(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)
Eight Minutes Earlier...
The world was still cracking under the weight of battles that could fracture timelines. While Adriel was locked in his brutal confrontation with Sentry across space and shattered fiction, Runeterra continued to burn.
Artoria hadn't yet unleashed the final blow. Her breathing was ragged. Her armor, cracked. Her grip on Excalibur—firm, but trembling. Every second stretched like a drawn bowstring ready to snap.
All around her, the corrupted remnants of Shurima twisted and wailed. Not with voices, but with ruptured code and distorted echoes. The once-proud lands of gold and honor had become malformed structures of glitching geometry and red-black smog. Trees jittered like broken data loops. Castles floated in flickers, caught in failing animation frames.
And there—rising from one of the shattered ziggurats—came a presence that dwarfed even the fearsome aura of the Minotaur she'd just faced.
A thunderous pulse rolled over the horizon. Not thunder. Not magic. Not divine wrath.
Something older.
Something worse.
She didn't have to turn to know who it was. Her body knew before her mind could process it. Her nerves screamed before her eyes even locked on the figure stepping across the fractured air itself.
Dark Hercules had arrived.
Twice her size and ten times as loud, the god of gods walked through the battlefield with the arrogance of a man who had fought the primordial forces of oblivion and lived.
But this wasn't the Hercules of myth.
This version reeked of madness.
His eyes shimmered with an abyssal gleam—like he'd stared too long into the Chaos King and liked what he saw. A grin played at the edges of his face, feral and cracked.
His mace was slung over one shoulder. But even idle, it radiated the weight of dying realities.
"Lovely light show," he said, voice echoing across dimensions. "Took down the Minotaur, didn't you?"
Artoria stood slowly. Her lungs still burned from her last strike. "You're late."
"You're early," Hercules chuckled. "You weren't supposed to win. That beast was meant to soften you up. Guess that Guardian gave you more than a pep talk."
Artoria didn't reply.
She drew Excalibur again. Its edge still glowed with residual energy—but nowhere near its earlier brilliance.
"I don't want to fight you," she said.
"You say that like you have a choice."
He was in front of her before she could blink.
She barely got her blade up in time.
CLANG!
The mace struck like a falling star. Her arms screamed as she blocked, skidding back across cracked earth and skimming the edge of a molten canyon. Sparks flew. The ground cratered. Her knees buckled.
He wasn't trying.
She felt it.
That hit was lazy.
"You Guardians always think you can fix everything," Hercules sneered, rolling his neck. "Always patching stories, healing timelines, protecting fiction like it's sacred. But here's a truth you don't get to rewrite—some stories are better broken."
He swung again.
Artoria twisted, blade flashing, meeting the next strike.
She didn't dodge. She refused to.
Because that's what the old Artoria would've done—what the Dark version had done. Skulking in despair. Surviving because she couldn't win.
But now?
Now, she was a Guardian.
Her footwork tightened. Her stance sharpened. She took a hit to the shoulder and didn't flinch.
Because this time, she had something more than just pride or duty—
She had faith.
Not in herself, but in the man who'd believed in her when she was ready to be discarded. The man who was still out there, rewriting an entire corrupted anime to save a girl no one else would've remembered.
She had faith in Adriel.
And because of that—she could hold the line.
Even against this.
Hercules noticed the change in her aura.
"Hmph. You actually believe you can stall me?" He grinned wider. "Do you know who I am, girl? I broke the Chaos King's jaw before sacrificing my power to recreate the multiverse. I've killed gods for less than that look on your face."
Artoria raised Excalibur.
"Then try to kill me."
Silence stretched.
Then Hercules lunged—and the second fight began.
A storm of strength and light collided in the burning heart of Shurima. While time fractured and stories bled across Omniverses, a knight with a wounded soul held the frontline against madness itself.
Because eight minutes were all she needed to buy.
And she wouldn't let the world fall before Adriel returned.
The sky cracked as their weapons clashed again.
Hercules's mace met Excalibur in a bone-rattling collision that split the ground open like fragile glass. Artoria staggered, her armor dented, her shoulder already dislocated from the last strike. Pain screamed through her body—but she stood.
She had to.
"You should be on your knees already," Hercules growled, circling her with maddening calm. "Or do Guardians not feel pain the same way anymore?"
Artoria exhaled through her teeth, her grip on Excalibur faltering only slightly. "We feel all of it. We just don't bow to it."
He chuckled. "Admirable. Stupid. But admirable."
He lunged again. Faster this time.
Artoria barely managed to block—but the blow sent her flying through a crumbled shrine. Stone exploded around her as her back hit the remains of a statue, shattering it into powder. Blood stained her lips again. Her body screamed for rest.
But she rose.
Every breath felt like chewing glass, but she rose.
Excalibur's light flickered—but didn't die.
"You're holding that sword like it's a cross," Hercules mocked. "Are you praying to someone? Or just pretending to be strong for his sake?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she charged.
The blow she landed barely moved him—but it was enough to draw a flicker of surprise from his face. A spark of interest.
He blocked the follow-up and swept her legs with a brutal kick. She hit the ground hard, shoulder-first, dislocating it again. But she rolled, popped it back in with a scream, and slashed upward—barely missing his throat.
He grabbed the blade with one hand.
Caught it.
It didn't even cut him.
Artoria's eyes widened.
"You're strong," he admitted, gripping the golden edge like it was a toy. "But you're still playing in a weight class meant for gods. You don't even realize it's over, do you?"
His other fist slammed into her gut.
CRACK.
She coughed blood, doubling over. Her knees hit the dirt. Her sword fell.
He didn't press the attack.
He just watched her, that grin still growing.
"I could kill you right now," Hercules said, voice like a rumbling storm. "One hit. Gone. Just like the Minotaur."
He crouched, bringing his face close to hers.
"But I won't. You know why?"
Artoria forced herself to look up, teeth clenched, eyes blazing.
"Because you're a coward," she spat.
He laughed. Genuinely, this time.
"Oh, no. Not cowardice. Opportunity."
She lurched forward, grabbing Excalibur again. She slashed—he sidestepped lazily.
"You've already tasted the corruption once. I can feel it still clinging to your soul like ashes on a battlefield."
He grabbed her wrist and twisted—hard.
She screamed again.
"Do you think you're clean, Saber?" he said, using the old name like poison. "You're a Dark creature playing dress-up. The world may not see it—but I do. You're fighting like you want to die. That's what corruption loves most."
She grit her teeth and pulled free, slashing across his face. The cut vanished before it could bleed.
He didn't retaliate.
Not yet.
He just looked at her—like a beast looking over meat not yet tender enough to bite.
"You've got potential, girl. Too much to waste on martyrdom."
She rose again, slowly. Blood dripping. Breathing ragged.
Her sword wavered, but her stance did not.
"I'm not wasting anything. I'm holding the line."
He tilted his head.
"Still waiting on your Guardian prince to come rescue you?"
Artoria didn't answer.
She lunged instead.
Their weapons clashed once more—sparks flying, the earth shaking again.
He was stronger.
She was faster.
But even speed had limits.
And she'd already pushed hers to the edge.
Artoria crashed through a dead, scorched tree, her body ragdolling across the cracked battlefield before she slammed into a jagged stone pillar. Her breath left her lungs in one harsh exhale as she dropped to a knee, eyes struggling to focus.
Footsteps echoed. Heavy. Unrushed.
Hercules didn't hurry. He was savoring this.
"I was a hero once, you know," he said, wiping a speck of her blood from his jaw. "A god of strength. Champion of Olympus. Son of Zeus. The good kind of myth. Always smiling. Always saving."
Artoria staggered to her feet again, dragging Excalibur behind her. Her hands were shaking. Her left eye was nearly swollen shut.
