[Last Episode: The fight that might not have a predetermined ending after all.]
Chapter 119, Episode 119
[The Primus World — The Covenant Sword]
[Leo looked at the sword]
[The eight angels had left]
[Their presence, their warmth, the fifty minutes of divine contract — all of it completed and withdrawn back to the palace in heaven where Raphael and Uriel and the others watched the Primus World from the highest point of the cosmological structure]
[What remained was what they'd agreed to leave]
[A covenant in the edge of the blade]
[It glowed with a light that had no color in any visible spectrum. The light of something that simply was]
[Voriath looked at it]
Voriath: The covenant stayed.
Leo: I guess...
Voriath: They gave the power as a loan. But the covenant they signed is a different thing.
Leo: The loan is paid back. The covenant is permanent.
Voriath: Semantically interesting. The angels left but their word is in your sword.
Leo: Eight words. For eight angels.
[Voriath tilted his head slightly. The motion of someone recalibrating what they thought they understood about the state of their opponent.]
Voriath: How much does a covenant add.
Leo: Less than the full form. But different in kind. The form was borrowed power with a time limit. This is a structural change.
Voriath: Permanent.
Leo: Permanent.
[A pause. Around them the Primus World held the silence of everything watching everything. Kai was still standing near the settlement boundary, the Devouring loop idle now but ready. The girl who had said please was still at the barrier, watching. Everyone was still watching.]
[Voriath raised the Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword]
[Leo raised the covenant-changed Shatter Nebula and they went again]
[The sword exchange happened at the edge of where the Primus World's gravitational pull gave way to open cosmological space]
[Leo came in from the left with just with the sword]
[The cut that came from the shoulder, through the wrist, with the full rotation of the body behind it]
[Voriath met it]
[The Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword and the covenant-changed Shatter Nebula crossed]
[The contact made no sound]
[Leo pushed voriath back]
[The blades held against each other]
[Leo felt the difference in depth between them]
[He was working]
[Voriath was not working. He was — interested]
Leo: You're not trying.
Voriath: I am.
Leo: Not at full output.
Voriath: No.
Leo: Why.
Voriath: Because full output from this form against what you currently have available ends in three seconds. And I'm not ready for this to end in three seconds.
[Leo looked at him across the locked blades.]
Leo: You're giving me room.
Voriath: I'm fighting you properly. There's a difference.
Leo: You're sure about that.
Voriath: You haven't used Satanael's new abilities yet.
[A pause.]
Leo: You know about them.
Voriath: I know Satanael. I know what it does when its vessel reaches a threshold. You haven't reached the threshold yet but you're close.I'm curious what happens when you do.
[Leo felt the pressure increase and adjusted.]
[Felt Satanael in the sword. The source that was not separate from him but was deeper than him]
[He pushed the blade lock hard and broke it, stepping sideways into the space the break created and bringing the sword around for the next exchange.]
[The exchanges built]
[Each one faster than the last.]
[The seventh exchange: both blades connected and the shockwave took out three neighboring solar systems' worth of planetary bodies]
[The shockwave's physical force applied to every solid object in range and the result was a reshuffling of a small portion of the cosmological map]
[Leo used a Galaxy Divide and Voriath caught it on the flat of the Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword and redirected it, and the redirected cut traveled through four dimensional layers before it stopped]
[Voriath swung with the mass of accumulated void-energy behind the blade and Leo's sword absorbed a fraction of it through the covenant's structural properties — not all, the sword could not contain all of it, but enough that the rest of the force passed through Leo's position without finding the resistance it needed to convert into damage]
[Leo used Galadrielo mid-swing to declare the local space a domain in which the Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword's void edge was required to announce its arrival before contacting him]
[A declaration that lasted half a second before Voriath's Law of Veto cancelled it. But in that half second Leo felt where the void edge was before it arrived and moved]
[The blade passed through the space he'd been as he hit from behind]
[The hit connected]
[Voriath moved forward three steps and stopped and turned]
[Looked at Leo]
Voriath: Three steps.
Leo: Not this again
Voriath: You moved me three steps.
Leo: Indeed Voriath
[A pause. The cosmological space around them very quiet.]
[Three steps. The same measurement. The same context.]
[Another pause. Longer.]
Voriath: I've never been moved three steps.
Leo: I know.
Voriath: Not by The Manipulator and Siriusniyo combined. Not by anyone in two hundred years.
Leo: Ereshkigal prepared me for you specifically. Or for something at your level. She said you'd eventually arrive.
Voriath: She prepared you to move me.
Leo: She prepared me to push beings that shouldn't be pushed. She didn't promise three steps. She gave me the foundation to find three steps myself.
[Voriath looked at the three steps of cosmological space he'd covered]
[Three steps that in this scale of fighting represented a significant distance — each step a trajectory change across light-minutes of space. But three steps.]
Voriath: Tell me something.
Leo: What.
Voriath: Before this. Before the Afterlife, before Force Light, before the Eastern World. Who were you.
[Leo was quiet for a moment. The covenant-sword glowing warm at his side.]
Leo: Nobody.
Voriath: Specifically.
