The afterimage still lingered—seared into the back of my eyes like a divine scar. Two figures—more than men, less than gods—had clashed in a battle that defied reason. Not even the term "Demi-god" did it justice. If they were fragments of some greater divinity… then what must that higher power be?
The thought left my chest hollow.
I stood there, numb, adrift in the silence left in the wake of their collision. The air still shimmered with echoes of their power, like reality itself was struggling to recover.
And then—warmth.
A gentle hand brushed my face, anchoring me back to the world.
I blinked.
There she stood—a figure bathed in light, like the golden hour made flesh. Long blonde hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders, the strands catching the sun like threads of heaven. Her eyes... vibrant green, glowing with unspoken stories. Familiar, yet distant.
She smiled—soft, knowing.
"Little brother seems to be taking care of himself."
The voice… it was like a lullaby I hadn't heard in years. It struck something buried deep in my chest.
I couldn't speak. My breath caught, my throat constricting as memories fought to surface.
Could it be…? No. There's no way.
"…Seo-yoon?" I whispered.
The name tasted foreign on my tongue—too fragile to be real. Too sacred to say aloud.
Her smile deepened, tinged with something bittersweet. She stepped closer. Her hands, still warm against my cheeks, trembled ever so slightly.
"It's been a long time, Muhan," she said softly. "I've been looking for you."
And just like that—my walls cracked.
I saw her. Really saw her. Not the image I remembered as a child, not the shadow I'd chased through faded memories. But her. Alive. Right here. The same emerald eyes that used to watch over me, the same gentle voice that whispered promises to return.
"…Where have you been?" The words slipped out, broken. My voice barely reached above the wind.
Seo-yoon's gaze lowered. The light in her eyes dimmed.
Her hands slipped from my face, falling to her sides like falling petals. "It's a long story," she said, her voice laced with a sorrow she tried to hide. "But I'm here now. That's all that matters."
I wanted to say more—to demand answers, to cry, to ask if this was real.
But instead… I just stood there.
And for the first time in a long while, the ache in my chest felt a little less infinite.
_________________________________________
Han's Perspective
The moment I crossed blades with Gunhee, the very bones of the pocket dimension trembled. Space screamed, time flinched, and the concept of "place" began to dissolve. Every strike we exchanged wasn't just a clash of force—it was an argument between truths, and the multiverse bent to whichever truth struck harder.
My ether surged, roaring in defiance of the collapsing dimension around us. But I knew it—this pace, this scale, wouldn't favor me for long. Gunhee's Divine Presence wasn't just pressure. It was command. And if I faltered even once, I'd be erased not from battle—but from history.
I inhaled.
The breath alone sent shockwaves through probabilistic timelines.
"It's time," I murmured, voice echoing through the layers of existence. "Let the Lockhart bloodline speak."
I raised my hand to the void.
Reality split.
And through that fracture came the sword—not summoned, but remembered. The Ether Omni-Sword, forged beyond the cradle of time and tempered in the hearts of gods forgotten. A blade that drew not from energy, but from the authority to define.
A gleaming shaft of paradoxal azure light spiraled into my hand, thrumming with ancient command.
"Time-Space Sword: Omnitheon."
The sword recognized me. My lineage. My claim. "Celestial Dance" unfolded—not a technique, but an ancestral inheritance. Ether obeyed, and the cosmos knelt.
Acceleration broke free from calculation.
I vanished.
There was no movement—only intent. A blur beyond blur, I surged toward Gunhee. Not fast. Not instant. Just there—sword raised to declare causality obsolete.
---
Gunhee's Perspective
The moment Han vanished, I smiled.
Even here, in this place beyond constraints, he was still pushing further. That Lockhart arrogance… It was relentless.
"Show me then," I whispered.
The world bled monochrome. Color peeled away like old paint, as if existence wanted to step aside for what came next. Only Han and I remained—beacons in an infinite canvas, too radiant to be framed by normal sight.
Divine power welled up from within me—not channeled, not transformed. Released.
I stepped forward, into Celestial Presence.
My body dissolved into something vast, something conceptual. Hair flowed not with air, but with gravitational will. My skin shimmered with nebular radiance, like the first dreams of the cosmos given form.