"But then came the Chaos King." He chuckled to himself, low and bitter. "A walking abyss. A silence that even gods feared. I fought him. Fought harder than I ever had. Made him bleed. Made oblivion itself scream."
He paused, looking to the dark sky as if expecting applause that never came.
"I won. I won, Saber. Gave everything. My strength. My immortality. Burned it all to keep the Multiverse from vanishing."
She didn't speak. Her silence was defiance now, not weakness.
"And how did the gods repay me?" His tone soured. "They turned on me. Afraid. Jealous. Wanted to carve up my power like vultures circling a carcass."
He grinned again. Wider this time. More unhinged.
"So I killed them."
He stepped closer.
"One by one. The skyfathers. The pantheons. Every backstabbing piece of shit who called themselves divine. I broke their bones and burned their temples."
He towered above her now, voice calm again. "But even then, it didn't end. The story turned on me."
Artoria's brow twitched at the word.
"Yes," he whispered, as if savoring it. "The narrative. The script. Fate. Call it what you want—it wanted me gone. Stripped me down to nothing. Rewrote me as a side character. A punchline."
He grabbed her by the throat before she could move.
Lifted her off the ground with ease.
"And then he came."
His voice dropped.
Even the air trembled around the mention.
"The one who watches behind the panel. The voice that isn't bound to a single universe. He showed me what I was. What we are. Just ink. Just scenes. Just... fiction."
He grinned wider, eyes glowing like molten stars.
"But he gave me freedom. Told me I could take back control. That if my story was just entertainment, I should entertain myself."
He slammed her into the ground. Hard.
Artoria coughed blood, but still reached for her sword.
"You think you're strong because you follow a code?" Hercules knelt beside her, gripping her hair to force her to look at him. "I was strength. And they still threw me away. But now?"
His breath was hot against her cheek.
"I write my own story."
He stood again, stepping back, letting her struggle to her feet. Her legs wobbled. Her armor was cracked beyond recognition. Blood trailed down her temple, dripping into one eye.
"But don't worry, little lion," he said, smirking. "You'll have a place in it."
She didn't respond.
Couldn't.
"I've had goddesses, mortals, even death herself under me. But you? You'll be special."
Her eyes flared with rage—but her body faltered.
He saw it.
He knew it.
"You'll make a beautiful Dark again. And you'll beg for it. Because this world doesn't deserve a martyr. It wants a monster in heels and steel."
He struck her again—backhanded her into the ground like swatting a fly.
Still, she tried to rise.
Again.
And again.
Her defiance made him grin.
Because it meant he could break her slower.
...
The golden sands of Shurima were black now.
No sun. No sky. No wind.
Just rot and heat and the smell of agony.
Charred bones littered the dunes. Stone pyramids stood half-melted, bleeding molten gold like they were weeping. The air itself was thick—like breathing through the smoke of centuries of suffering.
And through it all, Hercules walked.
Dragging Artoria by her arm like she was nothing more than a broken sword he hadn't decided to throw away yet.
Her armor scraped across the ground. Her body hung limp. She was awake, but silent. Her limbs trembled with every movement. Her fingers twitched around the hilt of Excalibur still clutched in her hand. But she couldn't lift it.
Not yet.
Not like this.
Hercules didn't care.
He was in his own world.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said, spreading his arms like a twisted god surveying paradise. "I call it New Shurima. Not very original, but hey—what's the point of creativity when you already own everything?"
He looked back at her, dragging her around a pillar carved from the bones of titanic sandworms.
"I remade this place myself. Brick by brick. Soul by soul. Used to be holy, you know? Proud land. Magic, history, royalty. They prayed to gods here."
He sneered.
"Now they pray to me."
They passed a village—or what was left of one. Mud huts flattened like wet paper. Screams echoed from below—somewhere underground. Not loud enough to draw attention.
Just loud enough to remind her they never stopped.
"There was a time when the League sent its champions to protect this place," Hercules said, stopping by a shrine made from torn banners and melted armor. "Real warriors. Proud names."
He kicked something by his foot. A cracked shield bearing the crest of Azir.
"Dead."
He looked at a burned javelin stuck in the sand like a grave marker.
"Nidalee. Dead."
He pointed at a pair of boots that still had bones in them.
"Renekton. Dead."
He motioned to a massive, shattered sun disc, warped and sunken into the earth like a fallen halo.
"Azir. Dead. Took longer than I expected, but his screams were worth the wait."
Artoria turned her head weakly, lips parted slightly—but no sound came out.
Her silence was the only resistance she had left.
Hercules crouched beside her, grabbing her chin roughly.
"You know what I learned, Saber?" he said, almost tender. "Gods are pathetic. Heroes even worse. They fight for mortals, beg for their love, bleed for their approval—and in the end, all it takes is a little pressure, and they snap."
He smirked, brushing a thumb across her blood-streaked cheek.
"I don't serve anyone now. Not Olympus. Not fate. Not that sad sack Multiverse. I serve me. I burn what I want, I take what I want, and I rebuild it all in my image."
He stood again, dragging her past a scorched oasis where the water was thick with ashes and corpses bloated beyond recognition.
"There was one champion who almost got away," he continued, his voice cooling. "The fastest one. Akshan. Thought he could hide in the mountains, start some kind of rebellion."
He stepped over a headless body with a grappling hook still attached to one arm.
"Didn't even take a full hour."
A gust of wind blew past. Hot. Rancid.
Artoria wheezed but still said nothing.
Hercules turned slightly, his tone shifting as if remembering something sweeter.
"There were others, too. Taliyah. Amumu. Rammus." He laughed a little. "That one just said 'ok' before I broke his spine in half."
Artoria's breath caught.
Something flickered in her chest. Fury? Revulsion? Both?
He stopped near a shattered throne of gold and obsidian carved into a cliffside. It overlooked a field where monuments of dead champions stood—twisted recreations of their bodies frozen in their final moments.
"They fought like insects," Hercules said, arms behind his back, regal in mockery. "But there was one name I hesitated to erase."
He looked back at her.
A shadow passed through his smile.
"Sivir."
Artoria's eyes widened—barely—but it was enough for him to notice.
"Ah. You know the name."
He tilted his head, voice lowering.
"We'll get to her." He chuckled darkly. "Trust me."
Then he yanked Artoria up again, hard.
"After all," he growled, leaning close, his voice dripping with mock affection, "you're my honored guest in this kingdom of screams."
He dragged her toward the throne—toward the next horror.
And the next page of his twisted masterpiece.
He dragged her back into his kingdom, entering the dark hollow walls of now a dead region.
The palace was obscene.
It wasn't built with purpose. It was a monument to Hercules' ego—a tower of broken marble and gold, carved into the corpse of an old Shuriman god. Statues of himself lined the halls, grinning in triumph over the rubble of cities long lost.
Hercules dragged Artoria across the obsidian floor, leaving a smear of blood with each step.
They reached the highest room—his chamber, if it could be called that.
A throne of polished bone. Chains hanging like curtains. Luxurious silks tangled with armor pieces taken from fallen champions.
And at the far end, surrounded by cushions, draped in gold like a pet—
Sivir.
Artoria froze.
She barely recognized her.
The once-proud mercenary, the blade-master of Shurima... sat hunched over, eyes distant and hollow, her body wrapped in exotic fabrics that served more as decoration than clothing. Her hands twitched now and then, grasping at air. Her skin was marked—not with wounds, but with symbols Hercules had carved into her reality.
She was breathing.
But only just.
"Surprised?" Hercules said, his grin cruel. "Everyone thinks she's dead. Sivir, the last hope of Shurima, the great treasure-hunter. A myth now."
He nudged Artoria's side with his foot, forcing her to look.
"She's mine."
Artoria tried to turn her head away.
He didn't let her.
