The world stilled.

The moment Endless appeared, time itself recoiled.

The earth cracked in slow-motion. Trees wilted under the sheer presence of the Eternal. Clouds dispersed, not in retreat—but in fear. Light dimmed, not because of the hour—but because the world itself knew who had come.

The King of Elves lowered his glowing hand, the final attack meant to destroy Kael Dragonyx and the Chaos Twins frozen mid-cast as he came out of the rumble he created from receiving one of Endless surprise attacks. His golden eyes, once unwavering, now trembled.

A suffocating void oozed into the atmosphere—Endless had arrived.

"You… dare interfere," the King growled, voice still thunderous, but the world no longer seemed to answer to him.

Endless tilted his head, an amused smile behind his shadow-cloaked mask. "Dare? I merely arrived. This isn't your world anymore, old king. It never was."

Maeralyn could hardly breathe.

Right now, she stood from a perch amidst the shattered citadel walls, she watched as the man she once worshipped as invincible stood still—uncertain.

"Father…" she whispered.

The wind changed.

Without warning, the King of Elves exploded forward—his golden cloak disintegrating in the force of his charge. The ancient runes carved across his silver armor burned so hot they bled white. His staff vanished from his hand and reformed into a jagged glaive of living light.

He didn't wait.

He couldn't.

With a primal war cry that shook the air, he slashed downward at Endless.

But Endless didn't flinch. He simply raised a single finger.

And the King was hurled backwards through a mountainside.

The mountain didn't explode.

It disintegrated.

A gasp echoed from every watching elf, ancient or not.

But the King rose again. Blood spilled from his lips, staining his pale beard. His crown cracked. And yet he smiled.

"You think pain frightens me? You forget who I am."

He thrust his hands forward—and the world responded.

Roots of trees thousands of miles away burst from the ground, swirling into a vortex of nature's wrath. Rivers changed course mid-flow. Stars shimmered even in the daytime sky. He roared, unleashing the Will of the World, channeling every ancient pact the Elves had forged with the land.

Endless was swallowed by a titan of flame, vine, wind, water, and raw mana.

For a moment… Maeralyn believed.

The King landed gracefully, panting, his arms lowered. The aura around him made the entire battlefield seem like a forest bathed in morning dew. He stood tall again, a beacon of hope, a living god.

Then—

"Are you done?"

The mana titan shattered.

A single, black, six-fingered hand reached through the ruin, gripping the king by the face.

BANG!!

And smashed him to the ground.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Each slam created a crater the size of a fortress. Golden blood sprayed with each blow. The Elven King tried to resist—but Endless was merciless.

"Your world is too old," Endless whispered, almost kindly. "And your people… too tired."

The King coughed blood and hurled a blinding spear of starlight at Endless' core. It vanished on contact.

Endless kicked him in the chest.

Crack.

Ribs shattered.

The King flew into the sky.

Endless followed.

They danced in the air—if one could call it a dance. One figure flailed under constant blows. The other moved with elegance beyond time.

Maeralyn screamed.

"FATHER!"

It echoed—not just in volume, but in power.

The King—bleeding, broken—froze mid-air.

His breathing was shallow, his eyes barely open.

But they widened.

His gaze drifted toward the citadel ruins where she stood. Where her tear-filled eyes were locked onto him, her hands trembling.

It has been centuries he last heard that word with such a voice.

Because of that, the chaos of the battle faded in that moment.

And for the first time in centuries…

He remembered.

He remembered holding her hand when she was just a small elf, clinging to his robes as she begged him to take her flying across the floating gardens of Aele'thean. Her laughter. Her wonder.

The way she looked up at him with those bright eyes and said:

"You're the best king in the world… but you're an even better dad."

He choked. But it wasn't blood this time.

It was grief.

It was love.

It was the pain of returning to a world that had moved on without him.

His broken arm trembled.

But he didn't block the next hit.

Boom!

Endless's fist crashed into his back and sent him plummeting into the very heart of the Elven Capital.

The impact erupted in a golden shockwave so massive that the roots of the ancient World Tree wailed in agony.

"NOOOOOO!!" Maeralyn cried, voice splintered by heartbreak.

Dust. Silence.

Only the sound of flickering embers and falling leaves.

Seer Velyrian clutched Maeralyn's shoulder as she collapsed to her knees, sobbing. "He… he knew you were watching."

She nodded, her sobs unrelenting.

