Lightning danced across the desolate field, twitching like nerves severed from a god's body. The sky had ruptured, the clouds parted by force alone, revealing stars like distant scars. In the center of the annihilated world stood Kael Fael—bleeding, blazing, breathing like the lungs of a dying world.
Across from him, the Origin-ranked Varnok twitched, flickering like broken crystal. Its mirrored shape was gone. The mockery of Kael had ended. Now, it was something primal—skeletal wings of lightning stretched behind it, its body a silhouette of chaos wrapped in skinless flame and dark essence.
The final phase had begun.
Kael clenched his fists.
The beast raised a hand.
They moved.
Fists collided, but the Varnok struck with folded dimensions, warping angles that shouldn't exist. Kael pivoted mid-air, eyes tracking movements beyond time, slipping just past a void-hook aimed for his heart.
He slammed his elbow into the beast's throat. It retaliated instantly with a knee spike that fractured Kael's ribs, followed by a spiral-tail whip infused with annihilation essence.
Kael caught the tail.
He roared, Essence igniting in a quadruple surge—Storm, Lightning, Flame, Kinetic—all twisted through his core like a burning cyclone.
"Essence Devastation: Apex Overdrive!"
The battlefield turned white.
Kael surged forward in a straight line that tore the land behind him into a spiraling trench. The Varnok's wings tried to intercept—but Kael phased through them, pure kinetic force bursting their structure like sand under a hammer.
They clashed in the upper sky—Kael hammering a blazing knee into the Varnok's sternum, lightning following through the blow and causing a detonation that blew apart a stormfront.
But the beast wasn't dead.
It screamed—no, layered screams. Voices of stolen souls howled out of its throat, trying to shake Kael's will.
It opened its chest—revealing a second core.
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Of course you would…"
The Varnok drew essence from the planet below—ripping it from the bedrock, from the air, from every dead and dying flame on the field. It became a sphere of collapsing entropy, building toward a singular, final erasure.
Kael stood in defiance. The Essence around him no longer roared—it sang. A final note in a requiem only he could finish.
He braced his legs.
Gathered every ounce.
Not for himself.
Not even for revenge.
But for Valeria.
Kael vanished—reappearing mid-air, fist drawn back.
"Dominion Reigns."
The punch shattered space.
It slammed into the Varnok's core just as its annihilation sphere ignited.
But Kael's strike pierced through. Essence channeled through the center of its being—flame to scorch, lightning to disorient, storm to tear, and kinetic to obliterate.
The core cracked.
Then imploded.
A silence swept the world.
The Varnok's body split apart in slow motion, scattering into fading motes of crimson essence. Its scream faded not in agony, but in final understanding.
Kael dropped to one knee, the storm finally settling.
Above, the stars blinked clearly again.
The war was over.
And the last flame still rose.
—End of Volume One—