"I could've killed her. Could've ripped her in half and left her bones in the market square. But she was... too pretty. Too fun to waste."
He chuckled.
"So I broke her a different way."
Sivir didn't react. She just stared at the wall, lips slightly parted.
"I gave her what no one else dared give: mercy. Over and over. Until she forgot how to say no."
Artoria felt something tighten in her chest.
Hate. Burning and pure.
Hercules walked toward Sivir and ran a hand through her tangled hair. She didn't flinch. Didn't blink.
"I remember when the people begged," he went on, voice low and nostalgic. "They gave me their leaders. Their mages. Even their children. One by one. Hoping I'd leave them scraps."
He laughed again.
"But it was never about war. Not really. It was about taking. This world was a buffet. And I was hungry."
Artoria's fist clenched weakly around Excalibur's hilt.
Hercules noticed.
"Oh? Is that outrage I see?" he said mockingly, walking back toward her. "Don't act so high and mighty. You know what this world is. You've seen the stories. How easily they break."
He crouched in front of her.
"I'm just being honest about it."
Then, in a tone colder than steel:
"And soon, you'll understand it too."
He stood again.
"Don't worry. You won't die here. Not yet. I want you aware before I turn you into another memory no one speaks of."
He turned to look at Sivir again—then snapped his fingers.
Two corrupted servants approached and gently took her away, treating her like a fragile heirloom.
Artoria watched them disappear into the side corridor, her jaw tight.
Hercules stretched.
"And now, Saber... let's see how long you last before your story bends like hers."
He reached for her again.
But this time—
She spit blood in his face.
Pain burned through her limbs like wildfire, but Artoria moved.
She didn't think. She didn't plan.
She lunged.
Her body, battered and trembling from the last two fights, erupted into motion. Her gauntlet cracked against Hercules' jaw with a thunderclap, catching him mid-taunt.
He staggered a half step—just one—but his grin never faded.
"Oh? There's fire still?" he said, licking the blood from his lip.
Artoria didn't answer.
She was already moving again, blades of golden mana carving through the space between them as she spun, ducked, and struck with every ounce of her divine training. Her armor shimmered with heat, cracked from the damage she'd taken. But her eyes blazed like stars.
"You're not touching her again."
Hercules laughed and caught her next strike with one hand. "Then take her."
He hurled her backward. Her body smashed through a pillar, but she caught herself mid-air with a sharp twist and landed hard, coughing blood.
Then she charged.
The moment she reached Sivir's side, she dropped her sword and pulled the girl into her arms.
Sivir twitched. Her lips moved, trying to form words.
"Stay with me," Artoria whispered. "Just a little longer."
A shadow loomed.
Hercules approached again, slow, amused. "So dramatic. But this? This is nothing. This is just foreplay."
Artoria closed her eyes.
She knew she had one shot.
One.
She stood tall.
Excalibur ignited in her right hand, even as Sivir clung weakly to her with the other.
Her mana surged.
Her soul screamed.
The divine light returned—brighter, heavier, desperate.
"EX—CALIBUR!"
The world turned gold again.
The explosion swallowed Hercules whole, vaporizing the throne, the walls, the chains. The ground split apart, chunks of obsidian palace hurtling into the sky. Artoria leapt through the blast with Sivir in her grasp, forcing her exhausted legs to carry them forward, out—away.
She didn't look back.
She couldn't.
Ash and rubble rained behind her. Every step jarred her bones. She could barely see through the dust and blood.
But she ran.
Sivir stirred again, murmuring incoherent syllables.
"Almost there," Artoria breathed. "Almost—"
The world shook.
A shockwave like a hurricane rolled over the palace remains.
"No," she whispered.
A voice bellowed behind her, mad with glee. "YOU THINK THAT'S ENOUGH?!"
He was alive.
He liked it.
A crater formed in the distance, smoke curling like a god's breath from its center.
Artoria kept running—but her legs faltered. She stumbled down the slope of what had once been a palace wall.
Sivir slipped from her grasp.
"NO!"
Artoria dropped to catch her—but her timing was off. Her arms scraped empty air as Sivir tumbled from her grip, sliding across the cracked earth.
She hit the ground, hard.
Artoria reached her seconds later, gathering her again. "Stay awake—stay with me."
Hercules landed behind them like a meteor.
The land cracked.
The air groaned.
His skin glowed red with divine heat, and his smile was twisted into something ancient and wrong.
"You almost made it," he said, voice low and hungry. "Almost."
Artoria stood between him and Sivir, her sword dragging, her legs shaking.
But she didn't run.
"I swear," she said, voice low, "I will kill you."
He chuckled. "No. No you won't. Because you're just like her. You want to be broken. You just haven't admitted it yet."
His eyes shimmered with unholy power.
The earth darkened.
Her vision blurred.
"I'll show you," he whispered, lifting his hand. "You'll thank me for it."
A pulse surged through the air.
Mind control. Corrupted, ancient.
Artoria clenched her teeth, stumbling back as her thoughts began to fuzz, her limbs locking—
No.
She gritted her teeth.
No.
She took one step forward.
Her blade rose, heavy as mountains.
But before Hercules could speak again—
The sky split open.
And someone stepped through.
He didn't even appear.
He was just there.
One moment Hercules stood above Artoria, power pulsing from his outstretched hand, the foul current of control magic humming through the air.
And in the next—
That hand was stopped.
Clamped in a grip colder than death.
A black glove wrapped around Hercules' wrist, tight enough to crack divine bone.
A shadow stood beside them, cloaked in threads of broken data and smoldering code.
Adriel.
His voice came low, furious, calm in the most dangerous way possible.
"The fuck do you think you're doing?"
Hercules' eyes went wide.
He hadn't sensed him.
Not even a flicker of presence.
Not even a breeze.
And now?
Now the hand that once crumpled titans was being held still.
Artoria looked up, her eyes wide with disbelief. Her heart surged.
"...Adriel?"
Hope came back like breath to drowning lungs.
Hercules stepped back instinctively, wrenching his arm free—but his eyes never left the smaller figure before him.
"You..."
His voice dropped, eyes narrowing as he studied Adriel more closely.
"You're different. You've got—" He blinked. "No."
His expression twisted.
"You're carrying him."
The Void energy swirled faintly behind Adriel's irises—corrupted code and shattered identity bleeding into his aura. The dark power of the Sentry... and the Void... embedded in him like a virus.
"You killed Bob," Hercules growled. "You killed the Sentry."
Adriel didn't answer.
He raised one hand.
And before Hercules could react, boom—he vanished across the horizon, flung like a meteor across what remained of Shurima. A split-second blur, body crashing through mountains and carving a trench through the corrupted sand.
The shockwave rolled through what was left of the land.
Adriel exhaled.
Then turned to Artoria.
Her legs buckled, barely holding. She kept herself upright, but her eyes were desperate.
"Sivir—she's—"
He was already kneeling beside her, running diagnostics with his palm hovered above the unconscious woman's chest. Threads of glowing data wrapped around Sivir's body like gentle chains, reading her vitals, scanning for corruption.
"She's alive," Adriel said. "Barely. He's damaged her nervous system. No visible soul fracture. Trauma's deep but reversible."
Artoria sagged, one hand over her heart. "She didn't even scream when it happened... She just stopped being."
"I've got her now," Adriel muttered. "She's not going back in his hands."
He turned to her.
"You shouldn't have fought him alone."
She didn't flinch.
"I couldn't let him do that to her."
Adriel gave her a look—half frustration, half admiration.
Then his eyes sharpened.
The earth was rumbling again.
Far in the distance... a shadow was rising from the crater.
Hercules was getting up.
And he was pissed.
Adriel stood slowly, eyes still on Artoria and Sivir.
"You've done enough," he said. "Let me handle the freakshow."
The sky dimmed.
The ground split.
