I thrust my spear hand at his nose.

  Not a jab. Not a feint. A fully committed penetration—index and middle finger aligned, wrist locked, shoulder driving through the kinetic chain like a piston rod.

  It was the fastest I had ever moved in my life. Surge still burned in my bloodstream, capillaries dilated, nerves firing at a frequency that made the world feel diluted—thinned out, viscous, slow. The air resisted differently at this speed. I could feel its drag along my knuckles.

  And still it couldn’t reach him.

  Leo raised the lightsteel dagger lazily and caught my hand on the flat. The impact rang like struck glass, a crystalline report that echoed off the cathedral vaulting. My fingers trembled from the collision, microfractures spidering through the distal joints.

  I should be able to break this.

  He was still sitting.

  Still seated on his throne.

  Still resting one elbow against the carved armrest, fingers draped loosely along his jaw as though observing a rehearsal.

  He yawned.

  The sound was small. Insultingly human for a bastard like him.

  I disengaged and circled him, feet gliding across fractured marble. The throne room floor was already carved with gouges from earlier exchanges—trenches from wind crescents, impact craters from redirected force, shards of stained glass crunching beneath my heel. My steps left shallow cracks with each pivot, stress fractures radiating outward from controlled torque.

  My speed exceeded anything I had previously achieved. Every tendon in my legs coiled and released. I had trained for this day. Bled for this day. Poisoned myself with Surge for this day.

  Yet his eyes followed me, following.

  The pupils did not widen. His breathing did not change. His spine never left the throne.

  I pierced from the lower right quadrant, targeting the tibial nerve just above the shin. A destabilization strike. If I crippled his base, I could collapse the structure—throne, posture, illusion of superiority.

  He rotated his foot a single inch.

  One inch.

  Not even a lift. Just a pivot from the ankle joint.

  My fingers sliced air where flesh should have been, momentum carrying me through a void that hadn’t existed a heartbeat before.

  I transitioned into a spinning backhand aimed at his cheekbone, redirecting rotational force from my miss. My heel carved a crescent in the stairs as I pivoted. He raised the dagger horizontally and absorbed the strike along the flat edge. The vibration traveled up my forearm, rattling my elbow socket.

  Leo’s gaze sharpened for the first time.

  The faintest contraction of his eyelids.

  He thrust.

  I retreated.

  But midair, a sting bloomed across my chest.

  I looked down.

  Skin-deep penetration. A precise line, barely wider than a thread, already beading red.

  He hadn’t stepped. Hadn’t rotated his hips. Hadn’t committed weight. He just flicked his wrist.

  He feels so far away.

  Like striking at a star reflected in water.

  I hit the floor and rolled, ribs grinding against shattered stone. Marble fragments embedded in my side. I spread my arms wide and screamed.

  Not pain.

  Rage.

  The sound ripped out of my diaphragm raw and unfiltered. It struck the vaulted ceiling and came back multiplied. Dust cascaded from overhead beams. The iron chandeliers swayed on their chains.

  Leo frowned faintly. “Are you angry, Vellin? That you still can’t reach me? Don’t blame yourself.”

  I surged forward, right fist chambered.

  I targeted his nose again—force over finesse. A direct structural collapse.

  The dagger dipped and cut into the crease of my index finger. The blade slid exactly along the flexion line of the joint, splitting skin without shattering bone.

  “No mortal can reach a god.” he said.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I flexed through the pain, forcing blood to move despite the severed fibers, stepped down hard onto his left foot, pinning it against the throne’s base. The impact sent a crack racing through the marble in a spiderweb pattern. The throne groaned under sudden asymmetrical load.

  I raised both spear hands.

  Piercing Hand x Reinforced Fist: Axiom Cross.

  I said the words only in my head.

  Alignment first. Breath second. Then compression.

  The collision detonated the air. A pressure wave burst outward, concussive and violent, shattering the remaining stained glass in a crystalline storm. Colored shards spiraled through the chamber. Banners ripped free from pillars and whipped across the room. The throne itself groaned under the displaced wind, ancient stone grinding in protest.

  My hands tore through resistance.

  There was a moment—a thin membrane of force—that resisted like tempered steel.

  I looked to my left palm.

  Blood.

  Not mine.

  Dust filled the chamber, swirling in opaque curtains.

  When it cleared

  Leo... Leo was hurt.

  A cross-shaped gash carved across his chest, mirroring the necklace he wore. The cut was deep enough to expose muscle fibers beneath, edges blackened slightly from frictional heat. The lightsteel dagger had fractured into shards across his lap, splinters of metallic glass reflecting the dim light.

  Shock flickered in his eyes.

  There.

  A crack in divinity.

  Good.

  I formed my spear hand again, drawing power into my right arm until muscle fibers trembled and lactic acid surged like fire beneath the skin. Veins bulged. My shoulder joint protested the torque.

  Piercing Hand x Reinforced Fist: Axiom Split.

  Too slow.

  The spatial relationship changed without transitional frames. One moment he was before me. The next, he was everywhere around me.

  The air filled with silver arcs.

