The explosion was abyssal.
A devouring silence followed the blast, a silence so total it seemed to erase even the notion of sound.
Everything — matter, laws, concepts, soul, story — was reduced to white dust, then sucked into a void without memory.
Even meta-conceptual entities, immortals, those who never die, would be disintegrated, swallowed by the divine light of Isissis.
Nothing could survive.
Nothing… except him.
At the center of the cataclysm, Sakolomi still stood.
His hair danced in the mana gale, his calm and tired gaze shone with an indecipherable gleam.
A faint smile brushed his lips — not of triumph, but of realization.
Then, without warning, he tilted his head.
A spectral fist, white and incandescent, brushed his face and exploded behind him, tearing the void.
Sakolomi countered with a sharp backhand, his arm tracing a golden glow.
Impact.
Bakuzan, struck full on the face, was hurled into the void.
But he already reappeared.
His size, though reduced, vibrated with an even denser energy.
His muscles gleamed with silver reflections, and his aura burned like a molten star.
He had grown again… in power.
But how? Where did he draw this seemingly infinite strength?
Sakolomi charged, and they collided.
Their silhouettes merged in a storm of blows.
Echoes of impact split the whiteness of the void; their movements were so fast they doubled, multiplied — there were a thousand Sakolomis, a thousand Bakuzans, fighting at impossible angles of the fractured void.
Then — Bam!
A sharp, brutal hit.
Bakuzan took the shock full-on, and Sakolomi followed with no respite.
Fist. Knee. Elbow. Heel.
Each strike sounded like a cosmic verdict.
The void vibrated, trembled, imploded at every contact.
A final kick swept Bakuzan off his feet, shattering his head in an explosion of light.
His body staggered, inert, before regeneration kicked in amid a spray of white sparks.
— Hrrrgh…
His jaw cracked.
An incandescent orb was born in his throat, swelling like a black sun.
With a roar, Bakuzan spat it out.
The orb tore through the void screaming, tracing a trail of violet and white light.
Sakolomi watched it come.
No recoil.
Just that cold, sovereign calm.
He bent his knees slightly, clenched his fists…
Then struck.
A perfect impact.
The orb split cleanly into two halves that moved apart before exploding simultaneously, unleashing two mana storms of unprecedented intensity.
Violet arcs ripped through the void, erasing entire swaths of existence.
Bakuzan stood frozen.
His pupils trembled in incomprehension.
His attacks were yet imbued with the order of Isissis — the very order that destroyed immortality and dissolved higher existences.
But Sakolomi neutralized them.
He deflected them.
He denied them.
No doubt was possible anymore:
Sakolomi had transcended the Madhurya.
The forces of the divine Order, once absolute, were mere shadows before him.
— AAAAAHHHHHHHH!
Bakuzan screamed and charged, his face contorted by rage.
But before he even covered the distance between them, he felt something.
A shock.
A wave.
He did not have time to understand.
Sakolomi already appeared before him.
One simple movement.
One only.
And his foot plunged into Bakuzan's belly.
Bakuzan staggered back, bent in two, hand clenched on his gut.
His breath was hoarse, broken, saturated with a pain he never thought possible.
Before him, Sakolomi advanced slowly, his gaze as sharp as a divine blade.
— You see well, he murmured in a calm, icy voice, that you are no longer a match…
But Bakuzan refused this truth.
His cry rose, wild, tearing through the void:
— Shut up!!!
A wave of mana surged around him, and suddenly, the void filled with thousands of white shadows.
Bakuzans — countless, identical, pulsating with an almost unbearable power.
He had just activated his forbidden technique: the Existential Source Doubling.
Each clone bore the same essence, the same strength, the same rage.
They emerged from all directions, cleaving the void, their shadow swords in hand.
A sea of blows crashed upon Sakolomi.
Yet he remained serene.
He dodged with almost unreal elegance, his movements drawing arabesques in the white light of the void.
Each strike from his hand dissipated a double in a golden flash.
One, ten, a hundred, a thousand.
The clones exploded, reformed, collided with one another in an infinite dance where even causality seemed to be lost.
Sakolomi then slowly raised his arm.
A strange light pulsed in his palm.
And at that very moment… the void itself seemed to turn over.
Around him, silhouettes emerged — Bakuzans again.
But this time, created by Sakolomi.
Perfect copies, indistinguishable from the originals.
Same aura. Same power. Same voice.
