After countless sword strikes—
He knew.
He couldn't scratch him.
Not a bruise. Not a blemish.
Not even a tremor in the stranger's stillness.
So Yama halted.
But he didn't retreat.
Wouldn't.
His breath began to fade—not with exhaustion, but as if the very substance of air abandoned him.
Oxygen became dust. Dust became void.
His eyes swirled—darting like a wheel drunk on its own velocity.
Still, he refused to end it.
"You won't win! Leave now before I crush you and send you to your father!"
And then, the stranger moved.
Not with rage.
But with precision.
Each step? A thousand layered atop one.
Not merely fast—but untethered from time.
It was like he invented time—
—and now decided when it should move.
Yama's laugh spilled out—wet, cracked, seething with cruel euphoria.
His breath warped the air—watery, acidic.
His eyes stabbed the dirt beneath his feet.
Then he looked up.
The stranger was already five centimeters from his face.
Yama gasped.
He jerked back—so violently he slammed into the trunk of a fallen, massive tree.
Not broken. Melting.
Reality could no longer bear its weight.
Then—
Pain.
Raw. Red. Unholy.
Blood oozed from Yama's palm like a curse unwilling to stay hidden.
Agony gripped him—relentless, as if administered by the divine hands of an executioner who knew no mercy.
He dropped to one knee.
But—
Yama was never the kind to stay down.
He stood.
Cleared the blood.
Brushed his chest.
Slicked back his hair.
And then…
Something began to stir.
Beneath his forehead a pulse emerged—zigzagging, crawling across his face like divine lightning awakening under skin.
It wasn't skin peeling.
It wasn't his flesh warping.
It was regeneration.
Every nerve realigned. Every cell rebuilt.
New skin.
New texture.
New marks etched by something ancient.
A hidden source now awakened.
His form expanded—bigger, faster, stronger.
And he hadn't even moved.
The transformation was silent.
But the world felt it.
The wind recoiled.
The earth hummed.
His pulse screamed.
His rage raged.
His eyes—
—oh, his eyes.
One burned a pure crimson, pulsing with warpath and wrath.
The other shimmered with a storm of gold, purple, blue, and green—
An indescribable hue.
A divine contradiction.
A color that should not exist.
"Did you think I was done…"
He twitched his head up, spat beside him, and grinned.
"…that was just to refresh myself."
No sword.
No blade.
Just him.
Then—
He moved.
This time, freed from the weight of the sword, his speed was unreal.
Not fast.
Impossible.
The sword had been a limiter.
His body now?
A weapon.
"Impressive…"
The stranger smiled.
Not a grin—
—a memory.
A knowing.
He exhaled.
Snowlike breath danced from his lips.
His body turned red—volcanic, radiant.
His cloak disintegrated.
It hit the carved stone beside him—carved not by hand, but by the force of Yama's earlier blow.
A weaponized earth scar.
And just before impact—
With less than a heartbeat left—
The stranger closed his eyes and smiled.
Calm.
Peaceful.
But Yama didn't slow.
His pride, his shame, his fury—everything surged into this single blow.
Then—
BOOM.
A cosmic thunderclap.
A crash.
A blast.
Air fled the scene.
Reality shuddered.
Space fractured.
It wasn't the stranger's finger this time.
It was his right arm.
An arm that could wipe a pantheon with a flick.
And then—
They clashed.
Fist against force.
Pride against paradox.
Until the sky tilted.
Until time glitched.
Yama gasped like a man sprinting through the rings of Saturn.
The stranger? Steady. Cool. As if he had returned from a walk around a moonlit lake.
Still—
Yama did not yield.
He crushed his fingers together—
Moved them in a strange vertical motion.
The sound—like lightning cleaving open a forgotten vault—made the crowd scream.
But not her.
She stood.
Untouched.
Unshaken.
Though trees twisted and the ground peeled, the object in her hands and her posture remained—still.
"Where is Leo?"
Oliver staggered to his feet, blinking through ash and flame.
He turned left, then right.
"…why can't I see him among these people?"
He scoured the dead.
The wounded.
The half-vanished.
But no Leo.
Then—
A voice.
Massive. Violent. Inescapable.
It split the air.
A command from the fabric of the world.
Oliver collapsed.
Not from pain—
From command.
The sound tunneled into his skull, piercing like a blade forged to shatter thought itself.
He screamed.
Clawed at his ears.
But then—
A message:
"Your body has undergone several changes.
Do you wish to continue with the upgrade?
Y / N?"
He didn't think.
"Y!" he screamed.
Another flash:
"Blood element detected.
Taste it to begin the process.
Or ignore to end the cycle."
'Wait… how did this even get triggered?'
His thoughts spiraled—turning inward.
To that one space that always answered.
The silent guide.
The Listener.
But before he could grasp the trigger—
His memory began to replay.
The clash.
Yama.
The stranger.
Fists. Fury. Power.
Every detail—
Rewinding through his mind like a god was showing him the roots of time.
As Oliver's memory played like a divine echo through his mind, a faint light flickered on his right shoulder. So dim, it could have been mistaken for imagination—unless one looked with unblinking eyes.
It shimmered from a mark—star-shaped—etched into his skin like it had always been there.
But only one point of the star pulsed.
The lower-left edge.
It blinked. Once. Twice. Faint and rhythmic.
Then, as his focus returned to the question screaming in his head…
The light stopped.
Like it had never existed.
"Huh! Huh! Huh!"
Yama gasped under the storm of strikes.
The stranger's blows were no longer just fast or strong—they were elemental.
The air itself coiled from each hit, twisting into a cyclone that broke and fell like molten rain upon Yama.
His body—mighty though it was—began to crack.
He resisted. But flesh has limits.
Even divine wrath has limits.
Then—
BAM!
He was hurled into the shattered remains of the very tree he had once obliterated.
But now, the tree devoured him.
Branches pierced him. Roots claimed him.
Arms—gone.
Legs—detached.
His limbs separated from his body like disobedient thoughts.
No boasting this time.
No smirk.
No retort.
Only silence.
"Your father begged louder than you do," the man said with a cold laugh, staring down at Yama's lifeless body.
And then—
A light.
Not from the sky.
From him.
He cast it upward—a thin beam that rose, hovered—then curved downward like a falling star.
It struck the stranger's back just as he turned away, eyes shifting toward the dying crowd.
"AHHHH!"
The stranger screamed.
Agony rushed through his spine like a thousand collapsing suns.
His knees buckled—not from pain, but recognition.
He staggered.
Collapsed.
The man who had moved time—who had laughed at the force of gods—now crumbled like dust under unseen gravity.
But before he fell, another thing had happened.
A ring.
Glowing. Ancient.
He had flung it into the air—almost carelessly.
It spun, hovered… then darted.
The crowd panicked, thinking death itself was descending.
But it didn't strike them.
It chose.
Sped through the smoke, across the debris, between the unmoving bodies—
—and landed silently on Oliver's middle finger.
A perfect fit.
As if it had always belonged to him. As if it had been waiting.