up his arms, along his neck, across his chest in symmetrical lines, until his whole form shone like a living sculpture carved from mountain and magma both.
The earth could not bear him.
When he set his hooves against the rock, the stone cracked beneath the weight, as if bowing beneath the gravity of something greater than itself. Little fragments broke away and fell into the mist below, their echoes swallowed before they could land. From his nostrils streamed vapor—not the gentle fog of a beast's breath, but the acrid steam of volcanic vents, curling hot ribbons that smelled of ozone and scorched stone.
He was no longer simply Karadir, son of the Boga.
He was vessel. He was conduit. An Emvicri. He was the one his ancestors had bound to the star that fell.
Adam did not move. His head tilted slightly, the yellow cloth about his eyes hiding any flicker of expression. Yet inwardly, the word he had spoken hung like a tolling bell, heavy and final.
Kaynok.
It was a name both given and returned, one that could not be unsaid. He felt it ripple in the air around him, in the stillness that followed, in the shudder that passed through the bones of the mountains themselves. The name had power, yes—but more than that, it had memory. And memory was the cruelest weapon of all.
For Adam, there was no triumph in seeing Karadir transfigured by its utterance. No victory in watching the molten veins flare alive. What rose before him was not merely an enemy revealed, but a brother chained to a fate neither of them had chosen. The sight pressed on him like grief.
Yet he did not falter. His chest rose, slow and deliberate, the calm of a man who had stood before storms greater than himself and learned not to bow.
Karadir felt everything at once.
The pain was immense, not of flesh tearing but of containment. It was as though his body was a vessel too small for the sea being poured into it. His bones rattled with each pulse of light, his teeth clenched until they threatened to crack. But pain was only part of it. Beneath the torment stirred something else—an elation so fierce it bordered on terror.
He spoke it.
The thought reverberated through him, not entirely his own. The star-born covenant within him rejoiced like a caged beast at the sound of its true title, straining against the chains of centuries. And Karadir, caught between man and mountain, between warrior and vessel, trembled on the edge of surrender.
This was what he had been made for. This was what had slept in his bloodline, waiting, biding its time. And now the name had awakened it.
His jaw tightened, breath pouring from his nostrils in volcanic streams. He wanted to roar, to unleash the fury that boiled in his marrow. Yet another voice—his own, smaller, fragile—whispered in the corners of his mind.
What am I now? Warrior? Or weapon?
The thought stabbed him, sharper than any blade Adam could raise.
And when he spoke—he didn't.
Something else did.
The sound that issued from Karadir's form was not the sound of breath passing through lungs, not the tremor of cords vibrating in a throat. No. The voice bypassed such mortal frailties altogether. It seized the very air around him, bent it, commanded it to vibrate, so that the words were felt before they were heard. Every creature, every soldier, every stone in the basin seemed to quiver with the resonance of it.
"You called my name… Kurtcan?"
The voice crawled. That was the only word for it. It moved not like music or speech, but like the slow, inevitable creep of glaciers across continents, like sediment settling in the floor of oceans older than memory. It was a sound drawn from the marrow of creation, carrying the dust of forgotten worlds and the sorrow of stars that had long since collapsed into silence.
It was not Karadir's voice. Not his youthful fervor, not his rage. It was something far older.
Across the fractured basin, Adam stood upon the jagged crest of blue crystal that had saved him only moments before. The wind had returned now, though it did not touch him. It bent, slid, and curved away from him, like water flowing around an invisible stone. Around his still form stretched a dome of profound stillness, as if creation itself knew to grant him a sanctified distance from the presence he faced.
He did not shift. He did not steel himself. His entire being, from the cloth over his hidden eyes to the grounded tips of his paw boots, was bent to a single action: listening. He received the ancient voice with the attention one might give to the tolling of the last bell in the world.
And then he nodded. Not as servant to master, nor as supplicant to deity. But as one ancient will acknowledging another. His head lowered—not in submission, but in solemn, unflinching grace.
