The Abyss howled.

  All sound, all color, all light drained to a whisper as Merkmal and Ehrek vanished into a fresh tear in reality, plunging into the lowest, bleakest layer of the void..

  The water here was ankle-deep, black and rippling with no source. One source of light seemed to be there but couldn't be seen, blind and cold. Their light had long since died, but their memory remained.

  Ehrek stood tall, a towering figure, armor cracked and icing.

  Merkmal stepped forward, suit shirt half-ripped, essence glowing violently around his body. He stared at Ehrek with no fear. His glowing royalblue eyes had changed. No longer just resolve—there was hatred. Pure, distilled retribution.

  Ehrek charged, water exploding in his wake.

  Merkmal vanished—blinked sideways, leaving afterimages. He reappeared behind Ehrek, fist already coiled with Rewrite energy, and slammed it into his back.

  The hit landed—but Ehrek didn’t flinch.

  He twisted impossibly, his arm lashing out, grabbing Merkmal by the spike through the throat and lifting him. Fingers dug in.

  “You bend reality,” Ehrek growled, “But that won't save you from death.”

  And then he slammed Merkmal into the surface of the Abyss. Once. Twice. A third time—harder.

  The water turned red-black, spraying upward in slow motion as time itself fractured.

  Merkmal’s body convulsed from the impact, bones cracking—but before the fourth slam could come, Merkmal's hand glowed royalblue as he swung his hand point black at Ehrek.

  Merkmal fell, body broken—but alive.

  “TRAIT—RECURSION COLLAPSE.”

  The world around them folded inward. The water bent like glass. The air became a tunnel, and suddenly—there were infinite Merkmals, all flickering across timelines. Some old. Some dead. Some from futures that hadn't happened yet. Each made from an inage of traits he has collected over the time he has existed.

  Each one attacked. As with a wormhole he grabbed his great sword preparing.

  Dozens of him rushed forward, each one delivering a strikes with fuled traits—a knee to the helmet bursting in flames, a palm to the throat trying to drain life, a flash of light and blades from between dimensions.

  Ehrek roared, caught in the web of collapsing Merkmals, Icing from dozens of points. A younger Merkmal stabbed him through the gut. An older one whispered a forgotten name in his ear that made Ehrek hesitate for a moment.

  But he didn’t fall. He broke them.

  He destroyed one by one with sheer force getting rid of every last one of them.

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  Merkmal screamed, falling down. the amount of Rewrite plausibility it took to create that many was too many.

  Then Ehrek was in front of him.

  He drove his knee into Merkmal’s chest, ribs shattering audibly. Merkmal’s body folded from the hit, flying backward and skipping across the Abyss water like a stone.

  But before he could even crash, space twisted again—and he was already back on his feet, behind Ehrek, essence spinning like a galaxy over his hand.

  “Die screaming,” Merkmal whispered.

  And he punched.

  The fist collided with the back of Ehrek’s head—direct, infused with Rewrite. It forced Ehrek to remember every hit he'd taken in the last five minutes—simultaneously.

  Ehrek dropped to his knees.

  Merkmal walked forward, one arm limp, the other ready to kill.

  But Ehrek remained defiant through the agony.

  “You think I fear death?” he rasped. “I was born surrounded by it.”

  Merkmal raised his hand, the fabric of reality bending and folding with his command. Through Rewrite, he had done the impossible—replicated V?rher’s blade, the weapon of causality and precision, forged in logic and brilliance. The sword shimmered in his grasp, indistinguishable from the original except the royal blue hue around the crimson blade, humming with devastating potential.

  Without hesitation, he brought it up—and struck.

  Ehrek turned his head slightly, sensing something in the distance. His gaze drifted toward the void far beyond the battlefield… when the replicated blade drove cleanly through his neck.

  There was no scream. No resistance.

  Ehrek’s body vanished instantly in a flicker of fractured light, leaving only his armor, which collapsed with a heavy thud onto the dirt. Beside it stood his greatsword, still embedded in the ground like a gravestone to a fallen warrior. The silence that followed was deafening.

  Then, from the distant void, a voice cried out—full of sorrow, rage, and disbelief.

  Merkmal stared at the remnants, his hand trembling as he knelt. One by one, he picked up the pieces of Ehrek’s armor, reverently, as if handling the remains of a god. But the moment his fingers touched the greatsword, the entire abyss recoiled.

  A blinding pulse tore through space as the abyss rejected him.

  Reality lurched—and Merkmal was forcibly ejected, his form dragged through rifts of swirling light until he was slammed back into the physical world. Earth’s atmosphere greeted him with a rush of wind and the warmth of sunlight.

  He stumbled, disoriented, and looked around. They were in the open fields—familiar, broken, yet still standing.

  To his right, he saw Seraphina and The Director crouched beside V?rher. The wounded tactician lied in a crumpled heap, bloodied and barely breathing. Seraphina’s hands glowed with radiant healing energy, her brow furrowed in concentration, while The Director’s weapon glowing green hopeful to able to heal him as well.

  Slowly, steadily, V?rher stirred.

  His jaw realigned with a series of cracks, bones reforming beneath his skin. His vision blinked back into focus as his mind cleared from the fog. They helped him to his feet, and with a grunt, he adjusted his collar and reached for his glasses—placing them back on the bridge of his nose with precise, practiced motion.

  That’s when he saw him.

  Standing quietly in the distance, framed by the drifting wind and endless horizon, was a solitary figure. Hands in his pockets.

  White lab coat. Light undersuit. Long gray hair.

  There was no mistaking him.

  V?rher narrowed his eyes, the breeze lifting the edges of his coat. The others followed his gaze, and silence once again fell over the field.

  It was Hegemon.

  Unchanged and eternal—watching, waiting. His presence carried with it the weight of universes. No words needed to be spoken. The very air trembled in anticipation.