The clash of our powers intertwined and shattered with every passing instant—flashes of blue and red mingled with a deep purple that whipped through the air like incandescent lashes, weaving a chaotic vortex directly above our heads.
The entire castle shuddered down to its very foundations.
Stones cracked with sharp snaps, steel beams twisted and groaned as if screaming under the strain, and the ramparts wobbled, fighting to remain standing like ancient crones refusing to fall.
Massive bolts of lightning, spawned by the sheer pressure of our presence, struck down around us, gouging smoking craters into the earth and setting the ground trembling in violent waves.
The air turned heavy and suffocating, as though we were submerged in molten lead.
And I was the first to pierce through that cacophony of chaos.
A roar erupted from my chest—not of pain, but born of all the power I had held back for far too long—a sound that tore through the clouds hovering above.
I surged forward with no plan other than to let this force consume whatever stood in my path.
My right arm cocked back, muscles hardening denser than steel while veins of red and blue energy pulsed like the heart of a volcano on the brink of eruption.
My breath escaped in searing plumes, and everything within me condensed into that single movement.
But before I could move my foot even a single inch, my body locked in place, as if fused to solid rock.
Muscles strained to their absolute breaking point, and lines of blue and red energy pulsed beneath my skin like white-hot wires, yet I couldn't move.
*MOVE! MOVE!* I screamed inside my head, grinding my teeth so hard the sound echoed in my skull.
"Gravity is an absolute law, Suki," Tsukumo's voice drifted over, calm and heavy, carrying the weight of the world itself.
"If it demands that you stop, you will stop. That is my truth."
"NO!"
I forced my right foot forward.
The air around me cracked, the ground split into deep webbed fissures, and every millimeter gained demanded conquering tons—tens of thousands of tons—of crushing pressure trying to flatten me against the planet's crust.
Blood leaked from my nose and the corners of my eyes, but my foot met the ground ahead.
"Your law doesn't work... against my force!" I snarled, taking a second step. Then a third. A fourth.
My walk broke into a sprint.
With every stride, the earth caved in, the air vibrated, and the very pressure meant to halt me seemed only to fan the flames burning through my bones.
The moment I reached him, my charged fist cut through the air and slammed full force into Tsukumo's face.
The sound echoed like a mountain splintering in two.
His head snapped back violently, his whole body dragged against his will as he skidded for miles across solid bedrock, carving a straight, smoking trench far past the castle ruins.
I leaped after him, launching into the air to finish the strike.
Suspended midair, I tracked the wake of devastation Tsukumo's body carved through the planet's crust as if ripping through old cloth.
I balled my fist and struck out into the open air.
The shockwave shot forward, solid and heavy as a runaway train without brakes.
But before it could reach him, Tsukumo simply lowered his hand, and gravity swallowed my attack whole.
The pressure abruptly spiked, compressing the energy until it dissipated into a thick plume of dust and pulverized rock that rose between us.
I hovered motionless in the void, clearing the smoke with a sharp sweep of my arm, but I was a fraction too slow.
The moment the dust parted, I caught a deep purple glow—gathering in his half-open palms—that seemed to swallow the light around it.
The atmosphere shuddered, invisible cracks spiderwebbed through space, and every sound in existence died into an oppressive silence.
"Collapse," he whispered, low, as if uttering the name of death itself.
The blast didn't tear through the wind; the wind simply ceased to exist in its path.
Space warped, compressed, and collapsed in on itself, drawing in tons of boulders, debris, and even the air in my lungs—everything sucked toward a single point of absolute destruction.
I tried to raise my arms, but they wouldn't move; he had already locked me down.
The blast engulfed me before any command from my brain could reach my muscles.
It was as if the planet itself had clamped its hand around me, crushing everything I was in a single instant.
My bones groaned in a terrible chorus of agonizing pain; a sharp crack traveled down my entire spine, ribs caved inward against my lungs like paper, and the breath was torn from my chest along with a warm spurt of blood.
The colors of the world drained away all at once, bleaching everything into dull gray shadows.
I felt my knees give way of their own accord, stripped of strength, devoid of will.
My skin felt ready to peel from my flesh as muscles were crushed against my skeleton with a force no human or divine power was meant to endure.
I opened my mouth to scream.
Nothing came out.
The sound was crushed inside my throat before it could even form.
Then I was hurled downward, every impact against the earth driving that crushing weight deeper into my bones until I finally came to a halt, driven into the ground like a stake slammed down by a furious god.
The entire continent trembled like a leaf in the wind.
I remained buried there, waist-deep in packed earth.