"Indeed," he said, and the air trembled at the calmness of his reply. "Great Star of ArchenLand."
The light in Karadir's eyes dimmed. The molten fire retreated for a heartbeat, narrowing to twin slits of gold as though the mind within him had stilled to consider. Recognition stirred, slow and dreadful, like mountains shifting after centuries of rest.
The features that had once been Karadir's seemed no longer his own. The obsidian horns crowning his head tilted inward, focusing like antennae upon Adam. The creeping lines of white-gold fire along his arms slithered higher, inching toward his jaw, marking him, claiming him. He was less man now than vessel, a chalice into which something older and infinitely heavier had been poured.
When the voice spoke again, it carried no haste, only weight.
"And yet you stand before me now… not in reverence, but in resistance."
It was not an accusation spoken in wrath, but a judgment rendered in weariness. The words dragged against the silence, heavy as falling stone.
"Do you still pretend to serve justice while shielding the ruins of tyranny? Have you grown as blind as the cloth over your eyes?"
The basin itself seemed to still. Dust, suspended midair, hung motionless. The very wind stilled its wandering, like a servant hushed in the presence of its lord.
Adam did not move. He did not waver. The cloth over his eyes might have hidden his expression, but nothing could conceal the quiet composure with which he received the star's accusation.
At last, he tilted his head, birdlike, precise. The gesture carried no arrogance, no defiance. It was not even curiosity. It was the tilt of one profoundly aware—aware of who spoke, aware of the ages that weighed upon these words, aware of the long story etched into every syllable.
"You know I cannot draw power from Kurtcan unless our hearts beat the same will," Adam said. His voice was a stream cutting through cavernous stone, pure, calm, and utterly steady. "The bond is one of truth, not convenience. If I were a hypocrite, if my will were false, you would not see me standing here. The Arcem would reject me. It has done so before."
His words did not clang like rebuttal; they rang like fact. They left no room for quarrel, only for recognition.
The answer was met with a sound. It was not quite speech—more like the world itself grinding its teeth. Deep underground, stone seemed to roll and shift, like titanic plates colliding far beneath the surface.
"Then your collective will," Kaynok rumbled, "is misguided."
The weight of it pressed down upon the basin, thickening the air until each breath came labored, heavy.
"Why then do you stand with the oppressors of the innocent? Why do you defend the Carlonites though they would stab you in the back given the slightest chance?"
The voice did not rise in anger. Anger would have been easier to resist. No—this was worse. It was disappointment, old and heavy, like the slow grief of a father who has watched his children squander the light given them.
"You protect the very structure that threatened ArchenLand in the past," the star intoned. "You guard the heirs of those who sought to extinguish the very light I bestowed."
The words bore no malice. Only bewildered sorrow, the incomprehension of an immortal being unable to fathom why mortals would so stubbornly guard the ruins of their own captors.
Adam stood.
For a moment, his silence was absolute. Yet it was not evasive, not guilty, not unsure. It was sorrowful. The weight of grief pressed upon his shoulders like a cloak. It was not sorrow for himself, nor even for the accusation. It was sorrow for the necessity of the question itself—that such a being, once so radiant, had come to utter such words.
When at last he spoke, the edge of his words softened the crystal ridges that still glittered around him, as if even stone bowed to the gentleness of his tone.
"There are truths that belong only to time."
The words fell softly, but they struck the basin like drops of water upon a parched stone—quiet, yet irreversible.
"They cannot be given; they must be reached. Yours, Kaynok, is not yet one of them. I cannot give you the answers you want. Forgive me."
The apology was not hollow. It was real. His voice carried no falsehood, no performance. He was not sorry for his stance—no—but for the wound his words inflicted upon one who had once been more than weapon, more than star.
It was the sorrow of a friend forced to withhold, not for pride, not for deceit, but for a greater fidelity—a loyalty even deeper, and more painful, than the loyalty of obedience.
__________________________________
The world answered.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!
