Spirit's Awakening: The Path of Lightning and Water

The void itself trembled as the Dragal Prince raised its hand, an unnatural stillness spreading across the battlefield.

The red-black corruption of the Abyss pulsed in tandem with the sickly blue sigils glowing across its metallic lattice-like body, each rune inscribed with an alien geometry that defied understanding.

The stars in the distance seemed to dim, their radiance suffocated under the sheer impossibility of the being now standing among them.

The Nexarian representative warriors braced themselves. Every single one of them felt it. A presence that was not simply powerful, but wrong—as though reality itself was rejecting the very notion that this creature could exist in this universe.

Spirit Kings tightened their grips on their weapons.

Demi-Gods reinforced their domains, desperately willing the fabric of space to stabilize.

Ribus himself narrowed his blazing eyes, the red-hot pieces of armor that adorned his body clinking as his muscles tensed.

Then the Dragal Prince acted.

It was not a strike, nor was it a technique. There was only the simple manifestation of its will—and a single Spirit Demi-God of Earth suddenly ceased to exist.

There was no struggle. No scream. No resistance.

A being who had once stood against the tides of the Abyss for over three millennia, whose hands had the power to forge floating citadels from the remains of dead stars, who could carve continents with just the weight of his footfalls, was simply… gone.

Not slain. Not obliterated. Erased by the Abyssal corruption that the Dragal Prince wielded.

The warriors nearest to him staggered as the realization sank in. There was no corpse, no remains, not even scattered essence left behind to be reclaimed by the universe.

A Demi-God, one of Nexaria's finest, had been removed from existence—consumed by an abyssal force beyond nearly everything this current batch of Spirit Kings and Demi-Gods had encountered before.

The battlefield froze.

For the first time, true fear crept into the hearts of the Nexarian warriors. They had fought Abyssal horrors for eons. They had clashed with its Generals, battled against its legions, witnessed entire civilizations on planets that were in the edge regions of their universe collapse to the creeping corruption's advancement.

But this? This was different.

A single being, a Dragal Prince, had done in less than a second what usually took the combined effort of multiple Abyssal Generals to accomplish.

And it had done so effortlessly.

The Spirit Kings closest to the now-empty space hesitated, their elemental forms flickering, their composure shaken. Even some of the Demi-Gods faltered, their bodies glitching, domains momentarily wavering. The very laws of reality struggled to reconcile what had just happened.

There should have been a fight. There should have been a battle. But there wasn't. There had only been absence.

The Dragal Prince remained unmoving in that hand raised position, watching.

There was no arrogance in its stance. No satisfaction. No triumph. It had not done this to intimidate. It had done this because that was simply the nature of its existence.

And that was far more terrifying than any act of malice.

Then—the silence was shattered as the pain of such a loss spread.

Ribus roared.

The sheer force of his voice alone ignited the battlefield, molten waves of celestial fire erupting from the very air around him. The inferno in his grip flared to impossible levels, the eternal flames howling in unison with his fury. The entire front line shook, Nexarian forces rallying in response to the raw, divine anger emanating from their god.

"FALL BACK!" Ribus bellowed, his command resounding through the minds of every warrior present. "REINFORCE THE NEXT LINE—NOW!"

It was a maneuver practiced across eons of battle, the shifting of defensive lines from one position to the next—a controlled withdrawal rather than a chaotic rout. The Spirit Kings and Demi-Gods moved in coordinated unison, covering one another's escape as they fell back toward the prepared secondary line—a holding ground built into the dying remnants of a shattered celestial body, now little more than floating debris caught in the shifting tides of the abyss.

But Ribus did not move.

His molten gaze burned toward the Dragal Prince, searing across the abyssal monstrosities that still surged forth, uncaring of the tides of war, feeding on the very space they occupied.

The abyss did not relent.

It never relented.

And so—neither would he.

He raised a hand, and the very essence of his divine power roared to life. Ribus would not leave without sending out a parting gift of his own.

He lifted both hands, and in response, the sheer immense heat altered the very fabric of the void as it began to warp around him. The core essence of every flame that had ever burned in this entire sector of the universe, seemed to all converge in a singularity of heat and destruction at that moment.

