Chapter 3 — Try Breaking Me
Kaosu heard paper crinkle.
It should not have carried across the burning plaza.
Buildings were collapsing.
Villagers were screaming.
Chaotic Energy hissed through the streets while Torin struggled to breathe beneath Kaosu's shadow.
Yet the small sound reached him anyway.
Kaosu turned.
Nyxus stood beside the remains of a market cart.
The unfinished fruit bun had been carefully wrapped and placed behind him.
The butterfly was gone.
So was the vacant expression.
Silver-white fragments drifted from Nyxus's body. They did not spread like an aura. They appeared in incomplete sequences—numbers, symbols and broken instructions assembling for fractions of a second before reality forced them apart.
The ground beneath his feet shifted.
Not cracked.
Adjusted.
Loose stones rotated into stable positions.
Broken tiles aligned along invisible measurements.
The world around Nyxus was attempting to become precise.
Kaosu smiled.
"Finally."
Nyxus took one step forward.
"That is a strange response."
"I was wondering how long you would keep pretending."
"Pretending what?"
"Not to care."
Nyxus looked toward Torin.
The man was half-buried beneath the fountain, one hand still pressed against the stone as though he intended to stand again.
Nyxus looked back at Kaosu.
"I don't."
"Then sit down."
"No."
Kaosu's smile widened.
"Why?"
"You hit the bread man."
"His name is Torin."
"So you knew it."
"That is not the point."
Kaosu laughed.
"You're challenging the son of Karma over bread?"
"No."
Nyxus's eyes began turning white.
Not glowing.
Emptying.
Color drained from his irises until only streams of shifting data remained.
"The bread is why I know his name."
The red threads surrounding Kaosu rose.
"You think you can save him?"
"No."
Kaosu paused.
Nyxus glanced at the villagers Torin had protected.
"I think he already saved everyone you were trying to kill."
His attention returned to Kaosu.
"I'm handling the remaining problem."
Kaosu's expression hardened.
Chaotic Energy condensed around his fist.
The pressure caused three nearby buildings to collapse in different directions.
Nyxus rolled one shoulder.
Then the other.
"You wanna break something?"
He lowered his head slightly.
"Try breaking me."
Kaosu punched him.
There was no warning.
One moment Kaosu stood beside the shattered fountain.
The next, his fist occupied the center of Nyxus's chest.
The impact folded the plaza.
Stone dropped several feet as the ground compressed beneath them. A circular shockwave raced outward, tearing smoke from the air and stripping the remaining roofs from nearby buildings.
Nyxus crossed both arms an instant too late.
He disappeared.
The force carried him through the edge of Sorahora, across the surrounding valley and into the nearest mountain range.
The first mountain opened around him.
The second lost its peak.
Nyxus passed through the center of the third and vanished beneath several million tons of stone.
Silence followed.
Kaosu looked toward the new opening in the horizon.
Torin's sapphire light had unsettled him.
The stranger had annoyed him.
This had corrected both problems.
Then the third mountain moved.
A section of the slope collapsed.
Silver-white light flickered beneath it.
Nyxus stepped out of the rubble.
His hoodie was covered in dust.
His expression remained unchanged.
He brushed a stone from his shoulder.
"I blocked that."
Kaosu appeared above the crater.
"You crossed three mountains."
Nyxus looked behind himself.
"Then I blocked it in several places."
"That isn't what blocking means."
"It prevented the attack from hitting Torin."
Kaosu's smile weakened.
Nyxus looked up at him.
"So it worked."
White code flashed beneath Nyxus's feet.
Kaosu saw his shoulder move.
He did not see the distance between them disappear.
Nyxus's fist struck him beneath the ribs.
For the first time since arriving in Sorahora, Kaosu left the ground without intending to.
He tore backward through the ruined mountain, crossed the valley and struck a distant ridge hard enough to split it.
The fracture traveled from the base to the summit.
The entire face of the mountain slid sideways.
Nyxus remained where Kaosu had been.
He looked at his fist.
"That was less complicated than I expected."
Red lightning erupted from the broken ridge.
Kaosu exploded out of it.
He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth.
He was also laughing.
Nyxus frowned.
"You are enjoying this."
Kaosu wiped away the blood.
"Obviously."
"That appears medical."
"You moved me."
"Torin moved you emotionally."
