Moonlight bled across the clearing, silver on black. The air was tight, waiting. At its center two figures faced each other, still as carved stone.
The stranger stood broad-shouldered and wild, his tangled beard glinting in the pale light. Around him floated two liquid spheres, each the color of molten moonlight. They pulsed and twisted like living things, and every pulse made the ground tremble.
Opposite him, Rajyugas barely seemed to breathe. His dark robes hung motionless though the night breeze hissed around him. Space itself seemed to bow where he stood, the starlight bending ever so slightly as if the world tilted toward his command.
A low hiss slid from the stranger's throat.
"You trespass," he said, his voice like wet stone grinding. "This village is mine."
The silver orbs shivered, splitting into a dozen glittering threads. They lashed out—arcs of liquid metal that cut through air with the whistle of blades. A single strike scythed an ancient tree clean in half. The trunk toppled with a thunderous crack.
Rajyugas did not move his feet. He lifted one hand, and the space before him folded inward, like a sheet of silk drawn tight. The silver threads met a wall of nothing. They winked out—vanished as though they had never been.
The stranger snarled and spread his arms wide. The silver re-formed into a spear and a whip, flashing with a cold inner light. "Tangres Technique!" he roared, and the ground quaked.
The spear shot forward, faster than lightning.
Rajyugas slid a single step sideways. To the watching children at the edge of the trees, it looked as though the world itself shifted with him. The spear plunged into empty air where he had stood, then reappeared a heartbeat later twenty paces away, embedded harmlessly in a boulder.
Ansh clutched Daav to his chest, eyes wide. He had never imagined power like this. Every swing of the silver weapon sounded like mountains cracking. Every ripple of Rajyugas' movement bent the very night.
The stranger was relentless. With a flick of his wrist the whip of silver split into countless tendrils that darted like serpents. They struck from every direction, gouging trenches into the earth, shearing the tops from trees.
Rajyugas raised both hands. A sphere of distorted space blossomed outward, shimmering like heat over sand. The silver tendrils hit the invisible dome and skittered away, each strike echoing like a hammer on iron. Sparks of moonlight sprayed across the clearing.
"You think you can bar my claim?" the stranger bellowed. "I will grind you into dust!"
"You have poisoned these people," Rajyugas replied, his voice calm, cold. "I will not allow it."
The stranger's eyes went black as the liquid around him thickened, flowing over his arms like living armor. "Then you will die with them."
He slammed his palms together. The ground burst upward in twin geysers of silver. They curved high above, then fell like twin waterfalls aimed straight at Rajyugas.
Space shrieked.
Rajyugas traced a quick sigil in the air. Reality folded. The waterfalls split apart, their force suddenly redirected sideways. They smashed into the forest beyond, flattening a corridor of trees.
But the stranger was already moving. He leapt through his own silver rain, beard flying, a hammer of liquid metal forming around his fist. He brought it down with the weight of a mountain.
Rajyugas met the blow with an open palm.
The world popped—an audible crack—as though a bubble of existence burst. For an instant there was no sound, no movement, only a black void where the two forces met. Then the shockwave erupted, flattening grass and shaking the children to their knees.
Ashwini clung to Vijay, shielding Daav with her arms. "He's bending the air itself," she whispered, awestruck.
The stranger staggered back, eyes wide. "You twist the world like clay," he growled. "But clay can be shattered."
He flung his arms wide. The silver around him exploded into a storm of needles. They streaked outward in every direction, thousands of glinting darts.
Rajyugas exhaled, slow and measured.
The needles never reached him. Space warped; distance lengthened. A single step for the stranger became a thousand. The darts drifted, slowed, then hung motionless in the air as if caught in invisible honey.
With a flick of his fingers Rajyugas swept them aside. They dissolved into harmless mist.
The stranger's fury boiled. He slammed his heel into the ground. From the wound in the earth poured a tidal wave of silver, an entire river that roared toward Rajyugas with the force to drown a valley.
Rajyugas answered with silence. He raised both arms, and the very landscape bent. The rushing river met a wall of pure void, a perfect absence. It hit—and disappeared. No splash, no sound, just nothing.
The stranger faltered, confusion flashing across his face.
Rajyugas' eyes sharpened. "Leave this place," he said quietly, the words carrying like thunder. "Your sickness ends tonight."
"Never," the stranger spat.
He lunged again, the silver on his body condensing into a blade brighter than moonlight. He swung for Rajyugas' heart.
This time Rajyugas did not dodge. He stepped through the strike. Space folded like a door opening and closing. One moment he was in front of the blade; the next he was behind the stranger, palm raised.
A narrow line of utter darkness traced across the night.
The stranger gasped. The silver blade flickered, then shattered into droplets. A dark cut appeared across his chest, thin and perfectly straight.
He staggered forward, clutching the wound. "Impossible…"
Rajyugas lowered his hand. "It is finished."
But the stranger howled, a sound like metal tearing. The silver around him surged violently, forming a monstrous serpent of liquid light. Its jaws opened wide, ready to swallow the clearing whole.
Rajyugas spread his arms. The air quaked. Space itself compressed until the stars above seemed to bow. He clenched his fists.
The serpent froze mid-lunge. Its body warped, folding inward as invisible walls closed from every side. The silver screamed, twisting against the pressure, but the prison of nothing tightened until the serpent collapsed with a soundless implosion.
The stranger fell to his knees. The silver armor cracked, then dissolved into a rain of dull grey droplets that hissed as they hit the soil. He swayed, eyes wide with disbelief.
Rajyugas stepped closer, his gaze like a blade. "Leave this world," he said, and with a final gesture pulled the very ground from beneath the stranger's feet.
The man gave one last roar before the space around him folded in upon itself. In a flash of cold light he was gone—snuffed out like a candle in a sudden wind.
Silence reclaimed the clearing. Only the faint drip of spent silver remained, pattering onto blackened earth.
Rajyugas lowered his hands. The tension that had ruled the air loosened, though power still hummed faintly around him. He stood alone amid the ruin: trees split to splinters, rocks cleaved, the earth itself reshaped.
Slowly he turned, scanning the shadows where three small figures huddled behind the living wall Ashwini and Vijay had raised. His eyes softened when they met theirs, but he said nothing.
The children could not speak. Their ears rang with the echoes of a battle beyond mortal scale. They had seen trees shatter, rivers vanish, the sky itself fold like paper. They had seen their teacher—calm, silent Rajyugas—command the very fabric of space as though he were its first and only master.
For a long time none of them moved. Only the moonlight, cold and endless, bore witness to the end of the stranger and the quiet victory of the man who ruled the void.