It was not thunder. It was not even noise. It was a sigh, long and subterranean, the weary release of a titan shifting in its sleep. The basin tilted, imperceptibly at first, then with the slow insistence of inevitability. Stones rolled and clicked against one another. Pebbles became small avalanches, whispering down slopes that only moments before had been steady.
High above, a cliff groaned—a deep, bone-rattling sound. For one terrible instant it leaned, as if to collapse upon the valley below, before settling back into place with the shuddering stillness of something alive and resentful.
The ground did not break. It rearranged.
It was not destruction; it was decision. Not the hammer against the wall, but the wall choosing to become a door.
"EARTH SHAPER: KAYA DÖNÜŞÜ – Rock Shift."
The words were not spoken. They were felt, commanded by a will now indistinguishable from the earth itself.
Then the impossible happened.
Massive ridges rotated like hinges, silent and precise. Valleys folded inward upon themselves like cloth being gathered in a giant's hand. Jagged escarpments curled and locked together, forming the rough petals of some colossal stone flower.
The world itself was being repurposed.
In moments, what had been a chaotic battlefield became something far more dreadful: an arena. A ring of stone, perfect in its encirclement, rose sheer and high on every side. The ground within leveled itself, brushing away rubble and carcasses of shattered rock until nothing remained but a clean, empty stage. A coliseum wrought not by man, nor magic, but by the will of the star wearing Karadir's flesh.
A place for judgment.
A place for endings.
Karadir—if indeed he could still be called that—stood at its center. He was less a man now than an axis, the turning point of worlds.
Twin blades erupted from his forearms. They were not forged; they grew, obsidian ridges folding open like volcanic crystal formations, their edges alive with simmering flame. His chest glowed, a slow, pulsating orange heat—not the heartbeat of a man, but the contained core of a star. Beneath the hardened skin, a celestial forge raged, its light aching to be spent, to carve, to remake.
The horns on his skull curled inward, tightening like fists clenching in fury. Every scar upon his hide pulsed, no longer pale reminders of battles past, but conduits, glowing seams filled with molten light. Each mark was both history and weapon.
He did not roar. He did not posture. The silence itself bent around him, acknowledging the weight of his presence. His being was proclamation enough.
And then he moved.
It was not running.
It was the continent deciding to lunge.
The ground did not crack beneath his hooves; it assisted him, each step a gift of momentum, every stone a servant lending force to its master. He advanced like inevitability incarnate, the crushing forward pull of tectonic will.
Adam's response was not panic, not defense. His body moved in rhythm, like a dancer returning to familiar steps in a long-remembered dance.
His right hand rose. With three crisp notes—click, click, click—the staff uncoiled. Not wood, not iron, but something deeper. Segments loosened and lengthened, their bonds spilling into shimmering, braided mana that glowed like chain-forged light. The staff turned once in his grip, extending into a segmented arc, fluid as water, unbreakable as fate.
Upon its surface, runes kindled. They lit not all at once, but in sequence, like stars emerging in a twilight sky. Each rune carried its own tale: of guardianship, of silence, of covenants written in times when men were still children. The staff became a story, one written not with ink, but with light.
The mist, creeping low across the basin floor, recoiled. It slid back as though ashamed, curling away from the blue luminescence, or perhaps bowing in reverence.
They collided.
Not with the scream of steel.
Not with the splintering of stone.
But with absence.
A vacuum thump sucked the sound out of the world. The impact was so absolute that the arena seemed to gasp and hold its breath. Dust hung midair, suspended. Birds far above faltered mid-flight, losing their rhythm in the sudden stillness.
Karadir's obsidian blades, burning with the molten force of the earth's heart, struck against Adam's staff, shimmering with the cold, crystalline light of the void.
And the world itself warped.
The air bent visibly at the point of contact, a shimmer like heat over stone, only sharper, hungrier. For a heartbeat, neither force yielded. Mountain met silence. Fire met crystal. The irresistible pressed against the immovable.