Kaosu stopped laughing.
Nyxus nodded.
"It went poorly."
Kaosu reached him before the last word finished.
His first strike targeted Nyxus's jaw.
Nyxus caught the wrist.
The ground beneath Nyxus chose that exact moment to split.
His footing vanished.
Kaosu drove a knee into his stomach.
Nyxus was launched upward.
A support of stone fractured above him despite having survived the previous collapse. It fell at precisely the wrong angle and struck the back of his head.
Kaosu appeared in front of him.
He drove both fists into Nyxus's chest.
Nyxus crashed through the valley floor.
The impact exposed a buried stream.
Water erupted through the crater.
A concealed pocket of volcanic gas ignited.
The resulting explosion consumed the valley.
Kaosu hovered above the flames.
Something struck him from below.
Nyxus's uppercut launched him through the smoke.
Kaosu spun once in the air, corrected himself and landed against the side of the mountain.
Nyxus emerged from the crater.
Part of his shoulder flickered several centimeters away from the rest of him before snapping back into place.
His outline stabilized.
"You didn't do that on purpose," Nyxus said.
Kaosu looked down.
"The gas?"
"The ground."
"It worked."
"That wasn't my question."
"I don't care."
Nyxus considered that.
"Then we have something in common."
Kaosu pushed away from the mountain.
Red threads poured from his body.
They entered the stone.
Nyxus watched them spread.
Kaosu attacked again.
Nyxus avoided the first punch.
Kaosu missed by several inches.
The fist struck empty air.
Nothing happened.
Then the atmosphere above them folded.
The pressure difference tore moisture from the clouds and dragged it into the upper sky. Temperature collapsed around it. An enormous blue-white slab formed almost instantly.
Nyxus looked up.
The frozen section of atmosphere fell directly onto him.
It broke across his head.
Kaosu stared.
Nyxus stood inside the rain of ice.
A glowing shard remained lodged in his hood.
Nyxus removed it.
He examined it.
"Did you just hit me with weather?"
"I hit you with Chaos."
"No. Weather did most of the work."
A buzzing noise surrounded them.
Nyxus looked toward the sky.
Thousands of locust-shaped creatures made from red light poured through the clouds.
They descended upon him.
One struck his arm and exploded.
Another chewed through the silver code around his shoulder.
The damaged sequence collapsed.
Nyxus slapped the creature away.
It detonated against the mountain.
The explosion disturbed a buried fault.
The fault shifted.
The mountain behind Nyxus began collapsing again.
Nyxus looked at Kaosu.
"Your energy is becoming irritating."
Kaosu spread his arms.
"Becoming?"
Nyxus ignored him.
White data moved through his eyes.
He watched the red energy carefully.
Not the color.
Not the pressure.
The behavior.
Each pulse separated into distinct layers.
The first disrupted stable outcomes.
One event became several possibilities.
The second weighted those possibilities.
Whatever could harm Nyxus became more likely to occur.
The third arrived afterward.
It did not change which consequence happened.
It made that consequence disproportionate to the event that produced it.
A crack became a fault.
A fault became a collapsing mountain.
A missed punch became frozen sky.
Nyxus looked toward Kaosu.
"Your Chaos has three behaviors."
Kaosu grinned.
"Only three?"
"Today."
Kaosu's smile sharpened.
Nyxus pointed at the red threads.
"The first creates instability. The second makes the instability unfortunate for whoever you're fighting."
"Misfortune."
"Yes."
Kaosu looked pleased.
Nyxus continued.
"The third makes the result worse than its cause has any right to justify."
Kaosu glanced at the collapsing mountain.
"Catastrophe."
"Probably."
Nyxus looked increasingly annoyed by the conclusion.
"Your punches don't just hit."
Red light gathered around Kaosu's hand.
"They multiply every calamity near the impact."
Kaosu's eyes brightened.
"Calamity multipliers."
Nyxus immediately regretted speaking.
"Do not call them that."
"I like it."
"That is why you shouldn't."
Kaosu attacked.
Nyxus leaned away from the first fist.
It missed.
The mountain behind him exploded.
Every fragment traveled toward Nyxus.
He raised one hand.
Silver code spread across the air in a geometric lattice.
The stone fragments entered it.
Their trajectories recalculated.
Thousands of pieces turned in perfect unison and passed around him.
