The air hung heavy, trembling with light.
Shattered marble. Fractured echoes. Every breath in Bhutala's arena seemed to wait for something to end.
Siddharth stood at the center of the ruin, white Aether cascading from his form like a storm of feathers. His chest rose, slow and steady, every exhale burning pale fire against the darkness that coiled opposite him. Virak's obsidian aura licked upward like smoke, black Aether bending gravity, swallowing the air.
Two forces — one consuming, one purifying — and between them, silence.
Ahan, Abhi, Aryan, and Vigil could only watch. Troops frozen mid-step, eyes wide, weapons forgotten.
"You've run long enough," Virak said, voice low, calm — the calm before destruction.
"You've chased too long," Siddharth answered. "You never understood what you were running from."
A ripple of laughter. And then — stillness snapped.
Virak moved first.
A black shockwave tore across the cracked stone. Siddharth met it head-on, both palms open, white flame bursting into the form of a radiant spear. The impact ripped through the amphitheater — light and darkness folding, each blow fracturing the ground in concentric rings.
Siddharth vanished — flash-step, reappearing above Virak with a downward strike. Virak turned, catching the spear mid-swing, black Aether condensing into a single arm guard that shone like obsidian glass. The two energies screamed against each other — sparks not of fire, but of reality itself.
The world bent.
Abhi covered his face. The brightness was unbearable. Even through the noise, he heard Aryan whisper —
"They're not human anymore."
Virak twisted, a backhand that sent Siddharth crashing into the remains of a wall. He didn't stop. He blurred forward, dragging a wake of shadows, each step splitting into mirages of himself — duplicates of motion, overlapping, confusing, unrelenting.
But Siddharth was faster.
He slammed his palms together — clang — a ripple of white lines burned outward, forming a sigil beneath him. Every black clone flickered, froze mid-strike, then shattered into dust.
Virak's real form lunged through the cloud — too late. Siddharth was already in front of him, one knee raised, elbow drawn back. A single, perfect strike.
Impact.
Virak's body bent backward from the hit, his jaw snapping sideways, a spray of black Aether scattering like shards of glass. The crowd gasped — even Vigil's smug grin faltered.
Siddharth landed softly, eyes dimming slightly. The white fire that surrounded him pulsed unevenly now, flickering, like a candle in wind. His body was starting to fail.
"You're... fading," Virak growled, voice warped, smile returning.
"Maybe," Siddharth replied, breathing heavy. "But I don't need to win. I just need to stop you."
Virak's grin widened. "Then stop me."
The world collapsed into chaos again.
They clashed midair, a storm made flesh.
Each strike painted the air — white arcs cutting through black crescents.
The sound wasn't metal, wasn't flesh — it was something cosmic, like tectonic plates grinding beneath stars.
White light carved through pillars, leaving trails that hummed before fading.
Black tendrils coiled upward, swallowing beams whole.
And somewhere in the middle — Siddharth, burning brighter and dimmer all at once. His every move left afterimages of light that peeled away from him like souls departing.
Second Pulse.
Virak raised both arms, gathering Aether until the air itself screamed. The shadows expanded — his body became silhouette, veins glowing like molten coal.
Siddharth matched him — both palms outward, channeling every fragment of remaining power. His veins glowed white, so bright they outshone the world.
The ground cracked between them.
And then — collision.
Aether met Aether.
White met black.
Creation met decay.
The explosion swallowed everything — an expanding dome of inverted color, the center a perfect void.
Ahan and the others were thrown back. Sound vanished — no scream, no blast — just silence.
Only light.
When the smoke thinned, both figures still stood.
Siddharth, chest heaving, arm scorched in streaks of dark Aether — it crawled under his skin like ink.
Virak's armor cracked, eyes gleaming feral red through the fractures.
They moved again.
Siddharth caught Virak's punch midair. Virak countered, elbow up — blocked.
Knee strike — deflected.
Palm strike — connects.
Kick — evaded.
Headbutt — both stagger.
Two gods trading blows in a dead world.
"You could have joined me," Virak said through clenched teeth.
"You could have stopped," Siddharth spat back.
"Peace is for those who forget what power feels like."
"And ruin is for those who remember only that."
They collided one final time.
