Chapter 516: Shackles IX
The clash carved silence into existence.
Stone and dust no longer fell—they froze mid-collapse, caught between Thalen’s decree and Leon’s defiance. The orb at the staff’s crown pulsed with constellations unraveling, their light unraveling into black threads that reached to claim the world. Opposite, Leon’s resonance screamed through the void, a rhythm not of resistance but rebellion, splintering inevitability into choices.
The city became a paradox. Half of it fell away into nothing, aged into the husk of time’s last breath. The other half fractured into mirrored shards of possibility, suspended in Leon’s expanding domain.
Thalen’s voice deepened, more force than tone.
"Defiance is not victory. You are not the first to struggle against the end. All before you bent, broke, or were forgotten."
Leon’s body shook under the strain. The Fifth Pulse rattled his bones, every breath threatening to dissolve into fractured light. Yet his stance did not falter. He drew one echo into his palm, condensed it until the sound alone bent the dust-choked air.
"Then I’ll be the first you can’t erase."
The orb blazed, constellations collapsing into a singular white star. Thalen swept his staff forward, and the star’s brilliance spilled into the world, devouring matter, light, and rhythm. The very laws of existence peeled away, stripped to their fading skeletons.
But Leon moved through it. His resonance pulsed not against Entropy, but within it, carving fractures in inevitability itself. The Fifth Pulse no longer merely denied—it rewrote.
Each echo he struck out split Thalen’s light into a thousand divergent outcomes: collapse delayed, collapse reversed, collapse rendered harmless dust. Each time, Entropy reformed, but thinner, less absolute.
Behind him, his allies stood in awe.
Naval muttered, knuckles white on his trident. "...He’s bending inevitability."
Milim’s lips curled into a grin despite the ruin around them. "Now that’s my kind of fight."
Roselia clutched her chest, tears in her eyes. "He’s... singing against the end itself."
Thalen’s calm cracked. His staff drove into the ground, forcing another pulse of inevitability outward. Entire blocks of the ruined city evaporated in an instant, drawn into the void. Yet as the tide reached Leon, it split, staggered, and faltered, breaking upon a rhythm the world itself now recognized.
Leon’s voice boomed, countless echoes layering into one truth.
"I don’t resist inevitability. I fracture it, until the only outcome left—"
He stepped forward, every motion tearing open more fractures in Thalen’s law, each one a rhythm of defiance carried on by his allies’ strength.
"—is my victory."
The Fifth Pulse howled. The battlefield itself broke into a storm of contradictions—ruin and rebirth, end and beginning, collapse and defiance—until the city no longer knew what it was.
And in that storm, Leon’s domain surged forward, driving into Thalen’s inevitability with the rhythm of a future that refused to end.
The city shuddered again, as if reality itself struggled to decide whether it still existed.
Thalen stood unmoving, yet the orb at his staff’s crown spun faster, constellations dissolving into streaks of black light. His robes of woven night billowed though no wind stirred. For the first time, his calm expression carried strain—not fear, but recognition.
"Fracturing... inevitability." His voice resounded like bells tolling at the world’s last hour. "You tamper with the foundation, Flamebreaker. Do you think the Sovereigns sit idly while a mortal carves at the bones of existence?"
The ground beneath him cracked—not from Leon’s resonance, but from something deeper. The earth bled shadow, lines of obsidian fire crawling outward, sketching vast circles into the ruin. Within those circles, the decay accelerated. Buildings crumbled into dust before they could collapse. Even the air itself screamed as it fell into void.
Liliana’s breath caught. "He’s invoking his Throne’s true form."
The night itself bent toward Thalen. His shadow rose, no longer cast by the dim light above but drawn from every ending that had ever been. The circle expanded, and within its reach, no law but Entropy could survive.
Roselia stumbled back, clutching her staff as her light dimmed. "He’s unsealing inevitability itself...!"
Thalen raised his staff high, the orb now a swirling storm of dead stars. His calm returned, colder than before.
"You fracture inevitability, Leon. But inevitability does not need to fight you. It waits. And it waits with an eternity’s patience. Your flame burns bright, but it too must fade."
He brought the staff down.
The Throne of Inevitables descended.
All around them, collapse became absolute. Roman’s anchored ground turned to dust. Naval’s water evaporated mid-wave, gone before it struck. Milim’s blazing aura flickered, eaten by unseen centuries. Even Roselia’s prayers unraveled in her throat, words withering before they left her lips.
