The battlefield had gone silent.
Smoke bled into the twilight, turning the air into a living storm. The ground was scorched with aether burns, molten lines still pulsing from the clashes that had come before. Aryan knelt amid the wreckage, his breath shallow, fingers clawed into the dirt. Ahan and Abhi stood beside him, weapons drawn but useless now — the stage had shifted far beyond them.
Two figures remained at the heart of the field.
Siddharth and Virak.
One, wrapped in the pale shimmer of white aether — radiant but controlled, like light bent through glass.
The other, steeped in an abyssal black glow that rippled like living smoke.
Between them, the dust hung weightless, caught in the tension of two wills too powerful to coexist.
"You've run long enough," Virak said, his voice low, distorted, echoing with the hum of his dark aether. "Every time, you slipped away. Every time, you thought the light could outlast the shadow."
Siddharth didn't move. His eyes glowed faintly, calm but unyielding. "And yet, here you are — still chasing the light you claim to despise."
Virak smiled. "No. I've learned to consume it."
He stepped forward — and the ground fractured. Just one step, and fissures webbed outward, molten cracks glowing red. A ripple of black energy followed, bending gravity itself. Reinforcements, soldiers who had been regrouping on the edges, stumbled back, their vision blurring from the distortion.
Siddharth lowered his stance, his palms open, breathing deep. "Then let's see if you can still stand when the light fights back."
The first strike wasn't seen — only heard.
A sound like thunder, then two afterimages flickered and collided midair. Virak's knee caught Siddharth's ribs; the impact sent a shockwave that tore through a row of broken pillars. Siddharth twisted midflight, catching himself on an invisible platform of solidified aether, then reappeared behind Virak, palm slicing through the air.
A beam of compressed white light erupted — clean, sharp, and pure.
Virak turned, letting the beam cut across his shoulder. Flesh sizzled; smoke hissed. He grinned. "That all you've got?"
"Not yet."
Siddharth blurred forward. Every motion was efficient, honed — a master's rhythm. His strikes came not as random swings but as patterns — palms, elbows, knees, every impact exploding with white aether bursts that illuminated the dark battlefield like lightning.
Virak countered with raw force. Every block shook the ground; every punch left black trails that hung like ghosts in the air. Their movements shredded the space around them — black and white lights spiraling, clashing, merging, repelling.
It was chaos. Beautiful, terrifying chaos.
From afar, Ahan's voice broke through the roar. "They're moving faster… the energy's distorting the field!"
Abhi squinted, eyes wide. "No — it's not distortion. It's them. They're bending space itself."
Aryan said nothing. His fists trembled. Every time Siddharth struck, it echoed something deep within him — a rhythm he knew, a conviction he once admired. But watching Virak absorb every hit, laughing through the pain, he felt something colder than fear: the understanding of what true imbalance looked like.
Siddharth spun, his heel cutting through aether-thickened air. Virak blocked, caught the leg, twisted — and slammed Siddharth down hard enough to crater the ground. Dust exploded outward, swallowing them both.
Then — silence.
For one heartbeat, the battlefield was still. Even the wind stopped.
And then, in the center of the crater, light erupted.
White fire met black smog, colliding in a spiral that tore into the sky. The sound came seconds later — a roar that rattled bones.
When the dust cleared, both stood again — bruised, bleeding, but smiling in defiance.
"You're holding back," Virak said, voice hoarse but sharp. "Why?"
"Because I can still feel your restraint too," Siddharth replied. His tone wasn't mocking — just understanding. "You've never fought to kill me. Just to prove that you could."
Virak's grin faded. "You think I need proof?"
He raised his hand. A sphere of black aether pulsed in his palm, small at first, then expanding, veins of red energy crawling through it like cracks in reality. The ground beneath him warped, sucked toward it.
Siddharth lifted his own hand. His white aether flared in response, tendrils coiling around his arm, pure light against the dark. The contrast split the battlefield clean in two — shadow and brilliance, hatred and resolve.
They stood, motionless, each waiting for the other to move first.
"Whatever happens now," Siddharth said quietly, "this ends here."
Virak's lips curled into a silent snarl. "Yes… it does."
They vanished.
The next instant, air detonated between them as they met mid-sprint, white and black colliding in a shockwave so massive that the reinforcements were thrown off their feet. The trio shielded themselves, the light blinding even through closed eyes.
In the blinding flash — two silhouettes locked mid-punch, frozen in the moment of impact.
And the world cracked.