And all creation seemed to hesitate, waiting to see which law of being would falter first.
___________________________________
CLANGGGGGZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!!
The first blow was no mere strike. It was a hymn of fire and ruin, creation and destruction braided into one. Kaynok's obsidian-flame blade swept through the air in a broad crescent. Wherever it passed, the very ground recoiled: stone hissed, seared black, and split open, glowing with veins of molten slag that bubbled like the froth of a witch's brew. The heat rushed outward in a searing wave, thick as breath from a forge, a wall that dared flesh and bone to endure it.
Adam did not meet it with defiance. He bent with it, beneath it, his body the curve of a river stone worn smooth by years of flowing waters. His motion was a whisper, an absence of resistance. Canvari twirled into his grip, whirling behind his back in a seamless blur of shadowed steel and cold light. With a twist of his wrist, the staff's central rod intercepted the weapon's backhand return—a hair's breadth away from shearing his flank.
Clash.
The sound rang sharper this time, a crystalline ping that pierced the silence, force honed to a single immaculate point. Kaynok did not pause. The second strike came like lightning in a summer storm, faster, narrower—a thrust not meant to wound, but to pierce utterly.
Adam leapt. Not back. Up. His bare soles grazed a slab of rock that tilted itself beneath him as if eager to serve. For an instant, he seemed to walk upon the air itself, lifted by nothing but precision and poise.
Below, Kaynok's blade drove deep. The earth screamed. A fountain of molten fire erupted, spraying brilliant arcs of orange. A boulder—once whole, unyielding—split as if it were bread, clean in half, each piece sliding apart with terrible grace.
From his high perch, Adam turned. His body twisted in a spiral, a comet in motion. Canvari came down in his hands, a falling star of intent. Not wide. Not wild. Focused. The descending strike sought a single point—the juncture of neck and shoulder.
No blood followed. No wound marred the stony flesh.
But the world reeled.
The staff's strike released a pulse—not outward, but inward, a concussive silence that did not blast but erased. Kaynok staggered. Two great, shuddering steps backward, each one shaking the arena floor like the footfall of a giant. Behind him, the half-broken boulder did not collapse—it crumbled, disintegrating into fine, uniform gravel, as if its very being had been negated by the reverberation.
They circled.
The duel was not theirs alone. The arena itself fought, its stone bones bending in answer to Kaynok's will.
Cliffs leaned, angling for advantage. Platforms thrust upward, new footholds offering sudden high ground. Jagged debris shifted like dancers following a choreographer's unseen hand, swirling before finding their ordained places.
The basin had become a creature, alive with motion, reshaping itself second by second.
Above, the mist hovered, denied entry to the ground below. What once had cloaked the battlefield in secrecy now hung suspended like a ceiling of pale ghosts, watching in silence, bearing witness. They were no longer concealment. They were spectators.
And the fighters—adamant stone and steady silence—were the show.
But not all who watched were ghosts.
From a ridge beyond the ring, eyes gleamed—cold, reptilian, slitted. General Gon.
His scaled body crouched low, his tail coiled in tight knots beneath him. His claws dug into the rock, anchoring him against the tremors that pulsed through the valley. He did not marvel at the spectacle, did not tremble with awe. His expression was flat, his jaw loose with the easy patience of a predator watching two rival beasts exhaust themselves.
The reptilian general muttered, his words a gravelly grumble.
"You two want to dance? Fine. Dance."
His gaze flicked downward, away from the titanic duel. Not toward Adam, nor toward Kaynok, but toward the dark crate—the humming, cursed object that pulsed at the basin's edge like a heart wrapped in iron.
His right arm shifted. It was no longer flesh. Where once had been limb and sinew, now there jutted a contraption: a cannon of bronze and iron, long and terrible. Its surface pulsed with violet lines, runes crawling across it like veins filled with poisoned fire.
The Arcem Blaster.
A relic, a curse, a weapon that should not be.