  I couldn’t track his wrists. Couldn’t follow the rotation of bone and joint. His elbows inverted mid-swing. Shoulders rolled past anatomical limits. I could see that at least. Slashes rained across my right arm and torso in a storm of flexible angles. It wasn’t traditional swordplay. There was no orthodox guard, no predictable chamber.

  It was something warped.

  Blades emerging from negative space. I tried to apply redirection—seeking contact points, leverage, structural interruptions.

  Every attempt to intercept met empty air or redirected steel.

  Lightsteel bit into muscle. Skin opened in long, oblique lines. Blood sprayed in hot ribbons across the throne steps, stippling white stone crimson.

  I kicked off a stair mid-fall, forcing distance with a desperate extension of my hip. Landed hard. Flexed.

  Closed some of the wounds.

  Not all.

  The deeper cuts continued to seep, my regenerative capacity taxed and uneven.

  I tore off my hoodie. Fabric clung to drying blood and peeled away with resistance. The green shirt beneath was already soaked, darkened.

  Leo rolled his shoulder once. The cross-shaped wound on his chest knit together gradually, muscle reweaving beneath skin like threads being pulled tight.

  He can heal.

  Of course he can. I'm not the only one who can do that.

  I assessed rapidly.

  One. Axiom Cross was my trump card. Two. He’s prepared for it now. Three. It strains my arms—more than twice and the integrity drops sharply. The second execution loses at least twenty percent output.

  Surge was fading.

  The hyper-clarity dulled at the edges. My heartbeat felt heavier.

  Leo flicked his blade.

  A compressed wind crescent tore toward me, visible only as distortion, like heat shimmer sharpened into a guillotine. It ripped up marble in its wake, carving a trench that split the chamber.

  I leapt.

  Another followed instantly above it, layered to catch aerial evasion.

  I leaned back midair and let it scream past my face, feeling the pressure shear a strand of hair. As gravity reclaimed me, I kicked, launching my own wind slash from the torque of my hip.

  He bisected it cleanly. Two halves dispersed into harmless turbulence.

  Then he sheathed the sword.

  He drew another dagger.

  This one bore a lion engraved along the guard, mane flared in relief, jaws open in silent roar.

  “This dagger is for those who have proven worthy.” he said.

  I laughed, blood running down my chin, mixing with sweat and marble dust. “I thought mortals couldn’t touch gods.”

  He thrust.

  A needle-thin gust punched into my shoulder and nearly drilled through. The force tunneled along the deltoid, compressing tissue instead of slicing it. My arm numbed instantly, fingers spasming as neural signals misfired.

  “You’re not a mortal.” Leo said. “You have a god dwelling within you.”

  I hovered my hand over the wound, feeling the disrupted fibers attempt to reconnect. “Unconscious God is a metaphor.”

  He clicked his tongue. “Believe that if you wish.”

  He pointed the dagger at my forehead. The tip did not waver.

  “I can release wind hard enough to kill you instantly. Your technique was creative—Reinforced Fist fused with Piercing Hand—but it failed. If that was your peak, this'll end soon.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Unconscious God.

  The blessing and the flaw.

  It enhances pain tolerance, removes internal governors, adapts instinctively by pattern assimilation. But it cannot counter what I have not studied. It requires information from my brain,

  And Leo’s style was...

  Infinite Cuts.

  I had read the manual Kaguya stole from Sun's archives. The ink diagrams of hyperextended joints. The annotations about ligament conditioning. The warnings about skeletal microfractures. The similarities between this and what Leo could do were undeniable. A system built around extreme skeletal flexibility. Every bone capable of unnatural articulation. Attacks originating from impossible angles, mid-swing redirections that blurred even enhanced perception.

  Its weakness...

  Interrupt the midpoint of a swing. Break the arm. Flexibility becomes fragility.

  But I couldn’t trigger Unconscious God on command.

  Which left only one path.

  Perforated Heart. A suicidal acceleration.

  I raised my spear hand toward my chest.

  A massive body slammed into me with the force of a battering ram and drove me through the side wall. Stone exploded inward. Pillars cracked. Air vanished from my lungs in a violent expulsion. Dust swallowed us in a suffocating cloud of powdered marble.

  Only three beings could hit me like that.

  Leo. Finn.

  Or...

  I rolled through debris, coughing blood, shards biting into my palms as I pushed up.

  Caleb stood before me.

  Veins bulging grotesquely beneath torn skin. Flesh lacerated from countless cuts, some still leaking, others already clotted in dark crusts. Bruises layered over bruises, purple and black like storm clouds beneath his skin. One eye swollen nearly shut.

  Yet his other eye burned clear.

  Focused.

  “Vellin!” he roared.

  The sound carried grief, fury, and something befitting pity.

  Of course he would be the last one standing.

  He charged like a war elephant, each step denting the floor, pulverizing debris beneath sheer mass and will. His shoulders were squared despite the damage. His breathing ragged but relentless.

  I met him halfway. At least they took down Finn.

  Our forearms collided, grinding bone against bone. The friction alone sparked blood as already-open cuts smeared and reopened. Muscles flexed to maximum contraction, fibers quivering under strain. We leaned into each other, breath mixing, foreheads nearly touching amid drifting dust.

  We spoke at the same time.

  “Our relationship ends today!” he shouted.

  “Fine by me!” I answered.