Leon’s resonance domain screamed as it held the tide at bay. But even as the Fifth Pulse fractured inevitability, every fracture demanded a cost. His skin cracked again, blood and light spilling from the seams. His heartbeat thundered in jagged rhythm, every beat threatening to collapse into silence.
Thalen’s voice pressed into him like a verdict.
"All things end, Flamebreaker. Even defiance."
But Leon’s steps did not stop. He staggered once, twice, then planted his foot forward, forcing the Fifth Pulse to coil tighter. His eyes burned, not with desperation, but certainty.
"Then I’ll fracture your Throne."
His resonance roared, the echoes at his back swelling into a storm that tore at the circle of inevitability. Each pulse did not merely resist—it rewrote, forcing choice into a place where none should exist. The Throne of Inevitables, once untouchable, shuddered as cracks appeared in the endless night.
For the first time, Thalen’s composure broke. The staff wavered in his hand. His eyes narrowed, and the calm weight of inevitability gave way to sharp intent.
"...You dare."
Leon’s domain surged.
"Watch me."
The clash of Throne against fractured rhythm shook not just the city, but the very sky above.
The city no longer held shape.
What had once been streets and towers was now a battlefield of paradox—half consumed by Entropy’s quiet hunger, half fractured into endless mirrors of possibility. Every breath the group took felt like it came from a world that wasn’t certain to exist in the next heartbeat.
At the center stood Leon and Thalen, their Thrones colliding.
The Throne of Inevitables bled shadow in sweeping arcs, constellations unraveling into lines of decay that erased whatever they touched. Opposite, Leon’s Fifth Pulse tore those lines apart, splitting them into threads that scattered into futures never lived.
The impact wasn’t thunder. It wasn’t flame. It was silence fighting silence, broken only when reality cracked under the weight of contradiction.
Leon’s body trembled. Each pulse of his domain sent jagged pain through his bones, his resonance threatening to splinter him as much as it did Thalen’s law. But he pushed forward, voice layering with countless echoes until it became a storm of defiance.
"Your Throne waits for all things... but it will never claim me."
Thalen’s eyes narrowed, staff raised higher. The orb pulsed, its light no longer dim—it blazed, consuming stars and spitting them out as black fire.
"You fracture inevitability, Leon. But inevitability is not a path—it is the ground beneath paths. Without it, even your rhythm collapses."
The black fire spilled outward, a wave that erased sound, light, and time itself. It swept across the ruins like the final dusk.
Naval planted himself in front of Roselia, trident flashing as he summoned torrents of water—but the wave aged it into vapor before it even rose.
Roman slammed his fists down, body-force flaring, but his strength cracked away as the ground beneath him ceased.
Milim’s energy blazed hot, a star reborn in her hands—but the moment it formed, Entropy dimmed it to ash.
Roselia gasped, despair in her voice. "Even our laws can’t stand—"
Liliana’s eyes sharpened. She planted her staff hard, her voice rising in song—not against Entropy, but with Leon’s rhythm. Her melody braided into his resonance, amplifying it, stabilizing it, turning his fractures into something the world could not ignore.
"Then we don’t fight inevitability—we echo his defiance!"
The others understood.
Roman roared and struck again—not to anchor the ground, but to hammer rhythm into Leon’s pulse.
Naval spun his trident in tune, forcing each splash of water to ripple in resonance rather than fight the tide.
Milim hurled sparks into the fractures Leon made, seeding them with possibility instead of light.
And Roselia sang prayers, not to heal, but to carry Leon’s echoes farther, louder.
The Fifth Pulse surged.
Leon’s domain no longer cracked alone—it thundered with the strength of every ally behind him. The fractures widened, lancing through the Throne of Inevitables, splitting the black fire into scattered threads of forgotten futures.
Thalen staggered. His staff shook, constellations breaking apart in the orb until the light guttered uncertainly. His calm shattered, voice heavy with something sharper—urgency.
"No... This rhythm should not exist. You are not a Sovereign. You should not be able to fracture me!"
Leon stepped forward, every echo hammering the declaration into being. His skin still cracked, but his eyes blazed with impossible certainty.
"Then remember it, Keeper—because this is the rhythm that even your law cannot end."
He raised his hand. The Fifth Pulse howled.
The battlefield screamed as inevitability itself began to fracture.