Aevor's expression didn't change, not even after Lyxaria's kiss still lingered in the air like a stolen spark, not even after Luna's wings trembled with barely restrained fury, not even after the unseen yandere presence let out another almost-inaudible growl that rippled through the conceptual dust of the void like the exhale of a jealous god who tolerated nothing and no one encroaching upon what she had already, irrevocably, eternally claimed; instead, he stood there in that calm, sovereign silence that made both girls feel the weight of their own heartbeat, as though their reactions were nothing more than small waves breaking against a mountain that had existed before waves knew how to move.
Lyxaria, still flushed from the kiss she had boldly stolen, still trembling from the way Aevor had looked at her seconds prior, still caught between smug triumph and an instinctive submission she was trying very hard not to show, leaned forward ever so slightly as if waiting — no, craving — a reaction from him, any reaction, even the smallest flicker of irritation or acknowledgment or amusement, as though she needed proof that the kiss had actually reached him.
It hadn't.
Or maybe it had, and he simply didn't consider it relevant enough to alter even a fraction of his composure.
Luna, on the other hand, couldn't breathe properly; jealousy curled through her like molten wire, and yet beneath that jealousy was something else — fear, trembling, raw fear that Lyxaria had stepped across a line, and that Aevor had let her, even if only for a moment, even if only because it was not worth stopping. Her fingers hovered near his sleeve again, desperate to reclaim him, to show that the bond she held was not something a foxborn interloper could simply rewrite with a kiss.
But before Luna could speak, before Lyxaria could press closer again, Aevor lifted one hand.
Just one.
Slow, deliberate.
His fingers extended toward Lyxaria's ear.
Not the chin this time.
The ear.
Lyxaria's entire body froze — not from fear, but from anticipation that radiated through her so intensely she nearly sagged forward before he even touched her, her fox ears twitching wildly in a futile attempt at composure as her breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat, forming a tight knot that quivered with heat and helpless excitement.
Aevor's fingers brushed the edge of her ear.
A single stroke.
Light.
Effortless.
Almost bored.
And Lyxaria… collapsed.
Not physically, though her knees buckled and her back arched in a way that suggested she barely remembered how to stand; she collapsed inside, pride folding, composure melting, her thoughts dissolving into a dizzy haze as that simple, casual scratch behind her ear unraveled her from the inside out, turning her from the smug Vyxari who had just kissed him into a trembling creature who leaned into the touch with shameless hunger.
A sound escaped her — soft, trembling, utterly involuntary — the kind of breathy, broken whimper that came only from the deepest part of instinct.
Luna made a noise too.
A noise made of claws and jealousy.
Aevor ignored both.
He continued scratching, slow and rhythmic, each stroke precise in a way that suggested he understood exactly how much control he wielded in that moment and exactly how deeply Lyxaria was drowning in it. Her tails fluttered wildly behind her, ribbons spasming in delight, her eyes fluttering half-shut as every ounce of her arrogance melted into warm, obedient bliss.
When Aevor finally withdrew his hand, she nearly stumbled forward, chasing the touch like a creature terrified of losing heat.
"Breathe," Aevor murmured, his voice low and steady, carrying that calm authority that didn't need volume to command obedience. "You're shaking."
Lyxaria shivered harder.
"I—I am not—" she tried to say, but her voice cracked midway, betraying her completely, and Luna's glare sharpened into a blade of triumphant fury.
Aevor glanced at both of them — just a glance — and the emotional warfare instantly stilled, as though the void itself swallowed their urges.
He stepped forward once, the shift of weight alone enough to straighten Luna's posture and make Lyxaria's breath hitch like she was being reeled back into the world.
"Both of you," he said calmly, "focus."
Lyxaria swallowed.
Luna nodded.
Aevor's gaze moved upward toward the endless lattice of universes above the Eonbark branch, and with the same casual inevitability with which he breathed, he added:
"We are testing something."
Lyxaria blinked. "…Testing?"
Luna straightened, wings rustling. "What kind of test?"
"Strength," Aevor said. "Stamina. Capacity."
Lyxaria smirked, her confidence returning in slow ripples. "Who are we measuring, exactly?"
"All three of us."
Lyxaria's eyes sparked with challenge.
Luna's eyes sparked with competitive fury.
Aevor simply raised a finger — and the test began.
The universes that hung from the branch of Eonbark shimmered, each one a self-contained reality with its own cosmological laws, timelines, and infinite Veils folded within deeper infinities, and Lyxaria stretched out her hand first, her palm glowing with foxfire brilliance as she wrapped her power around an infinite succession of universes, each one thrumming like a star trapped beneath her touch.
She lifted them.
Effortlessly.
A chain of infinite universes swayed in the void, suspended above her hand, fractal layers trembling like they were weightless ornaments.
Luna inhaled sharply.
Her wings unfurled.
She extended one finger toward the same cosmic tapestry — and her power surged with that feverish, emotional intensity that always accompanied anything she did for Aevor. A resonant hum burst outward, and infinite universes snapped upward at her command, entire clusters of Veils pulling free from the structure with a sound like creation exhaling.
