The dimension was bleeding.
Deep within the distorted, fragmented pocket of inverted reality, the air itself hummed with the sickening clash of two opposing forces. Broken chunks of shattered concrete, streetlamps, and fragments of what used to be a bustling city floated aimlessly in the anti-gravity vacuum.
Rehan stood atop a fractured slab of stone, breathing heavily. Blood dripped steadily from the side of his temple, tracing a crimson path down his jawline before falling into the endless abyss below. His clothes were shredded, and his skin bore deep lacerations that hissed with residual dark energy.
Yet, across from him, the entity known as the Lord of Time wasn't unblemished either.
Morgath hovered in the dead center of the void, his green-black aura flickering violently like an unstable storm of shadows. A jagged, golden-edged scar ran across his twisted chest—a remnant of Rehan's earlier strike that had managed to bypass the warped fabric of time. Dark, viscous fluid leaked from the wound.
Morgath touched the cut with his razor-sharp claws, his twisted face contorting into an eerie, amused grin.
"You have grit, brat," Morgath's voice echoed across the empty expanse, dripping with sinister delight. "I genuinely didn't expect a mere mortal child to push me to this extent. To think you could scar a being that commands the flow of reality itself..."
Rehan didn't smile. His grip on his glowing sword tightened until his knuckles turned bone-white. The golden aura radiating around him flared violently—molten and untamed, like a miniature sun struggling against an encroaching eclipse.
His eyes were burning with cold, suffocating rage.
"Shut your mouth and fight," Rehan's voice dropped into a dangerous, guttural growl. "Right now... I can't feel Li Wei's aura anymore. It's gone. Completely vanished. All I can sense through the distant dimensional drift is Ishita... and Zahir."
The golden flames around Rehan pulsed erratically, mirroring the turmoil tearing through his chest.
"If anything happened to him... I won't just defeat you, Morgath. I will erase every trace of your existence."
The Clashing Blades
Morgath's laughter burst out, sharp and mocking, vibrating through the spatial fissures.
"Grief makes mortals so terribly predictable!" Morgath shrieked.
In a fraction of a millisecond, the green-black storm erupted behind the demon. Morgath swiped his massive claws downward, slicing through three separate layers of space simultaneously.
"Demon Slash: Nether Rend!"
A colossal arc of pitch-black, corrosive energy tore through the void, accelerating as it distorted the very timeline of its trajectory. It didn't just fly; it skipped through moments, arriving instantly before Rehan's chest.
Rehan gritted his teeth and raised his blade, channeling pure, compressed golden radiance along the steel edge:
CRRAAAASH—!
The collision generated a blinding shockwave that shattered floating debris for hundreds of meters around them. The sheer, overwhelming kinetic force drove Rehan backward, his boots skidding across the floating stone.
Crack.
A sickening sound resonated through his arms. A visible hairline fracture formed along the spine of his glowing sword. The dark corrosion began eating into the golden metal, threatening to snap the blade in half.
Morgath's twisted face appeared directly above him, his malevolent eyes gleaming in the dark.
"What's wrong, boy?!" Morgath mocked, pressing down with immense pressure. "Looks like you're reaching your absolute limit! Let's see who walks out of this forgotten rift alive!"
The clash descended into raw, ferocious close-quarters warfare.
Morgath blurred into multiple afterimages, using time dilations to strike from five different angles at once. Rehan parried desperately—Clang! Clang! Boom!—sparks of golden light and venomous green flames detonated with every deflection. Rehan swung his sword in a wide arc, attempting to carve through the demon's flank, but Morgath phase-shifted backward, his claw snapping forward like a whip.
Sssshk!
The claw grazed Rehan's cheek, leaving a deep, burning cut.
The momentum broke. The sheer repulsive force of the dark aura blasted Rehan out of the air. He crashed hard onto a shattered slab of asphalt, sliding several meters before coming to a halt on one knee, gasping for air.
The Venom of the Demon
Rehan stayed down, his chest heaving, his sword trembling in his bloodied palm. The fatigue was finally catching up to his physical vessel.
