ONLINE: Blades of Eternity

The sky shattered like glass.

The burly Celestial launched forward, his body wrapped in glowing astral sigils that pulsed with the weight of cosmic judgment. Every step he took across the ruined coliseum cracked reality itself—space ruptured, colors bled into one another, and gravity distorted, warping the battlefield into a nightmare of chaotic pressure.

But Endless?

Endless danced through it.

The foreign essence that swirled around him responded like a living tide—tendrils of shifting nothingness that twisted and reshaped the world around him. It wasn't mana. It wasn't aura. It was something beyond comprehension—the raw fabric of unbeing, the echo of a forgotten truth, something older than creation.

As the Celestial descended, he brought with him a blade of folded space, woven from light so dense that it distorted everything in its path. With a mighty roar, he cleaved downward—aiming to unmake the being who had defied the order of existence.

But Endless tilted his head, raised a finger—

"Invert."

Reality inverted on itself.

The Celestial's attack reversed, flipping into a spiral of nothing that was devoured by Endless's aura. The ground beneath Valoria Kingdom split open, swallowing hundreds of homes. Entire districts flattened as the aftershock rippled outward, reducing architecture to dust and citizens to terrified screams.

Above, Kael Dragonyx stood rooted on a high precipice, his eyes wide and dilated—not with fear, but with something dangerously close to awe.

"…what is this power…?" Kael whispered, grinning with an intoxicated look on his face, even as the roof of the capital's palace collapsed behind him. "It… it doesn't follow any laws. No path, no essence, no soul. This is what true supremacy feels like."

Meanwhile....

Reeves was shouting something, but his voice was drowned by the chaotic roar of cosmic upheaval.

The Celestial did not falter. His body glowed with a pulse of divine retaliation, and his chest expanded unnaturally as he opened his mouth—

And a beam of pure harmonic destruction erupted.

It didn't fly. It was. It cut through dimension like a scalpel, erasing swathes of Endless's aura, ripping apart clouds, obliterating mountains, and piercing the skies themselves.

Endless staggered. For the first time since his emergence, his smirk faltered.

Then he laughed.

"So you're not just empty glory after all… good. Let me show you what dwells in the abyss you cast me into."

He raised both arms. The tendrils thickened, then coalesced into a monstrous shadow—a colossal limb made of screaming faces and shifting symbols, stretching up past the broken heavens.

And then—

Impact.

The kingdom shook. The coliseum was vaporized, reduced to a crater so deep it reached the molten core beneath. All across Valoria, the skies turned crimson, and a despairing wind swept over the land as the two titans clashed in a battle unfit for the mortal realm.

But despite all these....

Below—

Kaelen's heart pounded in his chest, not from fear, but from the timer ticking down in his vision.

[Time Remaining: 07:01]

'Damn it.... I don't have much time left'

He couldn't waste another second.

Even with the world crumbling, he gritted his teeth, then bolted.

"Kaelen, NO!" Marel's voice rang out, panic twisting his expression.

Reeves shouted after him, "Get back here! That's a death sentence!"

Lila reached out, tears pooling in her eyes. "Kaelen, what are you doing!!? please—don't—!"

But Kaelen didn't look back.

He dashed through the crumbling shield of Reeves's defensive runes and flung himself into the chaos. He had no clue where Magic Pandora was—only that if he didn't move now, everything would fall apart.

The moment he crossed the barrier though, a blast of pressure knocked him to his knees. The air was thick with so many overlapping energies it hurt to breathe. His armor cracked further, his lips split, and blood trickled down his chin.

"I.... can't give..... up now!"

Still, he pushed on.

But just when the others thought they had lost Kaelen to suicidal madness—

Kelvin moved.

Without a word, he clutched the wound on his side, gritted his teeth, and launched himself after Kaelen.

"Kelvin?!" Lila screamed.

Marel turned sharply, "Are you both insane?!"

Reeves' eyes widened. "No… not you too—!"

But Kelvin didn't stop. He didn't look back.

He caught up to Kaelen after a few painful strides, his voice hoarse but determined. "In as much as I despise you and will vaporize you if you ever get in my way, I'm not letting you die alone, idiot. You'll need someone to drag your sorry corpse back if you collapse."

Kaelen smiled faintly through the blood. "Thought you were a human that was built to not have a heart."

Kelvin laughed, voice cracked and dark. "Well, let's just say it died a long time ago."

Behind them, the sound of another collision split the air. The Celestial had just punched Endless through a mountain—and Endless returned the favor by imploding half the sky in a black sphere that sucked in light itself.

But Kaelen and Kelvin didn't look back.

Not now.

They ran forward, into the broken kingdom, through storm and fire and chaos, to hunt the legendary Magic Pandora—and carve their path through the debris of gods.

And so, the air was trembling.

The battle above between Endless and the burly Celestial had surpassed the realm of reason. Each collision between them was rewriting the landscape of Valoria. Mountains crumbled. The skies bled golden light and pitch-black void in equal measure. Laws—gravity, time, sound—were warped or outright denied. Birds stopped flying. Rivers flowed in reverse. Even the sun seemed hesitant to shine over Valoria now.