A shiver ran through the immensity.
— How is this possible?!
Bakuzan screamed, stunned.
Sakolomi's Bakuzans threw themselves at the original Bakuzans, and a shadow war began, a tide of blows, shards and roars shaking the absolute.
Sakolomi watched, impassive, his hair floating in the light of chaos, his gaze detached, almost disinterested.
Bakuzan, amidst the turmoil, understood nothing anymore.
What he saw defied all logic, all structure, even those Isissis had inscribed into the fabric of reality.
> "He reproduces my own essences… identically?! That's impossible… unless…"
His gaze blurred, a chilling intuition pierced his mind:
> "Could he be… a Transcendent of the Domain of Visnü?"
It was the only conceivable explanation.
Creating a being equal to oneself in the same order of existence is impossible — unless that being is above that order.
Unless he transcends even the structure that makes difference measurable.
But it was not over.
Sakolomi stretched out his hand again, and with a simple gesture, altered the foundations of the scene.
The Bakuzan doubles — all of them — lit up with a colossal aura.
Their strength began to rise, again and again, surpassing that of the original.
The void trembled.
Bakuzan screamed.
A wave of mana devastated everything, breaking copies, fracturing space.
Then — everything exploded.
A cosmic roar.
The void shattered, throwing the two brothers into another universe.
A new sky, saturated with stars and spiral galaxies, spread around them.
They fell back into this cosmic ocean, their auras blazing like black suns.
Bakuzan was panting, bloodshot eyes.
Sakolomi remained silent, his oversized shadow dancing on the rings of a distant planet.
— You son of a…! Bakuzan shouted.
He charged, mad with rage, brandishing his shadow sword.
But a hand closed mercilessly over his face.
Sakolomi had just seized him.
Without a word, he flung him through the void, dragging him like a living comet before violently smashing him against a planet.
Kaboom!
The entire planet exploded in an apocalyptic roar.
Bakuzan pulled himself from the rubble, trembling with fury.
His body cracked, his light flickered.
— That's enough!!!
Mana growled around Bakuzan, a wave of cosmic colors bursting across the surrounding void. His body twisted, reshaped under an incomprehensible force.
His white flesh cracked, his bones creaked like collapsing worlds — then all became silence.
Where the being stood remained only a silhouette without hair, without face, pure and spectral.
An immaculate entity, whose mere presence bent the universe.
Sakolomi watched him, impassive, arms crossed.
But space itself vibrated: Bakuzan's transformation made the constellations tremble, and tears of light opened in the sky of dying stars.
When the metamorphosis ended, Bakuzan's voice resonated — or rather, one hundred and three voices in unison. Each bore the resonance of a deity, an echo of Isissis, a rumble of Validus.
" This form… is the fusion of the three sources: Isissis, Validus… and me."
His simple gesture made entire solar systems falter.
" Let's see now, Sakolomi… how you're going to get out of this."
Sakolomi smiled faintly and launched himself without hesitation.
But this time, Bakuzan was no longer the same.
He saw the attack coming even before it happened — no, he saw it beyond the possible, the potential, and the become.
For him, Sakolomi's blows seemed to float in infinite slowness, as if causality itself dissolved before his gaze.
In a fluid movement, he grabbed Sakolomi's arm and, with a backhand of white energy, smashed him in the back before hurling him to the edges of the universe.
Then, without pause, he pursued him, striking, tearing, pulverizing.
Each impact echoed like a cosmic verdict.
" You think you can face me, in this state?!"
he roared, as galaxies burst beneath their dueling bodies.
Sakolomi was hammered by blows.
Space bent, stars collapsed, laws faltered — yet he did not flinch. No cry, no visible resistance.
The attacks, designed to judge, dissolve, annihilate even essence — seemed to glide over him without ever reaching their goal.
Bakuzan growled, frustration mingling with disbelief.
> "This is impossible… my blows determine destruction! They judge, then pulverize the being on all levels!"
But Sakolomi remained.
Intact.
Serene.
More alive than anything that exists, as if death itself never had authority over him.
Bakuzan, exasperated, screamed and delivered a final blow.
Sakolomi was thrown into the center of a galaxy, which imploded on impact.
The white titan then extended his hands toward the void, his palms closing slowly, framing Sakolomi from afar.
The space around him distorted, stars began to whirl in a spiraling movement.
" Spiral of Narration!"