The sky above Valderia split without sound.
No thunder. No light.
Just absence.
Reality thinned, stretched, and tore open like fabric pulled too far. The stars behind the veil twisted into unfamiliar shapes as something ancient pressed forward.
Lumiére felt it first.
Stone trembled. Towers groaned. Every glyph in the city flared at once, overwhelmed by a presence they were never meant to restrain.
Lucien froze mid-step.
Adrien looked up instinctively, muscles tightening.
Ombre laughed nervously for the first time in his life.
Malrick removed his mask.
"He's here," Malrick whispered. "Fully."
High above the world, beyond city and sky, **Kharos descended**.
Not as a body.
As a **will**.
Darkness folded inward, shaping itself into a towering silhouette, crowned with fractured light. His voice did not travel through air—it appeared directly inside the mind.
> **"Valderia still bleeds."**
Every living thing felt it.
Far above, within the highest sanctum carved beyond time itself, **Lordess Lumara rose from her throne**.
The sanctum ignited.
Divine glyphs spun into existence, forming a vast halo of golden geometry behind her. Her presence stabilized reality where Kharos unraveled it.
"So," Lumara said, her voice calm, sharp, unyielding.
"The traitor stirs again."
The space between them collapsed.
They faced each other not in sky nor land, but in a suspended fracture between realms—where laws bent under divine authority.
Kharos observed her silently.
Then—
> **"You replaced balance with obedience,"** he said.
> **"You turned Valderia into a cage."**
Lumara did not deny it.
"I turned chaos into civilization," she replied. "You left it to rot."
> **"I was sealed."**
"Because you were dangerous."
> **"Because I was honest."**
Their presences clashed subtly, distorting the fracture around them. Stars flickered in and out of existence. Time staggered.
Below, the war froze in awe and terror.
Lucien dropped to one knee, blood trickling from his nose.
Adrien roared, struggling to remain standing.
Ombre vanished entirely, swallowed by shadow.
Malrick's instruments overloaded instantly.
Lumara raised a hand.
Golden chains manifested from nothingness, forged of divine law, wrapping around Kharos' form.
"You were meant to be forgotten," she said. "Your era ended."
Kharos did not resist.
He **expanded**.
The chains shattered like glass.
Dark matter rippled outward, tearing through Lumara's constructs.
> **"You rule through fear of what you cannot control,"** Kharos said.
> **"I rule through choice."**
Lumara's eyes burned.
"And yet they choose you because you whisper power."
> **"They choose me because you never listened."**
She struck first.
A spear of condensed order—pure divine enforcement—pierced the fracture. It tore through Kharos' silhouette, ripping apart sections of his form.
For a moment—
Silence.
Then Kharos laughed.
The wound **closed**.
> **"You cannot kill what you made necessary."**
The space around them detonated.
Darkness and light collided violently, tearing fragments of reality loose. Entire concepts—gravity, direction, time—collapsed and reformed erratically.
Lumara drew her full power.
Her form ascended, wings of radiant geometry unfurling behind her. She became law incarnate.
Kharos responded in kind.
His shape sharpened, his presence solidifying into something vast and inevitable. Where Lumara enforced reality, Kharos **rewrote** it.
Their first true clash shook Valderia.
Mountains split.
Seas recoiled.
Lumiére's remaining towers collapsed in waves.
Lucien screamed—not in pain, but recognition.
This was what his power answered to.
Above them, god struck god.
Light carved through darkness.
Darkness swallowed light.
Neither yielded.
Neither fell.
And as their collision escalated beyond restraint, the fracture widened—threatening to tear Valderia itself apart.
The war of mortals meant nothing now.
This was divine judgment.
And it had only just begun.