The air cracked as steel met steel, a deafening clang ringing out across the colosseum like a war drum signaling battle's crescendo.
Kai and his clone clashed in a whirlwind of force and precision, blades flashing under the roaring sun. Each strike from Kai came with relentless intent, his dagger slashing low, then high, feinting left before twisting into a spinning lunge. But the clone was impenetrable. Every maneuver Kai attempted was met with mirrored skill, as if his very instincts were being read before he could act.
Their blades screeched against one another once more: Kai's dagger grinding against the clone's broadsword, the ebony blade held steady by the clone. Sparks hissed into the air, momentarily lighting both their faces. Their gazes locked.
Kai's irises blazed with royal azure light, fury and desperation surging in their depths. His breath came in sharp bursts, chest heaving, jaw clenched tight. His muscles tensed like a coiled spring ready to snap. The clone stared back, its expression blank: eerily serene. Its eyes glowed with a colder, brighter azure, devoid of emotion. No anger. No urgency. Just a haunting, unflinching focus. Like a reflection of Kai's strength without his soul.
Then the clone shifted. With an effortless surge of force, it broke the clash, driving Kai backward with a powerful shove. Kai stumbled, skidding several feet across the cold, uneven stone, boots dragging lines across the dust-covered floor. The clone however, didn't pursue.
It began to pace: slowly and deliberately, in a wide arc. Its head never turned away. The curve it walked was like a predator circling prey, gauging weakness, waiting. Every step it took echoed through the colosseum like thunder from some distant, angry god. Kai's grip on his dagger tightened. He couldn't keep matching blow for blow. He had to try something else.
Gritting his teeth, he channeled his Temporal Aura to flair up as he prepared himself. Letting out a quick exhale, he muttered, "Lethal Tempo: accelerate". A sharp glow ignited along his body, and the world around him blurred as time bent to his will. With a sudden crack of displaced air, Kai vanished, darting across the space like a bolt of azure lightning.
He moved faster than sight, a blur of motion streaking straight toward the clone, dagger poised to pierce. He rushed towards the clone, raising his dagger as he prepared to land a fatal strike. But, unfortunately for him, the clone had other ideas.
The clone's eyes snapped to him at the last instant: lifeless orbs flaring as they tracked his impossible speed. With a motion too precise to be instinct, it mirrored Kai's acceleration, temporal energy bursting around its form as it matched him. Clang!
Kai's dagger was caught mid-strike by the clone's sword once again. Before Kai could recoil, the clone's off-hand shot out like a viper, seizing him by the wrist. In one fluid motion, it turned and threw him clean over its shoulder. The ground rushed up to meet him.
Kai's own instincts, paired with his accelerated thinking, flared up. He twisted midair, rolling with the impact, dust and dirt exploding around him. He hit the ground hard but didn't stop, his muscles seemingly moved on their own. He pushed off with his palms and dashed backward in a blur, putting distance between them before skidding to a crouch near the far edge of the arena.
The sun beat down mercilessly above, casting stark shadows across the weathered stone floor. Cracks and glowing runes pulsed faintly beneath Kai's boots, the ancient power within the arena bearing silent witness to his struggle. He stayed crouched, dagger clutched tight, breath hissing through clenched teeth.
His jaw trembled...not with fear, but frustration. Every tactic. Every maneuver. Every ounce of his power.....matched and undone. He glared at the clone now standing perfectly still across the arena, unmoved, unbothered. It didn't breathe. It didn't blink. It simply watched. A perfect echo of his imperfect self. A reflection of him if he utilized his full potential.
Kai's knuckles turned white on his dagger's hilt. He could almost hear those annoying voices taunting him, "How do you beat something that knows everything you are....?" The azure light in his eyes flared brighter. "Well...looks like I'll have to show you what I can be."
The silence stretched, heavy and electric. Dust swirled through shafts of golden sunlight piercing the colosseum's broken rim. Kai stayed crouched, eyes locked on the unmoving clone, his breathing shallow, his expression sharp, predatory. A storm raged behind his glare, an inferno demanding to be unleashed. Then, with a low growl from his throat, Kai stood. And his Temporal Aura exploded.
It burst forth like a dam shattered, a surge of power roaring out in a wave that rippled across the arena. The runes beneath his boots flared violently as if awoken from ancient slumber, their glow matching the blaze erupting from his core. The once-calm air around him twisted into a spiraling vortex, howling with raw temporal force. Wind howled. Stone cracked. Dust was torn from the ground in whirling currents.
His aura flared brighter and stronger, no longer a glow, but a raging inferno of royal azure, wild and unrestrained. It coiled and lashed like a beast unchained, tendrils of light snapping at the air, bolts of royal azure crackling like lightning. The stone beneath his feet fractured, deep veins of molten blue searing through the floor as if reality itself was rejecting the energy he was pushing into existence.
Kai's hair rose slowly, floating as if suspended in water, then shot upwards, flailing wildly, as if being pushed up by an invisible storm. Time thinned around him, slowed and distorted, even halting for an instant. His entire body trembled with the sheer force flooding through him. His left eye ignited, not just glowing, but engulfed entirely in living royal azure flame, a burning sphere of raw, celestial power. A mass of condensed temporal energy formed in the middle of his chest, glowing with a blinding light as it pulsed like a heartbeat. BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!