She lifted them too.
Effortlessly.
Side by side, Lyxaria and Luna held up infinite cosmologies like they were delicate glass beads.
Lyxaria smirked. "Not bad for a girl who sneezes."
Luna hissed under her breath. "Not bad for someone who melts when her ear is touched."
Before the argument spiraled into claws and teeth and foxfire, Aevor spoke:
"Move."
The word landed like a decree.
Both obeyed.
They stepped aside.
Aevor approached the base of the Eonbark branch — a colossal metaphysical axis whose roots were older than time, stretching into layers that transcended the concept of dimensionality.
The entire layer.
The branch.
The universes.
The Veils.
The whole cosmological expanse.
He didn't prepare.
He didn't gather power.
He didn't even seem to exert intent.
He simply extended his hand… and raised his pinky.
Just the pinky.
He placed it beneath the colossal structure.
And lifted.
The entire layer rose.
Not slowly.
Not with rumbling strain.
It rose with a smooth, silent grace, as though it weighed less than a breath, as though mass and size and infinity and density were irrelevant before the presence of a being whose strength wasn't measured by force, but by the simplicity with which he bypassed all rules that defined force to begin with.
Luna gasped.
Lyxaria's jaw dropped.
Reality itself bent around the lift, universes dangling like lanterns, cosmic branches swaying like silk ribbons, entire mythic topologies tilting upward under the effortless motion of Aevor's smallest finger.
And he still wasn't done.
He held it there.
Who knows for how long, as there is no concept of time here.
But continuously, effortlessly, without a shift in breath or posture, as though infinite weight were indistinguishable from none, as though his stamina — inexhaustible by nature, endless in scope — made the act of lifting an entire cosmological layer with a pinky no more taxing than lifting dust.
Finally, Aevor looked at the girls.
Calm.
Unbothered.
Almost bored.
"Your turn," he said.
Lyxaria stared at him, voice trembling. "A-Aevor… you— how— you just lifted—"
"The layer," Luna whispered. "He lifted the entire layer. With his pinky."
Aevor lowered the structure gently, the colossal weight settling with not so much as a ripple as he withdrew his hand, dusting his fingers almost absentmindedly.
"That is my baseline," he said.
Lyxaria felt something in her chest ignite.
Luna felt something in her chest shatter.
The moment the colossal layer settled back into stillness, its vast mass restored to a quiet equilibrium after Aevor had lifted it with nothing more than the casual curl of his pinky finger—performed with such effortless indifference that the very concept of resistance seemed to wither into irrelevance in his presence—both Luna and Lyxaria found themselves frozen not out of fear but out of the overwhelming confrontation with a form of supremacy so absolute that their inexhaustible stamina, their transcendent reservoirs of power, their identities as beings who could stand above entire systems of metaphysical authority, all felt strangely small beneath the shadow of his unfathomable ease.
Aevor rolled his shoulder lazily, as though the act of lifting a cosmic layer—an expanse larger than most gods could conceptualize—was no more taxing than brushing dust from his sleeve, and with that faint smirk that implied both amusement and a silent dare, he let his voice spill into the air with that calm, domineering clarity that always made Luna's breath catch and Lyxaria's tails flick with an emotion she hated putting a name to.
"To think," he murmured, each word long and slow like a verdict descending upon reality itself, "that this was meant to be a challenge."
Lyxaria exhaled sharply, her ears flicking back for a heartbeat before she regained her poise, although even her natural arrogance—etched into her bloodline and anchored in her identity as a Vyxari—wavered under the weight of witnessing him exert less than a grain of effort to perform what should have been a cosmological impossibility.
Luna, cheeks flushed and expression trembling somewhere between awe, devotion, and an instinctive desire to please him, stepped closer. "A-Aevor…" she said in a low voice, each syllable stretched with reverence, "that was… beyond anything I've ever seen."
Lyxaria's lips curled with an amused superiority as she leaned forward, golden bells on her earrings chiming softly, her expression dripping with foxlike confidence. "It was impressive, yes, but it's not as though the three of us didn't already know he operates on a scale most beings couldn't touch even in their most delusional dreams," she said, her tone long and silky, though her sharp violet gaze never left Aevor's face, searching for even the slightest reaction, the tiniest acknowledgment of her presence. "Still… I suppose it clarifies certain things."
Aevor simply chuckled, a low, dismissive sound that made both of them stiffen like students caught worshipping their teacher.
"Well," he said, spreading his hands as though inviting whatever came next, "if we're done with warm-ups, what now?"
Lyxaria and Luna exchanged a glance, competitive tension sparking instantly like the ignition of two cosmic storms colliding. And then, at the exact same moment, as though driven by a mutual obsession to understand the scale Aevor existed on, and perhaps more importantly to impress him, they each summoned a sheet of shimmering parchment that manifested in mid-air—one crafted from Luna's esoteric Eryndaline reality-ink, the other from the Vyxari's luminescent essence-script, both representing entirely different systems of manipulation.
