In the realm of eternal light, Ya imposed his presence as a behemoth abomination, towering like a mountain, and unleashed his fury upon the land.
His massive form shook the ground, sending tremors through the landscape as he stomped towards his adversaries.
A chorus of creatures, each more wondrous and deadly than the last, waited not for his approach.
They hastened forward for an imminent collision.
The pantheon of guardian spirits gathered, each one a marvel of ethereal beauty and deadly prowess, and the living Fey prisoners behind them—they all rushed at him with vengeance shaking the ground from every step they took.
The twelve-limbed serpent, its translucent skin glowing with the cycles of suns, rose like a living aurora.
As it moved, the suns within its body pulsed, imbuing it with the raw power of creation and destruction.
As ya drew near, the serpent surprised him by speaking.
"Today, we shall unravel the threads of your existence," the serpent hissed, its voice like the gentle lapping of waves on a celestial shore.
Ya laughed from a thousand heads, a sound that shattered the air like a hammer on Chinese porcelain. "You think to vanquish me, insects? I am the forge that shapes worlds. I am the Arrow of Victory!"
The serpent unleashed a blast of solar fury on him, scorching the earth and sending him stumbling back. The air was filled with the acrid smell of burning stone and ozone.
Ya's massive body was soon surrounded by a churning vortex of fire and shadow. He retaliated with a wave of flame of severance that would have incinerated any ordinary foe.
But the serpent was no ordinary creature. It raised a limb, and a disk of light coalesced before it, absorbing the flames and reflecting them back at him.
Ya stumbled, pushing off at the last moment to avoid the flames dancing across his own form, still it caught some of his heads, severing them to the abyss.
He growled and manipulated the matter of the earth to create a shield of jagged rock to deflect the serpent's attack.
A few of his heads to the east caught sight of the Feys forming a group to chant a battle ritual into form.
He made to attack them but one of the guardian spirits,, a lion unlike any other, its body sculpted from crystallized dawn, its mane a flickering halo of lightning, charged forward with a mighty roar.
Its claws, razor-sharp and infused with the essence of morning, struck the demon's leg with the force of a landslide, sending shockwaves through the ground.
Ya howled, his fire-scorched flesh smoldering, as he attempted to manipulate the lion's crystalline form. But the lion's body, infused with the power of the dawn, resisted his influence, shattering his counterattack like a hammer striking brittle glass.
But he refused to give up, grabbing the beast with a hundred more tentacles and he exerted his will on it, enshrouding it with an aura of red energy.
The lion melted in his grip, becoming liquid crystal which he threw at the Serpent of the Stars as it rushed toward him, distracting it for a while.
The other guardian spirits, each more enigmatic and deadly, joined the fray.
Some hovered in the air like wisps of cloud, their forms shifting and flowing like the wind. Others swam through the air as if it were a sea, their movements fluid and sinuous.
And then there were those that moved without moving, existing in the spaces between one point and another, striking from unexpected angles like teleporting ghosts.
The Serpent of the Stars also joined the fray. Its solar power surging, unleashed a maelstrom of sunfire that fried the landscape, scorching the earth and igniting the very air itself.
Ya, his body a furnace of flame, countered with a blast of severing fire that would have melted steel. The two energies clashed, their fury unleashing a maelstrom that shook the foundations of reality.
The fore of the stars bowed and was sundered by the fires of severance. Ya flexed his will and sent another in the direction of the chanting elves.
Some of the other guardian spirits jumped into it and took the destruction on themselves.
As the battle raged on, the Ya's internal monologue was a torrent of fury and calculation. "These creatures are unlike any I know. Their powers are not just destructive, but also transformative. I must adapt, manipulate the matter around me to counter their attacks."
The serpent, projected to him, its consciousness a burning core of solar energy. "Let go and let us help you, boy. I will not be defeated. My power is the power of creation and destruction. I will unleash the full fury of the sun upon you, and reduce it to ashes if that's what it takes."
His Master's essence banished the Serpent from his mind
One of the aerial spirits, its feathers crackling with lightning, charged forward, its claws flashing like mirrors in the sunlight.
Ya, his body a churning even more vortex of severing flames, awaited the guardian spirit's attack, his energy coursing through the ground like a river of fire.
The two of them clashed, their powers locked in a struggle that would decide the fate of this realm.
And farther afield, the chants of the Feys reached its climax as Ya's flames danced across the landscape, scorching the earth and igniting the very rocks themselves.
The Serpent's sunfire, meanwhile, blazed like a thousand suns, its power unleashing a maelstrom of light and heat that would incinerate anything in its path.
The aerial spirit, its lightning form glowing with an inner light, stood firm, its body crackling with energy as it struck Ya with precision and deadliness.
In the end, Ya struck luck by doing something forbidden, a fact of which he hadn't been aware of.
He took hold of the aerial spirit's lightning, exerted his red aura on it and stabilized lightning in time, he commanded it to his will "freezing" the bolt, making it burn indefinitely like a white-hot spear.
He made to use it, but this was not a weapon. This was a phenomenon of the concept of destruction.
The Feys were only just reaching the end of their chant when they saw what he'd done and even they gasped.
No, Ya had no time to use it.
The weapon used itself.
It was an anomaly where lightning didn't dissipate quickly, lightning had been made permanent. Lightning which was five times hotter than the surface of the sun.
The realm of limbo became permanently ionized—a storm stuck in time.
Trees, building, skin, bones, rocks—every local matter of substance disintegrated and combusted entirely.
A temporal distortion echoed around the bolt of lightning in his tendrils, radiating around where the "flash" of lightning had been caught in a loop, frozen, cooking the same patch of space endlessly.
Even he did not escape the blaze. The lightning felt like an oven set to broil at 30,000°C, turned on for a split second, and then got stuck on.
He stared at the empty and desolate landscape around him, shocked by what a single act had engendered.
He truly was a force of destruction. He reduced the mass of lightning and settled down for his body to heal up, his array of adversaries now particles in the air.
For some reason his body was being too slow to heal.
He waited and waited and hours passed yet he was not healing.
Reluctantly he turned back into his human form and gaped at the sight he was met with.
His body healed up only to begin bleeding from a thousand injuries again. And then it healed up, bled more—the cycle continued.
"You have been cursed."
He jerked in shock, calling upon his fiery katana and merging it with the bolt of lightning.
He turned around and saw a woman as fair as the sun. She laid on the floor meters away from him, disheveled but unhurt. Her hair was as pure as silver and her eyes as bright as starlight.
She beckoned him. "The curse of a Feyling ritual. It will mark you for eternity."
Ya found her voice so entrancing. It captured his soul and tugged him onward.
"Come to me, come…son."
Ya took a step forward and did not look back.