Leo: My family died from an illness I couldn't stop. I was twelve and there was nothing I could do about it and I couldn't save them and then I woke up in the Chaos Universe without knowing how I got there or what I was. No money. No guild. No idea what I was or what the Satanael source meant. A boy who had lost everyone in a world he didn't recognize.
[Voriath was listening.]
Leo: And I built it. From that. Not because I had power. Because I had nothing else to do with the grief except make something that would mean the loss didn't just disappear into nothing. The Eastern World is every person who ever had nothing and chose to build anyway.
[The space held that.]
Voriath: You built an entire world out of grief.
Leo: Out of what grief turned into when I stopped letting it be only grief.
[A very long pause. Voriath Luminael, who had grown up alongside the Hyper Gods and never truly had nothing, looking at the boy who had been twelve and alone and had built something anyway.]
Voriath: That's why Satanael grew.
Leo: I guess you can say that yea
Voriath: The source grows with the vessel. And you gave it something to grow toward.
Leo: A will to fight
[Voriath looked at the sword. At the three steps of space behind him.]
Voriath: Then you've earned what comes next.
Leo: What comes next.
Voriath: Find out.
Voriath — Absolute Transcendent God — Beginning.
[The transformation didn't announce itself with sound or light]
[It announced itself with absence]
[The absence of Voriath having a body]
[One moment he was there — the jagged obsidian armor, the Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword, the presence of a being whose existence was more true than the universe's — and then he was not there in that way anymore]
[He was everywhere]
[The Fractal Singularity. The flickering multi-dimensional entity that was simultaneously present at every coordinate and absent from every coordinate]
[The multiverse itself becoming his skin. The void between stars becoming his breath]
[The Chaos Nihilikinesis Sword remained]
[The way a concept is present in the space it defines the watching cosmology felt it]
[Martha, in the Eastern World capital, went to one knee before she decided to. Her body simply acknowledged what was present before her mind caught up with the decision]
Martha: What kind of power is this
[Jeannette stayed standing but it was work]
[Avior in the Chaos Universe fell to both knees and was furious about it]
[Quinn, who was standing near the guild members watching the fight through the dimensional viewing connection they'd established, grabbed Blaze's arm to steady herself]
[Every person in the Primus World who was aware of what was happening felt it]
[The Fundamental Laws of Cosmos, in their Divine Domain above everything, felt it. Lyra, Draco, and Liam — who had not moved from their respective thrones because that was not their role and they knew it — each registered the Absolute Transcendent God form activating even they felt something]
[The Manipulator, in the space where he and Siriusniyo and Beatrice and Isaac were still dealing with Voriath's dimensional barrier — felt it through the barrier itself]
The Manipulator: He transformed.
Siriusniyo: Has he finally reached his peak
Beatrice: I believe so, I think it's time things take a turn
Isaac: Leo!!
[He said it quietly and the Primus World was watching]
[Luna Roseveltie, who had come through the Terra Celestial World's battle and found her way to the Primus World in the time the fight had been going — who had been standing at the settlement boundary with the God of Lunar and Varek at a standstill behind her while the outer defense held — stood at the edge of the field and watched Leo facing the form that was the multiverse itself wearing a presence]
[She watched him standing with the covenant sword and with blood on his face]
[She felt something she had been not-feeling for as long as she'd been around him]
[She looked at it directly]
Luna: Leo.
[Her voice wasn't loud. The space was very quiet. It reached him.]
[He turned.]
[He looked at her across the field. Across the distance between the settlement boundary and where he was standing, which was the distance between the person fighting and the person watching who was not separate from what the fighting was for.]
Luna: I'm watching.
Leo: I know.
Luna: Don't—Come back from this.
[A pause.]
Leo: I always come back.
Luna: That's not— I mean— I mean I need you to come back. Specifically. Because—
[She blushed]
[Around her, quietly, the guild members and rulers and every person watching this conversation also watched this conversation.]
[Avior had stopped being furious about the knee and was watching Luna.]
[Blaze was watching Luna.]
[Quinn, who had motivated Isaac, was watching Luna with an expression that suggested she recognized the category of what was happening.]
Luna: Because I'll be very angry if you don't.
Leo: You're always angry at me.
Luna: This is different angry.
Leo: How.
[She went red. Genuinely red. The flush of someone who has decided to say something and is discovering that deciding and saying are two separate physical experiences.]
Luna: Because this is the kind of angry that comes from caring too much about someone who fights the King of the Multiverse with a bleeding face and calls it a plan.
[Silence.]
[A very specific kind of silence.]
Leo: Luna.
Luna: Don't say it casually.
Leo: I'm not being casual. I already know
Luna: You know??
Leo: I've known for a while. I just wasn't sure if you knew.
Luna: I obviously know. I'm me.
Leo: Then we both know.
Luna: Sure Leo
Leo: When this is over.
Luna: Okay....
Leo: We talk about it properly.
Luna: Yes.
[A pause. She looked at him. At the covenant sword. At the blood. At everything.]
Luna: Fight better.
[Leo almost smiled boosting his confidence]
Leo: Thanks, I will and save this multiverse
[He turned back to Voriath. To the Absolute Transcendent God form that was the multiverse wearing itself as an entity.]
[And something in him was different.]
[The sword's glow shifted slightly.]
[Satanael felt it.]