And across the land, a god prepared to return to war.
Adriel didn't wait.
His eyes flicked over Artoria one last time—her bruised skin, torn armor, the raw fury still burning in her chest despite the exhaustion.
She still wanted to fight.
But she wouldn't survive another round.
Neither would Sivir.
He raised both hands, palms glowing with lines of shifting golden code. Instantly, complex glyphs spun to life around the women—hexagrams formed from rewritten logic, reality-bending script crawling across their bodies like golden tattoos.
"Restoration Protocol: Guardian Prime."
The injuries vanished.
Bones snapped back into place. Torn muscles knitted instantly. Energy flooded their veins like fire and lightning reborn.
Artoria gasped as her vision cleared, strength flooding into her limbs.
Sivir stirred with a broken whisper of a breath.
Before either could speak—
Fwoom.
A pulse of white light consumed them both—and in a blink, they were gone.
Safely teleported to Ixtal.
Adriel was alone again.
Just as Hercules landed.
Like a meteor, the God of Gods slammed into the ground, warping the terrain for miles. Reality rippled around his presence, forcing the plane of Shurima itself to recoil. Dust rose like thunderclouds, the pressure of his rage distorting the horizon.
"You threw me," Hercules snarled, stepping from the crater, veins glowing with wrath. "You threw me like a fucking toy."
Adriel didn't flinch.
"I should've deleted you too."
They moved at once.
Two blurs.
And then—collision.
BOOOOOOM.
Their fists met with a soundless, blinding detonation. The force ripped a hole in the sky, inverted the colors of the world, and vaporized everything around them for miles. Sand turned to glass. Clouds vanished. Shurima itself split in two.
The shockwave carried into the stars.
Adriel and Hercules—locked in a storm of fists and fury, warping reality with every strike, two titans clashing like gods in a war too ancient for mortal comprehension.
Hercules grinned through the chaos.
Adriel's eyes stayed cold.
No words.
No mercy.
The explosion from their last clash hadn't even finished echoing when Hercules shot forward again, his footstep cratering a continent-sized slab of earth behind him.
Adriel met him head-on—no hesitation, no retreat.
Their fists collided again.
This time, the planet didn't just shake.
It screamed.
Space cracked like glass above them. Shurima's sky warped into bleeding threads of color—ultraviolet and violet colliding, timelines screaming as they folded inward on themselves. And below—
Tectonic plates shattered like brittle glass.
Hercules grinned mid-punch, blood leaking from his lip.
"You always did like to hit first," he said with a savage chuckle. "Sentry was like that too. But you... you hit meaner."
Adriel didn't speak.
He twisted, ducked under Hercules's follow-up, then struck his ribs with enough force to send the god spinning.
But Hercules recovered mid-air.
And roared.
He slammed both fists into the earth.
And the land answered.
The mountain range behind them quaked—rose—and split.
With a snarl, Hercules ripped the entire top of the mountain out of the crust with raw telekinetic strength, his aura stretching high into the stratosphere.
He grinned like a lunatic as he hurled it.
"I'll tear you in half, BOY!"
The mountain soared like a bullet, casting a titanic shadow over the torn battlefield.
Adriel narrowed his eyes.
He didn't move.
He blinked.
One frame.
Gone.
The next—he was on top of the mountain chunk, hand outstretched.
"Format: Collapse."
A glyph lit beneath his palm, reality trembling as the sheer mass of the mountain began to fold in on itself.
Hercules was already leaping to intercept—but too late.
The mountain caved.
Compressed.
Exploded.
Not into debris—into raw, white quantum ash.
Adriel was already in front of him.
BAM!
A knee to the chest launched Hercules across the planet like a meteor, carving a glowing red scar across the sky as he flew.
Adriel followed through instantly, appearing in front of the god mid-flight—grabbing him by the throat—and spiking him straight into the ocean bed.
A continent buckled.
Tsunamis were born in every direction.
Hercules erupted from the sea like a wrathful storm.
He was laughing.
"YES! THAT'S IT! MAKE ME BLEED!"
They collided again above the Shuriman ruins.
And again.
And again.
Each blow shook layers of existence.
The stars dimmed from the pressure.
Every clash now bent causality—effects happening before causes, air combusting before their bodies arrived. The land was no longer recognizable. Mountains had become clouds. Forests were data glitches in physical form.
Adriel blinked blood from his eye. His bones ached, nanostructures rebuilding with every breath.
But he didn't stop.
He couldn't.
Not until Hercules was brought to his knees.
And not until this chaos had an end.
Adriel and Hercules soared into the upper atmosphere like dueling meteors, trails of blue lightning and scarlet divinity streaking behind them. Clouds shattered as they passed. The ozone peeled back from the sheer speed of their ascension.
They clashed again.
Fist to fist.
The impact ruptured the heavens.
BOOOOOM.
(Visual example)
A colossal shockwave tore through the stratosphere—a gouge blasted from the planet's curvature, as if a god had taken a cosmic bite out of the Earth itself. The world reeled beneath them. Satellites ruptured in orbit. Gravity warped.
Hercules laughed, eyes glowing with deranged euphoria.
"This is the battle I craved!"
Adriel didn't answer. He rotated midair, fingers crackling with bio-electricity. Arcs of golden-blue plasma spiraled down his arms as his Hacker Glyphs shimmered like fractals across his skin.
Lines of code—actual glowing script—began to orbit his limbs.
He stretched out a hand.
A ping echoed across the sky.
Magnetism surged.
All the metal wreckage scattered from previous battles—ships, swords, armor, bullets, even mountain iron—rose from the surface, drawn upward in a reverse meteor storm.
The debris formed a swirling iron halo behind Adriel.
He pointed.
The magnetic storm condensed and fired like a railgun barrage. Thousands of hypervelocity fragments screamed toward Hercules.
The Olympian raised a bracer, scoffing—until they split midflight, rewriting trajectory in real-time, hacked midair to target his joints, nerve clusters, pressure points.
He grunted, barely shielding himself before Adriel blinked in close.
Bio-electric energy surged.
"Disruptor Lance."
Adriel slammed both palms into Hercules's chest, unleashing a blinding arc of electromagnetic fury. The god convulsed, nerve signals scrambled by the hacking matrix and EM overload.
"YOU LITTLE—"
Adriel twisted behind him, legs locking around Hercules's neck, flipping him into a meteor spin toward the upper mesosphere.
Then dove after him.
They collided again, over the curvature of the Earth, punching so hard that the vacuum screamed.
Each blow was a warhead.
Each dodge cracked the fourth dimension.
Hercules reeled back, eyes blazing. "You stole his power. Sentry. You absorbed The Void."
Adriel's eyes flared with streaks of corrupted black lightning across gold irises. "Yeah... I did."
He raised his hand, electricity crawling up his spine like veins of judgment.
"So what?"
They charged again.
And the heavens split wide open.
And then—
They vanished from mortal sight entirely.
A sonic boom erupted miles above where they'd stood, and both figures reappeared in a blur of motion.
A storm of godlike violence.
Adriel ducked under a wide swing, driving his fist straight into Hercules's diaphragm. The impact sent out a cone of shattered air, blowing apart distant cloud formations. Hercules staggered—just slightly—but his grin widened, blood threading from his lip.
"You hit harder than I remember Sentry ever did," he muttered.
"Because I'm not him," Adriel growled back, pivoting into a spinning elbow.
It landed flush against Hercules's jaw.
And barely turned his head.
Hercules retaliated instantly, ramming his knee into Adriel's sternum, lifting him mid-air. The Guardian choked as the air left his lungs—and then Hercules delivered a rising hook into his ribcage, sending him hurtling through a mountain range.
The sky roared.
Adriel recovered, mid-flight, flipping to land on a cliff edge, one arm clutching his side. Blood trickled through his shirt, staining the glyphs that pulsed dimly along his collarbone.