The rhythm of time itself, seemed to emerge from the depths of his vessel. Kai's lips curled into a fierce, almost unhinged grin. The energy coursing through him felt like a second bloodstream: like lightning threading through his veins, urging him forward, demanding he tear his limits apart.
He crouched low, shoulders tight, fingers twitching, his muscles pulsing under the stress of compressed power. The vortex around him narrowed, drawing inward, until it circled him like a storm waiting to be unleashed. Across the arena, the clone stirred.
Its blank expression twitched, only slightly, but enough. It took one cautious step back, then raised its broadsword into a high guard. For the first time, it mimicked Kai without attacking. The aura around it surged, matching Kai's intensity in hue but not in feeling. It lacked the rage, the will, the raw hunger. It was lifeless power: empty, but clinical and precise.
But it knew something had changed. Kai's laughter came sharp, edged with both amusement and defiance. The flames crackled louder with every breath. "Oh? What's the matter?" he spat, voice hoarse but strong, laced with challenge. "All you can do is copy me, huh?" He took a single step forward. The ground beneath his boot shattered with a pulse of energy.
"You're nothing but a cheap, shiny knock-off," he said, his grin spreading wider, feral, fearless. "You can mimic my strength... but you'll replicate touch my soul. You see.....I have realized something crucial during our battle: my actual body is not present in this....place." he said, waving his hand, "all this time, the energy I have been using is not from myself, it is being fueled to me by some...external source, I know this because the sensation of my own energy is neither this dense nor this....pure."
He raised his dagger in front of him as he continued, "And from the very beginning....I have been missing one key feeling the entire time I have been here....that is the sensation of having a limited amount of energy flowing through me. I may be new to this gig, but my body has been exposed to this stuff long enough to sense how much energy I have left at any given time." Kai shook his head as he laughed, "It feels like a waste of time chatting with a wind up toy like you but boy, oh boy.....an infinite supply of temporal energy feels good."
The clone didn't respond. It couldn't. It simply raised its weapon higher. But Kai could sense it now. The balance was shifting. The predator had stopped circling. And the hunt was about to begin. Kai moved.
The arena cracked beneath his feet as he launched forward with a sonic boom, his figure engulfed in spiraling streaks of royal azure. A whirlwind of energy followed in his wake, ripping through the air like a divine tempest. The clone barely had time to adjust. Kai was already on it. Steel howled through the space between them.
Their blades met in another crash, but this time, the tone had shifted, decisively. Kai wasn't just matching blows anymore. He was driving them. Each strike came not with practiced form, but with raw fury, explosive instinct, and the speed of a storm unleashed.
His dagger was a blur: low, high, then horizontal. A feint turned into a slash, which morphed into a stab. Every angle. Every weakness. He pressed in mercilessly, fighting like a beast unchained from restraint. His Temporal Aura flared with each movement, creating afterimages that danced like ghostly specters around him. The clone was fast.....but it was faltering.
Its broadsword moved in rigid arcs, accurate but slightly slower, a fraction behind. Kai's relentless barrage was pushing it back, strike after strike slipping through its defenses. Sparks flew, metal screeched, and with a sudden twist, Kai's dagger scraped across the clone's shoulder, cutting through the armored suit. Thin lines of glowing violet blood shimmered in the air before vanishing. Kai's thoughts raced with sharpened clarity, "The sword's got range. But it's slower. Takes more effort to swing. Which means...."
He lunged in closer, almost chest to chest, he used his off hand to clamp the clone's wrist, so tight the clone's long weapon became a liability. "Let's see you try to swing now." His dagger snapped forward again, striking the clone's ribs with a jarring crunch. The impact knocked the wind out of it.....but Kai wasn't done.
As the clone reeled, trying to adjust, Kai's free hand released the clone's wrist and surged backward. Temporal energy bloomed in his fist like a newborn star, compressing tighter, brighter, until his knuckles hummed with catastrophic force. With a roar, he drove the punch straight into the clone's gut. CRACK!
The sound echoed like a rupture in time itself. The clone's body jackknifed, eyes wide, glowing brighter for a split second as it coughed out a mist of azure. Its stance broke, its knees buckled, its guard faltered. Kai snarled, adrenaline pulsing with each heartbeat. "Got you." Without pause, he shifted weight into his back leg, then unleashed a devastating roundhouse kick, his foot wreathed in twisting arcs of royal azure energy. WHAM!
His boot collided with the clone's face. The force detonated across its head like a battering ram, sending the clone spiraling sideways, tumbling through the dust with brutal velocity. The earth cracked where it landed, throwing up a wave of debris. The empty colosseum trembled. Kai didn't relent. He blurred forward again, trailing a comet-like streak of light behind him. His mind felt clearer than ever...only one single thought began to cycle over and over, growing stronger and louder each time, "kill....Kill.....KILL!"
The clone had barely started to rise, its posture wobbling, blade dragging across the floor. Its perfect expression was gone now, marred by a deep gash running from its cheek to jaw. Sparks and fragments of synthetic flesh crackled at the edge of the wound. Kai's dagger came down like a guillotine.
