The clash between Vasra and Tashi had torn the very fabric of the dueling realm apart. What had begun as a seething argument had escalated into a full-blown battle between Epic-ranked awakens. Time and Space against the very essence of Life. Each spell echoed through the void like a storm of ruptured laws, distorting everything it touched, violating reality's fragile web.
Vasra hovered mid-air like a deity, his robes snapping against tides of distortion. Around him, reality frayed, space twisted in loops, time stuttered and pulsed, and gravity bowed under his will. Runes of ancient chronology spiraled from his fingertips, forming a halo of forbidden spells. Behind him, the horizon fractured and reformed endlessly, as if the world couldn't decide what rules it was supposed to follow.
With every heartbeat, Vasra wasn't just casting magic, he was rewriting existence.
Opposite him, Tashi floated with a serenity that bordered on defiance. The World Needle spun in his grasp, a silver blur trailing luminous arcs through the air. Where Vasra unmade, Tashi restored it. Threads of healing light stitched the air, weaving into a net of balance in the wake of chaos. His expression was grave but unyielding, as though life itself stood behind him and refused to break.
"You always thought control meant order," Tashi said, his voice resonating through the realm like a temple bell. "But order enforced by power alone… is tyranny."
Vasra's eyes narrowed, his tone cold as the void. "And you always mistook sentiment for strength. That boy needed to awaken as something greater. Not just brave. A legend."
Tashi's expression didn't shift, but his eyes sparked with something deeper. "You mean like Alex?"
Vasra flinched. His composure cracked for an instant. "Alex acted out of pride. The family never abandoned him. He threw away a legacy for rebellion and ended up with nothing."
Tashi raised the World Needle. It shimmered, as if reality itself hesitated before its edge. "No. He chose to become his own man."
There was no more time for words.
Tashi lunged in a blur of motion wrapped in silver light. The World Needle speared through six layers of spatial ripple in a single heartbeat, untangling Vasra's distortions with clinical precision.
Vasra responded in kind. The air around him warped. Time decelerated. Tashi's movements stretched into echoes, as if caught in the amber of slowed causality.
But then a flick.
Tashi snapped his fingers. And blinked.
A flare of light and he was behind Vasra. And with a smile. "Your time magic is potent. But life, Vasra… life finds its way."
He drove the World Needle forward straight through where Vasra's shoulder should have been.
But Vasra was no longer there.
"I am not bound to a single place," his voice echoed from every direction, vibrating through stone, wind, and breath.
High above, Vasra reappeared, arms moving in elegant, unnatural arcs. Twin spirals of compressed time and folded space surged outward. The dueling realm began to collapse in on itself. The floating mass of objects twisted into unrealistic shapes, rivers of mana bent upward and bled sideways, trees folded like paper and vanished into fragments of possibility.
Tashi exhaled and pulsed with radiant force.
Where Vasra warped reality, Tashi anchored it. The ground glowed beneath his feet, and in midair, seeds sprouted. Trees burst from nothing, their roots entangling streams of destabilized mana. Vitality spread like wildfire, defying Vasra's entropy.
The sky split.
A rumble, then silence, the moment before an avalanche.
Back at Dawn Academy, the cataclysm hadn't gone unnoticed.
The first ripple, a subtle shift in ambient mana had stirred uneasy glances. But when space twisted, and students began collapsing from mana whiplash, the alarm was sounded. By the time the sky above the academy cracked, the senior faculty were already moving.
Instructor Elrin of Arcane Geometry attempted to reinforce the realm's boundaries with multiple defensive barriers. But the protections shattered like glass. The Swordmaster of Dawn, Master Karo, stepped forward, eyes sharp and narrowed.
Then the rest followed.
Twelve instructors. All Epic-ranked. Masters in their own right. Together, they formed the ancient rite of containment. The Chain of Balance.
Circling the dueling realm, they began to chant. Runes of celestial law bloomed into the air, golden and humming. Mana surged between them in a perfect geometric ring. The world trembled in response.
Within the realm, the duel raged on.
Tashi swept the World Needle in an upward arc, unleashing a wave of raw restoration. It wasn't just healing, it was renewal, rebirth. Grass grew across stone. Trees bloomed in the fractured sky. Life surged against the unraveling of time.
Vasra lifted his hands. Reality inverted. Gravity became an inward pull, collapsing toward a false singularity. Tashi countered, forming a lattice of living light that bore the weight of Vasra's gravitational force like roots bearing down in defiance of wind.
"You would tear down everything," Tashi said, voice cracking with grief more than rage. "Just because your plan didn't work?"
"You robbed him of a legacy!" Vasra roared, raw emotion bleeding into his magic. "Have you seen Jered's potential? The most common yellow system. A disgrace in family history! I couldn't let him waste away while the rest of us soared."
The storm of magic howled around them.
"I gave him what you never did," Tashi said. "A choice."
Their voices thundered through the sky. Mana crackled. The very threads of the realm quivered, stretched to breaking.
Outside, the formation reached its peak.
Instructor Rhem, master of mana sealing, drew sigils in swift strokes, each one a law of magic made visible. Instructor Vina, wielder of illusionary magic, shaped a tether, not of flesh, but of thought meant to seize both mages by mind and held them back to reason.
And then the final invocation.
The Chain of Balance activated.
Golden chains, forged from the laws of the world itself, wrapped around the dueling realm. With a blinding pulse, time slowed. Magic dulled. The very air thickened. Sound collapsed into a muffled heartbeat.
Inside, Vasra and Tashi froze suspended in space like they have turned into stone. But they were still conscious.just contained. Their mana was not erased, only bound. Reduced to manageable levels.
It was over.
But not resolved.
Vasra's gaze flicked toward the golden links still humming with celestial law. His voice was a low growl. "You called them."
"I didn't have to," Tashi said, barely winded, his tone almost mournful. "You lost control. We both did."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then Master Karo, radiant in his dark silver robes, floated into view. His presence alone bent the air around him not with force, but sheer authority.
"Both of you. Return to the Academy Hall. You will answer before the Council."
Vasra didn't speak. His fists trembled, lips tight, fury contained only by the chains of law.
Tashi for once said nothing.