Beneath the five black suns, two figures stood facing one another across the endless sea of blood.
One was a towering man clad in shattered black metallic armor. Half of his chest and his entire upper right arm were exposed, his skin marred with wounds both ancient and fresh. He held a long, thick spear raised above his head in a stance that defied conventional combat forms, a strange posture, unreadable, and yet undeniably lethal.
Opposite him stood Vale, his feet anchored on the rippling surface of the bloody sea. His stance was low, guarded, his blade held at his side and angled upward, ready to intercept or strike. His armor was in ruins, sliced open, dented, and stained with too many wounds delivered by the chained man throughout their relentless duel. Every breath he drew was ragged and painful, hoarse enough that it sounded like his lungs were tearing apart with each inhale. His internal organs were damaged. His bones trembled.
Yet he forced his body to stand. He forced it to obey.
Because this battle wasn't over. Not until one of them fell.
Vale's eyes burned with unwavering resolve, though the chained man's expression remained forever hidden behind the obsidian mask marked with a single golden sun. Vale had never seen the man's real face. It didn't matter. At this moment, nothing mattered except survival.
No… more than survival.
Victory.
Vale gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes. Beneath the surface of the blood-red sea, his foot shifted ever so slightly, a tiny adjustment, but one his opponent would surely notice. Even so, Vale couldn't afford hesitation. Not now.
A thin stream of blood escaped the corner of his mouth, trickling down his chin. He didn't notice. He didn't care. The drop fell in slow motion, or at least, it felt that way, stretching the moment into an eternity as it inched toward the ocean below.
When it finally met the sea, the world snapped forward.
Vale moved.
He launched himself with terrifying speed, slicing across the bloody surface like a phantom. At the exact same moment, the chained man surged forward as well, the blades embedded in his back rattling violently with each step.
Dozens of meters separated them.
It took them less than a second to cross it.
Both had long since transcended human limits.
Vale had clawed his way to this level through death after death, killed repeatedly by the chained man only to rise again, his skills sharpened each time. He studied every book the chained man gave him. He trained his body until it broke, then trained it again. He stretched his flexibility, refined his reactions, strengthened his mind.
And in that instant, as they closed in on each other, Vale felt something curious swell in his chest.
A smile.
A small, grateful smile.
He realized, if only for a fleeting heartbeat, that the chained man might have cared for him in his own brutal, monstrous way.
But sentiment wouldn't win this fight.
Vale couldn't lose. He wouldn't.
Not if he ever hoped to return to the real world.
They closed in. Vale adjusted his grip, switching his blade to his left hand. He saw the chained man shift, the spear poised to thrust toward Vale's exposed right arm. A perfect opportunity to counterattack. Vale knew his metallic right arm wouldn't break from a simple stab, he could use that moment to strike back using his left.
A faint grin tugged at his lips.
But then,
The spear moved.
Not forward. Not sideways.
No, it twisted in a way that defied reality itself, bending space around it like a puppet tugging on invisible threads. In an instant, its trajectory shifted, impossibly and instead angled straight toward Vale's left arm.
The arm holding his sword.
Vale's eyes widened in horror.
He couldn't stop. He was far too close. There was no dodging, no retreat, no plausible escape. He met the chained man's masked gaze as the spear struck him, his earlier resolve flashing violently across his pale eyes.
Then came the pain.
White-hot. Soul-deep.
The spear drove into his flesh, tearing through his arm with horrifying ease. For a heartbeat, Vale's mind flickered, drifting in panic, shock, disbelief. His life had been guided by logic, by what was possible, by what could be achieved within reason. He had never reached for anything he believed unattainable. Never dared to want something beyond what the world said was realistic.
But here, with blood spraying, agony blinding him, determination burning fiercely in his chest,
For the first time, he felt something clear.
A declaration not of logic.
But of will.
'I don't want to lose.'
'I want to beat you!'
The spear punched clean through his arm. The force tore his limb outward and sent his sword spiraling through the air.
Pain exploded through him, but he roared through it.
"And I won't lose again!"
Vale screamed, voice shaking the sea beneath them.
His metallic right fist clenched tightly, even as blood streamed from his mouth, even as teeth cracked under the force of his own resolve. His arm shot forward, muscles, gears, and willpower all aligning into one final, desperate strike.
Aimed directly at the mask of the chained man.
Eyes wide.
Determination absolute.
A final expression of defiance, resilience, and raw, unyielding will.
And Vale brought his right fist crashing forward.
As Vale's fist tore through the air, something shifted in his vision, subtle at first, then violently absolute.