Kaosu appeared between them.
His knee struck Nyxus beneath the chin.
Nyxus flew upward.
Kaosu followed.
"Calamity multiplier."
Nyxus caught Kaosu's next fist.
"I specifically asked you not to use that."
Kaosu twisted his wrist.
The red energy inside the surrounding debris ignited.
Every redirected stone reversed direction.
Nyxus looked around.
"Oh."
The fragments struck simultaneously.
The combined impact launched him through the clouds.
Kaosu followed him into the sky.
Nyxus recovered above the cloud layer.
A silver stream extended from his hand.
He caught Kaosu by the ankle.
Then he swung him.
Kaosu completed an entire circle before Nyxus released him toward the upper atmosphere.
"We're moving," Nyxus said.
Kaosu stopped himself in midair.
"You don't give me orders."
Nyxus appeared beneath him.
His fist struck Kaosu's spine.
Kaosu accelerated upward again.
"That wasn't an order."
Nyxus followed.
They passed through the upper atmosphere.
The sky darkened.
Clouds disappeared beneath them.
Sorahora became impossible to see.
Kaosu turned and struck downward.
Nyxus blocked.
The collision produced a ring across the atmosphere large enough to be seen from the opposite side of the planet.
Kaosu attacked again.
Nyxus redirected the fist away from Earth.
Again.
Nyxus moved the strike aside.
Again.
This time Kaosu changed direction halfway through.
His knee struck Nyxus's chest.
Nyxus fell toward the planet.
Red threads followed him.
They entered the atmosphere and began spreading toward the surface.
Nyxus stopped.
Silver-white code erupted from his body.
It crossed the approaching threads and forced them apart.
The Chaotic Energy curved around Earth.
Kaosu watched him.
"You're protecting them."
"No."
"You've redirected every attack away from the village."
"I like the bread."
"That is the same thing."
"It is not."
Kaosu laughed.
Nyxus pointed toward the planet.
"If another attack reaches the surface, I stop being careful."
Kaosu's smile widened.
"You're being careful?"
Nyxus looked at him.
"That should concern you."
For the first time, Kaosu did not immediately attack.
Then the red energy around him surged.
The atmosphere beneath them turned crimson.
Kaosu disappeared.
The collision drove Nyxus out of Earth's gravity.
He flew backward into open space.
Kaosu remained attached to him, delivering strike after strike.
Each punch carried a different failure.
Nyxus blocked the first.
A dormant satellite activated and struck him from behind.
He caught the second.
Its displaced momentum entered a nearby asteroid and changed its orbit.
He avoided the third.
The vacuum around him briefly acquired pressure and detonated.
Nyxus's body flickered.
His left arm separated into several incomplete positions.
White code pulled them together.
Kaosu saw it.
"What are you?"
Nyxus caught his wrist.
"You already asked."
He drove his forehead into Kaosu's face.
Kaosu's nose broke.
Nyxus followed with a punch to the stomach.
Then another to the jaw.
The third strike sent Kaosu through an asteroid.
The asteroid split.
Kaosu emerged through the opposite side laughing again.
Nyxus stared at him.
"You should be less happy about the broken nose."
"I've never fought anyone like you."
"That sounds peaceful."
Kaosu spread both hands.
Chaotic threads struck the surrounding asteroid field.
Hundreds of rocks changed direction.
They gathered behind him.
"What are you doing?" Nyxus asked.
"Improving."
Kaosu punched.
The fist crossed the distance first.
Nyxus caught it against his forearm.
Then the asteroid attached to the strike arrived.
It smashed into Nyxus from the same direction.
His body disappeared inside the rock.
Kaosu punched again.
A second asteroid followed.
Then a third.
Each fist dragged another celestial body behind it like a delayed consequence.
Nyxus was driven across the system beneath a barrage of stone.
Kaosu pursued him.
Every punch collected more mass.
Meteorites.
Fragments of abandoned satellites.
Lunar debris.
Everything the system had left unguarded became ammunition.
Kaosu's fists turned into the leading points of burning celestial chains.
Nyxus blocked another strike.
A meteor struck him from behind.
He spun.
Kaosu kicked him through the center of it.
The meteor shattered.
Every fragment curved back toward Nyxus.
White code unfolded around his body.
The fragments stopped curving.
Their trajectories aligned.
