"The one and only...."
"Saber Ghost."
"Strongest?" Draven walked another step forward, boots clicking like sacred punctuation,
"I just saw more Luminox than history wanted to reveal, and didn't look away."
He raised his hands towards them and shouted " Sentinel Dome"
A blue energy expanded outwards,forming a bubble - like shield around them, completely blocking any danger from outside, keeping them safe as the battle happens in front of them.
"Arynx. Viritius. Watch carefully."
Draven said as his body sunk into a battle stance — centered and calm.
The battle begin in an instant.
The battle ignited instantly.
The demon flicked his wrist — and the suspended fragments of obsidian exploded forward, screaming through the air like a swarm of miniature meteors.
Draven drift-stepped sideways, letting them carve nothing but wind, his movements deliberate and calculated.
The demon snarled, irritated.
The shards re-forged mid-orbit — reshaped into countless daggers, launched again at a speed Arynx's eyes couldn't even negotiate.
Draven looked at them and yelled
"Flashdodge"
And then he blurred into motion—vanishing and returning across the hall in fractured instants. He moved faster than sight could follow, faster than danger could lock on. Arynx caught only sparks of him - afterimages flickering like lightning.
Then time folded—one blink, he was gone. The next, he stood behind the demon.No steel glinted. No air screamed. Yet a wound bloomed.
"The silent blade," Caldus breathed, scarcely blinking. "It shows itself only to those it recognizes as its master." Awe carved his expression deeper than fear.
The demon taggered back, shocked . Pain, though shallow, insulted it deeply. Fury flared across its burning wings.
The demon raised a hand toward the impossible height of the hall. Shards of the shattered knight statue spiraled upward, obeying it like iron to a magnet. They fused mid-air, forging a sword born not from metal, but from memory.
Its hilt formed from fractured quartz—jagged elegance shaped by symmetry—while the blade ignited into a spear of violet flame, roaring softly like a star contained. The same fire that shaped its wings had now hardened into a edge.
Then began the duel.
A sword fight that looked less like combat, and more like forbidden art. combustion fire trailed every swing of the demon's blade, carving light into arcs of purple, while shards shot from all directions like vengeful constellations.
Yet Draven stood unshaken.
Every strike came from a direction surprise had not yet invented—above, below, blind sides, unseen angles—but Draven blocked. Again. And again. Each deflection precise, calm, impossibly clean.
His sword never revealed its shape, yet the hall felt it.
Each time he blocked, the clash didn't spark,
it chimed, deep and singular, like a bell struck once by destiny, reminding the world something had met its perfect equal.
Then, in one breathless moment,
Draven slipped beneath the demon's swing like a blue phantom sinking under a falling star.
He rose into a silent arc, his upward slash carrying the promise of victory, a strike so surgically timed that even the air held its breath for the demon's end.
But right before the invisible edge could crown triumph—
purple flames unfolded.
The demon flared its wings and tore upward, an eruption of violet wind launching it into the sky with sovereign defiance.
Draven's attack cut nothing but intention.
The demon twisted mid-air and exhaled a whisper of flame.
It extended a palm toward Draven,
fingers poised like a spell about to be signed.
It punched the air once.
No explosion.
No light.
No warning.
Just a ripple—transparent and harmless-looking.
But Draven reacted.
Not after.
Not before.
In the very moment.
He lunged away like a man dodging a second that hadn't arrived yet.
And then it hit—
The ground he almost stood on split with a deafening absence turning into impact, collapsing inward like a wrathful crater being born under the weight of a hidden starfall. The shockwave came late for the arena… but never late for Draven.
The demon struck again.
And again.
And again.
Shockwaves punched the air like invisible cannons, each impact chasing the ghost of Draven's footsteps—cratering the obsidian circle wherever he used to be, always a second too late, always denied. The hall groaned under the demon's frustration, but Draven's movement was a language the demon could never understand.
Then,a wide grin stretched across Draven's face—unshaken, unafraid.
It wasn't the smile of survival.
It was the smile of advantage.
"Speed… it impresses the fools. Timing is what impresses fate."
The words dropped from his mouth with lethal calm, spoken like a man who had already measured the second he needed.
Then he moved.
Not around the attack.
Not away from it.
Through the opening between seconds.
Draven appeared directly before the demon, inside its guard, closer than possibility should allow. His hand shot out with predatory precision, fingers locking around the demon's face—no tremor, no hesitation, just inevitable grip.
He leaned in, eyes burning storm-blue, and spoke a single name that sounded like judgment had learned a word:
"Shatterfall."
Light erupted—not loud, not wild—
absolute.
A pure white blast roared from his palm like a newborn star rejecting confinement, detonating against the demon's helm of horns forged from purple flames. The impact drove it backward through the present itself, hammering it into the engraved arena like a verdict being signed with explosive scripture.
The demon hit the ground like it had offended gravity personally.