With a casualness that belied the hunger in his eyes, Gon clicked three glass capsules into its chamber. Each one slid home with the sound of grinding teeth. All three were empty. Yet each glowed faintly, as if hungry, waiting to be filled.
The serpent's forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. He could taste the power, the resonance, the clash of Arcem against Arcem. His pupils narrowed in satisfaction.
His gaze did not waver. Not from the warriors. Not from the spectacle. But from the crate.
The source. The reason.
The prize.
"Let's see," he hissed, low and eager, "how it eats."
_________________________________
Below, the battle thundered on, no longer a skirmish of flesh and steel but a symphony of elements, a hymn written in fire and silence, stone and will.
Staff met flaming swords with a concussive thump that devoured sound. Staff met living stone, the collision shivering through the very marrow of the arena.
They raced across sheer cliffs as though they were meadows. They leapt from ledges that should have crumbled, soared across spaces where air alone ought to have betrayed them. Gravity bowed to them. Law deferred. The battlefield itself was their canvas, and they wrote upon it with blows and counterblows, each one a verse in an old, terrible song.
Kaynok commanded the world as if it were his own body. Each hooffall was not just a step but an edict. When he struck the ground, the earth shifted, cliffs tilting, walls bending inward, valleys folding to trap his foe. Stones did not fall at random—they rolled in precise, fated arcs, weapons crafted in the space of a heartbeat. The entire basin was his instrument, a body of stone loyal to the pulse of his thought.
Adam, by contrast, did not command. He did not fight the world into submission. He moved with it. He bent like water, flowing into the crevices the stone had left unguarded. He skimmed across broken ledges lighter than dust, his weight a secret shared only with the air. Even tumbling stones became allies—stepping stones beneath his feet, percussive notes in the furious symphony of their duel.
Violence was no longer the word for it. This was worship. A ritual not of altars and incense, but of sweat and will. Terrible, beautiful worship—the language of two powers who understood one another not with words, but with blows.
Then—silence.
As if in some unspoken covenant, both stopped.
They stood twenty feet apart.
Breath rose and fell, not ragged, not weak, but measured—like bellows in a forge, steady and strong. The silence of the arena was heavy, broken only by the sigh of cooling lava and the settling groans of newly born cliffs. Dust hovered, unwilling to fall, as if even gravity feared to disturb the fragile truce.
Between them stretched an air thick with unspoken truth, a tension so vast it was as though the basin itself awaited judgment.
And then, within the vessel of stone and star, something stirred.
A voice.
Not the grinding, eternal voice of Kaynok.
The other voice.
Karadir's.
It's too much.
The thought tore from him like a gasp. Not aloud—no one else heard it. It was his own cry, an inward breaking. His veins felt aflame, his bones creaked as though stone were splitting within them. His chest strained against the unbearable weight of the star's power.
We've stayed manifested too long. You know I cannot maintain this form for more than thirty minutes. The pact… it demands its price. I'm… breaking.
Kaynok's reply was thunder in the hollow caverns of his mind, unrelenting, a storm whose winds crushed dissent.
"End him."
The command was not request, not counsel—it was decree. A single strike, all of their power, the annihilation of the foe. The star's voice was without hesitation, without compassion.
"Now. Or I will take the reins fully."
The threat was no hollow thunder. Karadir knew. The star would seize his body, burn it hollow, leave nothing but ruin in its wake. His life was nothing beside its will.
His jaw clenched. The grinding sound was not only stone upon stone—it was a man clenching down on himself, forcing silence upon his own heart.
A memory flickered. Not stone. Not fire. Something gentler.
A corridor in ArchenLand, lit by golden torches. A laugh shared between two boys who did not yet know what destiny would demand of them. An older man's hand, warm and human, clasping his own. Adam's hand.
The memory lanced him.
"He was your friend. Not mine."
Kaynok's words swept over the memory like cold water, dousing its light.
"He is an obstacle. Nothing more."
Not anymore.
