The battlefield was chaos.
The night sky burned with streaks of scarlet fire, as if the heavens themselves were bleeding. The ground shook beneath the clash of magic and steel, splintering into craters where spells had struck. Kael staggered forward, his breathing ragged, every muscle screaming in protest. His hands trembled as he gripped his blade, blood dripping from his side where an enemy's strike had torn him open.
He had already pushed past his limits. His powers—those countless abilities he had cultivated—flared and flickered like dying stars. The echoes of his strength reverberated in the air, but they were fading, collapsing under the sheer weight of the enemy forces arrayed against him.
Around him, his allies fought desperately—Selene calling on her elemental blessings, Arion weaving illusions to confuse their attackers, Lyra firing arrows of pure light. But it wasn't enough. For every enemy they struck down, more came.
Kael fell to one knee, his blade embedding into the scorched earth to hold himself upright. His vision blurred. The edges of his consciousness darkened.
"Kael!" Selene's voice cut through the din, sharp with desperation. "Don't you dare fall now!"
But he couldn't answer.
The enemies closed in. Dark-robed sorcerers chanted in unison, their voices weaving a spell meant to bind his very soul. Warriors clad in black steel raised their weapons, eyes gleaming with cruel anticipation.
Kael's chest heaved, and for a moment, he thought it was over. He thought this was the end.
Then—
The world stopped.
A sound reverberated through his skull, not from outside, but from within. It was not one voice, but many—whispers, chants, cries, and roars all at once. Divine hymns and demonic howls tangled together in a discordant harmony. His body seized as a force unlike anything he had ever known surged through him.
Child of fate, a voice thundered, low and ancient.
Bearer of ruin, another hissed, sharp as a blade.
You are ours.
His veins burned with liquid fire. His soul splintered, fracturing under the weight of power too vast for any mortal frame. He screamed, the sound tearing through the battlefield, making both ally and enemy freeze in horror.
The robed sorcerers faltered. The warriors halted mid-charge. Even Selene's chant broke as her eyes widened in terror.
Kael's body convulsed, arcs of white and black lightning exploding from his form. His hair whipped wildly in an unseen storm, his wounds sealing shut in bursts of searing light. His eyes snapped open—glowing, not with one color, but with two: a blinding silver-white in the left, and a crimson abyss in the right.
He rose slowly, no longer trembling.
The ground beneath him fractured outward in a perfect circle, as though the earth itself feared his touch. Shadows coiled around his feet, yet from his back spread wings of pure radiance, neither angelic nor demonic but something beyond comprehension.
The battlefield fell silent.
Kael's lips parted, his voice no longer entirely human.
"I… remember now." His tone was cold, chilling. "This power was never theirs to grant. It was always mine."
The air thickened.
Every breath the enemies drew seemed heavier, every heartbeat slower. It was as though the very laws of existence bent beneath Kael's awakening presence. His aura expanded outward, colliding with the battlefield like a tidal wave. Men and women dropped their weapons, clutching their chests as their souls recoiled in primal fear.
Kael lifted his hand. Slowly. Deliberately.
A sorcerer screamed as his body was torn apart—not by blade, not by spell, but by command. Kael hadn't moved more than a gesture. Space itself had split, carving the man into dust.
Gasps echoed.
"What… what is he?" one soldier whispered, his voice breaking.
Kael's eyes glowed brighter. Silver light pulsed with divine brilliance, while crimson shadows writhed, hungry and chaotic. His power resonated in two extremes—order and chaos, creation and destruction—bound together in a single vessel.
A line of enemy warriors charged anyway, their fear drowned by desperation. Their armor clanged as they raised shields, rushing forward with battle cries meant to drown their terror.
Kael didn't even bother to draw his sword. He raised his palm and spoke a single word.
"Fall."
The ground buckled. Cracks spiderwebbed outward, glowing with molten fire. In an instant, the warriors collapsed—armor crumpling inward as if the weight of the world itself had been forced onto them. Bones shattered. Screams tore through the battlefield before silence followed.
Selene stumbled back, her staff trembling in her grip.
"Kael… this isn't you," she whispered, her voice small, broken.
But Kael didn't look at her. His gaze remained on the enemy, cold and merciless.
A black-armored knight roared, swinging his massive greatsword with both hands. The blade blazed with cursed flames as he leapt toward Kael. For a heartbeat, hope flickered in the enemy ranks.
Kael caught the sword mid-swing. With one hand.
The cursed flames sputtered and died. The knight's eyes widened in disbelief, but before he could even scream, Kael's grip crushed the blade into shards of metal. A moment later, his other hand pierced through the knight's chest, ripping out not just flesh and bone—
—but soul.