Hercules landed opposite him, barefoot against stone that couldn't hold his weight. It cratered beneath him with a dull, ominous crunch.
"No tricks now?" he asked, pacing forward slowly. "No fancy code. No reality-breaking shit. Just you."
Adriel rolled his shoulders. "Exactly what you wanted."
Hercules roared and charged.
They met in a collision that atomized the mountaintop entirely. Shockwaves broke the sound barrier three times over in every direction.
Adriel ducked low, delivered two crushing body blows—only to take a brutal hammer-fist to the back that knocked him through the earth like a meteor.
Hercules dropped after him, fists blazing, slamming down from orbit—
Adriel met him mid-fall with a rising uppercut, both of them smashing into each other with titanic force. The surrounding terrain collapsed in a sphere, as if gravity itself recoiled from their presence.
They fought mid-fall. Blow for blow. Strike for strike.
Adriel's fists were precise—surgical.
Hercules's were devastating—wild, raw, born from centuries of war.
One combo from Adriel nearly dislocated the Olympian's shoulder.
But Hercules responded by headbutting Adriel so hard, his vision shattered into static and white noise.
Both hit the ground in opposite shockwaves.
And both got back up.
Bruised. Bleeding.
But unbroken.
"You're stalling," Hercules said, cracking his neck. "For what?"
Adriel spit blood, eyes locking with him.
"Not stalling," he replied. "Testing your limits."
Then he charged again.
Hercules bellowed a laugh, the sound echoing like a collapsing star. "You're holding back, little Guardian! Let's see you handle this—!"
In an instant, his body expanded, warping space itself. His already massive frame ballooned to cosmic proportions. Mountains below were ants beside his foot. The curvature of Runeterra strained beneath his weight.
A shadow consumed the entire region.
He raised one foot.
"To dust you go!"
The sky cracked. Gravity inverted. Every molecule on the continent shuddered as his divine heel came down like a second moon threatening to end all life beneath it.
But Adriel didn't move.
He simply stood there, arms crossed, watching.
Then smiled.
"Big target," he said. "Big mistake."
Hercules's heel slammed down—
—but Adriel was already gone.
A sonic shockwave ruptured the heavens.
Suddenly—
A blur.
A streak of gold and black light cut through Hercules's leg at terminal velocity. The god howled, staggering midair as Adriel appeared behind his ankle, arm braced like a javelin thrower.
His hand pulsed with raw magnetic force, Hacker Glyphs spiraling violently down his wrist.
He grabbed Hercules by the tendon.
Then—
He threw him.
No. He launched him.
Hercules's body tore through the stratosphere like a divine missile. Wind shear vaporized, planets trembled in their orbit, and stars turned their attention toward the streak of brute force violating the solar system.
Saturn blinked past. Jupiter screamed by.
Hercules spun in the void, still disoriented—until Adriel appeared behind him again. This time, inverted in orbit, fists drawn back like a slingshot of physics-breaking magnitude.
"Try landing, jackass."
A final punch connected.
The impact—
—rippled across light-years.
(Visual Example)
A star blinked out.
Hercules's massive body was hurled toward a distant planet like a god-shaped comet.
And then—he hit it.
The world didn't crack.
It detonated.
Shockwaves devoured its moons. Rings shattered like glass. The entire planet erupted into a spiral of flame and broken atmosphere, as Hercules cratered its core and splintered its very axis.
Floating in the silence of space, Adriel adjusted his coat, the electric glyphs still hissing around his shoulders.
"Didn't think that far ahead, did you?" he muttered to himself.
Below, in the smoking void where a planet once orbited—
Hercules stirred. Slowly.
Painfully.
But alive.
Adriel turned, his tone shifting back to that calm fury.
"Round two?"
And vanished again, breaking the sound barrier of space itself as he dove back toward the wreckage of Olympus's greatest shame.
The dust hadn't even finished resettling on the obliterated surface when Hercules's hand shot up from the molten crater, grasping rock and crushed atmosphere like it owed him something. He pulled himself free, steaming, scorched, snarling.
Adriel landed with a sharp step beside a cracked mesa, shoulders loose, fingers still sparking with residual energy.
"You're still conscious?" he asked.
Hercules spat blood that evaporated mid-air. "You think a little star-slam would finish me?"
Adriel narrowed his eyes. "You weren't fighting full throttle. Not entirely."
A grin, twisted and sharp, cracked Hercules's face. "I was avoiding collateral. Didn't want to stir the wrong web."
Adriel's tone hardened. "What are you talking about?"
Hercules didn't answer. He stood tall again, shrinking slightly to a more practical size—though still colossal by any standard. His eyes gleamed. "This rock isn't part of your map. I can let loose here. Don't have to worry about disturbing Anansi's threads."
Adriel blinked. Anansi? His brows lowered. "What's he got to do with you?"
Hercules just chuckled and rolled his neck, bones popping like tectonic plates grinding together. "Don't worry about it. You'll be dead before it matters."
Adriel stepped forward. "The hell is he planning? And why are ya'll modifying the cosmology?"
Another grin.
"Curiosity's gonna get you killed."
And then—no wind-up, no theatrics—Hercules was on him.
Fist met face. Adriel flew backward through a jagged cliffside. Before the debris could settle, Hercules followed, pummeling Adriel mid-flight with a flurry of blows so heavy they folded the terrain around them.
Adriel kicked off a chunk of floating rock and shot around behind Hercules, striking him in the kidney with a disruption burst—but Hercules just flexed, ignoring the tremor in his spine.
"Hurts, doesn't it?" he growled, grabbing Adriel by the throat mid-move. "That I'm stronger. That you're borrowing stolen might, and still can't put me down."
Adriel glitched free—literally phased out of the grapple with a brief flicker of code—then reappeared beneath Hercules's chin and uppercut him with a charge of compressed kinetic hacking. The force ripped through Hercules's skull like a lightning drill, but he just roared and responded with a knee to the gut that cratered the bedrock beneath them.
The ground split for miles.
Lava surged. Lightning screamed through the atmosphere.
Each blow they traded now wasn't just power—it was hatred. A god disgusted by the mortal who dared rise too far. A Guardian infuriated by the corruption of something once noble.
"You don't care about this Omniverse," Adriel hissed as he blocked another punch with both forearms, the force sliding him backwards across molten glass. "You're just a junkyard dog—growling because your leash snapped."
"You think you're above me, boy?" Hercules shouted, grabbing a molten boulder and hurling it like a meteor. "You're nothing but a line of code pretending to have conviction!"
Adriel caught the rock with one hand—and crushed it.
"No," he said, stepping forward through the fallout. "I'm the line that corrects corrupted code like you."
Their fists met again.
And this time, the planet combusted in response.
Chunks of the shattered planet scattered into orbit, vapor trails spiraling into the cold silence of space. The instant their fists collided, a rupture in spacetime cracked the dead sky like shattered glass.
And then—
They were gone.
Adriel and Hercules launched into the void, streaking across the starry abyss like dueling comets. The vacuum warped around their momentum, cosmic winds swirling from their presence alone. They weren't flying. They were colliding with reality itself and making it bend.
They passed the remains of moons, chunks of old nebulae, and stardust fields until their momentum dragged them near a supermassive black hole—its gravity a silent scream in the distance, pulling light and time into its churning abyss.
Hercules cracked his neck, laughing. "Now this? This is the battlefield I deserve!"
Adriel didn't respond. His body glowed with a harsh bioluminescence, circuitry exposed along his jaw, arms, and ribs from the sustained damage. The light of the Void within him flickered in rhythm with the spinning event horizon below.
"You should've stayed in the League world," Hercules barked. "At least there, they still have gravity to bury your corpse under."
He struck first.