Karadir's reply was bitter, a taste of ash in his soul. He shoved the memory down, as one shoves down a flame when it burns too hot. The cause was everything. The rebellion. The future. Adam had chosen his side.
And yet.
He hesitated.
For the space of a single heartbeat, he faltered. A fraction of a second. The smallest tremor of humanity inside a vessel of living stone. His shoulders dipped, ever so slightly. His blazing golden eyes flickered, a flame wavering in sudden wind.
It was nothing.
And it was everything.
A single human hesitation in the chest of a god.
And it was enough.
Enough to lose all.
_______________________________
It began as a sound no mountain should ever make.
HHHHHHHMMMMMMZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
A shrill, mechanical whine—thin, piercing, unnatural. It cut through the thick silence of the arena like a blade dragged over glass, a violation of the sacred duel being waged. It did not belong to stone or crystal, to fire or silence. It belonged to something else. Something foreign. Something profane.
Adam's head turned first, his senses catching the distortion in the air. Karadir's eyes followed a fraction later, their molten blaze narrowing. But both were late. Their focus had been fixed too long on each other, their wills locked in that fragile moment of hesitation. The distraction had cost them.
The sound swelled—higher, sharper, like claws raking the insides of the skull.
And then they saw him.
General Gon.
He stood upon a jagged spur of rock, one leg cocked in careless balance, his reptilian frame outlined against the ominous bulk of the steel crate marked Item X. The faint hum from the box matched the vibration now crawling across the basin, as if the two resonated together in some dark conspiracy.
But the crate was not what held their attention.
It was the thing fused to Gon's arm.
A weapon that should never have existed.
Its bronze-and-iron surface writhed with etched runes that pulsed in veins of violet fire. Its chamber glowed faintly, each curve and joint trembling as if barely containing the hunger inside. The cannon was not metal so much as parasite, something alive, something that fed as it functioned. The sickly light throbbed in rhythm with a pulse that was not Gon's heart.
His right eye glowed to match it. That same violet, that same obscene illumination. It was not sight—it was hunger given vision.
And Gon grinned.
It was not the sly smile of the calculating commander, nor the cold smirk of a predator. It was stretched, grotesque, a rictus of triumph, cruelty, and anticipation all welded together.
"You two were too busy putting on a show," he sneered, his voice distorted, amplified, as though the weapon itself spoke through him. The guttural words carried across the arena, crawling into every crevice like oil. "Let me remind you what real power looks like."
The cannon whined again, higher this time. The air around its muzzle warped, bending like heat haze, as though reality itself strained against the gathering pressure.
And then—
He fired.
The Beam
The sound was wrong.
Not the thunder of fire. Not the roar of stone. Not even the crackle of lightning.
It was a shriek. A tearing. The violent sound of something rending the very fabric of what was real.
A lance of violet light erupted forward—pure, concentrated malice given shape. It was not merely energy. It was corruption, force that bent life away from its form, that unstitched the weave of what it touched. It was hunger given speed.
Adam's body shifted instantly, his staff coiling to meet the impossible. Karadir lunged, stone cracking beneath his desperate stride. But both were too slow.
Because something else moved first.
____________________________________
Garo.
The name needed no title, no preamble. He was simply Garo. The faithful. The steadfast.
And in that instant, he was motion.
He moved before the whine had even finished forming. Before thought could catch his body, his body had already chosen. He did not weigh odds. He did not wonder if Adam could defend himself. He did not ask if Karadir's power would suffice.
He saw the beam aimed at his leader, his Savior.
And his body acted.
It was not bravery. It was not decision.
It was instinct born of faith. Faith so absolute it made a mockery of fear.
He leapt.
The violet beam met him mid-flight.
The world froze.
Karadir's roar split the arena, and this time it was not Kaynok's voice but his own. Humane. Raw. Shattered.
"NO!"
The sound cracked against the cliffs, a broken cry, not of a general to a soldier but of a brother to a brother.
But he was too late.