Slash! his dagger cleaved across the clone's chest, tearing through reinforced fabric and drawing another splatter of glowing blood.
Slash! another clean strike across its arm, nearly severing the hand at the wrist. The broadsword clattered to the floor.
Slash! a diagonal arc from collarbone to jaw, slicing clean through the glowing eye, extinguishing it in a burst of searing azure flame.
The clone staggered backward, expressionless face now twitching in spasms of broken mimicry: half its visage torn, synthetic muscle twitching beneath cracked skin. Sparks danced in its ruined eye socket, its body jerking with fractured movements, no longer fluid, no longer flawless.
Kai stood tall, his chest rising and falling like a war drum. His aura howled around him, the vortex feeding his momentum, the storm sharpening his fury. "Still standing you worthless bastard?" he said between breaths, voice ragged but fierce, his grin all teeth and wrath. "Good. I want you to feel this."
Around them, the ancient runes pulsed in unison with Kai's heartbeat, echoing the primal rhythm of battle, of dominance, of a soul that refused to be outdone by its own shadow. The clone raised its head. Its remaining eye glowed dimly, its mouth trying to form something like a breath or thought. But there was nothing left in it. It wasn't fear. It wasn't pain. It was failure.
Kai's expression hardened, a flash of sorrow swept beneath the fire of his glare, though for no longer than a tenth of a second. "You're just a reflection," he muttered, blade gleaming in his grip, "but I'm the one casting the light."
The broken clone stumbled towards him. Then suddenly, it lunged at him, it's one good had extended towards Kai's throat. Kai simply accelerated himself and stepped to the side, before landing a solid punch right on the clone's jaw. Kai deaccelerated himself as the clone went flying. Right before it could hit the wall, Kai accelerated himself again, rushing towards the clone then positioning himself and landing another punch across the clone's sternum. The clone went crashing through the ground but Kai accelerated again as he rushed to the clone and delivered a solid kick across it's side.
This onslaught of devastating strikes kept continuing, till the clone was beyond unrecognizable. It's battered body lay across the ground, motionless other than the occasional twitch of life. Kai grabbed the head of the clone and lifted it up, gazing into what was supposed to the his own face. He lifted his dagger and drove it right where his heart would have been, ending the clone's misery. He let go of the body as it fell to the ground and began to dissolve away into small particles of violet temporal energy, dissolving into the wind.
Kai let out a long, steady exhale through his mouth, the air escaping like a weight being lifted off his chest. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in what felt like hours, and his muscles, though worn, were no longer trembling. A strange warmth unfurled in his chest: gentle, almost melodic.....as though a quiet flame had been kindled within his heart. It pulsed softly, not with the intensity of battle, but with the strange serenity of something....earned.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the silence settle as his Temporal Aura faded away. Then came the voices. "CONGRATULATIONS, YOUNG WARRIOR." They echoed from every direction, layered and ancient, many voices speaking as one, yet each carrying a distinct timbre, like a choir of forgotten gods. "YOU HAVE BESTED THE TRIALS." The sound seemed to vibrate through the very marrow of his bones. "WE SEE YOU WORTHY OF ASCENSION. MAY THE GIFT WE GRANT YOU BE USEFUL IN YOUR FUTURE BATTLES."
At their final word, the world around Kai began to unravel. The towering colosseum walls, once marred with the scars of his battle, began to dissolve like mist under sunlight. The roar of wind faded into nothing. What remained was light, soft at first, then growing brighter, reshaping the space around him. When the radiance dimmed, Kai found himself standing in an enormous chamber, unlike anything he had seen before.
The ceiling arched high above like the dome of a celestial temple, encrusted with constellations that shimmered and slowly shifted. Every star twinkled in rhythm with his heartbeat. The walls, carved from obsidian stone etched with flowing silver lines, whispered with ancient energy. The scent of burning incense, something spiced and unfamiliar, drifted through the air.
Beneath his feet, a carpet unfurled, rippling outward from his position. Deep crimson and royal black wove into intricate patterns of hourglasses, warriors, and rising suns. On either side, tall brass torch stands erupted into flame, one after another, forming a glowing corridor of golden firelight that cast dramatic shadows across the chamber. Kai's breath caught as his eyes traveled down the illuminated path.
At its end stood a pedestal: ornate, regal, and humming with a quiet power. It was forged from a dark violet metal that seemed to drink in the torchlight rather than reflect it, its surface engraved with runes he instinctively recognized as temporal in origin. Upon it rested a glass orb, flawless and suspended on a rich dark blue cushion that shimmered like the night sea. His boots made no sound against the carpet as he moved forward. Step by step, slow and reverent, the world fell away until there was only the pedestal, the orb, and his racing pulse.
He reached out. The moment his fingers brushed the glass, the orb responded, flaring to life with a radiant brilliance. A blinding azure light surged forth, swallowing the chamber whole in a cascade of radiance and rushing wind. It wasn't harsh or burning, it felt like being engulfed in the first light of dawn after a long, endless night.
Then everything was light. And Kai stood at the cusp of something new.