[Satanael]
「There it is.」
[From the Chaos Universe, through the dimensional connection the guild members had maintained, Quinn was watching]
[She hadn't been able to reach Isaac directly — the dimensional barriers Voriath had created blocked direct communication in most frequencies]
[She watched Isaac and Beatrice and The Manipulator and Siriusniyo working at the barrier]
[She watched Isaac in particular]
[In Helios Absolute Afterlife, his fire was the color of the universe's first second. She had watched him train with that fire and had watched him figure out what it was capable of]
[She spoke into the connection]
Quinn: Isaac!
[She wasn't sure if he could hear her. The barrier muted most signals.]
[But she tried.]
Quinn: I watched every fight you've had in this war. Through the connection. The way you figured out how to go before the origin of the space-time continuum and hit the floor when you couldn't hit Mercurius directly—That was the most you thing you have ever done. Thinking sideways when something is too hard to think through. I Love you Issac!!!
[On the other side of the barrier, Isaac paused in his work.]
[Just slightly. A half-second pause that The Manipulator noticed]
The Manipulator: Someone you know.
Isaac: Possibly.
The Manipulator: The fire just changed color
Isaac: Am adding more pressure
The Manipulator: Slightly warmer.
Isaac: I noticed.
Quinn: I know you can probably hear me better than you're letting on. The fire always responds before you do. Finish this and come back.
[Cinder]
「Your person is talking to you, more like your crush or your girlfriend 」
Isaac: girlfriend...
[Cinder]
「Are you going to respond.」
Isaac: After we get through the barrier.
[Cinder]
「She can hear you right now through the fire.」
[A pause.]
Isaac: Quinn.
Quinn: Yes.
Isaac: After this.
Quinn: Am waiting for you my love
Isaac: My Love.....??
Quinn: yea, I wanna be your girlfriend
Isaac: ehhhh.....
Quinn: I need an answer now!!
Isaac: It's simple. I will answer you after the war
Quinn: Simple is terrible sometimes.
Isaac: After this, we'll figure out the better version together.
[A pause on her end.]
Quinn: Together.
Isaac: Yes.
[A pause on his end.]
[The fire went a specific warmer shade that had no name but that Cinder had privately decided meant something she was not going to say out loud because it was not her feeling to name.]
[Twilight]
「Isaac. The barrier.」
Isaac: Right.
[Meanwhile at the Dimensional Barrier — Four vs The Wall]
[The barrier that Voriath had created to block the path to the Primus World was seventeen layers of his authority compressed into a single conceptual wall]
[Beatrice had tried time, The Manipulator had tried truth and Siriusniyo had tried origin-fire]
[Isaac had tried the pre-beginning state]
[Every one had been acknowledged and refused. The wall didn't fight back. It simply was more primary than the things thrown at it]
[They stood in front of it]
Isaac: He knew we'd come here.
The Manipulator: He always knows. His Infinite Glass shows him timelines. He saw this specific moment.
Siriusniyo: Then he knows what we're going to try next.
Beatrice: He also knows we're going to get through.
[The three of them looked at her.]
Beatrice: If he'd wanted to make the barrier unbreakable, he would have built it differently. This is strong. Very strong. But it's seventeen layers, not a hundred. He gave it enough to slow us down. Not enough to stop us permanently.
The Manipulator: You think he wants us to get through eventually.
Beatrice: I think he built a wall that would take us a long time to get through rather than a wall that would take forever. He wants the fight with Leo and Isaac to be the real thing. Having us stuck here permanently makes it smaller.
[A pause. Siriusniyo looked at the barrier. Then at Beatrice.]
Siriusniyo: You figured that out from the construction.
Beatrice: And from the fact that Voriath values genuine fights over convenient ones. The barrier is deliberately porous at one specific point.
The Manipulator: Where.
Beatrice: The seventeenth layer. The last one. It's slightly thinner than the others. Not by much. But thin enough that if we hit all sixteen outer layers simultaneously and send everything we have through the fracture at the seventeenth in the moment the sixteen are simultaneously addressed—
Isaac: The seventeenth collapses.
Beatrice: The seventeenth collapses. And we're through.
The Manipulator: Can we hit sixteen layers simultaneously.
Beatrice: You can do four simultaneously. Siriusniyo can do four. Isaac can do four. I can do four.
[A pause.]
Siriusniyo: We each hit four layers at the same time.
Beatrice: Perfectly synchronized. Then everything through the fracture at the seventeenth.
The Manipulator: You planned this.
Beatrice: I've been reading the barrier's structure since we arrived. Yes.
[The Manipulator looked at her with the specific expression of someone who is recalibrating their entire model of another person.]
The Manipulator: You're very intelligent.
Beatrice: A hundred years of practice. Most of what I learned wasn't about swords. But thanks, I am flattened
Isaac: It was about thinking.
Beatrice: About reading. Everything is readable if you look at it right.
[She looked at the barrier.]
Beatrice: Ready.
[They moved into position. Four points around the barrier. Each aligned with four of the sixteen outer layers.]
Beatrice: Three.
[Siriusniyo raised Sutur's End. The origin-fire running at the level it had reached in the fight with Voriath — not as high as Sutur's Genesis, but close. Enough.]
Beatrice: Two.
