The city was gone. What stood in its place was a battlefield that barely clung to reality, stone spirals hanging in the air, streets caving into nothing, and the sky splitting open like glass.
At the center, Kai Xander stood wrapped in golden flame that radiated like sunlight. It did not scorch or devour, it shone. His aura pressed down, silent and absolute, beautiful enough to look divine, terrifying enough to feel inescapable. Behind him, Avalokiteshvara's thousand hands spread wide, each one shimmering with the same brilliance, ready to strike.
Across from him, Yobokari smiled faintly. His Akugan burned scarlet, veins crawling across his face like cracks in the earth. The Shi'en Jinkai loomed behind him, palms seared with glyphs that pulsed like dying stars.
Yobokari (mocking, calm):
"Look at you. The Veilbreaker. Hero, savior… jailer. Tell me, Kai, what's left of your mercy when the wheel itself refuses to turn?"
Kai (quiet, firm):
"…It still turns. Even if it breaks a thousand times, it turns."
Yobokari (sharp laugh):
"You're clinging to a corpse. I burn the wheel to ash, and you call that evil?"
(He lifts his palm. A temple vanishes, erased without sound.)
"This is freedom. To cut away everything that binds us. Even gods are edits waiting to be erased."
Kai stepped forward. The stone beneath his foot shattered into glowing lotus petals. His eyes locked on Yobokari's, unwavering.
Kai:
"You're not freeing anyone. You're just replacing one cage with another."
The air screamed. Avalokiteshvara's thousand hands descended, each strike tearing the ground into lunar craters. Yobokari moved with a flick of his wrist, whole rows of arms vanished mid-strike, wiped clean like chalk.
But Kai's voice cut through the chaos.
Kai:
"…Karmic Reflection."
One surviving hand mirrored Yobokari's gesture. For an instant, the world stuttered. A half-destroyed shrine flickered back into existence, still burning, but real again.
Yobokari's smirk widened. He raised his right hand. Seven crimson eyes opened in his palm, each spiraling inward, each one a star devouring itself.
Yobokari (low, surgical):
"This is truth without mercy."
Kai drew in a slow breath. The thousand arms folded inward, compressing into one perfect hand of golden radiance. The battlefield dimmed, as though every other light bowed before his flame.
Kai (steady, unshaken):
"Then I'll answer you… with mercy without end."
The palms met.
The world exploded into white.
Silence. The battlefield is gone.
"That battle… that name… the boy who would shatter the veil. This is how it began."
The white fades into the Bodhira mountains. A boy no older than seventeen sits in lotus position, fire petals circling around his body as he breathes. His name is Kai Xander, and the story begins before the world learned why he was called the Veilbreaker.