Time, in this place, bent and cracked like the air around them.
Jin and Velka stood at the edge of the Final Mission—an otherworldly space suspended between realms. A land of broken sky, floating mountains, and seas of inverted light stretched before them. This mission was different. Unlike the previous ones, this place was alive… watching… waiting.
"Stage One: The Mirror of Blood and Beasts"
The first trial began without warning.
The Battlefield of Lost Reality. To proceed, survive the wrath of the Forgotten Sovereigns — shadows of gods whose names were erased."
Suddenly, monstrous beings emerged from the dark. They didn't walk — they unraveled. Grotesque shadows shaped like fallen deities, each made of fragmented time, broken beliefs, and collapsing dimensions. Their eyes were galaxies spinning backward. Their limbs moved with the sound of clocks shattering.
Jin and Velka exchanged a glance.
"They're not alive," Jin murmured. "They're concepts. Echoes."
Velka summoned her blade, runes glowing gold across her arms. "Then we kill the idea of them."
The Forgotten Sovereigns charged, howling with voices that shattered stone. One struck the ground, causing a time-flash: the entire battlefield looped three seconds backward. Another screamed, and reality bent — turning air into liquid and freezing fire.
Velka blinked between floating islands, dancing with light as she slashed the concept-shadows into fragments. But they kept reforming, stronger, adapting to each strike. Her golden hair fluttered wildly, her eyes locked in furious focus.
Jin, however, stood still.
He watched the patterns — the way reality distorted every time they struck. The way their presence consumed logic. Then he closed his eyes and whispered:
"Zhel-Vorah… I saw you use this… Let's see if I can do it too."
His eyes snapped open — no longer glowing with power, but emptiness. A void deeper than the abyss itself.
Jin raised his hand.
Four lines of blinding light shot outward in a perfect square formation, creating a crystalline grid that hummed with immense pressure. The world stopped.
Literally.
Everything froze — from the crashing islands to the howling Sovereigns, even the flutter of Velka's cape. The battlefield became a glass sculpture, perfect and untouchable.
Then Jin declared. "Dragon Glass"
Now he slowly approached to the Sovereign and killed him.
The glass shattered and Velka, released from the frozen space, collapsed to her knees in exhaustion.
"That… was insane," she panted, golden eyes wide with awe.
Jin smiled faintly, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth.
After surviving the first trial, he and Velka stood before an ancient obsidian door, breathing heavily, their souls still shaking from the absolute silence of Dragon Glass. As the door creaked open, it revealed a cathedral suspended in a void of starlight. Music — haunting and wordless — drifted through the air, echoing with forgotten hymns and voices that no longer belonged to any world.
This place was sacred and cursed.
Velka whispered, "This is a Memory Chapel… a place where lost songs of fate are buried."
Jin's instincts roared — the air smelled like illusion and madness.
Then, the voice returned.
"Stage Two: The Choir of Oblivion."
From the altar of the chapel, ghostly entities emerged. They were beautiful and terrifying — entities composed of shimmering echoes, illusions of pasts that never happened. Some wore Jin's face. Others, Velka's. Some were twisted versions of Lia. Their forms fluctuated — now children, now monsters, now lovers — all speaking false memories and singing songs no one remembered writing.
They circled the duo, whispering promises, regrets, futures stolen by time.
"You left her behind."
"You'll become a god… and still lose everything."
"You'll burn the world again, just like before."
Jin clenched his fists. His eyes narrowed. "These things… they're not real."
Velka didn't move.
Her lips parted. Her body trembled.
"I… I hear them," she said. "I hear myself in them. They're singing my Requiem… this time I will not fall into their trap. "
The illusions closed in — more vicious, more alluring — until Velka slowly stood upright.
Her eyes turned silver. Her voice was calm.
And then, she whispered the name of her power:
" The Requiem
Whim — Echo of Mystery."
The moment her words echoed, the air itself rippled with unknowing.
Reality flickered.
Her body became enveloped in strands of silver music — not sound, but conceptual threads of forgotten lore. Her hair lifted like starlight. Her eyes held an unfathomable knowledge — as if staring at her made one forget who they were.
Mystirism, her gift, began its work.
Mystirism is the power to veil existence in layers of paradox, riddles, and mystery — the more one tries to understand it, the more lost they become. Every attack Velka launched was unknowable. If one saw her blade coming, it was already too late. If they tried to anticipate her, they'd forget what they were doing. It was the weaponization of unsolvable beauty.
The ghost-entities attacked, but their bodies unraveled trying to comprehend her. Even Jin, watching her from behind, felt his memories flutter — like pages being flipped too fast.
Velka sang no words, but the Requiem moved with her — every strike, every breath a question the enemy could never answer. One by one, the whispers of false futures fell into silence.
But the final phantom rose — larger than the rest. It wore Jin's face and Lia's voice. It wept as it burned.
"You are not salvation," it said. "You are ending."
Velka faltered.
Jin stepped forward.
His red eyes were glowing. The stars above trembled. Space coiled around his hand like a wounded snake.
He raised it slowly and said.
"Then let the end begin."
The sky screamed.
An infernal star ignited in his palm — the Birth of Destruction.
He threw it.
The infernal comet roared like the scream of the first dying god.
The illusion shrieked — not in pain, but in denial. And then it was gone. No explosion. No sound. Just erasure.