And far below, buried under stone and memory, the King of Elves barely moved.

Yet through those battered body....

A flicker of a foreign energy still lingered.

----

As the dust from the battlefield settled for a brief second, the battered and bloodied figure of the King of Elves lay motionless against a scorched pillar of rootstone—his ancient armor cracked, his once-lustrous emerald cloak in tatters, drenched in streaks of silver blood.

Endless stepped forward, his abyssal cloak of dark fire rippling behind him, his void styled mask gleaming like a god of oblivion. He did not even glance at the fallen king. His attention was on the Divine Seed, glimmering faintly in the distance, nestled within a floating orb of temporal mana.

He whispered, amused, "So this is the hope you all clung to... laughable."

He raised a hand.

But before he could take a step, a powerful hum began to echo through the ancient battlefield.

From the shadows of the broken ruins and crumbled towers of the Elven royal sanctuary, they emerged again—the Ancient Elves.

This time, they stepped in formation, forming a sacred circle between Endless and the Divine Seed. Their eyes burned not with fear, but with purpose.

The tallest among them, an Elder known as Serethar the Stillborn Flame, spoke with thunder in his voice.

"We may fall this day. But we shall not let you walk over the dreams of our kind."

Each placed their hands over their chests, and ancient glyphs of impossible complexity seared into the ground around them. Vines erupted from the earth, blossoms of extinct flora glowed with volatile mana, and the skies—once again—began to shift colors in rapid succession.

A God-tier Elven Seal Spell—one that had not been cast in over twenty thousand years—began to take form.

Endless stopped.

For the first time, his shadow-cloaked form tilted his head, as if surprised.

"…Interesting."

From the edges of the ruins, Maeralyn crouched behind a half-broken sigil stone. Her pale hands trembled. Tears blurred her sight.

"Velyrian… do you think… they'll… survive?"

"No," Velyrian said, his voice grim and honest. "They're buying time. For us. You. Me. The Seed. We need to—"

"I can't leave him," she snapped back.

"But you must!" he said, gripping her shoulder. "You're the Heir! If he—"

Suddenly, a voice—weak but commanding, deep but gentle—pierced through the cacophony of spellcasting.

"Maera…"

Her breath caught.

That voice.

Her heart stopped beating for a moment as she slowly turned around.

There—leaning heavily on a broken glaive, his long white hair cascading in blood and dust, stood her father.

The King of Elves.

His body shook with agony, but his eyes… they shone with tears of pride as something began building within him.

"You must go… child. Do as Velyrian says. Your path… lies beyond this moment."

Maeralyn's lip quivered. Her fingers dug into the stone.

"But you—"

"I am already gone, daughter," he whispered, smiling softly. "All that remains is honor."

"No.... Not yet....."

She sobbed, not like a warrior princess—but like a daughter saying goodbye to the only man she ever feared losing.

Meanwhile…

The Ancient Elves completed their spell.

The sky turned white.

A monolith of runes erupted above them, shining like a second sun. It twisted space itself, threatening to unravel the threads of reality.

Endless faced it without flinching.

When the beam of eternal light shot toward him, he simply opened his palm.

And the spell—a spell that could bend time, fracture dimensions, and obliterate gods—was caught in the maw of his abyss.

"No more toys."

He clenched his hand.

And the spell shattered like glass.

The recoil threw the Ancient Elves to the ground. One by one, their bodies burst into white flames—consumed by the backlash of the spell they'd dared to cast. Their noble forms disintegrated into mana particles, their souls carried away by the wind.

Some of the elves watching screamed, eyes wide in horror.

Even Velyrian and Maeralyn was frozen, unable to believe what he had just witnessed.

But the King of Elves—who was watching—nodded grimly.

"They did well…"

Endless turned toward them.

There was no rage in his presence.

Only inevitability.

He began to walk forward.

"Now, I'll be taking what's mine—"

But then, something strange happened.

The ground beneath him pulsed. Boom. Boom. Like a heartbeat—ancient and unyielding.

The roots of the world stirred.

From behind him, the battered King of Elves stood straight.

Both his eyes and his body burned with green flame. His broken glaive was gone—now replaced with a bow made from the branch of the First Tree. One which he had vowed never to use again.

He pulled the string.

The world shook.

"Enough," the King said.

Endless paused.

"You stand again?" he asked, amused. "You cannot win."

"I don't have to," the King whispered. "I only have to make you remember pain."

He fired.