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Back in the Azure Universe, Commander Aiden approached the Main Lab with methodical steps, his Omni-Adaptive Blade – Blade of Infinite Realities humming faintly at his side. Three hours had passed since King Arion had decisively defeated Captain Blacktide, Ryuzen Takeda, Sir Cedric Lionheart, and Kai "The Phantom Fist" Raiden. The victory should have meant success for their mission on Planet X, but the sudden alert from their communication system—a panicked researcher's broken message about Kael and Kenshiro infiltrating the Main Lab—had changed everything.
King Arion had decided to handle the situation personally, instructing Aiden to gather reinforcements from the Second Generation Sentients before joining him. During those three hours, Aiden had attended to "other business" elsewhere on the planet, expecting to return to find the situation resolved. He had heard nothing from King Arion since.
The entrance to the Main Lab stood before him, its reinforced doors partially ajar. Aiden pushed them open and stepped inside.
What awaited him was beyond comprehension.
The laboratory—once sterile, organized, and filled with cutting-edge equipment—had become a charnel house. Blood painted the walls in abstract patterns. Equipment lay shattered, sparking with dying energy. Containment units designed to withstand cosmic forces had been torn open like paper.
But these details registered only peripherally in Aiden's mind.
His focus was transfixed on the bodies.
The entire Decima Vanguard—the elite team of ten Second Generation Sentients—lay scattered across the laboratory floor. Vex, whose razor manipulation had cut through planetary defenses, had been dismembered, his limbs arranged in a grotesque spiral. Rane and Cinder were fused together, their elemental powers of plant and fire frozen in a crystallized moment of mutual destruction. Frost had melted into a puddle of rapidly evaporating sludge, while Volt's body crackled with the last vestiges of his electrical essence.
Gale and Terra's remains were barely recognizable—the former dispersed into molecules of air, the latter crumbled to dust. Abyss and Flux appeared to have imploded, leaving behind only scorched outlines on the laboratory floor. And Rift, whose spatial manipulation could create doorways between dimensions, had been folded in on himself, his body twisted into an impossible shape.
Among them lay Morrigan, along with the eight creatures summoned by her "Abyssal Command – Nether Ascendancy" and Zephyros—the powerful Second Generation Sentients who had faced King Kael and Kenshiro earlier. Both were still, their extraordinary abilities silenced forever.
The researchers who had staffed the lab shared the same fate—dozens of bodies in white coats, their expressions frozen in final moments of terror.
Aiden's enhanced senses catalogued every detail of the slaughter, his Third Generation mind processing the implications even as shock threatened to overwhelm him. He had contacted Rane, Vex, Abyss, and Flux specifically to assist King Arion, but somehow all ten members of the Decima Vanguard had been summoned—and fallen.
"King Arion!" Aiden called out, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "Are you here?!"
Only silence answered him.
"KING ARION!" he shouted again, more urgently.
Nothing.
As Aiden drew breath for a third call, a voice cut through the stillness—not Arion's, but one he knew all too well.
"There's no use. He's hiding."
In the center of the laboratory stood King Kael, his form splattered with blood and grime. King Kael stood but it seemed as if he was lifeless himself, it didn't seem like he was breathing, just a dead corpse standing. His left arm had been completely severed, the wound cauterized by shadows. His eyes were open but vacant, his chest motionless. He appeared to be a corpse propped into a standing position, his shadow aura barely pulsing, like a heartbeat nearly extinguished.
"Hiding?" Aiden questioned, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. "What do you mean? I don't sense his presence, just the aftermath of it."
King Kael's lips curved into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "He's a coward, so he hid his presence so you wouldn't know he is in here."
"Impossible," Aiden scoffed, though doubt crept into his voice. "Arion's strength far surpassed yours."
Kael's expression darkened. "After all the sparring we've had, you still don't recognize my strength? Your 'King' recognizes my strength." He paused, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper. "He knows he can't get hit again..."
The implication sent a chill through Aiden. He knows King Arion wouldn't retreat from any battle. The very suggestion contradicted everything he knew about the monarch's power and pride.
"So why are you still here if you defeated him?" Aiden asked, scanning the room for any sign of movement, any indication that this was a trap.
"To wait for you," Kael replied simply. "You still are my responsibility as the King of the Requiem Universe. Even if you are good or bad, you're my responsibility. I figured you'd come along, so I waited."
Aiden raised his sword slightly, his precognition ability already calculating potential attack vectors. "And you expect to do what? It's not like yo—"
His words cut off abruptly as a wave of power unlike anything he had ever felt before crashed over him. The air in the laboratory grew heavy, reality itself seeming to bend and warp around King Kael's form. The pressure was so intense that Aiden instinctively took a step back.
"Essence Manifest..." King Kael's voice resonated with otherworldly power. "Leak Requiem."
Kael's transformation was both subtle and profound. His body became partially translucent, with constantly shifting fractures appearing across his form like cracks in glass. These fissures leaked shadows and void energy outward while simultaneously drawing in fragments of reality. His eyes transformed into pools of absolute darkness, tiny tears within them revealing glimpses of other dimensions beyond comprehension.
When he moved, parts of his body seemed to lag behind, creating temporal afterimages that leaked shadow essence into the air. A haunting, multi-layered dirge emanated from the rifts in his being—the sound of reality itself mourning its inevitable dissolution.
Instantly, Aiden's Omni-Battle Precognition activated—not by choice, but triggered by the overwhelming threat before him. Thousands of possible battle scenarios flashed through his mind simultaneously, each one playing out to its conclusion in microseconds.
In every single one, he failed.
In some, he was obliterated instantly. In others, he lasted minutes or even hours, employing every technique and ability at his disposal. Some scenarios showed him fleeing, others fighting to his last breath. Different weapons, different strategies, different approaches.
All led to the same outcome: defeat.
The certainty of it froze him in place as King Kael took a single step forward, reality fracturing beneath his foot.
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