They formed a ring.
Nyxus sent them past Earth, where they entered a stable orbit instead of destroying anything.
Kaosu watched the new ring form.
"You keep fixing everything."
Nyxus wiped blood from his lip.
"You keep making it stupid."
Kaosu launched himself forward.
Nyxus met him.
Their fists collided.
The impact emptied the surrounding space.
Asteroids disintegrated.
Satellite remains flattened into expanding sheets of metal.
The shock traveled through a nearby moon.
A fracture appeared across its surface.
Kaosu struck again.
The fracture widened.
Nyxus drove both feet into Kaosu's chest and launched him through the moon.
Kaosu passed entirely through it.
The moon remained intact for three seconds.
Then it separated into two halves.
Dust and lunar fragments spread across space.
Kaosu emerged from the debris.
Blood ran down one side of his face.
One arm hung at an unhealthy angle.
Red energy twisted it back into position.
Nyxus's hoodie had lost most of one sleeve.
The other had already belonged partially to a goat.
They stared at each other through the remains of the moon.
Neither moved.
Minutes passed.
Then Kaosu smiled.
Nyxus sighed.
"You're about to do something unnecessary."
"Everything I do is unnecessary."
"That explains your personality."
Kaosu attacked again.
The first hour had belonged to mountains.
The second belonged to the sky.
By the third, gravity had become an inconvenience neither of them respected.
They crossed interplanetary distances through impact alone.
Kaosu's Chaos spread farther with every exchange.
A dead planet shifted from its orbit.
Two asteroid belts began colliding.
A distant star entered a flare cycle centuries too early.
The failures were still possible.
Chaos simply stopped respecting when they were supposed to happen.
Only Earth remained stable.
That was not luck.
Whenever a red thread turned toward the planet, silver code intercepted it.
Whenever an impact threatened to send debris toward the surface, Nyxus changed the trajectory.
Whenever Kaosu positioned Earth behind him, Nyxus moved.
Kaosu noticed every time.
"You really do care."
Nyxus caught an incoming meteor with both hands.
"No."
The meteor cracked between his palms.
"You keep saving them."
"The bun is still there."
"You could get another one."
Nyxus threw the meteor back.
It struck Kaosu and shattered against his face.
"That one was mine."
Kaosu tore through the debris.
His fist struck Nyxus's cheek.
Nyxus's head snapped sideways.
A delayed calamity ignited inside the moon fragments surrounding them.
Thousands of pieces accelerated at once.
Nyxus vanished beneath the barrage.
Kaosu raised both hands.
The lunar fragments compressed.
They collided around Nyxus.
A new sphere formed from their combined mass.
Kaosu closed his fist.
The sphere imploded.
For several seconds, nothing moved.
Then a white line appeared across its center.
The sphere divided cleanly in half.
Nyxus floated between the pieces.
His skin flickered with broken code.
One eye had temporarily failed to render.
It returned.
Nyxus looked toward Kaosu.
"What did Torin show you?"
Everything stopped.
Kaosu's expression emptied.
Nyxus watched him carefully.
"Before you started hitting him harder."
"Shut up."
"It was something you wanted."
Red energy erupted from Kaosu's body.
Nyxus nodded.
"That answered it."
Kaosu crossed the distance and punched him in the throat.
Nyxus caught the arm.
Kaosu struck with the other.
Nyxus blocked.
A moon fragment hit Nyxus in the spine.
Kaosu drove his forehead into Nyxus's face.
Nyxus answered with a knee.
Both moved backward.
Kaosu's breathing had become uneven.
Nyxus's outline continued skipping frames.
"What did you see?" Nyxus asked.
Kaosu's eyes burned red.
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know you attacked a man who couldn't hurt you."
"He resisted me."
"No."
Nyxus looked directly at him.
"He made you want something."
The meadow flashed through Kaosu's memory.
Grass beneath bare feet.
Sunlight.
His own laughter.
A voice calling him home.
No Karma.
No titles.
No one kneeling.
Kaosu screamed.
The Chaotic Energy surrounding him detonated.
The red threads no longer remained confined to the system.
They spread outward.
Nearby planets shifted.
A star convulsed.
Space filled with possible catastrophes, and every one of them began leaning toward reality.
Kaosu attacked without technique.
Without restraint.
A fist.
An elbow.