Every heartbeat was a solitary struggle, hammering against the force still squeezing every fiber of my being, desperate to reduce me to nothing more than a dark stain upon the ruined ground.
"Impressive... you are the first to survive my Collapse."
I shattered the hardened rock pinning me simply by flexing, sending fragments exploding into powder around me.
I dragged myself up slowly, every fiber of my body screaming.
"I will only stop, Tsukumo..." I balled my fist until my knuckles turned white, "...when you no longer have the strength to stand."
He offered no verbal reply; he merely let out a dry huff of laughter, extended his hand, and bent space around me.
"Mercury Prison."
The weight dropped all at once, as if an entire mountain had been lowered onto my shoulders.
My knees groaned, but they did not buckle.
*This is way heavier than before,* I thought.
Tsukumo struck me with a kick powerful enough to cleave me in two, but the moment I realized the weight had lifted, I locked my body in midair to keep from flying off.
Tsukumo's eyes flashed with surprise. I snapped back and landed a punch square on him; he crossed his arms to block, but the impact dragged him backward, his boots skidding across bedrock until he crashed into a stone pillar that crumbled entirely.
He brushed off the dust and smiled, his eyes gleaming once more.
"You wield brute force like a beast... yet you understand nothing of how the world works."
"Stellar Mill."
He flicked his wrist, and the air surrounding me began to whirl with it, dragging stones, debris, and the ground itself into vortexes that crushed everything toward the center.
I was tossed back and forth, slamming into rocks that hit like solid steel, but instead of struggling to escape, I locked my arms to my sides, made my body as dense as humanly possible, and waited.
The moment the vortex dragged me right in front of him, I kicked off the open air—no technique, just pure power—and the shockwave popped the whirlpool like a soap bubble.
He fell back a step, taken aback once more, then clenched his fingers tight.
"That's not enough!" I yelled through the air, surging toward him again.
But just as my arms cocked back to strike him once more, a single hand held out in the open air halted me dead in my tracks.
I was frozen solid, suspended as if caught on an invisible tether.
In that moment of paralysis, Tsukumo blurred forward with breathtaking speed, closing the distance in the blink of an eye and clawing his fingers deep into my temples.
I felt the pressure mounting, the bones of my skull grinding together, the world spinning around that grip that threatened to crush my head like an eggshell.
A scream tore from my throat—a raw, cracked sound born of pain and fury—but before my hands could so much as touch his arm, he slammed me downward.
And as I fell, he intensified the gravity pinning me down.
The weight multiplied—doubled, tripled, a hundred times greater.
My body slammed into the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the entire continent, and colossal stone monoliths erupted into the air and crashed down around me, sealing me inside a ring of rock that stretched for leagues.
I was lodged deep in the earth, sinking slowly, compressed by a force I couldn't see or touch, yet felt in every single fiber.
*That technique is insane,* I thought.
I moved my index finger first, then my entire hand.
Muscles screamed and skin tore, but I pushed through.
Bit by bit, Force Transformation answered my call, my body's sheer density enduring the staggering weight he cast upon me.
But Tsukumo didn't wait.
He launched into the sky, stopping at the apex of the heavens, and gave a subtle flick of his fingers.
All those gigantic monoliths, fragments of mountains, shattered fortress walls, and rocks the size of whole islands drifted upward alongside him.
The sky above turned pitch-black, swallowed by a tide of stone that blotted out the sun.
"Damn it... get up... get up..." I snarled at myself as the ground beneath me gave way a little more.
"Tell me, Suki," his voice rained down from above, cold and sharp.
"How does it feel to have the entire world trying to crush you all at once?"
He made a simple gesture, as though letting grains of sand fall from his grip.
And the tide crashed down.
The stones plunged at terrifying speeds, scorching the air around them like blazing meteors.
The deafening roar of their descent drowned out all else; I was about to be buried alive, crushed into nothingness beneath millions of tons of stone.
"AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!"
The roar tore from my chest, carrying every last scrap of strength remaining within me.
Still lying flat in the crater, I thrust both arms skyward, gathering every drop of Transformation energy until my veins felt ready to burst, and brought my palms together in a single clap.
The impact made no immediate noise.
First, the air warped, bending like heated glass.
Then, a wave of pure force erupted outward, sweeping everything upward.
Wherever it passed, the stones were not merely pushed back—they were pulverized, disintegrated into microscopic shrapnel and a towering plume of dust that billowed beyond sight.
High above, Tsukumo's face twisted, his teeth gritted.
"Bastard..."
He flicked his hand again, applying gravity to the dust itself; the haze compressed and vanished within seconds, as though it had never been there at all.