[The Manipulator raised the One Wonder Sword. The blue flame in its truest expression.]
Beatrice: One.
[All sixteen outer layers hit at the exact same moment]
[The Manipulator's four hit from the conceptual layer. Siriusniyo's four hit from the origin-fire layer. Isaac's four hit from the pre-beginning state]
[Beatrice's four hit from the temporal layer — the moment in which each of the four layers she was addressing existed, stolen and removed so that the layer couldn't exist in the time it needed to exist in]
[The sixteen outer layers compressed under the simultaneous pressure and the seventeenth, thinner than the others, had nowhere to draw from]
[The sixteen layers it was built on top of were under maximum simultaneous stress. The seventeenth layer cracked at its thinnest point through the fracture
Isaac — Cinder's Transcendence Laser —
[Cinder flew outside the framework of the barrier entirely, angled the laser from a point that had no position within the barrier's definition of space, and fired through the fracture at the exact moment it existed]
[The seventeenth layer broke]
[The path to the Primus World was open as they went through]
[The Primus World — The Meeting and the Wall's Fall]
[They came through from the dimensional path into the outer space above the Primus World]
[The first thing they saw was Voriath]
[The entire multiverse wearing itself as a presence. Fractal and flickering and everywhere and nowhere]
[The void between stars as breath. The concept of having a body somewhere below the form's actual level of existence]
[The second thing they saw was Leo standing in front of it]
[Bleeding as the sword raised]
Voriath: They're here. They finally break the barrier.. am genuinely impressed
[He said it to the space between him and Leo. Acknowledging the arrivals without turning to address them, because in the Absolute Transcendent God form he was the space and the space didn't need to turn.]
Leo: I guess my rival is here
Voriath: You knew they'd come.
Leo: I was fairly sure.
Voriath: Did Beatrice figure out the seventeenth layer?
Leo: Why are you asking me as if I was there with them...
Voriath: Are you trying to insult me or something
Leo: No its common sense
[A pause. Something in the fractal form's flickering settled slightly]
Voriath: She's remarkable.
Leo: was that a compliment..
[Isaac came through the path and stopped when he saw Leo and stopped specifically.]
Isaac: Been a while Leo, your still alive
Leo: I'm standing... are you trying to downplay me
Isaac: Nope. But You're bleeding.
Leo: But am still standing.
Isaac: How long have you been doing this alone
Leo: Long enough
[Isaac crossed the space between them. Not fast. Just — directly.]
[He stopped next to Leo and looked at Voriath.]
Isaac: That's what we're dealing with.
Leo: Yes, he has great offense so be careful
Isaac: He's the multiverse.
Leo: In this form. Yes.
Isaac: The whole thing.
Leo: Yes.
[A pause. Isaac looked at the form for a very long moment.]
Isaac: How do you hit the multiverse.
Leo: Very carefully and with very clear intent about what you're hitting.
Isaac: What have you found.
Leo: The form is the multiverse but it's Voriath experiencing himself as the multiverse. Which means his identity is still present in it. His perspective. His way of being. The form is not the multiverse operating itself — it's Voriath operating through the multiverse. The distinction matters.
Isaac: Because?
Leo: Because the multiverse doesn't have a preference about what happens to it. Voriath does. You can't reach the multiverse but you might be able to reach Voriath inside it.
Isaac: How.
Leo: I've been working on that.
[Beatrice, arriving behind Isaac, looked at Leo. At the blood. At the sword. At the posture that was managing the specific math of standing under conditions that recommended not standing.]
Beatrice: You should sit down.
Leo: No.
Beatrice: You've been fighting alone for—
Leo: I know how long I've been fighting.
Beatrice: And?
Leo: And I'll sit down when it's over.
[She looked at him for a moment. Then looked at Isaac. Then looked at the form.]
Beatrice: I'll stay back.
Isaac: Why.
Beatrice: "Because you two want to fight him together. I heard what you said to each other. I'll be here when you need me.
[The Manipulator and Siriusniyo arrived. Took in the scene.]
Siriusniyo: The Absolute Transcendent God form. A Form beyond all Causalites
The Manipulator: even beyond all laws
Siriusniyo: We should—
The Manipulator: No.
Siriusniyo: We have the one thing left.
The Manipulator: I know.
Siriusniyo: They could use it.
The Manipulator: Listen.
[Siriusniyo listened to the space where Isaac and Leo were standing next to each other. To the exchange happening between them]
Leo: How much do you have left.
Isaac: More than you.
Leo: That's not hard.
Isaac: No. You look terrible.
Leo: I held him at bay
Isaac: Before or after you started looking terrible.
Leo: During.
[Isaac: looked at the form again.]
Isaac: You moved the Absolute Transcendent God form back
Leo: Earlier. When it was the fifty-percent-absorbed form. He escalated after.
Isaac: Of course he did.
Leo: How much do you actually have left.
Isaac: Enough for a long fight. The pre-origin state took a lot. But I have the second form. And Cinder has things she hasn't deployed yet.
Leo: Together.
Isaac: Together. Yes. You know what I want to say.
Leo: Same thing I want to say.
Isaac: Say it anyway.
[Leo looked at Isaac. At the fire still running in him]
Leo: I want to be stronger than you.
Isaac: I want to be stronger than you.