The shockwave finally caught up.
The fragments rained down.
The air returned its breath.
And for a moment…
Arynx believed the battle was over.
But the demon stood up again.
Not just wounded—offended by survival. Fury rolled off it in waves Arynx could feel on his skin. The violet fire that once danced along its horns and wings was gone. In its place burned a newer flame—black edged with purple, deep in anger, softer only in sound… but louder in intent.
Its horns curved back regally, now burning in smokeless night-flame. Its two massive wings stretched open behind it, feather-shaped but made of pure fire—silent, cold, and impossibly beautiful in terror, like a fallen king had replaced a war beast.
It raised its hands.
Slow… and commanding.
Hair-thin cracks slithered through the building, racing through the pillars, ceilings, walls—branching like a pulse through bone. The beautiful architecture Arynx admired seconds ago now trembled.
Then—Ruin.
The entire structure fragmented into floating relic-shards, hundreds, thousands, layered pieces of seen-and-unseen masonry, each suspended by the demon's will. The hall didn't collapse downward.
It collapsed outward.
Everything burst into floating obsidian shards—armor, stone, pillars, engravings—splitting into a hurricane of solid debris captured mid-fall. The demon didn't gesture wildly.
A single flick of its wrist, and the fragments obeyed.
They began to spin around the arena, first slowly—like pages of memory turning—then faster, savage, tightening into a spiral that devoured direction. The shards blurred into a cyclone of engineered ruin, circling them like orbiting judgment.
To Arynx, it looked like they were in the middle of a tornado with nowhere left to stand, nowhere left to fall to, nowhere left to hope toward.
Then Draven attacked again.
The demon dodged.
Not by movement—
by absence.
Its speed had increased tenfold, enough to shame air itself. One second it was there, the next a streak of purple-black flame marking its last location.
"Even Draven couldn't do anything now…" Arynx thought.
Fear didn't crawl over him this time.
It crashed into him like a tidal wave, sudden, cold, total. His breath sharpened. His pulse pounded like warnings trying to become prophecy.
He wanted to scream—but the noise was trapped behind awe.
Then his thoughts spoke the line for him:
"Even legends fall wrong when time hunts them back."
The storm of shards kept spinning.
The demon kept smiling.
And Arynx realized this wasn't just a fight anymore.
It was a legend being invited to die.
But Draven?
He smiled wider. Not out of triumph… but recognition.
The kind of smile a hunter wears when the forest finally answers.
His grin grew, slow, predatory, certain—like someone who expects fear, welcomes it, and dresses it like armor.
"You three. Watch closely," he said, voice steady like a vow.
"Let me show you the power of a Dominion - Grade Luminox."
The demon heard the challenge.
And it responded.
It released a cry—not loud, not roaring, but sharp enough to split determination itself.
A shiver ran through the air as flame raced across every floating obsidian fragment. The shards ignited in cold celestial black, burning like falling stars forged into knives.
At the same moment its fist struck the air—a punch without contact, yet the world rippled.
A shockwave invisible to form but immense in presence, hurled outward like judgment gaining speed.
Daggers of burning stone.
Invisible shockwave quakes.
Raining from every direction at once.
They were trapped in a storm that had learned cruelty from symmetry.
Arynx froze—not in motion, but belief.
"This is it… even escape has abandoned vocabulary," he thought, terror tightening around his ribs.
The attacks rushed them like a disaster rehearsed to perfection.
Then—
Draven snapped the moment in half.
"DAWNBURST"
he yelled—not like a spell, but a verdict.
The world lit up.
Blue flame didn't spread.
It announced.
It surged forward like the sunrise had been recast as destruction—clean, silent, unstoppable, and blinding in its beauty.
It carved through the air, vaporizing every moving shard, erasing every pending shockwave, demolishing the storm before it realized wind needed its permission.
Even the demon scorched.
Not engulfed in smoke, not drowned in ash—
but purged by light itself.
When the flame faded, the hall was silent again.
Too silent.
Like it had been waiting for Arynx to breathe before giving noise meaning again.
And when he finally looked at Draven—
"He didn't carry legend behind him anymore."
"Legend ran to catch up to him."
His hair had grown long—
not just blue, but burning in disciplined flame, like lightning learned elegance from night and color from victory.
The fire didn't rage.
It flowed.
Carefully.
Like a million slashes restrained behind grace.
A part of Arynx whispered:
"If greatness ever asked to be seen… this is what it would point to."
Then, in front of Draven—light flowed into the lattice.
Quiet, purposeful, alive.
The glow gathered inward, tightening into a single source, calm but commanding—like a star choosing where to stand.
It descended—not falling,but choosing to settle.
Runes awakened under its landing, blue sparks flickering briefly to greet it like loyal subjects saluting their ruler.
And in the very heart of the circle, suspended above the carved floor, stood the object of legend:
The Luminox.