And when the air cleared, I was already standing right in front of him.
Dense steam billowed from my skin, pouring from my pores and every wound forced open and knit shut by sheer force.
I looked like a furnace without a chimney, an engine redlining far past its limits, burning itself to ash.
Tsukumo reacted on instinct, raising both arms to guard his face, bracing for the devastating punch he knew was coming.
But he realized too late.
What I had prepared was not a punch.
It was a kick.
I funneled every thread of energy into my right leg, feeling bone groan and fracture beneath the sheer power pooling there, and unleashed the strike.
The sky went dark.
The clouds vanished in a blink; the wind died completely.
The entire atmosphere vibrated, shuddering as if on the verge of splitting in two.
The tip of my boot connected flush with Tsukumo's abdomen. I heard and felt the distinct crunch of his ribs shattering, even as I felt the bones in my own leg partially give way, unable to withstand such unimaginable force.
He vomited a torrent of blood, his eyes wide with shock and pain, as the momentum of the kick spun him through the air before hurling him toward the earth.
The impact was apocalyptic.
The ground quaked with an earthquake that seemed to drag on forever.
Dust, rock, and entire layers of planetary crust were launched skyward, shooting so high they pierced the atmosphere, forming a colossal pillar of destruction extending from the fresh crater into outer space, visible from anywhere on the planet.
I fell from the sky like a stone stripped of its final tether.
My body felt wrecked from the inside out; every bone and muscle screamed in unison. There was no energy left to fly, no strength remaining to even keep myself fully conscious.
"Feels like I'm gonna die..." I muttered, my voice swallowed by the wind rushing past my ears.
I slammed into the ground defenseless, hitting like a ragdoll tossed aside, right in the center of the crater I had gouged open moments prior.
The impact rattled what little was left of me, and I lay there flat on my back, staring up into a dense curtain of smoke and dust that shrouded everything.
My breaths came in ragged, raspy gasps, every inhale burning as if I were swallowing broken glass.
Then I heard it.
Muffled groans, violent dry coughs, and the sound of blood being spewed out with force.
They were so close they almost felt like they were coming from inside me.
I slowly reached out a trembling hand and touched something warm and wet.
A hard, brutal slap swatted my hand away, sending a jolt of pain up my arm to the shoulder.
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!" he roared, his voice cracking at the end, nearly dissolving into unconsciousness.
Tsukumo knelt nearby, resting in a growing dark pool beneath his knees.
His chest heaved in desperate gasps; he coughed until his body doubled over, yet he refused to let himself collapse entirely.
His shoulders trembled as blood ran down his chin, dripping onto the fractured earth.
"Why... don't you just stay down?" I said, struggling to lift my head even a fraction.
He raised his face just enough to glare at me through the smoke.
"I could ask you the same... you bastard." He spat a wad of blood.
"What makes you want to die for a bunch of weak, useless pests? It's pure madness."
A weak, raspy laugh slipped past my lips as I dragged my body up onto my knees, trapped in awful company.
"I'm just someone trying to do what's right, Tsukumo. I fight for those who can't fight. I fight so people can live in peace."
"I didn't want it to come to this... I offered a truce. I asked us to stop."
I managed to stagger to my feet, and the surrounding smoke began to clear.
"But you threw it all away. And here we are, destroying an entire planet... just to feed your pride and your bullshit goal."
At that last word, Tsukumo surged up as if he had been burned.
His fist struck my chest—weak compared to his earlier blows, yet the force packed into the movement unleashed a shockwave that swept away the crater's remaining dust, exposing the absurd depth we had gouged into the world's crust.
I didn't budge an inch.
I simply stared back, watching rage mask something far deeper in his eyes.
"What drives you, Tsukumo?" I asked, low and steady.
"What made a god like you enslave, hurt, and murder so many? What made you turn your back on everything Lavinsk stands for..."
I clenched my fingers until my knuckles turned white, delivering the phrase I knew would crack his armor.
"...and turn your back on your own father?"
His fist froze in midair, still pressed against the torn fabric of my suit.
His fingers uncurled slowly.
He let out a dry, humorless laugh that echoed off the rock walls.
"Don't talk about the old man... like you know him."
Tsukumo finally raised his head completely.
His golden eyes, once consumed by arrogance and blind rage, now revealed an ancient, heavy shadow he had carried long before I ever set foot here.
"The blame..." His shoulders sagged slightly, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp, bitter whisper, "...lies entirely with him."
The air around us seemed to grow heavier still.
The silence that followed was hollow, heavy with years of resentment, of a story never told, and of a side of Tsukumo that no one in Ruitan had ever possessed the courage to face.