The golden motes of the clone's destruction had barely faded before Alter was moving again. His lungs burned; each step was a jolt through a body already fraying at its edges. Every muscle screamed, the Demon God Killing Martial Arts toll gnawing at bone and soul alike. Golden blood streaked his armor in long, jagged trails — but the war hadn't stopped to let him breathe.
Not for him. Not for anyone.
A column of black flame ripped past him, close enough to blister the edge of his gauntlet. Ahead, Seraphina was locked between two Demon Gods — both titans of the Abyss, their bodies wrapped in storming shadows and barbed sigils. Her silver fire cut swathes through their assaults, but each strike she took shook her frame, sparks scattering like shattered starlight.
Alter didn't hesitate.
He broke into a run, leaping across a collapsing platform as gravity lurched sideways. He landed in a crouch beside her just as one Demon God's halberd cleaved through the air toward her spine. His hand shot out, seizing the haft mid-swing. The impact drove him back half a step, but his grip didn't break.
"Miss me?" His voice was hoarse, but the glint in his eyes was sharp.
Seraphina exhaled once — relief flickering in her gaze — before snapping her attention back to the fight. "You look like hell."
"I've looked worse."
They moved together without another word. Alter's fist crashed into the halberd wielder's jaw, silver fire searing over his knuckles from Seraphina's proximity. She spun low, her blade dragging a crescent arc of flame through the second Demon God's knee joint. Both enemies roared — not in pain, but in rage — and charged as one.
The platform beneath them cracked, fissures glowing with the molten light of the collapsing sanctum core. Above, entire fragments of the Abyssal capital drifted through rifts in space, smashing into each other in bursts of dust and fire.
Far to their left, Solien and Val'zaruun's duel had transcended mortal sight. Every clash between them was a cataclysm — spears of shadow and blades of pure light meeting with such force that reality itself tore in lines of pure void, hanging open for moments before stitching shut. Mountains of black stone lifted from their foundations and spun apart under the gravitational distortions of their strikes.
And still, neither yielded.
Alter ducked under the sweep of the halberd, stepped into the Demon God's guard, and drove a palm into its chest — Hellpulse Eruption igniting deep inside its core. The Abyssal titan staggered, the glow in its runes faltering for an instant. Seraphina didn't waste the opening; her sword plunged in a diagonal slash that left a blazing wound from collarbone to hip.
The second Demon God lunged for her flank — and Alter intercepted, shoulder-checking it hard enough to knock the creature sideways into a crumbling archway. The impact shattered the stone and sent the demon's form twisting into the void just beyond.
The ground beneath them groaned — not from weight, but from the sanctum's heart tearing itself apart. The pull of the void was becoming constant now, a slow but inevitable drag.
"Seraphina," Alter said, his tone sharp, "we finish this before the floor is gone."
She nodded once, eyes like molten silver.
They struck together — his fists a storm of golden force, hers a flowing tempest of silver fire. Every blow was another fracture in their enemies, another step toward driving them down before the sanctum fell. The roars of other gods echoed all around — titanic duels overlapping, shockwaves colliding in a tapestry of destruction that had no quiet thread.
Above, Solien and Val'zaruun slammed into each other again, the force sending a ripple through the entire battlefield. For a heartbeat, Alter's eyes locked with Solien's across the chaos. No words passed — but the meaning was clear.
Hold.
Push.
Break them.
The sanctum's collapse was no longer minutes away. It was already happening.
And Alter wasn't done yet.
The sanctum's death was no longer a theory. It was reality, cracking and peeling away in sheets of stone and light as the heart of the Abyssal capital came apart in a storm of collapsing planes. The air itself screamed — a pressure like the ocean depths crushing against the skin, every breath tasting of ash and raw void.
Solien's duel with Val'zaruun tore its way through what remained of the sanctum's upper tiers, their blows punching through walls of reinforced blacksteel and sending splinters of molten architecture spiraling into the void. With every exchange, the realm quaked — a god of light and a god of the abyss locking wills in a storm of violence that threatened to snap the battlefield in two.
Then, Val'zaruun broke away.
It wasn't retreat in shame — it was a calculated step backward, his movements precise, his crimson eyes burning like twin supernovas. Shadow coiled around him in long tendrils, wrapping his form as he stepped through a breach in the air itself.
"VAL'ZARUUN!" Solien roared, his voice cutting through the war's chaos. Without hesitation, he dove after him.
Alter's head snapped up. "He's going to the citadel."
Seraphina was already moving, wings of silver flame unfurling at her back. "Then we end it there."
The two launched upward, the shockwaves of their ascent scattering debris and half-dead Abyssal warbeasts into the abyss below. The surviving War Gods followed in their wake, divine light streaking through the darkness as the collapsing sanctum fell away beneath them.