A knee.
Another fist.
Each movement carried enough force to fracture planetary bodies.
Each impact multiplied every disaster around it.
Nyxus blocked.
Countered.
Redirected.
Kaosu struck him through the remains of the moon.
Nyxus returned through the debris and punched Kaosu across an orbital path.
Kaosu caught a meteor behind himself, reversed direction and dragged it into Nyxus.
Nyxus split the meteor with one hand.
Kaosu emerged through its center.
They collided again.
And again.
The system shook beneath them.
Kaosu's movements became wilder.
Nyxus's became smaller.
More exact.
Kaosu created a thousand possible disasters.
Nyxus corrected nine hundred and ninety-nine.
The last one always found him.
A fragment struck his temple.
A pressure wave reached him from the wrong direction.
A fault opened inside a celestial body millions of kilometers away and sent its core directly into his path.
Chaos did not need to overpower him.
It only needed reality to make one mistake.
Kaosu hit him through another planet.
Nyxus exited the opposite side.
Kaosu was already there.
His fist connected.
Nyxus flew backward.
Kaosu followed.
"I will break you!"
Nyxus stopped himself.
White energy folded inward around his body.
He looked at Kaosu.
"Torin already broke you."
Kaosu froze.
Nyxus continued.
"He did it without touching you."
The red light around Kaosu became absolute.
Every chaotic thread in the system pulled toward him.
The distant accidents stopped.
The shifting planets held.
The convulsing star quieted.
For one moment, Kaosu gathered all of it.
Not efficiently.
Not precisely.
Violently.
Too many consequences compressed into one arm.
Too many failures demanded the same destination.
Kaosu's fist trembled beneath the pressure.
Nyxus stared at it.
White code flashed across his eyes.
The attack had no stable outcome.
If he avoided it, Earth stood behind him.
If he blocked, the multiplied consequence would travel through the system.
If he redirected it, Chaos would infect the new direction.
Kaosu had not intentionally constructed the trap.
His power had.
Nyxus looked toward Earth.
Even from this distance, he remembered the broken plaza.
Torin's hand against the stone.
The wrapped fruit bun waiting on the cart.
Nyxus raised one hand.
His aura stopped flickering.
Every fragment surrounding him collapsed toward his fist.
No wild streams.
No expanding light.
No decorative storm.
Compression.
One unstable sequence entered another.
Then another.
Millions of broken instructions reduced into a single path.
His fingers curled.
Space around his knuckles flattened.
The pressure did not explode outward.
It waited.
The punch contained enough compressed force to break Kaosu completely.
It would not stop with him.
The strike would continue through the space behind his body, through every physical boundary attempting to absorb it, and eventually through the membrane containing the universe itself.
One swing.
That was all it would take.
Kaosu saw the fist.
He smiled.
"DIE, MORTAL!"
Nyxus frowned.
"I told you I'm probably not human."
"That isn't what mortal means!"
"It feels related."
"THEN DIE, WHATEVER YOU ARE!"
Kaosu attacked.
Nyxus moved.
Red Chaos crossed the system from one direction.
White code crossed it from the other.
Planets shifted from the approaching pressure.
The remains of the moon flattened into two expanding rings.
Earth's atmosphere trembled.
The distance between them vanished.
One hundred kilometers.
One.
A meter.
Their fists approached.
Kaosu's attack carried every disaster Chaos could produce.
Nyxus's carried enough concentrated force to end the argument and everything unfortunate enough to exist behind it.
Neither could stop.
Then the universe became quiet.
Not time.
Time continued.
Not space.
Space remained where it was.
Something more immediate disappeared.
Intent.
The anger inside Nyxus vanished.
Kaosu's rage went silent.
The attacks still possessed force.
Neither of them could remember why that force needed to continue forward.
A man stood between them.
No portal had opened.
No energy announced him.
He simply occupied the one point in the universe neither attack should have allowed anything to survive.
A long coat moved gently around him despite the vacuum.
His expression suggested mild disappointment.
One finger was raised between the approaching fists.
Both attacks met it.
Neither advanced.
The Chaotic Energy stopped howling.
The Glitched Energy stopped calculating.
For the first time in hours, nothing broke.
The stranger looked at Kaosu.
Then at Nyxus.
"Enough."
The word was quiet.
The universe treated it as a ruling.