The Olympian roared and closed the distance in a blink, fist cocked and glowing with condensed divine force. Adriel barely dipped under the blow, the gravitational lensing from the nearby singularity curving light around them as their fight tore through space.
Adriel countered with a spin-kick enhanced by a magnetized pulse, striking Hercules square in the jaw. The force sent the god tumbling, his body skipping along invisible gravity wells.
But Hercules laughed even as he caught himself. "That all you got?!"
He launched himself again, this time twisting mid-air, slamming a hammer-fist into Adriel's collar. Bones cracked, and Adriel was flung backward—but he stabilized, flipping and retaliating with a photon-charged uppercut.
The explosion of impact lit the edge of the black hole like a solar flare.
Adriel blurred forward, striking with clean precision—jabs to Hercules' joints, neural pressure points, and blind spots. His Hacker glyphs lit up with every hit, rewriting Hercules' muscle feedback temporarily to stall movement.
Hercules snarled, catching Adriel mid-strike by the wrist. "I'll break every bone in your fictional shell."
He slammed Adriel down toward the accretion disk—but Adriel fired a gravity anchor into nearby debris, pulling himself back and launching both legs into Hercules' chest.
The God of Strength spiraled, but laughed harder.
"That's it! Give me more!"
They clashed again. Fist to fist. Strike for strike. Every blow threatened to bend the laws of physics.
And the black hole watched.
A massive surge of light burst from their exchange, caught in the gravitational pull. The horizon began to distort visibly as their combined energy fed into the singularity's hunger.
Adriel shot a glance at the spiraling core below. "You're going to rip the fabric here."
"Good," Hercules grinned, his teeth stained with ichor. "Let the universe feel our wrath."
Their fists collided again—and for the briefest moment, the event horizon itself warped into a ripple of frozen time.
In that silence, just before the next strike, Adriel said flatly:
"Then I'll end this before you can undo more than yourself."
He vanished in a blink of corrupted light.
Adriel reappeared behind Hercules, fingers glowing with raw code. He didn't waste words. His palm struck between the Olympian's shoulder blades—an injection, not of force, but of instruction.
[//init:Blackhole.Override//Conceptual_Erasure_Core=true]
Reality screamed.
Below them, the black hole twisted. The singularity pulsed like a sentient heart, then opened. Not wide, not physically—but deep. The laws that governed existence collapsed in upon themselves. Light vanished, time bent, and the sense of "what is" began to falter.
Hercules paused mid-swing. He felt something wrong. Something deeply, cosmically incorrect.
"What... did you do?" he growled.
Adriel's eyes narrowed. "I rewrote its purpose."
The singularity surged.
Instead of devouring matter, it now consumed meaning.
And it started with Hercules.
His bracers flickered—not in damage, but in identity. For a split second, they forgot they were weapons. His left arm spasmed, confused between being flesh or concept. The divine aura around him blinked out of phase, as if the universe was second-guessing his role.
"You bastard—!"
Adriel tackled him mid-sentence.
The two plunged headlong into the black hole.
What followed wasn't darkness. It was absence. Not a void—but the erasure of void.
Inside the core, space had no name. Time had no memory. Gravity didn't pull—it questioned.
Hercules swung his fist—and missed, not because Adriel dodged, but because the idea of "swing" had yet to resolve in this space.
Adriel kicked upward. It landed late. Then early. Then not at all.
Hercules snarled, teeth cracking. "You'd sacrifice yourself for a chance to beat me?!"
Adriel coughed blood, floating. "Not sacrifice. Calculation."
Around them, layers of reality peeled back. Memories of fights, titles, gods, thrones—all faded. Hercules' name flickered above his head like unstable code.
"What is this... sorcery?!"
"No. Just a patch," Adriel said.
Hercules roared, grabbing Adriel's throat—except the action unraveled mid-grip, like someone rewinding reality on frame one. His hands remained open. His intent was lost to the void.
Adriel held steady, despite his limbs beginning to unwrite. Glyphs on his skin were short-circuiting. His left eye flickered like a broken HUD. Even he wasn't immune—but he'd built buffers.
"You want to be above gods?" Adriel muttered. "Then let's test what happens when gods lose the words written beneath them."
Hercules screamed—a soundless wail that cracked nothing, because sound required definition.
His hair vanished. Then his scars. His shape began to distort.
But he didn't stop swinging.
He was Hercules.
He was will.
And he fought even as the universe forgot his legend.
Adriel's bones fractured from the next strike. The black hole flared again—an impossible pulse of anti-light—as Hercules made one last push, fists tearing open the surrounding unreality.
"You can erase me," the god snarled, half-face erased, half-divine. "But I will still beat you down."
Adriel's hand reached forward, trembling, soaked in anti-data. He tapped Hercules' chest. A final override.
[//collapse:Name.Value(Hercules)=NULL]
And for a moment... Hercules was no one.
The black hole convulsed.
Both were thrown out the other side, barely tethered to existence.
Adriel landed first—somewhere, somewhen—his knees hitting fractured stardust. He breathed hard. Bleeding from wounds even his mind couldn't name.
Behind him, a burning trail scorched across the event horizon as Hercules crashed through dimensions like a comet, screaming his identity back into reality.
The fight wasn't over.
But the battlefield had changed.
And now... even the gods weren't sure who still was.
Adriel stumbled to his feet.
The world—if it could be called that—was a chaotic fusion of half-rendered reality and narrative void. Planets hung half-written in the sky. Light bled in paragraphs. The code was broken here.
He looked down at his hands. No glyphs. No electricity. His hacking interface barely flickered, reduced to primitive error symbols. Even his senses were warped—his name felt detached. His purpose blurred.
But he still stood.
Then—the tremor.
A roar of recognition cracked through the silence, not just sound, but presence.
Hercules.
His body reformed from myth. Every cell rewritten by belief. By every reader, every whisper of legend, every culture that dared speak his name.
First came the hands—gripping nothing, then forming a jagged spear of muscle.
Then the chest—scarred with a thousand wars he had no right surviving.
And then the eyes—golden with purpose, not because he was alive, but because enough stories refused to let him die.
Adriel's eyes widened.
"No... he's not healing."
He stepped back.
"He's being remembered."
Hercules roared back into the frame of existence, slamming into the broken ground.
"YOU THINK A BLACK HOLE CAN ERASE ME?!" he bellowed.
He was cracked, fractured—not entirely solid. But more real with every breath. Every word spoken was another line of code written by worship.
And Adriel understood.
This wasn't just a fight against strength. It was a fight against legacy.
He had to kill him—before the world fully remembered him again.
Adriel leapt forward, each footstep shedding sparks from the collapsing fabric beneath him.
He threw a punch. Clean. Straight.
Hercules caught it with one hand.
But he winced.
Still not whole.
Adriel followed with a knee to the gut, then an elbow to the temple, then a roundhouse that sent the demigod flying into a chasm of collapsed metaphors and decaying archetypes.
He didn't wait.
Adriel pounced.
The two crashed, rolling through what used to be a dreamscape—now distorted echoes of heroic sagas gone sour.
Adriel smashed Hercules' head into the jagged remains of a fallen narrative tree, then drove both fists into his ribs.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Hercules laughed—bloodied, eyes still gleaming.
"And yet, I am."
He backhanded Adriel across the broken field.
"You want to kill a legend, Guardian?"
He rose again, breath sharp, skin flickering in and out of dimensional clarity.
"Then hurry. Because I can feel them."
Adriel blinked.
"Feel who?"
"The ones still telling my story."
He pointed to the stars.
"A thousand timelines. A thousand mouths. A thousand believers."
Lightning rippled down his arms. He took a step forward, body starting to glow with each breath.
"If even one of them keeps me alive... you can't kill me."
Adriel grit his teeth.
This wasn't about outpunching him anymore.