Leo: One day we find out.
Isaac: One day we find out.
[A pause.]
Leo: When this is over.
Isaac: When this is over. A real fight. No wars. No external stakes. Just us.
Leo: That's what I want.
Isaac: Same.
[They looked at the form together.]
Leo: Don't hold back.
Isaac: I'll outpace you if you don't keep up.
Leo: I've been fighting the King of the Multiverse while you were at a wall.
Isaac: While I was defeating his strongest servant.
Leo: After I defeated both of his strongest servants with my eyes open.
Isaac: You had the angelic form.
Leo: You had a hundred percent Helios Absolute Afterlife and Cinder.
[A pause.]
Isaac: This is going to be annoying competition while fighting the literal manifestation of the multiverse.
Leo: Yes. It's going to be excellent.
[Isaac almost smiled. The specific almost-smile that Leo had learned to read as the genuine thing.]
[Siriusniyo, in the background, heard this exchange and felt something settle in his chest. He looked at The Manipulator.]
Siriusniyo: That's why.
The Manipulator: Yes.
Siriusniyo: They want to do this themselves.
The Manipulator: Not because they're prideful.
Siriusniyo: Because they're each other's standard. If we help, they're comparing themselves to us instead of each other.
The Manipulator: Yes.
[Siriusniyo looked at the form. At Leo and Isaac standing in front of it.]
[And smiled. The very specific smile of someone who understands something and finds it good.]
Siriusniyo: Then we watch.
The Manipulator: Yes.
Beatrice: And we wait for when they need us.
Siriusniyo: Yes.
[Beatrice was already smiling. Had been smiling since Isaac arrived]
Ereshkigal: IS THIS ALL YOU HAVE!!
[Every person in the Primus World who could hear things felt the voice register as a physical presence]
Ereshkigal: I moved three steps when BOTH of you hit me. Three steps. In my world. And you are telling me that one of you got moved in open space by someone you had watched fight for weeks and you—
[She paused. The specific pause of someone finding their precision.]
Ereshkigal: You trained under me. Both of you. Five weeks. In the Afterlife. In the world that I built and run and have been running since before the Primus World had a proper structure. I did not move three steps so that you could come here and demonstrate approximately sixty percent of what I watched you do in your final session.
Leo: With respect—
Ereshkigal: I am not done.
Leo: —I moved him three steps—
Ereshkigal: Once. In an earlier form. Before the Absolute Transcendent God form. What have you done in the Absolute Transcendent God form.
Leo: —I've been reading the structure and working on an approach—
Ereshkigal: Isaac.
Isaac: Yes mam
Ereshkigal: Do you have something useful to contribute or are you also going to explain your approach to me.
Isaac: I was going to fight.
Ereshkigal: Good. Do that. Leo.
Leo: Alright
Ereshkigal: Stop managing your output. The covenant is in the sword permanently. You are not going to run out of what it gives you. You have been fighting like a person who was planning to run out of something and you are no longer planning to run out of anything. Adjust.
[A pause.]
Leo: Yes.
Ereshkigal: Isaac.
Isaac: Yeah
Ereshkigal: You defeated Mercurius by going before the origin of what he was made of. Voriath is made of the authority to define what exists. What is the origin of that authority.
[Isaac was quiet for a moment.]
Isaac: The Hyper Gods gave him the framework. He grew past it but the framework is the origin.
Ereshkigal: And what exists before frameworks.
Isaac: Twilight.
Ereshkigal: Yes.
Isaac: the boundary between what exists and what doesn't. Before a framework exists, everything is at the boundary.
Ereshkigal: Yes. So.
Isaac: So Twilight Vessel Transcendence doesn't just go before Voriath's origin. It is the state that his origin state was operating next to when it formed. It's adjacent to his foundation.
Ereshkigal: Which means.
Isaac: Which means I'm not attacking the structure. I'm the neighbor of the structure.
Ereshkigal: And you can work with what's adjacent to you.
Isaac: Yes.
[A pause. Ereshkigal's presence — not physical, she was not present in the Primus World, she was in the Afterlife, but the quality of her attention was directed here — settled slightly.]
Ereshkigal: Five weeks. Both of you. I did not invest five weeks in two beings to watch them fight at sixty percent. Do what I know you can do.
[Then the presence was gone]
[Isaac looked at Leo.]
Isaac: She said sixty percent.
Leo: She's not wrong.
Isaac: She's not wrong at all.
Leo: I know.
[A pause. Both of them looking at the Absolute Transcendent God form. At the multiverse as a being. At Voriath Luminael, who was everywhere and nowhere and had been watching this entire exchange.]
Voriath: Ready.
Leo: Yes.
Isaac: Yes.
Voriath: Then come.
[The Fight: Two Hearts, One Target]
[They moved simultaneously]
[Leo came from the direct angle. Sword forward]
[The covenant blade burning with the warmth of eight agreements and everything the sword had become]
[Isaac came from the conceptual layer beneath the direct angle]
[The Helios Absolute Afterlife's first-universe heat carrying him through the space that existed before the multiverse had organized into dimensional layers. Before Voriath's form had a framework to be the multiverse through]
[The Absolute Transcendent God form registered both]
Voriath — Omnipresent Strike.