Velka ran to Jin as he collapsed.
"That…" she whispered in awe and dread, catching him before he fell again, "that was the Birth of Destruction… the weapon of the true dragons."
As they lay in the ruins of the memory cathedral, stars shining softly through the cracked ceiling, Jin turned to Velka with wide eyes.
"You… used a Requiem," he said, stunned. "The same… as Aurelion and Lia?"
Velka nodded, brushing silver strands from her face. "Yes. I carry the Echo of Mystery. I was chosen… like them."
Then her eyes narrowed, curiously. "But how did you get Dragon Glass and Birth of Destruction? Only Zhel-vorah could wield them."
Jin smirked, tired but proud. "My reversal trait… lets me mimic any power I've seen — no matter how impossible. And I can use them without limit. No cost. No copy. Just understanding. And I am also a True Dragon that's why I can use this power."
They sat in silence.
The battlefield shimmered under the fading stars.
They were bruised. Bloodied. But alive. They stood up and went to the final stage
The battlefield was no longer a place.
It was a canvas.
A sky of pure white stretched in every direction, endless and infinite. Stars hung motionless, frozen in the silence of awe. The ground beneath Jin and Velka's feet had turned into translucent glass — and beneath it, flowed the unwritten — moments that never came to be, futures unchosen, dreams never born.
A celestial voice whispered from every corner of the void:
> "Stage Three: Confront the Story You Refused to Become."
From the horizon came a figure — shifting, infinite.
It was made of possibilities that died.
Its left half was Jin — eyes hollow, his body rotting with the weight of failure.
Its right half was Velka — wings broken, her requiem a silent scream.
And in the center, its face was Lia, crying tears of starlight… and fading into dust.
Jin took a step back. Velka trembled.
"This is not an enemy," she whispered, "It's our guilt… our 'what ifs.'"
The Entity roared. It did not walk — it tore through time, every movement rewriting the fabric of the battlefield. Each breath summoned a forgotten war. Each heartbeat erased a miracle.
They had never seen such terror.
And yet…
They stood.
The Entity launched an attack — a black lance of collapsed destinies.
Jin's Dragon Glass ignited instantly — four radiant beams of divine crystal erupted, forming a cross between them and the lance.
"No one," Jin muttered, eyes glowing like fallen suns, "can break my Dragon Glass. Not even those who rule time. That glass renders all concepts — even time — meaningless…"
The lance shattered.
But it wasn't enough.
The Entity unleashed a tidal wave of broken stories, entire civilizations screaming in silence as they fell through the glass battlefield.
Velka rose.
Her voice trembled with divinity.
"Requiem Whim — Echo of Mystery. Mystrism."
From her lips came a single note — soft, sad, unknowable.
Mystirism surged around her, manifesting as mirrors reflecting moments that had never happened — possibilities of power ungranted. Her body glowed with hues not seen in any known reality, and the sound of her requiem reversed the entropy of death, turning forgotten things into blades of resonance.
Jin followed — his right arm wrapped in black flame.
"Now you'll see it," he whispered, as a second sun exploded behind him.
"Birth of Destruction."
The infernal star howled — reality recoiled.
It didn't burn matter.
It burned stories.
The narrative of the monster twisted, folding into itself, screaming silently as its essence began to unravel.
Still, it endured.
They had one chance left.
Jin turned to Velka. Their bodies bruised. Eyes heavy.
"If we combine it… your requiem and my destruction…"
She nodded.
They held hands.
And something… happened.
Her voice, divine and gentle, twisted into his darkness —
His fire, primal and chaotic, was cradled in her melody.
Their power fused — not layered, but rewritten.
Time wept.
The glass beneath them bloomed into roses of light. The sky shattered, and through the cracks poured a color that had no name. The void became a cathedral of mirrors, music, and fire.
They unleashed their final attack.
It didn't fly.
It didn't strike.
It sang — a wave of unmaking beauty, burning and embracing all at once.
The monster dissolved in awe — as if it had waited its whole existence to be ended by something this perfect.
But the recoil was too much.
Velka was hurled backward like a meteor, her body limp.
Jin flew after her. His wings of ash beat once — and he caught her mid-fall.
They floated, cradled by the starlit remnants of their attack. Around them, light rained in slow motion, like feathers from a dying phoenix.
The battlefield was gone.
Only beauty remained.
Velka opened her eyes, her body glowing faintly from the strain. Jin held her tightly, breathless.
"You caught me… again," she said with a weak smile.
He looked down, his heart thundering.
Velka placed her hand on his cheek. "Jin," she whispered. "I have to say it now… I don't want to hide it anymore."
The stars above bent closer, listening.
Her voice cracked. "I love you."
And then — with the sky weeping auroras around them, with the final embers of their fusion lighting the air like fireflies — she kissed him.
It was not hesitant.
It was not perfect.
It was real — raw, broken, honest.
The moment stretched. The galaxy held its breath.
She pulled back, her voice shaking. "I know you love someone else… but I wanted to give you my heart before this journey ends."
Jin didn't speak immediately. He held her tighter.
The world below them healed slowly, light returning to its rightful place.
And in that moment, they hovered like two eternal souls caught between war and peace, sorrow and warmth—drifting not in victory, but in the quiet ache of something deeply human.