He didn't notice immediately. He was far too consumed by the singular desire burning through him: his will to win.
But the world around him began to unravel regardless.
Color vanished.
Not just red, not just the metallic shimmer of his arm, or the cold blacks of the chained man's armor,
No.
All color ceased to exist.
Then, impossibly, every color returned all at once, merging into a single primordial hue. It wasn't black. It wasn't white. It wasn't anything the human eye was meant to perceive.
It was the origin color, the shade that reality itself had been painted with before division, before categorization, before the universe learned how to make distinctions.
In that impossible light, Vale saw a silhouette.
It was the shape of the chained man, but hollow, comprised only of edges, as though his existence had been outlined but never fully filled in. A being missing something essential, something fundamental.
Behind him, the blades impaled into his back shone with blinding brilliance, lines of pure creation pouring from them like rivers of energy. Further above, threads, thin, delicate, yet infinitely strong, stretched upward. They attached themselves to the five black suns, and those suns were no longer black at all. They were overflowing with the same unbearable, origin-colored radiance.
Vale's world slowed to a crawl.
When his foot touched what should have been the bloody sea, he realized the ocean was gone. The ground beneath him shimmered like glass.
Then, he noticed his own arm.
His right metallic limb glowed with a radiance so intense it bordered on blinding, an unfiltered, raw luminescence that felt older than reality.
And in that moment, Vale understood.
He didn't want to believe it.
He almost refused to believe it.
But there was no denying it.
This place, this world stripped to its primordial essence, where everything reverted to its original, intended form
It wasn't normal.
It wasn't a dream.
It was the one place Vale had always believed he would never reach.
Nirvana.
A realm so immeasurably vast, so beyond comprehension, that he had given up on it long ago. A place spoken of only in half-mad scriptures, riddled through the manuscripts the chained man had tossed him. A place closer to the heart of creation than any mortal, or immortal, had any right to exist within.
And yet…
He was here.
But even with this revelation, Vale's intent did not waver. A thousand emotions surged through him, fear, awe, agony, exhilaration, but none of them mattered.
He still wanted to win.
Yet he couldn't ignore the sensation tearing through him,
This hellish sensation.
He had read about the Nirvana. He knew it allowed one to feel everything: every cell, every fiber, every quantum spark within their body. But he had never imagined,
This.
His nerves weren't simply awake; they were screaming.
His blood wasn't simply flowing; it was roaring.
His muscles weren't simply straining; they were fracturing and reforming within the same instant.
The ultimate power,
also the ultimate curse.
An overstimulation so intense it drowned out thought, drowned out breath, drowned out identity itself. A sensation worse than all his deaths combined.
But Vale… moved anyway.
He didn't care about the agony flooding him like molten steel.
He didn't care about the cosmic torture tearing through his every atom.
He cared only about one thing,
Landing this punch.
In the mere instant it took to swing his fist, Vale endured what felt like millions of lifetimes of agony. Endless renaissances of pain folded into a single heartbeat.
And yet, he kept going.
Outside Nirvana, his physical body reflected the transformation. His metallic arm ignited with streaks of brilliant blue and purple light, energy awakening deep within the arm's construction, as if some hidden protocol had finally been triggered.
The chained man's golden eye widened behind the mask.
He had made the same mistake Vale once had,
He underestimated proximity.
He underestimated desperation.
He underestimated Vale.
A faint smile formed beneath the chained man's mask just as Vale's fist collided with it.
In Nirvana, the silhouette cracked.
Like glass.
Like ancient stone.
Like a divine sculpture meeting its first imperfection.
Shards of the outline fractured outward, not with sound, but with an echo too deep to hear.
But the chained man did not move.
Vale, however, couldn't hold on.
His vision distorted, Nirvana collapsing as his consciousness slipped away. He returned to the real plane abruptly, color snapping back into existence. His senses dimmed. His body trembled.
He looked at the chained man,
and smiled.
A sad, exhausted smile.
"I… I really tried…" Vale whispered, voice trembling as though he were on the verge of tears.
His body gave out.
He collapsed
but strong arms caught him before he could.
As Vale's fist withdrew, pieces of black stone tumbled from the chained man's mask, falling into the blood below.
"I know," the chained man said quietly.
Vale forced his gaze upward. Through hazy vision, he saw the chained man's face for the first time, a single golden eye shining through the shattered mask, framed by a black brow and skin too perfect to belong to something mortal.
Then the chained man spoke again, softer this time.
Almost gentle.
"And it was enough."