The beam struck Garo square in the chest.
His body convulsed, arching violently backward. Every muscle seized, locked in rigor, his limbs jerking taut like a puppet on cruel strings. His mouth flew open wide, but no scream emerged. Not even breath escaped. The silence was worse than a thousand cries.
Violet lightning raced up his spine, across his limbs, a net of cruel fire that bound and consumed. His eyes, wide and startled, flashed once with their old light—bright, fierce, loyal—then dimmed, extinguished like lamps in a house abandoned.
And then his body began to collapse.
Not in blood. Not in ruin. But in emptiness.
He shrank inward, skin and flesh sagging, as though the air had been drawn out of him. His form crumpled like a wineskin drained dry, like parchment curling in fire.
And from that husk rose a light.
A stream of bluish-green brilliance, vibrant and alive, wrenched free from him. It was not breath, not blood, but essence—his life force, his mana, the very core of his being. It writhed as if struggling to remain, to cling to the body it was torn from. But the beam pulled, irresistible, dragging it screaming into the cannon's chamber.
The Blaster pulsed hungrily, glowing brighter as the capsule filled. The light inside churned, once brilliant, now caged, trapped, reduced to fuel.
CLICK!!
The chamber sealed.
And with it, Garo was gone.
His body fell.
Time did not merely slow—it stopped.
The clash of elements, the shifting coliseum, the duel that had shaken mountains—all dissolved into nothingness. For Karadir, the universe collapsed to a single point: the small, limp body falling before him.
He moved.
Not as a warrior, not as a titan wrapped in the mantle of a star, but as a man. His massive form blurred with a speed born not of power but of sheer, desperate will. Before Garo's body touched the ground, Karadir was there. Kneeling. Cradling him. His colossal arms, meant for breaking armies, trembled as they folded around a boy's frame that weighed less than a fragment of stone.
The boy's head rested in his lap. His light fur, once brushed into prideful spikes, was scorched black at the edges where the beam had torn through. Around his neck, the wooden eagle pendant he had carved with his own hands—his emblem of freedom, of loyalty, of hope—was gone. Reduced to a few flakes of ash that clung stubbornly to the fur of his chest.
Karadir's molten-gold eyes burned, not with fury, but with a terror so vast it hollowed him out. This was not battle. This was loss.
Garo's eyes fluttered open, faint, dim. Light flickered there—weak, guttering, like the last flame in a lamp before darkness swallows it. His gaze sought only one thing: not the enemy, not the weapon, not even life itself. But the face above him. The one he trusted.
"…Savior…"
The whisper was frail, more breath than sound. It was not a title. Not a role. Not even a plea. It was simply a name. Karadir's name, stripped bare of all the weight of rebellion, prophecy, and legend. The name of the man Garo had followed.
And then—
Nothing.
No heroic cry. No desperate gasp. Not even the faintest tremor. The light was snuffed out in an instant, erased like chalk washed from stone. His soul did not pass—it was taken. Where Garo had been, there was now only absence, a void so profound it left no echo.
The silence that followed was unbearable. It was not peace. Not sleep. It was a silence that declared: he is gone.
____________________________________
The quiet shattered under Gon's voice.
"That one just had to jump in." His tone was not grief, not even respect—it was irritation dressed as mockery. He sighed with deliberate exaggeration, his forked tongue tasting the air between words. "At least he won't be interrupting again."
He stood tall beside the humming steel crate, the cannon fused to his arm glowing with fresh hunger. He patted the weapon like a favored hound, its violet light pulsing in time with his own vile glee.
"That was your warning," he said, each word oozing with pride. "Meet Carlon's newest invention. The Arcem Killer."
He rolled the name on his tongue with theatrical relish, savoring it. "Designed to drain and absorb the mana and Arcem of any Tracient. Perfectly. Neatly. Bottled like perfume."
He tapped the glass capsule embedded in its chamber.
Inside, the bluish-green light of Garo's essence swirled. It pulsed, faintly rhythmic. Like a heartbeat trapped in glass.
