Chapter 25: The Temporal Hurricane
Rin hesitated for only a fraction of a second, his mind screaming against the danger of the merge. But the Void Hounds were closing in, their presence crushing the air and threatening to destabilize the newly sealed core.
"Fine, Arbiter!" Rin roared, letting go of his last vestiges of human self-preservation.
He channeled the entirety of his Rending Gale into the fate tether, forcing his vast reservoir of kinetic, wind-based mana into Aiden's core.
Aiden gasped, the sudden infusion of raw, chaotic energy overwhelming his Chronos systems. The influx of power was painful, but he immediately began to filter and control it.
"Chronos Filter: Kinetic Acceleration!" Aiden commanded, his eyes blazing blue.
He took Rin's raw wind energy, the massive, chaotic speed of the Gale, and passed it through the temporal filter, forcing the wind to move faster than normal causality allowed.
Rin's sword, the Blade of the Rending Gale, burst into a shimmering silver light. When he swung, the sword didn't just cut; it created a Temporal Hurricane—a devastating vortex of hyper-accelerated wind that tore through space and time.
The first Void Hound that entered the radius of the Temporal Hurricane didn't vaporize; it decayed. The Chronos-accelerated wind stripped the chaotic energy from the Void Hound's form at an unnatural speed, tearing its molecules apart into dust and black vapor within milliseconds.
The other Hounds shrieked and recoiled, the hyper-accelerated decay an existential threat to their formless existence.
Rin, now acting as the eye of the Hurricane, moved with impossible grace, his blade a blur. He was moving so fast, only Aiden's Chronos vision could track him.
"Left Flank! Deep Strike!" Aiden directed, his voice a low, mechanical command transmitted directly into Rin's mind via the Tether of Silence. Rin didn't hear the words, but he felt the vector of the command, the precise angle and timing of the strike needed to maximize the temporal decay.
Rin moved, his blade turning into a silver arc that ripped through five Void Hounds in a single, perfectly calibrated pass.
The remaining Vanguard watched in stunned silence. Rin and Aiden were no longer two separate hunters. They were a single, devastating entity of controlled chaos—the perfect, paradoxical weapon.
The combat was brutal, fast, and terrifyingly efficient. Within two minutes, the entire wave of Nyx's Void Hounds was annihilated, their chaotic energy dispersed by the Temporal Hurricane.
RRin lowered his blade, panting, the silver light fading. Aiden collapsed to his knees, his face pale, but a satisfied, cold smirk touched his lips.
"The merge is successful," Aiden confirmed, struggling to his feet. "The Temporal Hurricane is stable. It is the only counter-force against the void."
Rin walked to him, not with tenderness, but with a fierce, protective necessity. He helped Aiden stand, their bodies pressed together.
You almost killed yourself again, you idiot, Rin tried to project through the tether.
A sharp, paralyzing pain flashed through both of their cores, a painful reminder of the Tether of Silence.
Rin closed his eyes, accepting the constraint. He had the weapon he needed, and he had the man he loved, but he could never tell him why. The victory was as painful as the betrayal.