He had to kill the memory.
He had to bury the idea.
So he changed tactics.
Adriel surged in, grappling Hercules into a violent spiral. They tumbled through layers of fractured myth. He twisted his arm behind the Olympian's back, channeling all of his bio-electricity into a single point.
Not to destroy.
To rewrite.
A Hacker's last resort.
"You exist because they believe you matter."
Adriel whispered into Hercules' ear as they descended into another rupture.
"So let's make them forget."
He plunged the rewritten code into Hercules' spine—a single command:
\DELETE: HERACLES.EXISTENCE-PROPERTY = CORE:RECOGNITION
Hercules screamed.
The light dimmed.
For a heartbeat, all was silent.
But then the code shuddered.
Denied.
Too many believers. Too many old stories. Too much legacy.
Adriel was thrown back by narrative rejection.
Hercules stood, staggering, steaming with paradox.
"You can't overwrite a myth."
His fists rose again.
"But I can break a man."
And so the bloodbath began anew—
A race against memory.
And Adriel was running out of time.
The first punch didn't land.
It tore through space.
Hercules swung, missing Adriel by a whisper, but the sheer force cracked the vacuum open like a mirror, a jagged scream of entropy exploding in every direction. The shockwave alone shattered a moon in the far distance.
Adriel blurred forward, blood still leaking from his brow, and buried a knee into Hercules' ribs. The god grunted, stumbling back a step. But he recovered immediately, catching Adriel by the throat and slamming him into a dying star.
The detonation ripped across the black.
Adriel rolled out, one arm burnt down to muscle and bone, and willed the tissue to regrow with a mix of stolen regeneration and raw tenacity.
"Still think I'm just code?" he snarled.
Hercules answered by biting down on a plasma flare and spitting it at Adriel.
They clashed again.
Flesh broke. Bone bent. Reality screamed.
Adriel moved with precision, his hacker glyphs flickering between broken algorithms and desperate calculation. He ducked low under a godly haymaker, carved his elbow into Hercules's sternum, then flipped over the Olympian's shoulder, planting a boot to his spine on the way down.
Hercules twisted with a growl and grabbed him mid-air, swinging him like a ragdoll and slamming him through the crust of a planet-sized comet.
Adriel gasped but latched onto Hercules's wrist, injecting a pulse of bio-electric chaos that short-circuited the Olympian's muscle control for a millisecond.
Just long enough to land three punches to the throat.
Blood sprayed.
They hit the ground of some unnamed realm, flat and shattered like a ruined marble floor of forgotten gods. Dust from crushed worlds hovered in the atmosphere like frozen ash.
Adriel was breathing hard. So was Hercules.
Each blow was costing them concept.
They weren't just losing strength. They were losing meaning.
Adriel charged. Hercules met him head-on.
Punches landed. Not in flurries, but in titanic, soul-splitting detonations.
Hercules struck with the weight of religion. Myth. Ancient belief that still echoed in bedtime stories and history classes. Every blow was a hymn, twisted and made cruel.
Adriel responded with silence. With speed. With razor-focus. Every strike was stripped of glamour—just war, raw and real.
He caught Hercules in the gut, twisted into a spinning back elbow, and slammed it into the god's jaw. A crack echoed as divine teeth flew out, spinning through space like stardust.
Hercules didn't flinch. He laughed.
He drove his thumb into Adriel's eye.
Adriel screamed. Staggered.
Hercules hammered him to the ground, straddled his chest, and unleashed a brutal cascade of fists. Each one cracked cosmic marrow. Each one smeared blood across what little gravity remained.
Adriel hacked the gravity mid-beating.
Suddenly, everything flipped.
Hercules flew upward as localized physics collapsed under Adriel's override. He twisted midair, recovered, and came down like thunder.
But Adriel was ready.
He launched upward and met him fist-for-fist.
The collision was a nova. Again.
They plummeted, both burning, bleeding, trailing fire.
Adriel landed first. Skidded, kneeled.
Hercules stumbled down, coughing ichor.
They faced each other.
Bruised. Broken. Shaking.
No gods. No titles. Just war.
Adriel spat blood. "You're not invincible. You're just loud."
Hercules cracked his neck. "And you're not human. You're a virus that got too proud."
Another charge.
No technique now.
Just hatred.
They clawed. Headbutted. Bit. Screamed.
It was no longer a battle.
It was survival.
And neither was sure who deserved it more.
The two titans stood, blood-soaked and staggering. Hercules grinned through broken teeth, his form glitching between divine glory and primal rot. Adriel, bones grinding, eyes dim with strain, stared across the broken space at the god he'd been clawing to end.
"You're bleeding into everything," Adriel muttered.
"I am everything," Hercules spat, limping forward. "The muscle behind myth. The breath in your bedtime tales. You can't erase what's etched in the soul."
"No," Adriel admitted, raising his palm. "But I can throw it where no soul remembers."
The glyphs on his arm began to burn violet-black. Not blue. Not gold. Not white. But the absence of all data.
The Obsidian.
The codes of erasure etched themselves into Adriel's skin like circuitry carved by entropy itself.
Behind him, a yawning tear opened in space. But it didn't hum with cosmic energy. It didn't shine. It drained.
It was the Obsidian Void.
The great trash pile of forgotten data, lost media, corrupted drives, dead links, discarded stories—everything the real world deemed obsolete. Everything the collective memory of the internet chose to erase.
Even gods could vanish there.
Hercules's grin finally faltered.
"What... is that?"
"Where fiction goes to die," Adriel said flatly. "Permanently."
The ground beneath them—if it could even be called ground—fractured like a collapsing server. Files floated up in binary spirals. JPGs of deleted icons. Text strings with missing headers. Forgotten scripts. Cancelled projects. All swirling around the hole like digital carrion.
Hercules stepped back instinctively.
"You think you can cast me into that?"
"I'm not casting you. I'm rewriting you."
Adriel stepped forward.
Hercules charged.
They collided again—but this time, Adriel didn't trade blows. He gripped Hercules with both arms, lifting the massive, godly form with effort born of necessity. Glyphs activated across his back like a collapsing firewall.
Hercules fought, roaring, limbs flailing like a mad bull.
"You throw me into that pit and you damn every version of me! Every story! Every saga!"
"That's the point," Adriel growled.
He forced him to the edge.
"You don't get to come back. Not this time."
"No!" Hercules bellowed, digging his fingers into Adriel's flesh, ripping muscle from bone. "You're nothing! A patch! A fixer! A janitor! You think you can erase me?! I am myth incarnate!"
"And I am what myth fears," Adriel said, and kicked Hercules into the Obsidian Void.
For a moment, the god resisted—his body burning with narrative friction. The data refused to let go.
But Adriel wasn't done.
He raised both hands and began typing into the void itself—into the source field. Not just code, but anti-code. Unwriting.
[DELETE ENTITY: HERCULES.GOD_OF_GODS.DARK]
[CONFIRM?]
[YES.]
The Void screamed. Not aloud—but in broken metadata, in 404 errors across realities.
Hercules howled, not in pain—but in existential unraveling. His form began to fracture, not in bone or skin—but in idea.
He reached out.
A child's drawing of Hercules on a wall vanished.
An old Greek statue cracked and crumbled.
An archived article titled "Why Hercules Is Still Relevant" blinked out of a university's server.
Belief began to fail.
The final fingers of Hercules clawed at the edge—but Adriel stepped on his wrist, pinning him.
"You were never a god," he whispered. "You were a story."
And with one final press:
[PURGE.]
The hand dissolved into dust.
The Obsidian Void closed.
Hercules was gone.
Not dead.
Not imprisoned.
Not sleeping.
Forgotten.
Adriel staggered back, collapsing to one knee. The cost was enormous. His soul trembled from interfacing with the Void. His systems were corrupted with residual emptiness.