"Whatever spark he had—it's mine now," Gon continued, his grin curdling into a sneer. "And in a case where the victim has no Arcem? It drains the mana clean. Leaves nothing."
He let the word hang. A poison in the air.
"And you know what zero mana means, don't you?" His voice lowered, almost intimate, as if teaching a cruel lesson. "For a being made of magic?"
Karadir stared.
His great chest rose, but no breath came. His molten eyes, always aflame with conviction, with rebellion, with wrath, were wide and hollow. The fire in them was gone, replaced by something terrible: understanding.
His voice, when it came, was not a roar. Not even a growl.
It was ash, scattered on a dying wind.
"You… erased his soul…"
The words cracked as they left him, heavy, broken, disbelieving. They were not accusation alone—they were confession. The admission of something unthinkable, something beyond war, beyond cruelty.
Gon's smirk answered. A vile, unrepentant thing.
"Bingo."
One word. Light as dust. Heavy as murder.
Gon's head tilted. His glowing violet eye narrowed. The cannon shifted in his arm with a hungry whine, its runes crawling with fire, its muzzle trembling with impatient need.
He turned. Slowly. Casually.
From the grieving titan to the other.
Adam.
"And you?" Gon said, his tongue flicking across his teeth. The weapon screamed as it charged, drawing light, air, even warmth into itself. The very atmosphere seemed to pale, drained of vitality.
"You're next."
______________________________
Adam took a single step forward.
It was not a step of fury, nor of defiance. It was inevitable—like the tide creeping onto shore, silent and irresistible. His yellow blindfold stirred in the sudden draft that swept through the coliseum, as though even the air leaned closer to hear what would follow.
"You're not the type to invent that weapon."
The words, spoken evenly, struck like a blade slipped between armor plates.
Gon faltered. His grin, stretched and grotesque only moments before, twitched with confusion. The statement was so calm, so utterly unrelated to his triumph, that for a heartbeat he simply blinked.
Adam's tone sharpened, cutting away the general's veneer with surgical precision. "You were a soldier. Disciplined. Loyal. You lived within the order of command. You marched. You besieged. You executed plans. You never… tinkered." He gestured faintly, his hand a conductor's baton punctuating truth. "You never wove corrupted mana into glass canisters."
The glow along his staff, Canvari, rippled. The runes brightened, a shifting tide of blue like water stirred by moonlight, resonating not with power, but with recognition.
Adam's head tilted slightly, listening to the weapon's hum as though it were whispering its secrets. "This device does not sing with Carlon's crude, industrial resonance. Its core pulses differently. A deeper rhythm. Older. Not born of invention, but of intrusion. Corrupted."
Gon's jaw tightened. His violet eye darted, too quickly, to the side.
Adam's voice lowered to a whisper, though somehow it filled every corner of the arena. "I have felt this only once before. A presence that did not wish to wield power… but to consume it. A will that burrows into others, hiding, festering. A worm inside an apple."
Gon's trigger finger twitched but did not press.
The blindfold fluttered again in the wind. Adam's lips shaped the word with terrible finality:
"The Shadow."
The name was not loud, but it struck like a mountain collapsing into the sea. Silence cascaded in its wake, deeper than the pause after thunder.
Gon froze. Every mocking smirk, every ounce of arrogance drained from him. His posture sagged under invisible weight. His eye, blazing violet, flickered. Not with strength. With fear. The name had cut through his bravado and reached whatever parasite now shared his skin.
Adam stepped closer. Slowly. Light uncoiled around him—not the steady, defensive glow of Canvari, but something purer, brighter. It was not a shield. It was revelation. Prophecy given flesh.
"And that, General Gon…" His mouth curved into a smile—wry, sharp, merciless. Not a smile of warmth, but of judgment. The smile of a player who had already moved his final piece and now waited for his opponent to realize they were finished.
"…is why you've chosen the worst possible target for your Arcem Killer."