Kaelen, with Kelvin at his side, stumbled through the broken veins of the capital—both of them wounded, drained, and barely holding on to consciousness.

"Kaelen," Kelvin grunted, "what the hell are we even looking for?"

"I don't know," Kaelen admitted, his voice ragged and cracked. "But I'll know it when I see it… I have to."

The system timer was blinking furiously in the corner of his vision:

[Time Remaining: 05:00]

[Objective: Acquire Magic Pandora]

[Status: Not Obtained]

Kaelen's every breath was fire in his lungs. His limbs felt like steel bars—heavy and cold. But his eyes were locked ahead, desperation etched into every line of his face.

They darted through collapsed buildings, leapt over massive fissures in the ground, and barely dodged the gravitational aftershock of a celestial strike that leveled half a mountain in the distance.

Then—

He saw it.

Nestled between the fractured remains of a once-grand statue—a relic of Valoria's founding king—sat a floating crystalline cube, rotating slowly in the air.

It was glowing.

No… singing.

Not in sound, but in soul.

Kaelen felt it the moment he laid eyes on it. His heart thudded once, hard and deafening in his chest. The cube was made of shifting, translucent layers—each facet held a universe, stars swirling like whirlpools in a glass prison. This was it. The Magic Pandora.

"There!" Kaelen pointed, his voice rising with adrenaline.

Kelvin's eyes widened as he too saw the ethereal object glowing like a divine ember amidst the chaos.

"How do we get it?" Kelvin asked.

"We run."

And they did.

They broke into a sprint, pushing every ounce of strength left in their bodies as the magical gravity from the ongoing divine battle tried to force them down. Blood leaked from Kaelen's nostrils, from Kelvin's ears, but they pushed on. Nothing else mattered.

[Time Remaining: 03:42]

[Distance to Target: 43 meters...]

Each step forward felt like moving against a collapsing world.

And then—

Time cracked.

The world shimmered.

And something divine stood in front of them.

A Celestial. Not the burly one still trading punches with Endless above—but the one who had first spoken upon their arrival. The one who passed judgment. The one whose words could silence eternity.

He hovered an inch above the ground. Clad in flowing robes made of starlight and celestial fire, his presence was absolute. Golden sigils hovered around his form like orbiting planets, and his face was veiled by a serene mask with a single radiant eye pulsing at its center.

Kaelen and Kelvin froze.

Their momentum died.

The pressure was colossal, far worse than Endless's aura—this one was heavier, yet it didn't crush. It stilled the world around it. It was truth.

"You do not belong here," the Celestial spoke, his voice everywhere and nowhere. "This is not your battle, young heirs of fleeting blood."

Kaelen's lips quivered. His body wanted to kneel. Every instinct screamed that he was in the presence of a being who sat beside the Source of all things.

But—

[Time Remaining: 03:02]

He couldn't stop.

"I-I need that!" Kaelen shouted, trembling. "The Magic Pandora—if I don't get it… something worse will happen!"

The Celestial tilted his head, the star-forged mask unreadable. "You presume you understand what this object is. You do not."

Kelvin stepped forward, coughing up blood but baring his teeth. "We don't care what it is—we need it. If you're not here to stop Endless, then move aside."

The moment Kelvin said that, the Celestial's orbiting symbols flared once, and the ground around them fractured silently.

Kaelen flinched, sweat dripping from his brow.

But the Celestial… said nothing for a moment.

Then, surprisingly, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

A portal opened beside him—a vision rather than a door.

Inside it, Kaelen and Kelvin saw the world burned. Endless stood atop a mountain of corpses, holding the shattered remains of the very cube they were about to acquire. The Magic Pandora pulsed faintly in his grip, drained and dead along with two weapons at his back.

"This," the Celestial said calmly, "is the future where you fail."

He snapped his fingers again.

Another vision.

This time, Kaelen stood bathed in light, holding the Magic Pandora above his head as a flood of magic surged across a ruined world, restoring the skies, rebuilding forests, breathing life back into a world nearing extinction.

"This," the Celestial murmured, "is the future if you choose wisely."

Kaelen gritted his teeth. "Then help us. Please."

The Celestial was silent.

Then… he stepped aside.

"You have three minutes," he said, "before the battle above swallows this place whole."

Kaelen didn't waste another second.

He and Kelvin rushed past the Celestial, leaping into the wreckage and landing at the base of the shattered statue. The Magic Pandora hummed as Kaelen reached out—and the moment his fingers touched it—

[Objective Complete]

[Magic Pandora Acquired]

[Time Remaining: 00:59]

Kaelen collapsed to one knee, the cube glowing as it was about to enter his grasp, his body trembling from sheer overload.

Kelvin dropped beside him. "You got it… you crazy bastard."

Kaelen smiled, panting. "Now… let's make sure it's not in his hands."

Above them—

Endless roared in fury as the burly Celestial landed a devastating blow to his chest, sending shockwaves through the city once again.

But Kaelen now held something Endless must have wanted.

And the true war was just beginning.