[The form's omnipresence allowing an infinite number of simultaneous strikes from every possible angle in every dimension]
[Leo's shield of void-walkers took the omnipresent strike]
[The spirits of those who had died in the void between universes — beings the universe had forgotten — absorbing the strikes because the strikes were events and events couldn't fully land on things that didn't fully exist in the framework events required to land in]
Isaac — Twilight Vessel Transcendence — Beginning.
[He replaced his magical energy entirely with Twilight Spark energy. The dual authority of absolute creation and absolute destruction]
[An anomaly in the natural universe. The boundary between existence and non-existence wearing a body]
[The Absolute Transcendent God form felt the Twilight Vessel Transcendence arrive at its periphery]
[The edge of the space adjacent to its foundation]
[Voriath felt it]
Voriath: You found the adjacency.
Isaac: Impressive you managed to figure it out
Voriath: You're next to my foundation, not attacking it.
Isaac: Adjacent things can push each other without fighting.
Voriath: And you're going to push.
Isaac: Very hard.
Twilight Vessel Transcendence — Dimensional Frame Dislocation.
[Isaac reached into the invisible borders that separated the dimensional realms the Absolute Transcendent God form was spread across — not the form itself, the organizational structure the form was using as skin — and physically dislocated the frames]
[It pushed the realms against each other in a sequence that disrupted the even distribution of the form's consciousness across all of them]
Voriath: Is he separating realms from a different dimension?
[The form flickered]
[Leo was already there]
Shatter Nebula — Covenant Engaged — Full Cut.
[The blade went through the flickered region cutting the specific thread of Voriath's presence that was connecting to that region]
[The thread connecting Voriath's identity to the portion of the multiverse-skin that had flickered]
Voriath: What... the.. what's happening to my body... What did you do to my body.. answer me!!!
Leo: I created a thread connecting your identity from your inner body to distort your body into pieces
[The connection severed]
[For two seconds, the form had a region that wasn't fully Voriath. A blank section]
[The form regenerated it but the regeneration required attentionon regeneration was attention not on Leo and Isaac]
Leo — Satanael Genesis Flash Step
[He deleted the distance to the blank region and appeared inside it. Inside the form. Inside what was technically a portion of the multiverse wearing Voriath's authority and inside Voriath]
From inside: Galadrielo — Declaration — Point Blank.
[He declared, from within the form's own structure, that this point in space was Leo Sebastián's domain]
[One point. The point he was standing in from inside]
[Voriath couldn't Veto from outside what was declared from inside without acknowledging the interior, and acknowledging the interior created a framework that hadn't existed before in this form — a distinction between inside and outside]
[The Absolute Transcendent God form didn't have an inside and outside. It was everywhere]
[The declaration forced the concept of an inside to exist]
[Which meant the concept of an outside existed]
[Which meant the form was no longer purely omnipresent. It had a structure now. Even if that structure was: there is one point that is inside and the rest is outside. That was a structure and a structure could be addressed]
[The form shook conceptually]
Voriath: You forced a binary into an omnipresent form.
Leo: Inside and outside. Yes. The form didn't have that before.
Voriath: You created a distinction within the formless.
Leo: The form was formless. I gave it a form. Small one. One point inside. But a point.
Voriath: And now I have structure.
Leo: Now you can be addressed structurally. Yes.
[A pause. The form's flickering intensifying as it processed the forced binary.]
Voriath: Extraordinary, I must say Sebastián...
Leo: Don't get to cocky with your words...
Voriath: How long have you been working toward this.
Leo: Since you went into the form. I needed a way to give you structure. Galadrielo from outside couldn't do it — your authority overrides the law I write outside. But from inside—
Voriath: From inside, the law is in the same space as the form's foundation.
Leo: At the same level. Too close for the Veto to cleanly separate them.
[The forced binary was propagating. Inside and outside creating additional distinctions]
[The omnipresent form developing the skeleton of a structure it wasn't designed to have.]
[Isaac watched this from the adjacent state]
Isaac: It's getting structure.
Leo: That's the point...
Isaac: Which means—
Leo: Which means you can hit the structure instead of the formlessness.
Isaac: Yes.
Twilight Vessel Transcendence — Absolute Law Monoliths.
[He manifested pillars of solidified Twilight Spark energy across the structural skeleton that was developing in the form]
[Issac kept dictating laws within the forced structure Leo had created. Laws that the structure would need to follow because structure followed laws]
[The form that had no structure was now a form with structure that had laws]
[The laws said: Voriath Luminael is a participant, not an author, in this space.
The same law Leo had written at the touch-point earlier]
[But now from within the structure at the point where it couldn't be cleanly overridden because it was inside the thing it was overriding]
[Voriath felt the laws propagate through the forced structure]
[He felt something that he had not felt in either the physical form or the fifty-percent-absorbed form]
[Pressure]
[The pressure of something that was restructuring the experience of being in his most absolute form]
Voriath: You two are working together.
Leo: Rivals for a reason
Voriath: Without communicating.
Isaac: We don't need to.
Voriath: Your strategies complement each other without coordination.
Leo: We trained together for five weeks under Ereshkigal. Our approaches developed alongside each other.
Voriath: So when you fight together—
Isaac: The gaps in one are the strengths of the other.
