“Intruder… Die…” The three voices overlapped, rasping through countless unseen throats.
The words vibrated inside his skull, as if the realm itself had spoken through them.
All three lunged at once, movements abrupt and eerily synchronized.
No artifacts, no visible techniques, only arms lifting, fists clenching, cutting the distance with brutal simplicity. Even that simplicity tugged on the realm, the very law of reincarnation rang like a struck bell in answer.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The air detonated around the incoming fists. Wherever each fist passed, youth curdled into decay, newborn vigor wilted into rot, and certainty thinned toward nothingness. They were weaponizing reincarnation itself, folding the cycle of life and death directly into the blow.
Jared‘s eyes narrowed; caution overtook every other emotion. He drew his arm back, dense chaotic force spiraling to his knuckles, and met the middle fist head-on.
“Chaos Spellbreaker!” he roared, letting the punch fly.
The gray stamp of his Chaotic Fist shot upward, meeting the three pale Reincarnation seals at the center of the dull sky. He braced for thunder, but no shockwave came; only a thin, hungry hiss seeped through the air, as though acid were licking bone.
The moment the two arrays touched, they gnawed at each other, chaos trying to unweave the laws of return, while those same laws clawed back, desperate to swallow the chaos whole.
At last the gray seal punched through; the trio of reincarnation marks shattered like brittle glass, though his own imprint thinned, its edges dimming. The leftover surge slapped the three gray figures, forcing them to stagger two steps; their misty bodies rippled, then steadied, as if nothing had happened.
A chill pinched the back of his neck. Strong, too strong for mere constructs. Clearly these shapes weren‘t living things at all; they were guardians, avatars forged straight from the very laws of reincarnation. In this place the whole Reincarnation Realm poured its weight into them, turning destruction into a momentary inconvenience.
Jared couldn’t let the fight stretch; every second would only let the realm rebuild their shells. Decision snapped into him. His right hand closed on nothing, and the Dragonslayer Sword condensed there, blade humming to be swung. Across its length surged churning chaos, the cycling Five Elements, incandescent Earthfire, and a coiling golden dragon phantom; the four forces wove together into a dusk-colored Sword Aura flecked with shifting lights.
“Chaos Genesis!” Jared cleaved forward with a single, unhesitating stroke. He abandoned intricate forms, instead pouring every drop of chaotic force into the sword’s primal urge to split and reshape worlds.
Where the blade stormed past, the surrounding gray aura peeled away, torn like rotted cloth. Within the death-silent realm, a raw pocket of chaos forced itself open, insisting on its own uncharted sky. For the first time the gray figures twitched, sensing true danger. They refused to meet the stroke. Bodies unraveled into three swirling clouds that bled outward and vanished into the omnipresent fog.
Instantly the entire field churned; gray-white mist boiled from every direction, squeezing toward Jared like closing jaws. Within the surge, countless chains, blades, and arrowheads coalesced, whistling through the mist in a storm of dim metal. The realm itself meant to pin Jared down, grind him into sameness, and leave no scrap of chaos behind.
“Parlor tricks!” Jared’s expression didn’t shift. Instead, his Chaotic Domain flared outward, its radius leaping from a hundred yards to three hundred in a single breath. Inside the swelling sphere, turbulent chaos roared; the Five Elements spun rivers of earth, fire, water, and wind; Earthfire blazed, scouring every alien speck; the golden dragon phantom coiled overhead, its long cry nailing evil to silence.
Every gray assault that crossed the boundary dissolved at once, stripped apart and folded back into formless chaos. Beyond the ragged edge of his Chaotic Domain, the three gray phantoms pulled themselves back together. Their misty bodies quivered, as though the very thought of crossing that boundary scalded them.
Fine… If they refuse to step inside, I will drag them in!
“Since you won’t come to me, I’ll force you out.” A dry laugh scraped out of him.
Both hands closed around the Dragonslayer Sword; Jared drove the point straight into the cracked earth.
“Chaos Origin! Earth Suppression!” Jared’s shout rang like iron striking stone.
The ground answered with a gut-deep boom. From the buried blade a ring of gray ripples raced outward, devouring distance in heartbeats. Where the wave passed, the floor of this death-ridden realm split like old porcelain. Pale stones blistered, then melted into swirling ash, surrendered to the chaotic force flooding them.
The quake reached the phantoms’ feet; the ground bucked hard enough to tear them loose. They had no choice but to fling themselves into the air. A spark fired behind his eyes. Now!
Light knifed through his gaze as his left hand carved a seal in the air. The right formed two fingers into a blade and stabbed toward the hovering phantoms.
“Chaos Origin! Trifold Reversion!” Three sparks of gray tore from Jared’s fingertip, faster than thought, faster than fear.
In the same breath they buried themselves in each phantom’s chest. This time the darts ignored the outer fog; they drilled straight into the bright nodes pulsing at each core. Those nodes were the very hinges on which the law of return turned. All three bodies froze mid-air.
Mist churned violently, birthing silent screams that clawed at his skull. They tried to summon the governing law to patch the wound, but chaotic force had already seeped into the nodes. It gnawed from within, unmaking them stitch by stitch.
Jared’s voice dropped to a gravelly whisper. “Break!”
Thunderous cracks followed, three in brutal succession. Each phantom burst apart, dissolving into whorls of pristine reincarnation aura. Nothing re-formed; the nodes lay in ruins, erased by the invading chaos. The three clouds of aura hovered briefly, then drew inward, drinking themselves into the waiting Chaotic Domain.
The domain pulsed, fed. Even so, tension tightened Jared’s shoulders instead of easing them. This had been only the gate.
Jared lifted his gaze toward the deeper gloom. There, the gray fog peeled aside like curtains, revealing a dead-straight road. At the road’s far limit loomed the outline of a vast gray palace. A vibration, faint as dust shifting, trembled across the broken stones before Jared could name it.
From the black palace ahead, a sound unfolded—vast, indifferent, older than anything still breathing.
“Bearer of chaos… At last, you stand before me.” The voice held no anger, no joy; it settled over Jared with the chill patience of a glacier studying an ant.
Jared’s fingers tightened around the Dragonslayer Sword until leather groaned. Each step toward the gray staircase felt heavier, as if the floor demanded tribute for letting him pass. When the first boot touched the lowest stair, the palace doors sighed inward without a hinge or echo. The invitation felt surgical, removing every excuse to hesitate.
Inside, nothing waited. Columns, altars, thrones—every certainty was absent, leaving only distance and the smell of cold stone. At the far end, above a narrow platform, a pallid knot of light hovered, shifting shapes faster than breath. Mouths and eyes surfaced, laughed, wept, vanished, then returned as strangers.
Was that the Lord of Reincarnation itself, or only a skin it wore in this realm?
