The black chains moved.
Green and red lightning continued to crack across Safsan's body.
His eyes remained completely black.
Everyone watched him.
Safuu.
NAREZEN.
The two knights.
The survivors scattered across the battlefield.
But Safsan...
wasn't looking at any of them.
He was looking somewhere else.
At empty space.
SEENEE noticed immediately.
Safsan tilted his head.
Then spoke.
“I see you.”
Nothing answered.
To everyone else, there was nobody there.
No presence.
No body.
No energy.
Nothing to sense.
Because the person Safsan was looking at wasn't standing on the battlefield.
He was standing within time itself.
Hidden between moments.
Watching.
Safsan raised one hand.
One of the pure-black chains moved.
“Show yourself.”
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The chain disappeared.
Not forward.
Not backward.
It simply vanished from the present.
Then—
CLANK.
Something caught.
A figure was violently ripped out of time.
GREEN THUNDER exploded across the battlefield.
A young man crashed into reality.
Kairo.
He landed on his feet.
For the first time since appearing in Odania...
Kairo looked genuinely confused.
“What—”
He looked at the black chain wrapped around him.
Then at Safsan.
Safuu's eyes widened.
She recognized him.
The man who had spoken to her about the future.
The man whose knowledge had changed her plans.
“Kairo...”
NAREZEN looked at him.
Nothing.
No recognition.
It had lived through these events before.
It remembered this battlefield.
It remembered Safuu.
It remembered the knights.
It remembered what should have happened.
But this man?
NAREZEN had never seen him.
Kairo stared at Safsan.
Then his confusion disappeared.
Something heavier replaced it.
“So it really happened.”
Safsan said nothing.
Kairo lowered his head for a moment.
“You warned me about this.”
Safsan's expression didn't change.
“You told me that if I ever saw you like this...”
Kairo clenched his fist.
“...I shouldn't fight you.”
Silence.
“But I don't have a choice anymore.”
He looked directly at Safsan.
“And I don't care what you told me.”
His voice became quieter.
“I just wish I didn't have to fight my best friend.”
Safsan stared at him.
Best friend?
The words meant nothing to him.
He had never met Kairo.
Not truly.
He didn't know his name.
He didn't know where he came from.
He didn't know why this stranger had saved him.
Yet Kairo spoke to him like they had lived through years together.
Safsan finally answered.
“What are you talking about?”
Kairo froze.
For one brief second...
he remembered.
This Safsan didn't know him yet.
Their friendship...
belonged to the future.
Safsan pulled the chain back.
Then smiled.
Not warmly.
Not cruelly.
Almost curiously.
“You're my first test.”
Kairo's eyes narrowed.
Safsan looked around the battlefield.
“Everyone else here is too weak.”
Green lightning flashed.
Kairo disappeared.
Safsan disappeared.
For one second—
they fought.
And then...
everything was over.
Silence.
No one understood what had happened.
There had been movement.
Green.
Red.
Black.
A sound like the world itself being struck.
And then—
bodies.
The people who had survived the civil war...
were dead.
Some had spent hours hiding beneath broken buildings.
Some had crawled through blood to escape.
Some had carried their children.
Some had survived Blood Hunger.
Some had survived collapsing streets.
Some had survived everything Odania had thrown at them.
It didn't matter.
Black chains covered the battlefield.
Some bodies had been caught by them.
Others had died before the chains ever reached them.
Speed alone had been enough.
The Knight of the Spear...
dead.
The Guardian of the Roots...
dead.
NAREZEN...
dead.
The being that had manipulated VAREK, ZARQEN and NAREV.
The reincarnating Holawaka that remembered this battle from another life.
Gone.
It had not even understood how it died.
The battlefield became still.
Smoke moved through the ruins.
Black chains slowly disappeared.
The green lightning faded.
Then the red.
At the center of everything...
Safsan lay on the ground.
Unconscious.
His eyes were closed.
His breathing was quiet.
As though nothing had happened.
SEENEE stared.
He had no words.
A battle that should have contained countless events...
had ended in a moment.
People who should have survived...
were dead.
NAREZEN should not have died like this.
The two knights should not have died here.
None of this belonged to the future SEENEE knew.
And Kairo—
SEENEE looked for him.
Then stopped.
Somewhere else on the battlefield...
among the destruction...
Jalatta was alive.
Uninjured.
Standing somewhere within the ruins.
For reasons no one yet understood...
he was fine.
SEENEE looked across what remained of Odania's capital.
Then back at Safsan.
One second.
That was all it had taken.
One second...
to turn the future into something SEENEE no longer recognized.
And somewhere inside that single second...
Safsan had fought Kairo.