A sphere of shimmering essence pulsed in Kael's palm before he closed his fingers, snuffing it out like a candle.
The knight's body dropped lifelessly to the ground.
"Mon… monster," one of the sorcerers stammered, falling to his knees.
Kael finally spoke again, his voice calm yet dripping with menace.
"Monster? No. You mistake me." His crimson eye flared, shadows twisting upward like tendrils. "A monster is bound by limits. I am beyond them."
He spread his arms wide.
Light and darkness erupted in unison. Blinding radiance seared across the battlefield, while crawling shadows devoured the edges of reality. Both collided around Kael but did not consume him. They obeyed him.
A storm of paradoxes. A god's judgment wrapped in a devil's hunger.
Arion whispered in horror, his illusions unraveling. "He's… not human anymore."
Even Lyra, who had always believed Kael would be their unshakable protector, lowered her bow, her lips trembling. For the first time, she feared him more than the enemy.
The battlefield had shifted. The enemies no longer fought for victory. They fought for survival. And in that moment, deep down, every soul—ally or foe—knew the same truth.
Kael had ascended.
The battlefield burned with silence.
Every scream had been swallowed, every clash of steel forgotten. All that remained was the oppressive weight of Kael's aura pressing down like an invisible storm.
The remaining sorcerers broke formation, stumbling back as their chants faltered. One dropped to his knees, tears streaming down his face. "Forgive us! Please—"
Kael raised his hand, fingers curling slightly. The man's plea ended in a gurgled cry as his body unraveled into dust, scattered by a wind that did not exist.
"Forgiveness," Kael said, his voice carrying over the desolate battlefield. "A luxury of the weak. I am not weak."
The words cut deeper than any blade.
Selene's knuckles whitened around her staff. Her heart ached, her eyes wide with disbelief. The Kael she knew—the Kael who laughed in the quiet moments, who fought not just to win but to protect—was slipping away. What stood before her now was something else. Something darker.
Lyra whispered, voice trembling. "We can't… reach him anymore."
"Not yet," Selene whispered back, though her own conviction wavered.
Kael's wings of light and shadow spread wider, blotting out the sky. Energy crackled around him, bending the air and tearing rifts in space. From those rifts spilled flashes of dimensions unknown—worlds of fire, oceans of void, endless stars collapsing in silence.
The enemy commander, a scarred general clad in enchanted plate, gathered what courage he had left. "He bleeds like any man!" he shouted, rallying the last of his forces. "He is no god—strike him down!"
The desperate cry rallied a dozen warriors, who roared and charged together.
Kael didn't move.
A faint smile curved his lips. Cold. Inhuman.
Shadows shot outward from his body, spearing each soldier mid-stride. They froze, suspended in the air like insects pinned to glass. With a flick of Kael's wrist, they were torn apart—not with gore, not with blood, but shattered like glass statues, fragments of their existence erased from reality.
The general halted in his charge, horror rooting him in place. His legs shook.
Kael's silver eye locked onto him, glowing with unbearable brilliance. His crimson eye burned like the abyss itself.
"Your courage is admirable," Kael said, voice echoing like thunder across eternity. "But courage does not defy inevitability."
He stepped forward. The general fell to his knees, his weapon slipping from numb fingers.
Kael lifted his hand—then paused.
The battlefield itself trembled. The stars above flickered as though fearing his next command.
For a heartbeat, Kael hesitated. A flicker of humanity sparked in his expression, a memory clawing at the edges of his mind—Selene's voice, Lyra's laughter, Arion's loyalty. The bonds he had forged. The reasons he had fought.
But the moment passed.
His eyes darkened, the divine silver dimming, the crimson abyss swallowing its light.
"No," Kael whispered to himself. "Humanity is weakness."
With a single motion, the general was obliterated, reduced to nothingness.
Gasps echoed among both enemies and allies.
Selene staggered back, tears welling in her eyes.
"Kael… what have you become?"
Kael turned his head slowly, his gaze falling on her. For an instant, his expression softened—but then the shadows coiled tighter around him, and the moment was gone.
"I have become what the world demands," he said coldly. His voice carried not anger, not joy, but absolute certainty. "From this moment… gods and devils alike will kneel. I am neither. I am the abyss."
The sky itself seemed to darken at his declaration.
The battlefield drowned in his presence, and both ally and enemy knew—this was no longer the same man they had followed. This was something beyond mortal comprehension.
And in the silence that followed, a single truth settled over them all: