CHAPTER 438: CLASH (2)

Steam cleared.

Frost hissed.

Two figures stood, but the land between them was no land anymore. It was a ragged trench of cracked permafrost and shattered ice pillars, stretched wide like reality had been forced to make space for a battle too big to contain.

Ethan’s grip tightened around his hammer. Runes flickered along its surface in patterns that hinted at deeper power he could not yet draw out. His red armor glowed faintly, threads of white energy pulsing at each joint. Not flames; just raw vitality, the kind born from strength that had tasted divinity before.

Leon hovered, wings spread, snow twisting around him like a living crown. That mechanical eye zoomed and refocused, analyzing Ethan’s stance, his heartbeat, his weaknesses.

"Ethan!" Leon snarled. "Look at how far beneath me you’ve fallen."

Ethan didn’t respond with words. His golden eye sharpened, and an invisible force rippled outward like the air itself was bending under pressure. The Stagnation Field collapsed around Leon in an instant.

Movement died.

The breeze froze mid-gust. Snowflakes halted in the air. Even the faint hum of Leon’s cybernetic heart slowed to a crawl.

Ethan vanished from where he stood.

The next moment came like a thunderbolt.

His hammer crashed into Leon’s raised blade, tearing sparks and shards of ice in every direction. The sound was a deep, physical thing, a boom that punched the breath from the land.

Leon’s stalled motion rebooted violently, sending him spiraling backward. But he caught himself with a savage twist, wings gouging the air, boots carving trenches in the ice as he skidded to a halt.

"You dare freeze me?" Leon spat.

The ground shuddered. Jagged ice spires shot upward beneath Ethan, hunting his spine like a pack of spears. He vaulted over them with a burst of strength that cracked the frozen world beneath him.

Earth answered him.

A seismic pulse erupted from his step. The ice spires snapped like twigs, collapsing into glittering debris. Leon countered with a wave of frigid energy that froze the falling shards midair, transforming them into daggers that launched toward Ethan like a hailstorm forged from knives.

A faint pulse radiated from Ethan’s hammer. Reality twisted a hair’s breadth to the left. The daggers passed through where he had been, as if space itself politely refused to acknowledge their existence.

A subtle trick of Mysticism. Barely noticeable, except to someone who knew him.

Leon noticed.

"You’re still hiding tricks. Still pretending you’re human enough to limit yourself."

Ethan answered by slamming his hammer into the ground.

Sound erupted.

A concussive blast tore through the battlefield, shredding frozen trees and stripping ice from the castle walls. The shockwave hit Leon full force, sending him crashing through the air. His wings flared, circuits sparking, barely halting his tumble.

Leon roared and launched himself forward like a missile of steel and rage. Their weapons collided again and again, each impact forging a new crater beneath their feet.

Psychic pressure reverberated from Ethan, heavy enough to make the world tilt. Leon’s vision wavered, just long enough.

Ethan’s fist drove into Leon’s chestplate.

The blow wasn’t magical.

It was raw strength.

Armor dented. Leon coughed out a burst of steam and staggered as Ethan followed through with a swing of his hammer that should have obliterated him if Leon hadn’t teleported a meter away with a flicker of cold light.

"I REMADE MYSELF TO KILL YOU!" Leon screamed. "This body exists to bury you!"

His wings sharpened like scythes, and he dove, sword cleaving downward in a strike that split a frozen lake behind Ethan in two clean halves.

Ethan blocked. Barely.

The force drove him to a knee. Leon’s mechanical eye rotated wildly, locking onto every micro-fracture in Ethan’s armor.

"Break," Leon whispered.

Ice erupted inside the dent Ethan had made earlier in Leon’s armor, except now it formed around Ethan’s arm. Frost raced up his gauntlet, locking muscle, slowing blood. His fingers numbed.

Leon’s laughter cracked the sky.

"I’ll peel you apart piece by piece. Just like I was!"

Ethan’s golden eye flashed.

The Mark of Serenity branded the air.

All noise died.

Leon froze mid-swing, suspended in a silence so deep it felt like the universe inhaled and refused to exhale.

Ethan rose slowly. He pulled free of the ice trapping his arm simply by flexing, metal and frost snapping away like brittle twigs.

His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of the land itself.

"You keep saying everything is my fault. But you chose hate. You chose to throw your life away. You chose to become this."

The silence ruptured.

Everything accelerated.

Leon screamed and lashed out with a blast of energy so cold the color blue itself seemed to flee from it. Ethan countered with a swing that sent a ripple of invisible force crashing through Leon’s attack, shattering it like glass.

The battlefield trembled under powers neither of them fully controlled anymore.

This wasn’t a duel.

This was years of resentment and buried truths exploding into a storm that the world was not prepared for.

And it had only just begun.

...

The moment the clash reset, neither of them touched the ground again.

Ethan rose into the air without a sound. No wings. No thrusters. Just willpower and command over existence itself. The atmosphere bent around him, supporting him like an obedient servant.

Leon’s wings beat once, sharp enough to slice the wind, and he launched upward with a trail of hoarfrost spiraling behind.

Two meteors, one red and one blue, collided mid-sky.

Their power detonated.

Clouds above shattered into vapor. The ice below cratered from the wind-pressure alone. Ethan’s hammer spun in a brutal arc, forcing Leon to block, the sheer momentum dragging him higher into the sky whether he wanted it or not.

Ethan didn’t stop. He blurred through the air like a crimson comet, appearing above, below, behind, every strike precise and merciless. Leon blocked most but not all. Cracks began to form along the knight-like plates fused to his cyborg body.

Leon retaliated with a wide sweep of his greatsword that unleashed a crescent of freezing energy. It tore open the horizon. Ethan slipped past it by warping his position a fraction of a second earlier than the attack landed. Space bent and stitched itself back together in his wake.

Leon snarled and thrust out a palm. A spear of condensed absolute zero shot forth, reality trembling around it. Ethan caught the spear with his bare hand. Frost crawled up his arm, threatening to devour flesh and bone.

Ethan squeezed.

The spear shattered into mist.

Leon’s mechanical eye flickered with panic.

"You shouldn’t be able to do that... you shouldn’t have ANY of that power left!"

"I don’t need all of it to beat you," Ethan replied quietly.

Leon screamed and flew backward, wings beating violently as he summoned a storm. A blizzard erupted, spiraling into a colossal vortex that swallowed the entire sky. The world turned white. The wind howled like a thousand dying things.

Ethan hovered calmly within the storm’s heart.

Then his aura expanded.

The blizzard slowed.

Snowflakes hung still, caught once again in the grip of the Stagnation Field. Leon tried to move, but his body locked; only his fury was able to twitch the corners of his mouth.

A single tap of Ethan’s hammer against Leon’s blade sent shockwaves through Leon’s entire being. Circuits fried. Bone rattled. His wings faltered.

Ethan’s next swing was a downward comet of force.

Leon twisted free of the slowed time at the last possible second, teleporting behind Ethan and slamming his sword toward his spine. Ethan pivoted, meeting the strike with the haft of his hammer. The explosion of energy hurled them apart.

Leon caught himself mid-air, panting. Vapor escaped his mouth in furious bursts.

"You ruined my life!" Leon’s voice cracked. "You stole EVERYTHING! I became this monster because of YOU!"

Ethan hovered opposite him, armor gleaming under the fractured light. His expression, despite his anger, held something unexpected.

Sadness.

"You were given a chance to grow stronger, to learn, to stand beside us," Ethan said. "But all you ever saw was what you weren’t."

Leon’s wings flared wide. His aura surged so cold the air screamed.

"I don’t want to stand beside you! I want to stand OVER YOU! I want you broken. I want you begging. I want your LIFE!"

He shot forward faster than gravity could register. Ice and metal war-cries echoed.

Ethan met him head-on, hammer spinning.

Sky turned into a battlefield.

Air turned into blades.

Even the sunlight seemed to fracture around the chaos.

They no longer looked like two men fighting.

They looked like forces of nature trying to erase each other.

And far below them, beneath the roar of colliding powers, Anbord trembled.

Because no matter who won...

The world would never be the same when this battle ended.