[The form's response began.]
Voriath — Absolute Transcendent God — Authority Reassertion.
[He pushed the Veto through the interior structure Leo had forced into being from the form's own internal logic, which was still his logic, which meant the Veto came from inside the structure]
Issac: What's he doing
[The laws Isaac had written cracked]
[Leo's declaration wavered]
Voriath — Pride of Wrath — Structure Dissolution.
[He nullified the concept of the structure having an interior. Removed the binary Leo had created. Made inside and outside the same again]
[The point Leo was standing in became the same as everything else]
[Leo was no longer inside. He was in the same space as the form again. Which was everywhere and nowhere]
[Leo felt the structure dissolve and moved before the dissolution completed]
Leo: Shit— shit...
Satanael Genesis Flash Step
[He was back in the space adjacent to the form before the dissolution finished, using the moment between the dissolution starting and completing to exit through the closing gap]
[He came out]
[The binary was gone]
[The laws were cracked and the structure was dissolved but the form was not what it had been before]
[The forced binary and the laws, even dissolved, had left something behind in the form]
[The form had been forced to process an interior]
[It had done so and reasserted its omnipresence. But the processing had required work. Required attention]
[It required Voriath's authority to be applied to his own form in a way it hadn't needed to be applied before]
[The form was still the Absolute Transcendent God but it was slightly more expensive to maintain than it had been and they had barely started]
Leo — Incantation.
[He hadn't used these yet. The new abilities Satanael had been holding. He looked at the sword and felt them in the blade — not separate from the covenant, connected to it]
[The permanent change the Afterlife had made was not just the covenant. It had changed what was accessible]
[Satanael]
「Now.」
Leo: Hymn of the Blazing Void Absolute Annihilation of the Seven Heavens
[The white flame from a dimension that didn't exist appeared at the tip of the covenant sword]
[The flame that burned things usually considered unburnable. Souls. Space. Time]
[The framework that made space and time what they were applied to the form's periphery]
[The cost of the form went up again]
Isaac — Fate-Line Incineration.
[He perceived the lines of fate and destiny that connected Voriath to his future outcomes within this form]
[The lines that said: the Absolute Transcendent God form leads to these outcomes. He burned through those lines at the root]
[Voriath without fate-lines in his current form had no predetermined outcomes in it]
[The form was stronger than any of his other forms. But it was no longer connected to any guaranteed results]
[The fight was truly open]
Voriath: You burned my fate-lines.
Isaac: The connection between your form and its predetermined outcomes. Yes.
Voriath: Nothing is certain now.
Isaac: Nothing was certain. We've been saying that since the fight started.
Leo: The Zero-Possibility Zone and the Absolute Probability cancelled each other earlier. We're fighting in genuinely open space now.
[A pause. The Absolute Transcendent God form holding — maintaining, against the cost increases and the burned fate-lines and the memory of the dissolved structure — but holding.]
[Voriath looking at the two of them.]
[The same two who had moved him three steps earlier in a lesser form. Who had found the binary and the adjacency. Who had burned the fate-lines. Who had made his most absolute form more expensive to maintain than it had ever been.]
Voriath: Leo Sebastián.
Leo: Interesting
Voriath: Isaac Hector.
Isaac: What....
Voriath: You are not what the files said either of you were.
Leo: We know.
Isaac: The files are old.
Voriath: They are very old.
[A pause]
Voriath: I need to tell you something.
Leo: Tell me.
Voriath: The world I want to build. The better one. The one that requires deconstructing this one. It has always had this in it.
Leo: What.
Voriath: This. What you two are. What The Manipulator and Siriusniyo are. What Beatrice is. I didn't want a world without challenges worth having. I wanted a world worth having. Those aren't the same thing.
[Leo looked at him.]
Leo: You're telling me this now.
Voriath: Why wouldn't I
Leo: While we're fighting.
Voriath: This is when you understand things.
[Isaac watched the exchange.]
Isaac: If the world you're building includes people like us, why fight to build it by destroying what's here?
Voriath: Because what's here can't produce what I want. The current structure has ceilings. Limitations. People like you are happening despite the structure, not because of it. You reached what you are by pushing against everything the structure said you should be.
Leo: So change the structure.
Voriath: Indeed Leo, you understand where am coming from
Leo: You don't have to break everything to change the structure.
Voriath: The structure doesn't want to change.
Leo: Nothing wants to change. You change it anyway. That's what the Eastern World is.
[The form's flickering intensified]
[Satanael was in the sword. Very present]
[The warmth of the source running at the highest register Leo had felt it at since the fight started.]
[Satanael]
「Leo. Your hair.」
[Leo blinked.]
Leo: My hair.
[Satanael]
「Look.」
[He couldn't look at his own hair in the middle of a fight against the Absolute Transcendent God form of the King of the Multiverse. But he could feel it]
[The change in weight. The change in the way the air moved around it. His hair was growing and darkening. Just — changing. Long and black, spreading from the roots]
Leo: What—
[Satanael]
「The Afterlife. When you were there, when you trained, when Ereshkigal fought you — the source was absorbing. Not power. Property. The Afterlife's fundamental nature is different from the living world. It changed something in the source. And the source changes the vessel gradually, as the vessel is ready, so it has change your appearance and your hair」
Leo: My hair is changing because of the Afterlife training.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: Is it going to be long and black.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: That's unexpected.