The impact bent light itself — the amphitheater folding, inverting, until it looked as if the universe blinked.
Then — the white Aether inside Siddharth erupted.
It wasn't rage. It wasn't fear. It was defiance.
Every cell of his being became energy, every heartbeat a final spark.
"Not... today."
Siddharth thrust his hand forward.
Aether condensed — a single line, a spear of light — and pierced through Virak's chest.
For a moment, time stood still.
Virak's eyes widened — not from pain, but disbelief.
Siddharth smiled faintly.
"For them."
Then, like glass meeting dawn, Siddharth's form began to dissolve. His body fragmented into pure light, scattering upward — white Aether fragments floating like ash in reverse.
Virak fell to one knee, smoke rising from the wound in his chest.
He let out a hollow laugh, low and uneven.
"You think... that's enough to kill me?"
No answer. Only light — rising, fading.
The trio stumbled forward through dust and echo. Aryan fell to his knees beside the last trace of white flame, reaching out — but it was gone before he could touch it.
Above them, the sky cracked with lingering Aether, black threads cutting through white clouds.
And from the ruins of the amphitheater, the only sound that remained was the fading hum of power — the echo of a man who'd burned everything to protect what little light was left.
The dome of energy finally collapsed.
Aether—white and black—spiraled upward, dissolving into a silent rain of light.
Ahan and the others crawled through the smoke, coughing, eyes squinting against the haze. The battlefield was gone—only glassed stone and swirling dust remained.
At the center stood Siddharth. His armor was shattered, the Aether sigils burned into his skin like molten calligraphy. His chest rose and fell, faintly.
Virak staggered opposite him, one hand clutching the wound in his chest where the spear of light had pierced through.
"Still standing," Virak rasped.
"Not for long," Siddharth whispered.
They both stepped forward, slowly—each step dragging.
When they met, their fists collided.
There was no explosion this time.
Just the dull thud of exhausted gods.
A final pulse of Aether rippled through the air—white and black, merging briefly, before dissolving.
Siddharth exhaled.
He saw nothing—no enemy, no allies, no war. Only fragments of memory: Ahan's laughter. Aryan's stubbornness. The promise he'd once made to his master under a bleeding sky.
He smiled.
"It's done."
The white light began to climb from his body, piece by piece. His form fractured, each splinter rising like shards of dawn breaking apart.
Aryan's voice cracked somewhere behind him.
"No—no, wait—"
Ahan tried to move, but Abhi's hand caught his shoulder.
Even he, cold and measured, couldn't speak.
Siddharth turned slightly, eyes barely open.
"Live... like it meant something."
Then the final pulse burst.
It wasn't loud—it was beautiful.
A bloom of radiance that washed over the ruin, lifting the dust, the debris, even the darkness itself for a brief, blinding instant.
When the light faded, only ashes of white Aether drifted in the air.
Virak was gone.
So was Siddharth.
Silence.
Minutes passed. Hours, maybe. The battlefield lay still, littered with glass and shadow.
The trio stood at the crater's edge, wind howling through what was once Bhutala's heart.
Aryan dropped to one knee, eyes locked on the empty center.
Abhi's fists clenched, knuckles bleeding against broken stone.
Ahan's voice trembled.
"He... he really did it."
"He bought us time," Abhi said quietly. "And that's all a warrior can ever buy."
Above them, the clouds parted.
A single streak of light cut through the gray, faint and thin—but enough to illuminate the ruin below.
The white Aether fragments still floated in the wind, dancing, refusing to fade completely.
They clung to the air like memories that wouldn't let go.
Aryan reached out and caught one between his fingers.
It glowed faintly, pulsing once—like a heartbeat—before dissolving into his palm.
He whispered, almost to himself—
"We'll finish it... for you."
Epilogue
Far above, beyond Bhutala's walls, in the shifting corridors of the unseen world, something stirred.
A masked figure stepped into the light—a silhouette crowned in white flame, eyes glinting behind an iron helm.
He paused before a mirror-like surface, tracing the outline of his reflection.
The face beneath the mask flickered for a moment—just enough for a familiar shape to form.
A face the world thought gone.
"The light never dies," the voice murmured. "It only changes hands."
Then the reflection dimmed, and the figure turned away.
End of Volume I — The Light Radiance