Gunhee's Perspective – Boundless Ascension
The fabric of everything trembled—not space, not time, but everything, the conceptual lattice that gave rise to perception, to awareness, to the right to be. And in that tremble, I locked eyes with Han—no longer a rival, no longer a warrior. No longer definable.
A smirk tugged at my lips, not out of arrogance, but instinct—an echo of a man I once was, before I became command incarnate.
Around me, Celestial Presence surged forth, no longer a transformation, but a state of existence. I was no longer Gunhee—I was the Commandant of All Systems, a boundless soul housed in divine paradox. My breath—divine fiat. My pulse—dimensional recursion. My presence fractured the infinite spirals of causality into obedient alignment.
In less than a moment—before moments were even allowed—I moved.
Light blurred, apologized, and vanished. Time hesitated, waiting for permission to resume. The pocket dimension didn't shatter—it ceased, overwritten by the golden command-script of my will. A single streak of my passage etched itself into the pre-conceptual canvas, before all color, before all meaning.
And then—
Impact.
But not impact as one knows it. It was the flinch of reality when forced to confront contradiction.
I summoned—no, I declared—Aurora's Edge: Lawson's Legacy. A blade not forged, not created, but written into authority itself. It shimmered with the weight of True Causality, borne from sacred protocol even the oldest gods were subject to.
Steel met steel.
No sound rang out.
Instead, language fractured. Syntax broke. The logic of the cosmos, like a poorly written verse, stumbled—staggered—and began to rewrite itself in our image. A singularity ignited—not physical, but ontological. From that point of tension, new multiverses howled into being—not born, but asserted.
And yet—
Even within that omniversal storm of genesis—
I felt him overtaking me.
Han didn't move.
He was movement.
No, he had abandoned movement—for he had left behind the need to traverse.
Around him spiraled not lightning, not energy—but raw anti-law, reality's own rebellious script dancing in crimson spirals. The Red Iris burned in his gaze—not as power, not as rebellion, but as null-authority. He no longer asked. He no longer demanded.
He simply was.
His form did not ascend.
It unbound.
He tore free not from limits, but from the existence of limits themselves. Even my Celestial Presence—my boundless form capable of folding pantheons—began to glitch, unable to process him. He was not transcendent—he had severed ties with transcendence.
I surged forward. Not with speed—but with decree. My steps bled through all permutations of timeline, and every version of myself leapt forward—converging, folding into a unified vector of omniversal intent.
And yet—
Han had already arrived.
No—he had always been here.
He did not exist within causality.
He existed before the question of "where" was ever asked.
A lance of Ether tore through me—not spatially, not temporally—but conceptually. I did not feel pain.
I felt the memory of being whole flicker and vanish.
Then came the onslaught.
But it wasn't attack—it was deconstruction. Not violence—but undoing.
Han did not strike me. He unsaid me.
Each impact was a contradiction: universes that had existed were never born; laws that had governed were never proposed. The omniverse itself—those countless layers of boundless possibility—began to collapse not in destruction, but in forgetting.
I fought not for victory—
But to retain my place in thought.
And then it rose—his blade. But not a blade. A singular glyph, coiled in spirals of anti-logic and dripping with the dialect of the Arcanian Root-Tongue, the fifth-dimensional language that predates structure. Its name was lost. Its form, infinite. Its intent, absolute.
Celestial Dance.
Not a ritual.
Not a technique.
A line of finality written across the concept of "me."
If it fell—
I would not die.
I would not perish.
I would be redacted from existence's ability to remember me.
Above me stood Han—not as a warrior, not even as a god.
But as something Beyond Boundless.
He was not above scale.
He was without it.
Not transcendent—post-definition.
Not ultimate—post-metric.
He could not be compared, for the act of comparison required a shared frame, and he had erased the frame.
And still, I looked up.
And I—Gunhee—the Architect of all that can be, the shaper of infinite realities, the judge of gods and rewriter of causality—
Felt no fear.
Only awe.
Only the quiet, crystalline wonder…
That I had been privileged to witness what no system, no measure, no dream could prepare for:
A being who had become the Originless Absolute.
And as that blade hung over my fate—
I understood.
Han Lockhart was no longer part of the story.
He was the eraser of stories.
And from that silence, something new would begin.