They broke into the citadel like a thunderhead hitting glass. Its vast obsidian spires loomed high above the rest of the capital — a fortress of endless walls and twisted geometry, anchored to the very heart-vein of the Abyss Realm.
And inside, Solien and Val'zaruun were already tearing the main hall apart.
The chamber was a cathedral of shadows, its pillars carved from voidstone and inlaid with burning runes older than mortal memory. Lightning and shadow-fire clashed in its center — Solien's spear flaring with blinding gold as it met the abyss-forged halberd in Val'zaruun's hands. Sparks the size of boulders shot in all directions, carving deep gouges into the walls.
Alter and the War Gods spread to surround them, weapons at the ready — but before they could close in, Val'zaruun's free hand snapped upward.
The runes in the citadel's floor ignited.
Chains of blacksteel and bloodlight shot from the ground, spiraling upward to ensnare Solien in a prison of crushing force. The sound was like bone breaking under the weight of the earth itself. Solien's eyes went wide as the pressure bit deep into his armor, fracturing the divine sigils along its surface.
Val'zaruun moved with the speed of inevitability. In a single step, he was inside Solien's guard, his halberd reversing in a deadly arc.
The blade punched through Solien's side. Golden light burst from the wound, scattering like fireflies across the blackened floor. Solien's spear clattered to the stone as his knees buckled, the chains tightening further to hold him upright only so his enemy could watch him break.
"SOLIEN!" Seraphina's voice cracked the air. She was there in a heartbeat, intercepting Val'zaruun's next strike with her blade. Silver fire exploded across the impact, buying a fraction of a second — enough to force Val'zaruun back half a step.
Alter hit him next, driving a golden-chi palm strike toward the Abyss King's chest. Val'zaruun caught it on the shaft of his halberd, the collision sending a quake through the floor that split it for twenty paces in every direction.
The other War Gods joined in, their combined assault a storm of light, flame, and steel — but Val'zaruun's power was overwhelming. Each of his counters shattered divine weapons, his aura alone enough to hurl gods across the chamber. Every movement was measured, every blow designed to kill or cripple.
"Seraphina," Solien's voice was ragged, each word dragged through the pain of his wound. She turned to him, one hand pressed against the injury to keep his golden blood from spilling further.
"Get me to Alter," he said, eyes locked on the Draconian Prime across the hall. "Now."
She hesitated for half a heartbeat — then nodded, her grip tightening on his arm. The chains cracked under her strength and the flare of her fire, but Val'zaruun's attention was already shifting, his gaze narrowing on Alter as if he'd been waiting for this exact alignment.
The floor beneath them thrummed, the walls seeming to breathe. This citadel was his throne — and he had no intention of letting any god leave it alive.
The citadel's throne hall groaned as if the stones themselves could sense the killing intent thickening within it. The air was a furnace of fractured light and strangled shadow, each breath tasting of ozone and scorched metal.
Through the chaos, Seraphina emerged — armor dented, hair streaked with ash — dragging Solien with one arm as the other deflected a crashing wave of abyssal force from the melee. Solien's armor was split open across the chestplate, golden light spilling from the wound in pulses that dimmed with each step.
She half-fell to one knee beside Alter, setting Solien down against the cracked base of a shattered pillar. "You can't—"
"I'm not fighting," Solien interrupted, his voice low but heavy with something deeper. His hand clamped around Alter's forearm, the grip like a vice. "I'm giving."
Alter's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean—"
"This is the only way," Solien cut in. "You take it. All of it — my radiance, my spear's fire, my life's light. It's yours now."
Before Alter could refuse, it began.
A deep, resonant hum rolled through the hall — low at first, like the distant grind of tectonic plates, then building into a roar that made the shattered walls vibrate. Light bled from Solien's palms in liquid streams, wrapping around Alter's arm like molten gold before plunging into his skin.
Alter gasped — not from pain, but from the sudden weight of it. The Radiance didn't flow gently; it surged. Every heartbeat became a thunderclap in his chest. His veins lit like braided rivers of fire under his skin, flooding up through his shoulders, his neck, his head.
FWOOM!
A corona of golden light erupted around him, each flare throwing out ripples that warped the air like heat-haze. Lightning arcs of pure Radiance lashed from his back, scorching gouges into the cracked stone behind him.
His breath hitched, then deepened — each inhale a pull of starlight, each exhale a roar of heat and pressure. The chamber shuddered under the force gathering in his frame.
The sensation was overwhelming. It wasn't just strength — it was clarity. His senses sharpened to an unbearable edge. He could hear the minute snap of stone fracturing beneath his boots, the low creak of Val'zaruun's armor plates shifting across the hall, the faint flutter of Seraphina's cloak fifty paces away. The world was no longer dimmed by pain or fatigue. Every nerve sang in perfect resonance.
