Chapter Six: The Unshaken King's Judgment
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Lightning cracked across the heavens. The sky itself seemed to tremble under the pressure of what was to come.
Silas stood tall, blood trickling down his side from the mysterious strike, yet his expression was anything but pained. It was focused now—his usual mockery replaced by something far more dangerous. Calm.
Kael coughed violently, barely able to stay upright, but the arrival of the new figure gave him strength. The newcomer emerged slowly, each step forming a ripple through the shattered battlefield. Clad in a cloak woven of voidlight and storm, their face was obscured by a mask that twisted constantly, never staying in one shape for long.
"You took your time," Kael rasped.
The figure didn't answer.
Silas narrowed his eyes. "You're not from this world... but I've felt you before. In the fractures."
The mysterious figure finally spoke—layered voices folding over each other like echoes through time. "Your perception is sharp, Silas. It won't save you."
With a single step, the figure vanished.
A sonic boom exploded from behind Silas as the figure reappeared with a blade of pure entropy arcing toward his neck. Silas ducked, his body rotating mid-air as his foot shot upward into the attacker's chest, launching them into the sky. But before the mysterious one even hit the air, Kael was already in motion, shadows bursting from him like geysers.
Silas caught them both—parrying Kael's storm of claws with his bare hand while forming a sphere of radiant distortion behind him to halt the entropy blade.
Lyra, from a distance, could barely comprehend what she was seeing.
It wasn't a fight. It was a clash of gods.
Kael roared, transforming fully into his Hollow King form—wreathed in black fire, wearing a broken crown of screaming spirits. His voice echoed from every direction.
"Fall, Silas! Fall to my eternal reign!"
But Silas only raised a single hand, his blood now glowing white.
"Gate One... Veil of Stillness."
The world froze.
Wind stopped blowing. Kael's fire halted in mid-air. The mysterious figure's entropy blade paused mid-swing.
And then, with no sound at all, Silas moved.
He stepped past Kael, past the entropy blade, past every attack thrown at him.
Time resumed.
A sonic fracture blasted across the landscape. Kael was flung backward, blood spraying from a dozen wounds he hadn't seen form. The masked figure slammed into the ground, their mask shattering slightly at the edge, revealing a single eye glowing with ancient fury.
But they did not fall.
Kael rose again, this time barely standing. The masked figure stood beside him, power pulsing between them.
"You're strong, Silas," the masked one said. "But you're still bound. You haven't broken your chain."
Silas exhaled.
Then the sky turned white.
Silas's aura erupted—an ocean of pressure crushing down on the battlefield. Even Lyra, protected by distance, felt her bones rattle.
"You want 70%? Fine."
Silas extended a hand, and the battlefield shattered into floating islands.
"Gate Two... Mirror Collapse."
Suddenly, reality folded inward.
Kael and the figure moved in perfect synchronization—twin storms of death. They struck from above, below, every angle—but Silas was there, each time, as if he knew the attack before it came. He caught Kael's arm mid-swing and drove him into a floating rock, then caught the masked one's entropy sword with two fingers, cracking the ground beneath them with the backlash.
"You don't understand," Silas said softly. "This isn't me going all out. I'm just... getting warmed up."
The figure snarled and began weaving handsigns faster than mortal sight could track. From the markings left in the air, a portal of abyssal light opened behind Silas. Kael charged through, using the teleport to flank him.
They struck him together—one with shadows, one with entropy.
BOOM!
The explosion tore through dimensions.
Silas emerged from the cloud... bleeding, breathing heavily, but still standing.
His eyes gleamed now with unveiled power. "Not bad. You actually made me feel that."
He raised both hands.
"Gate Three... Event Horizon."
A singularity formed behind him.
Everything was being pulled into it—light, sound, matter. Kael screamed as his cloak unraveled. The masked figure tried to teleport, but the space bent around them.
Silas floated above it all, divine in stature.
"This... ends now."
A single gesture. And the singularity collapsed inward, sending a final devastating pulse across the battlefield.
Kael and the masked figure lay broken.
Silas descended slowly.
Kael reached out weakly, face bruised, body shattered. "You... monster..."
Silas raised a hand. "Call me what you want. You're done."
He gathered energy into his palm—bright, final.
And just before he released it, a crimson glyph flared under Kael and the figure.
A portal.
The figure grinned. "We'll finish this next time, Unshaken King."
They vanished.
Silas stood in the silence, the air shimmering with the echoes of power.
Lyra approached slowly. "They escaped..."
Silas nodded, wiping blood from his chin. "Yeah. But next time... they won't."
And above, the sky wept, knowing the war had only just begun.
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To be continued...