[Satanael]
「I know. There are other unexpected things.」
Leo: Tell me.
[Satanael]
「You are the embodiment of Transduality and Duality. Do you know what that means.」
Leo: No.
[Satanael]
「It means you are the being through which all opposites are mediated. Life and death. Existence and non-existence. Victory and defeat. Beginning and ending. All pairs of opposite things — you are the living point at which they meet and are resolved.」
Leo: That sounds large.
[Satanael]
「It is very large.」
Leo: When did I become this.
[Satanael]
「You haven't yet.」
[Leo paused.]
Leo: I haven't yet.
[Satanael]
「No. Transduality and Duality takes two hundred years to master. You have been building toward it your entire life and the Afterlife accelerated the foundation. But you are not there yet.」
Leo: So I'm building toward it.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: And the hair is part of that building.
[Satanael]
「The hair is a sign that the building is happening at a rate that is becoming visible.」
[A drop appeared at Leo's eye — a literal condensed drop of the Afterlife's ambient energy, having been carried in the Satanael source since the training and finding its way to expression now. It ran down his cheek.]
Leo: And in the meantime.
[Satanael]
「In the meantime, I can give you what you're ready for. Not the full Transduality. But what you've built enough to carry.」
Leo: What is that.
[Satanael]
「Everything you're about to feel.」
Satanael — New Abilities Unlocking.
–Stats–
『Abilities names』
『The Void-Walkers Aura was already running』
『The True Reality Styx — he could feel the entities that had died once. The fallen kings. The things that had ended and were not completely gone. He could reach them』
『Deity's Breath — the breath that could make or unmake ecosystems, planets, entire structures of existence. The exhale that drew all matter toward him』
『True Name Incantation — he knew, with the specificity that the Satanael source's enhanced awareness provided, the true names of certain things.Some things.』
[The most fundamental ones in the space around him including one true name that was very relevant]
[He looked at Voriath at the Absolute Transcendent God form]
[He knew the true name of the framework the form was built on]
[The framework's. The structural logic that allowed the Absolute Transcendent God form to exist at the level it existed]
Leo: Satanael.
[Satanael]
「Yes.」
Leo: The framework's true name.
[Satanael]
「Yes. The Afterlife gave you the perception for it. But Leo — knowing the name and using the name are different. Using it will change this fight completely.」
Leo: I know.
[Satanael]
「When you speak the True Name of the framework, the framework must respond. It cannot not respond. It will not destroy Voriath. But it will make the form acknowledge its own structure. Which means the form will have to occupy a structure. Which means—」
Leo: Which means I can reach it from within that structure.
[Satanael]
「Yes. The same approach you used earlier. But this time not forced. This time invited by the name.」
[Leo looked at Isaac.]
Leo: Isaac.
Isaac: I'm listening.
Leo: When the form takes on a structure — when it becomes addressable — I need you to hit it from the Twilight adjacency at the exact moment.
Isaac: At the exact moment.
Leo: Yes.
Isaac: How do I know when.
Leo: You'll feel it. The boundary between existence and non-existence will shift when the framework's name is spoken. You live at that boundary.
Isaac: I'll feel it in Twilight.
Leo: Yes.
Isaac: Alright.
[Isaac looked at Cinder.]
[Cinder]
「I'm ready.」
[Twilight]
「I'm always ready.」
[Isaac: looked at the form.]
Isaac: Leo.
Leo: Yeah
Isaac: One day we find out which one of us is stronger.
Leo:looking forward to it pal
Isaac: That day is not today.
Leo: Nah
Isaac: Today we're finding out if both of us is enough.
Leo: Yes.
Isaac: Do you think we are.
[Leo felt the covenant sword. The eight agreements in its edge]
[The long black hair at the edges of his awareness. The drop of Afterlife energy that had traced a line down his face]
[The Eastern World behind him and Luna somewhere in the Primus World watching and the word she'd said — come back.]
Leo: Yes.
Isaac: Good.
Leo: Isaac.
Isaac: Bruh, how many times have you called my name
Leo: I don't know, but Good Fight
Isaac: Sure, Good fight.
[They looked at Voriath. At the form that was the multiverse. At the being who had two hundred years of preparation and the weight of everything he wanted the cosmology to be on the other side of it.]
[Leo raised the covenant sword]
[The blade glowing with the warmth of eight covenants and the Afterlife's condensed energy and the long black hair at the edges of it all reflecting the light and he spoke]
[The true name of the framework didn't need to be loud]
[It needed to be true and it was]
[The Absolute Transcendent God form heard its own structural foundation named and for the first time since it had activated—
It took the shape the name described]
[It became addressable]
[It became — something you could reach]
[Isaac felt the shift at the boundary between existence and non-existence. The Twilight Spark energy in his form resonating with the change like a tuning fork responding to the note it was tuned to]
[Cinder]
「Now.」
[They moved together and the Primus World watched and the cosmology watched and lastly the fight between two people who had nothing when they started and built everything from it, and the being who was remaking everything so he could build something worth having—
Reached the moment that had been building since the seal broke]
To be continued...