Morgath descended slowly, his feet never touching the ground, looking down at the kneeling human with supreme arrogance.
"Look at you," Morgath sneered, extending his arms as if addressing an audience. "Kneeling in the dirt, clinging to a broken weapon. Is this what humanity places its bets on? A weak, sentimental child?"
Morgath took a slow step forward in the air, his voice dripping with venomous mockery.
"Your so-called friend, Li Wei? If his aura is gone, it means he was crushed like the insignificant bug he was. He probably died screaming in agony, realizing how utterly worthless his resistance truly was. And that girl... Ishita? The twin demons will tear her apart piece by piece before Lord Ghost Demon claims her soul."
Morgath leaned down slightly, his grin widening until it reached his ears.
"This world of yours is a joke, Rehan. Weaklings protecting weaklings, preaching about hope and bonds. It's pathetic. The moment the strong arrive, your fragile little civilization crumbles like dry ash. You cannot protect your friends. You cannot protect your world. You are just a stepping stone for the true rulers of reality."
The False Limit
For a long second, only the crackle of distant dimensional lightning could be heard.
Then, Rehan's fingers dug into the cracked stone beneath him.
"You're wrong..." Rehan whispered.
Dheere se, Rehan stood up. His head was lowered, but the golden aura around his body suddenly stabilized into an absolute, eerie stillness. The chaotic flickering stopped.
"You don't understand a single thing about us... about Li Wei... or about this world."
WHOOSH!
In an explosion of blinding rage, Rehan launched himself forward, closing the gap in the blink of an eye. His sword blazed with every drop of aura he had gathered, aiming a lethal, horizontal cleave straight for Morgath's throat.
Snap.
Morgath effortlessly leaned his head back, letting the edge of the blade miss by mere millimeters. With a sinister chuckle, Morgath's claw shot forward and firmly locked around Rehan's wrist, arresting all his momentum instantly.
With a swift, disdainful twist, Morgath spun Rehan around, pinning his arm behind his back and pulling him close, his dark aura suppressing Rehan's movements completely.
"Did you really think a temper tantrum would work?" Morgath whispered right into Rehan's ear, laughing condescendingly. "Brat... did you really believe I was fighting at full strength? I haven't even unleashed my true power yet. You didn't even realize how outmatched you were, did you?"
Rehan's breathing was shallow. His body was trembling—visibly shaking from head to toe, as if the sheer exhaustion had drained every last ounce of life from his muscles.
His voice came out weak, ragged, and trembling:
"Is that so...?" Rehan murmured, his words barely audible through his labored breaths. "...You think... you're the only one... who hasn't shown their true power yet?"
Morgath's smirk suddenly froze.
The trembling in Rehan's body wasn't from exhaustion.
It was the physical strain of containing an unimaginable, catastrophic density of energy that had been compressed to its absolute limit within his core.
Before Morgath's brain could even process the sudden shift in atmospheric pressure, Rehan's eyes snapped open—glowing not with golden flames, but with a pure, blinding, stellar radiance.
"Unseal."
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The entire void inverted. The shockwave didn't travel; it simply consumed everything within a thousand-meter radius instantly.
Rehan moved.
It wasn't speed. It was absolute displacement. To Morgath's perception, the concept of time ceased to exist. There was no wind, no sound, no trajectory.
CRUSH—!
Morgath didn't even see the strike. He didn't feel the impact until the force had already caved in his entire chest cavity, shattering his ribs and pulverizing his demonic core.
A deafening sonic boom echoed seconds after the blow had already landed. Morgath's eyes rolled back as the colossal kinetic and pure aura blast sent his massive body hurtling across the void like a broken ragdoll, smashing through five floating concrete structures before crashing violently into the dimensional bedrock below.
The smoke cleared.
Standing in the epicenter of the shattered void, Rehan stood tall, his silhouette glowing like an awakened deity against the darkness, watching the fallen Lord of Time with unyielding, merciless eyes.