For the first time in centuries, Ribus prepared to unleash the Full Might of the Eternal Flame that he wielded as part of his domain of [Fire].

The Abyssal Legion surged forward, predatory instincts screaming as they were sensing weakness in the retreating Nexarian forces.

Uthzol, the Twisted Ogre Warlord of Sloth, yawned as he began his advance, his movements slow but inevitable, his rusted cleaver dragging behind him, cutting through the void itself. Lady Mourna's whispers grew stronger, waves of despair threatening to crush the morale of the already shaken Nexarian warriors.

But they did not get far.

Ribus shifted and then thrust his arms forward—and everything in front of him ignited. The universe itself burned.

A wave of pure, undiluted destruction erupted from his position. A supernova given will, a solar catastrophe turned weapon. The flames fueled by divine mana rushed forward.

The Abyssal Legion screamed.

The wave of golden-white fire expanded in an instant, swallowing entire swathes of the Abyss' minions, incinerating their corruption, turning their malformed, writhing masses into nothingness. Millions of abyssal creatures—warriors, horrors, behemoths—vanished into ash, reduced to cosmic silence, their corrupted energy unable to sustain itself beneath the sheer might of a god's unyielding flame.

Even the Generals were forced to react and use their own individual methods to escape.

Lady Mourna, the Banshee Queen of Envy, let out a shriek as the flames reached her incorporeal form. The abyssal silks of her being began to unravel, the whispered wails that had sapped the will of the Nexarian warriors dissipating, leaving behind only a hollow silence as she retreated into the depths of the abyssal forces, vanishing beyond sight.

Uthzol, the Ogre Warlord of Sloth, groaned as the golden fire ate away at his rotting abyssal flesh, his massive cleaver cracking under the weight of its power. His form shuddered, his movements slowing even further, before he, too, stepped back, retreating into the abyssal tide.

Nyxir, the Demon of Lust, did not fight. He vanished entirely, disappearing into the shadows before the flames could ever reach him.

Three Generals. All driven back.

And yet—Ribus was not done.

Ribus' flames surged toward the heart of the abyssal horde, a celestial inferno of divine wrath that twisted and coiled with the fury of the heat death of the universe. The sheer magnitude of the firestorm ignited the void itself, bending the fabric of space as it tore through the encroaching darkness.

Abyssal creatures writhed in agony as the fiery purge reduced them to nothingness, their grotesque, shifting forms unable to withstand the raw destruction of god-forged flame. Their shrieks echoed soundlessly through the void before their very existence was erased, swallowed by a force far beyond their comprehension.

Yet, at the center of it all, the Dragal Prince remained still.

It did not flinch, did not brace itself, did not acknowledge the world-ending flames bearing down upon it. It simply stood, an unbroken fixture amidst a battlefield drenched in chaos. The firestorm raged forward, cutting through the writhing masses of abyssal monstrosities, its brilliant glow carving out a temporary sanctuary against the relentless tide. Space itself trembled from the impact, celestial storms igniting along the edges of the blast zone, but even as the fury of the flame sought to consume all in its wake—the Dragal Prince did not burn.

The cause of the sudden involvement of one of the Pantheon's members, the Dragal Prince, was shielded without any effort of his own.

The abyss swallowed it.

Not retreated—swallowed. Like a mother sweeping up its child in its arms, the corruption twisted and folded space around its form, creating an unnatural rippling effect, as though the abyss itself was shielding it. The flames pushed forward, struggling against the creeping void, but then—just as the last remnants of the firestorm reached its peak—

The Dragal Prince was gone.

Not burned to ash.

Not erased from existence.

Simply removed.

Ribus narrowed his molten, lava-like eyes as he clicked his mouth, "Tch."

The battlefield had reset, but the Nexarian forces were still forced to give this region up.

The retreating Nexarian forces behind Ribus' retaliation reached the next defensive line, reforming their ranks. The void still burned with residual divine flames. Ribus' flames left behind a scar upon the battlefield, but the battle was not over.

No, this war had only escalated a step further and as the abyssal corruption would soon creep forward once more—so too would the weight of what had just happened.

A Dragal Prince had intervened. And the Abyss had shown its hand.

Nexaria was being forced even further. They were running out of time.