But it was done.
The legacy of that Dark Hercules, the abomination, the myth twisted by ego and bloodlust—was erased.
He looked to the sky, stars reforming in silence.
A whisper on the wind, low and impossible:
"They'll forget you too, Adriel."
He didn't respond.
He just stood.
And walked toward whatever fight came next.
Because stories didn't end with applause.
They ended with silence.
And someone had to clean up the last page.
Adriel's body trembled as he opened the portal.
Reality buckled for a heartbeat as his cracked code forced space to obey, the edges of the gate sputtering like a corrupted file trying to boot. The realm between dimensions clawed at him, trying to keep what remained of his soul in limbo, but he pressed forward—because there was nowhere else to go.
Ixtal waited.
He stepped through.
And immediately collapsed.
The lush, vibrant humidity of the region kissed his skin like rain after fire, but Adriel didn't feel it. His feet gave out before he even hit the first vine-covered stone. His body struck the ground with a dull thud, limbs twitching. Blood seeped from his mouth, painting the ancient flora beneath him in glowing streaks.
The portal shimmered shut behind him with a whisper.
A heartbeat later—
"ADRIEL!"
Saber's voice broke into the canopy like thunder. She blurred across the clearing in an instant, nearly slipping as she dropped to her knees beside him.
Her gauntlets shook.
"Hey! HEY!" she shouted, gripping his face gently, then more firmly when he didn't respond. "Adriel, what happened?! Talk to me!"
His lips moved faintly.
She leaned in close.
"...forgotten..."
Saber's chest tightened.
Her knight instincts screamed to move, to act, to fight something—but there was no enemy left. Just him. Just the Guardian that fell from heaven after dragging a false god into the trash bin of existence.
And now he lay broken.
Saber clenched her jaw and turned. "Magicians! Healers! NOW!"
A team of Ixtali mystics and chem-tech nurses scrambled into the grove, drawn by the noise and by the surges they'd felt. Magical pulses had torn through the ley-lines all over the continent not minutes ago. The local fauna had scattered. Storms had bloomed then vanished in the skies.
And now their Guardian lay in a crater of soft moss, practically sizzling with residual concept decay.
"Careful!" Saber barked, standing protectively over him.
One of the magicians knelt to examine Adriel's body, her hands glowing with green restorative runes.
"He's regenerating... but it's unstable. His internal matrix is trying to rewrite itself faster than his soul can keep up."
"What does that mean?" Saber snapped, eyes flicking between their hands and Adriel's barely moving chest.
"It means..." the healer hesitated, "...he's fighting himself."
Then, just as she tried to amplify the restoration spell, her magic rebounded—repelled by a pulse of internal code from Adriel's body.
"What the—?!" she gasped, falling back. "He just rejected external healing!"
"Of course he did," Saber muttered bitterly, her fists tightening. "Stubborn ass..."
Adriel stirred.
His breath caught.
His eyes cracked open just barely—gold light flickering behind lashes matted with blood and black ichor.
He saw her.
Her blue eyes.
Her presence.
Her pain.
"...You're safe," he rasped.
"Barely," Saber snapped, but her voice cracked. "You idiot. You almost didn't make it. Again."
Adriel's fingers twitched.
"Ixtal..." he whispered. "This... is Ixtal, right?"
"Yes," she said softly. "You're home. Well, as close to one as you have."
He let out something between a cough and a laugh, a golden mist puffing from his mouth. "Felt the fight, didn't you..."
"We all did." Saber looked away. "The world felt it. Even Ace and Peter—wherever they are—must've felt you scream across the ley-lines."
Adriel's head lolled slightly. His system was still auto-correcting errors. Every nerve was a severed wire reconnecting through brute code and willpower. His heartbeat wasn't even biological anymore—it was algorithmic.
"I finished it," he said, barely above a whisper.
"I know."
The healers had stepped back now. One of them spoke softly to Saber. "There's... nothing more we can do. His regeneration is accelerating again. He'll heal. Just not right away."
"Then get out," Saber said.
The group hesitated—but she didn't repeat herself.
Once alone, she dropped to her knees again, her composure slipping. Her armored gloves shook as she reached out—this time more gently—brushing tangled strands of Adriel's hair from his face.
"You scared me."
"I scare everyone," he murmured.
She ignored the weak attempt at sarcasm. "No. Not like that. You..." She swallowed hard. "You scared me because I thought you'd vanish. Not die. Disappear. Like he did."
Adriel didn't answer, but his eyes glimmered faintly. The light was there again—dim, but steady.
Saber looked down at him, then to the jungle canopy above.
"You need rest," she said. "Let this world hold you up for once. Just... stop trying to hold everything together by yourself."
He didn't argue.
Didn't protest.
Just closed his eyes.
And Saber stayed beside him, sitting cross-legged now, arms resting on her knees.
The room was quiet except for the hum of residual magic and the soft buzz of Ixtal's ever-growing flora reclaiming the battle-worn grove around them.
Outside, the world remained broken.
Fires still burned in far regions.
The Dark still threatened the remaining pieces of fiction.
Peter and Ace were still out there, locked in another war.
But for now—
Adriel was safe.
And Saber wasn't going to let go.
The canopy outside rustled faintly—too steady, too deliberate for mere wind.
Saber tensed.
Then the door creaked open.
Qiyana stepped through like a blade unsheathed. Her posture screamed control, but her eyes... they flickered with something she couldn't mask. Concern. Disbelief.
And buried under it—rage long cooled into something sharper: restraint.
Her gaze went straight to Adriel.
She didn't acknowledge Saber at first. Didn't need to.
She knelt beside him in silence, every movement calculated, as if touching a holy relic—one forged in blood and burden.
Saber watched without comment.
"I heard the healers left," Qiyana muttered, one hand brushing lightly across Adriel's forearm. "Figured you'd still be here playing guardian angel."
Saber stayed kneeling, her hands resting on her legs, fingers interlaced. "He doesn't like to be alone when he's like this."
"He doesn't like to be worshipped, either," Qiyana said pointedly, glancing her way at last. "But I guess you missed that memo while you were busy being a Dark."
Saber didn't flinch. "I didn't forget. I live with it every time someone like you walks into a room."
The tension curled tight between them. Not violent. Not even angry. Just... jagged. Familiar.
Qiyana exhaled through her nose. "Relax. I'm not here to argue. I'm not even here for you."
Her fingers pressed softly against Adriel's hand. "I'm here because he came back."
Saber looked at Adriel's face. Still pale, but steady now. Algorithms flickered subtly beneath his skin, healing the damage the universe itself couldn't process.
"He's not like us," Saber said, voice low. "He breaks for us. Bleeds for us. And never asks for anything."
Qiyana didn't answer. She didn't need to.
They both knew.
After a long pause, she spoke again—quieter this time.
"The last time he left, the sky cracked."
Saber nodded. "This time it almost fell."
"And he held it up anyway."
They sat there in silence, the rift between them still present—but Adriel's unconscious form was enough to keep it bridged for now.
"Just so you know," Qiyana added, glancing sideways at Saber, "I still don't trust you. But he does. And that's enough to keep my blade sheathed."
Saber accepted it. "That's all I ask."
Qiyana leaned in a bit closer to Adriel, speaking only for him now. "You came back from hell again, didn't you?" Her voice cracked slightly. "Damn you, Guardian... you always come back broken, but you still come back."
A faint flicker passed across Adriel's face—almost like he heard her.
Qiyana's lips pulled into a subtle smile. Not triumphant. Just... tired.
"Rest now," she whispered. "Before something else breaks."
Saber stood finally. "I'll give you some time."
"Good."
And with that, the Empress of Ixtal resumed her vigil. Alone with the man she admired. The man she refused to lose.
To Be Continued...