"But you didn't answer my question," Fenrir said, his voice hoarse, the taste of blood still in his mouth. "Why are you here, Tesla?"
Tesla glanced over his shoulder, brushing a speck of dust off his white sleeve. "Glad I showed up when I did. Otherwise, they'd be scraping your remains off the dunes by now."
The Conqueror gave a faint smirk but didn't press further. He knew that tone — Tesla's presence was never coincidence.
Tesla stepped forward, closing the distance to the killer. "I don't believe in overtime," he murmured, voice edged with disdain. "But this… this sucks."
The stranger leapt high, body twisting midair with inhuman grace, the kusarigama shrieking through the air. The blade came from the opposite side, faster than before. Tesla tilted slightly, sidestepping as though moving through a slow breeze. Trails of dust and static spiraled around him. His fingers began to trace invisible symbols in the air, and lightning coiled around his hands like living serpents.
"Okay, Conqueror," Tesla said without turning. "See you later."
Fenrir stiffened. He understood instantly.
Tesla, the prodigy of the Academy, first in every discipline, the only mage ever crowned King of the High Table. His peers called him Magnet, for his mastery of electromagnetic and magnetic fields, but his real strength lay elsewhere, space itself. Tesla could bend the world like paper, fold distance, tear dimensions. His most terrifying creation was Spatial Rend, a spell that could dislocate existence within a chosen domain.
Tesla stepped closer to the enemy, raising his hand. The air wavered, reality bending like heat haze. "Let's move somewhere… quieter," he said.
The stranger opened his mouth to retort, but before the words formed, the world around them collapsed, color drained, sound muffled, and both vanished into a tear of distorted space.
The desert was silent again.
Fenrir dropped to his knees, exhausted. The adrenaline faded, leaving behind only pain and the ache of failure. He looked up at the rippling horizon where the two had vanished. "So it ends… for now."
Then, at last, the Conqueror let his sword fall beside him and allowed himself to rest.
The air inside the distorted space shimmered like fractured glass. It was a void without horizon colors bled into one another, gravity pulsed unevenly, and echoes looped endlessly.
The kusarigama's blade sliced through the warped air, leaving streaks of red light in its wake. The stranger was fast, unnervingly fast, his movements smooth and precise. But Tesla wasn't even where the strikes landed.
Each time the weapon came close, Tesla's body flickered—one moment beside the enemy, the next behind him, then far above, watching like a bored god.
"Your coordination's decent," Tesla said, appearing behind the stranger again. "But you swing that thing like it's 200 years out of date." The kusarigama flew backward, the chain whirling, aiming for Tesla's throat. With a faint hum, Tesla vanished and reappeared inches away, untouched. The chain tore through afterimages, slicing nothing but distorted light.
The stranger hissed. "You rely too much on tricks."
"Tricks?" Tesla smiled faintly. "No. Just physics."
He extended a hand, and the warped domain responded. Space folded, drawing the kusarigama's chain into impossible angles, forcing the weapon to twist and recoil like a snake eating its own tail. The stranger yanked hard, breaking the distortion with brute force, then rushed in again, slashing upward.
Tesla didn't even move his feet this time his body blurred as he teleported in microscopic intervals, the blade phasing through an afterimage. "Predictable," he muttered.
Then his tone shifted, lower, colder. "You killed a good man."
The air around him began to hum with electrical charge, lightning tracing the distortions of space itself. "And that… is something I can't just walk away from."
Before the stranger could respond, Tesla snapped his fingers. Space shattered—like glass under a hammer and multiple rifts opened at once. From each, arcs of white lightning and spatial tears surged, converging on the enemy.
The kusarigama wielder braced himself, wrapping the chain around his arm, his aura flaring red. But Tesla's attacks weren't linear—they came from nowhere and everywhere, bending through folds of reality.
One strike grazed the stranger's shoulder; another disoriented him as gravity flipped, sending him sprawling across a ceiling that wasn't there.
Tesla walked closer, the storm orbiting him. "This domain is mine. Every breath you take here passes through my control. So tell me…"
He raised his hand, the lightning focusing to a single point in his palm.
…how long do you think you can survive in my world?"
The stranger fell to one knee, the kusarigama slipping from his grasp, its chain rattling softly against the fractured ground of Tesla's domain. His breathing grew shallow, each inhale scraping like broken glass. The aura that had once wrapped around him like a storm now flickered weakly, dissolving into drifting motes of light.
He looked up at Tesla through the pale shimmer of the distortion. His voice cracked—not from pain, but from the weight of something long carried. "Why don't you finish me here and now?"
Tesla's expression didn't change. His eyes, cold and unreadable, glowed faintly with residual lightning. "Yeah," he said after a long pause. "That would have been better for both of us." He lowered his hand, the energy fading away. "But you know I can't do that."
For a moment, nothing moved. The distorted air grew still, the hum of power quieted. Then the stranger laughed a hollow, fragile sound. It wasn't mockery; it was grief disguised as humor.
"What are you trying to accomplish," he murmured. "Your supervisors are playing savior while the world rots." He coughed, a streak of blood painting his chin. "You think not killing me is mercy? You think sparing me makes you righteous?"
He raised his eyes again, and in them was something raw despair older than either of them should have known. "I've forgotten how it feels to sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see the same faces. The ones I failed to protect. The ones I was ordered to kill."
Tesla said nothing, though a faint tremor crossed his jaw.
The stranger clenched his trembling hands, nails cutting into his palms. "You have no idea what it's like… to remember every scream, every single one, and know it was never your choice. I begged them to stop. I begged them to let me die but they chained my soul instead. Every order, every kill, every face… all burned into me, again and again."
The kusarigama glowed faintly beside him, as if reacting to his despair.
He looked down at it, then back up at Tesla, eyes wet with tears that refused to fall. "If there's a hell, I already live there."
Tesla's fingers twitched, lightning crackling briefly and dying in his palm. His voice was low, nearly breaking. "You know exactly why I can't."
The stranger's lips curved into a broken smile. "Then I guess my curse continues." He stood, swaying slightly, retrieving his weapon. "When we meet again, I won't hesitate. Not because I want to kill you… but because I need you to end me."
Tesla said nothing. The domain around them began to unravel, light folding back into itself as the sands of the southern desert came into view once more. The stranger stepped backward into the dissolving horizon, his voice echoing faintly as he vanished into the dust, "Tell him to face me…"