A blinding pillar of light flared upward from where they knelt, punching through the fractured ceiling. Outside, the war paused for half a heartbeat as gods and demon gods alike turned toward the explosion of Radiance bursting from the citadel's heart.
The hum in Alter's chest crescendoed until it became a continuous, metallic ring that seemed to thread itself into the air, vibrating through the bones of every living thing nearby. His wounds sealed, scars fading as if time itself bent to the Radiance now filling him.
Solien's grip loosened, his golden aura flickering like a dying star. "Go," he rasped, a faint smile on his lips.
Alter rose.
His hand closed around Starsever's hilt, and the weapon ignited — not with mere light, but with a living flame of gold and white, its edge resonating in harmony with the Radiance in his blood. When he swung it once in the empty air, the CRACK of the swing's wake split the room's tension like a hammer blow.
Across the hall, Val'zaruun tilted his head. "So… they crown you with another's light to meet my abyss?"
"Not just light," Alter answered, stepping forward as the floor splintered in a web beneath his boots. His voice carried like a warhorn. "The spearpoint of heaven and the sovereign of dragons — together."
The Abyss King's mouth curled into something between a grin and a snarl. "Then come. Burn in my dark."
The remaining War Gods pulled back to the citadel's edges at Alter's command, knowing this was no longer their fight to join.
Star against black hole.
Light against endless dark.
And then — BOOM!
They clashed, the shockwave erasing the floor beneath them and blasting molten shards into the far walls. Radiance and abyss slammed together in a cyclone of light and shadow, tearing jagged wounds into the air.
The first collision rattled the citadel to its foundations. Alter's Radiance burned against Val'zaruun's abyss like two suns trying to devour each other. Each swing of Starsever sent concussive booms tearing through the collapsing hall, golden arcs of light crashing into black storms of voidsteel force.
CLANG! CRASH!Each impact warped the walls, shattering whole pillars into airborne shrapnel. The ground under their feet split open, glowing from the sheer heat bleeding off their clash.
Alter pressed forward, the Radiance flowing from Solien still howling inside his veins, every movement hitting like a war god's verdict. Val'zaruun's abyssal greatblade moved in broad, oppressive arcs, the void itself folding inward around each swing — making every block feel like pushing back a collapsing star.
Then came the moment.
Val'zaruun's blade came in low. Alter's block met it perfectly — too perfectly. The collision was cataclysmic.
KRRAAAASH!
The shockwave didn't just throw them apart — it ripped the weapons from both their hands. Starsever spun away in a golden spiral of light, embedding itself deep in the far wall. Val'zaruun's greatblade crashed into the rubble, sinking into the stone like it had struck a swamp.
For half a breath, there was silence.
Then their eyes locked.
Weapons forgotten.
No more steel — only will.
Alter's stance shifted low, hands open, fingers curling like claws. His body thrummed with Radiance and fury, the familiar rhythm of the Demon God Killing Martial Arts pounding through muscle and bone. Val'zaruun mirrored him in his own way, the abyss clinging to his frame in coils of smoke and jagged shadow, shaping into gauntlets of living dark.
They moved at the same time.
Fist of Ruin — Alter's right came down like a meteor, smashing into Val'zaruun's raised forearm with a thunderclap that cratered the floor beneath them. Val'zaruun's counter was a Soulbreaker Dive, his elbow cutting a brutal arc toward Alter's temple — but Alter's Heaven-Piercer Step snapped his body sideways, driving a knee toward the Abyss King's ribs.
BAM! BAM! BAM!Strike after strike, they blurred into a hurricane of god-tier martial destruction. Each technique cracked the air, each parry left an afterimage of light or shadow suspended in the ruin around them.
Alter's Void Fang Rend carved open the abyssal armor across Val'zaruun's chest, the Radiance burning into the wound like molten sunfire. Val'zaruun answered with a crushing hook of shadow — a blow that would have reduced lesser gods to powder — but Alter caught it on his forearm, teeth bared. The Graviton Sever that followed sent Val'zaruun slamming to one knee, the stone beneath him spiderwebbing outward in all directions.
The Abyss King snarled, his voice a growl vibrating through the wreckage. "You've been given too much light."
Alter's breath came steady, golden steam rolling from his mouth. "Then drown in it."
The fight climbed toward its peak. Requiem Fang Barrage — Alter's fists became a storm, hundreds of strikes in seconds, each one driving Val'zaruun back through collapsing walls. But the abyss fought back — tendrils of black energy erupted around Val'zaruun, snapping toward Alter's throat, his ribs, his legs.
The two titans crashed through the citadel's inner ring, floor and ceiling falling in sheets of molten debris. Every step, every blow brought them deeper into the collapse, until the very air screamed with the strain of holding them.
And yet — neither slowed. Neither yielded.
They were past the point of attrition. This was now predation.