The battlefield was silent. Not with peace, but with the unbearable tension of two warriors on the edge of a final clash. Vael and the God of Swords stood still, watching each other. The weight of the moment pressed down on them.
The god knew—whoever struck first would decide the battle. One mistake meant destruction. It had fought endless wars, faced beings beyond understanding, yet Vael felt different. There was something new. Something unknown.
Vael, too, fought against inevitability. His technique was just one of many theories, a small piece of something greater. It was destruction made real, the power to erase existence. But knowing it wasn't enough. He needed control. Control he did not yet have. The god would not give him even a second more than necessary.
The god's eyes sharpened. Its divine blade pulsed with divine energy. It would not wait forever.
Vael's mind raced. He had two choices—use the attack now, incomplete and risky, or find a way to create an opening. But how? The god's precision was absolute. It reacted to every move with mastery honed over eons. A feint would fail. A distraction would be useless. He needed something beyond strategy.
He needed inevitability.
His fingers clenched. Power crackled at his fingertips. The storm within him raged, demanding release. His body screamed at him to act, to fight. But he forced himself to be still, to focus. The will that brought him here would carry him forward.
The god stepped forward.
Vael's heart pounded. This was it.
The attack had to be absolute. More than that—it had to be undeniable.
Then, the answer struck him.
He had been thinking about it all wrong. He didn't need to overcome the god's precision.
He needed to make it irrelevant.
A slow breath left his lips. His muscles relaxed. His mind cleared. The storm within him didn't calm—it shifted. No longer wild, but controlled. Held back. Ready to be unleashed in a single, perfect moment. The god's gaze flickered. Recognition flashed in its eyes.
Then, at the same time, they moved.
The battlefield exploded.
The god's blade cut through the air, bending reality at its edge. Vael lunged forward. His power condensed, folding into itself, space distorting around him. Their clash sent shockwaves tearing through the sky, splitting the world apart.
Steel met energy, blade against raw force. Each impact created ruptures in the fabric of existence, sending ripples of power across the battlefield. The god's divine blade struck downward, splitting mountains in the distance, carving canyons into the land below. Vael twisted, narrowly avoiding the strike as he countered with a burst of his own power, sending the god skidding back for the first time.
The god steadied itself, eyes narrowing. "You wield something beyond comprehension," it said. "But you are not yet its master."
Vael didn't respond. He surged forward again, weaving between slashes, each one carving apart the battlefield. His movements became sharper, his attacks more controlled. The god's speed was unreal, its blade moving too fast for the eye to follow, yet Vael met every strike, adapting, learning.
With a flick of its wrist, the god sent a wave of divine energy outward, a tidal force of destruction. Vael raised a hand, his power coalescing into a barrier that shattered upon impact but absorbed enough of the blast to keep him standing.
"You do not know what you are," the god said, stepping forward. "And that makes you dangerous."
Vael exhaled. "I don't need to know. I just need to win."
The god's expression darkened. "Then let us see if you can."
Their battle resumed, faster, more brutal. The ground beneath them fractured with each clash. Lightning crackled in the sky, torn from reality itself as their energies clashed. The god swung its blade, and the heavens trembled.
Vael moved with absolute certainty.
His attack was not an action. It was a conclusion.
A small, simple sphere formed in his hand. But inside it was something impossible—a force that did not just destroy, but erased. It did not burn like fire. It did not break like entropy. It was deeper. More final. A power that made it so what it touched had never existed at all.
The god's divine energy met it—and the impossible happened. The god's power, the essence of divinity, was not resisted. Not destroyed.
It was taken.
The god's eyes widened. Astonishment flickered across its face. This was not possible. No force had ever consumed divinity itself.
"How can this be?"
The god's voice wavered between disbelief and wonder. "Divine energy is absolute. No mortal, no being, no force should be able to take it, let alone absorb it."
Its gaze hardened. "What are you?"
Vael met its stare, his voice steady.
"I don't know. It is not divinity. It is not bound by the laws of gods or mortals. Beyond that... I cannot say."
The god's expression darkened.
"A force beyond divinity. A power with no law, no order. Then tell me—what is its nature? What drives it? What gives it purpose?"
Vael clenched his fist.
"I don't know. It exists because I willed it. Beyond that, I don't understand."
The god was silent for a moment, then exhaled. The shock in its eyes faded, replaced by something sharper—resolve.
"Then this battle is not over."
Vael clenched his fist, and the world trembled.
The ground cracked beneath him, not from impact, but from the rejection of stability itself. The sky shook. Colors bled into one another as the boundaries of reality twisted under his will.
The god moved. Faster than light, its form blurred, shifting between fragments of reality. It struck with a thousand blades in a single breath, each cutting through reality, each severing possibilities before they even formed. A storm of light and steel. A divine weapon of ultimate speed and precision. Its blade, forged from divine authority, lashed out to strike before Vael could finish his attack.
But then, something impossible happened.
The storm did not just erase—it consumed.
The god did not scream. It did not falter. It simply ceased.
Its form unraveled, devoured by the force Vael had unleashed. The divine energy, once absolute, was stripped away, leaving nothing behind.
No memory.
No trace.
No existence.
The God of Swords was erased, as if it had never been.
The battlefield was empty. The god was gone. The storm had passed.
Vael's body trembled, his breathing ragged. Every fiber of his being burned with exhaustion, his muscles strained beyond their limits. The world around him flickered, the very fabric of existence struggling to comprehend what had just occurred. The weight of his own power pressed against him, demanding release, yet he held on. He had to.
The silence stretched, unnatural and heavy. The air smelled of scorched reality, of something far beyond fire or decay. The battlefield, once a place of divine struggle, now felt like a void, a hollow scar in the fabric of creation.
Vael's vision blurred. His legs wavered. His mind reeled from the sheer magnitude of what he had done. There was no victory here, no triumph. Just absence. The battle was over, but the consequences had only begun.
And then—Vael collapsed.
Darkness enveloped him. But it was not death. It was something else. Something deeper.
Vael's consciousness stirred, and when his eyes opened, he found himself in a place that defied understanding. The battlefield was gone. The sky, the land, even time itself felt different. He was floating in a vast, endless void, where colors twisted and shimmered, forming shapes that dissolved as quickly as they appeared.
He tried to move, but there was no ground beneath him. No weight. No direction. Only existence itself.
Then, a voice spoke.
"Well done."
It was the same voice he had heard before, the one that had whispered to him in moments of doubt, the one that had guided him toward this power. It was neither warm nor cold. It simply was.
"You have done what none before you could. You have erased a god."
Vael turned, searching for the source, but there was nothing. Just the voice, reverberating through the void.
"What is this place?" Vael asked, his voice steady despite the strangeness around him.
"A threshold. A point between what was and what will be. A place I created, so we could speak without the intervention of 'them'."
Vael narrowed his eyes. "Then why am I here?"
The voice chuckled, a sound like the echoes of collapsing stars. "Because I made this place to answer your questions. Killing a god was a feat worth acknowledging, but it is merely the first step on the path you are willing to walk."
"It was only the beginning."