Luna's parchment folded itself out of the surrounding air, born from a whisper of her conceptual weaving.
Lyxaria's materialized like a ribbon of fox-fire condensing into papery form, thick with self-shaping metaphysical intent.
And Aevor raised a brow, amused, because even he found it interesting how two beings with such violently different origins unconsciously mirrored each other the moment he stood before them.
They wrote one word on their pages.
Infinite.
For every stat.
Strength, durability, speed, willpower, intelligence, abilities, potential—each line etched with infinite symbols looped into complex spirals, as if infinity itself struggled to convey the magnitude they meant.
Aevor's smile widened.
"Really?" he drawled, the word stretched long enough to make them both tense, "infinity?"
Luna swallowed. Lyxaria clicked her tongue.
Aevor stepped closer, looking down at their pages with the same expression he might use to humor a child showing him a crayon drawing of the cosmos.
"Infinity cannot calculate my stats."
Both girls stiffened.
Lyxaria's ears twitched sharply. Luna's pulse thrashed visibly at her throat.
He let silence linger, not because he needed to—but because watching them react pleased him.
Then he added, in a tone softer and far more devastating:
"And to be fair… you're calculating based on what I've shown you. Which is something like—"
He raised a hand and pinched two fingers together until the space between them was impossibly small.
"—zero point zero zero one percent of my true power."
The effect was instantaneous.
Luna inhaled sharply, her heart nearly exploding in her chest with the realization that everything she had just witnessed—Aevor lifting a layer with his pinky, reshaping reality by flicking his wrist, existing effortlessly above systems that defined creation—was a microscopic fragment of what he truly was.
Lyxaria, prideful, arrogant, and towering in superiority by nature of her race, found herself speechless for the first time since her birth. Her tail flicked once, twice, betraying a shock she could not hide.
But Luna, impulsive and ever eager to impress him, stepped forward so quickly Lyxaria growled under her breath at the boldness.
"Then—then let's do another challenge," Luna said, her voice trembling with excitement and reverence, long sentences spilling from her lips like a dam had broken inside her, "let's see who—who has more abilities, who can perform more transcendences, who can manifest higher forms of conceptual manipulation, who can surpass the other in sheer diversity and depth—Aevor, let's do that, let's try that, let's—"
Lyxaria cut her off with a smirk so sharp it could slice through willpower.
"Careful, little moon," she purred, stretching her words slow and elegant, "you might embarrass yourself in front of him."
Luna glared, sparks crackling from her fingertips.
Aevor didn't stop either of them.
Because he didn't need to.
With a single flick of his gaze, the air bent, the ground shivered, and space itself rearranged into an arena-like expanse—not for him, but for them, because the very idea of him needing an arena was hilarious.
"Fine," he said, voice rich with amusement, "if you want to drown yourselves in the comparison, go ahead."
And so it began.
Luna unleashed Temporal Totality Override, followed by Aetheric Bloom Harmonization, then Eryndal Fractal Reversion, and Soul-Thread Recomposition, pushing her entire arsenal outward in long cascades of luminous power.
Lyxaria retaliated with Essence-Shift Warpbloom, Vyxari Self-Shaping Dialectic, Meta-Instinct Apex Tuning, Mythic Fox-Fire Reality Scar, and Quantum Mirage Ten-Tail Rend, each ability drawn from a race born from the instability of undefined possibilities.
Dozens became hundreds.
Hundreds became uncountable.
They manifested:
Conceptual inversion
Dimensional overwriting
Causality weaving
Infinite recursion sight
Memory architecture forging
Self-deterministic rewriting
Non-linear identity grafting
Fiction-actualization binding
Omni-veil rethreading
Trans-modal compression
Existential mirroring
Primordial intention shaping
Hyperlink soul migration
Entropic refusal
Living paradox induction
Meta-layer harmonics
Pre-origin crafting
Transcendental singular imprints
Void-logic chromatic seals
Superpositional divinity lapses
Axiomatic pulse inflection
Thought-architecture disassembly
Spirit-chain deemergence
Temporal chord synthesis
And the flood kept going, neither of them tiring for even a second, because their stamina was inexhaustible, their power sources endless, their wills sharpened by the desire to stand as close as possible to Aevor—even though both of them knew they stood at distances he had long transcended.
Aevor watched, arms folded, expression calm, lovely, mercilessly amused.
After several minutes, perhaps hours—it was impossible to tell because time had politely stepped aside—Aevor finally lifted a hand.
"That's enough."
Both froze instantly.
Luna panting, Lyxaria bristling, the air thick with unleashed power that hadn't even scratched the bark beneath their feet.
"You both have over infinite abilities," Aevor said, voice long and soft, "but comparing yourselves like that… is pointless."
They both stared at him.
And he smirked.
"Because even if you had infinite more… it would still not reach me."
The silence that followed was long, heavy, and electric.
And then—
A faint shimmer in the distance.
A presence watching.