Chronovain raised his hand.
Time stopped.
The cathedral, Kael, even the air itself everything froze mid-motion. Only Chronovain moved freely through the stillness, stepping off his throne of fractured moments with a ghost of a smile.
"Do you see now?" he whispered, walking up to Kael's paralyzed form. "This is the difference between us. You bend shadows. I bend reality."
He brushed a finger against Kael's chest. "Your heart still beats. But only because I allow it."
A crack shimmered through the air. A small one.
Chronovain turned.
Another crack.
Then a pulse of black lightning tore through the stillness, and Kael's fingers twitched.
"Impossible," Chronovain hissed. "You're outside of time. You can't move."
Kael's lips curved. "Then maybe… I'm not in time anymore."
The Abyss moved.
Dark tendrils surged from Kael's back, carving fissures into the frozen moment. One by one, shards of time collapsed into void, and Kael stepped forward, tearing himself free of Chronovain's control.
"Time may rule existence," Kael growled, "but the Abyss devours all."
He launched forward with a war cry, blade meeting Chronovain's outstretched arm. Sparks of pure paradox exploded from the clash timelines unraveling around them like fabric on fire.
Reality twisted.
Kael was suddenly fighting multiple versions of Chronovain at once one aged and slow, another young and vicious, a third made of starlight. Each step Kael took forced him into a different memory or future.
In one moment, Lyra screamed his name.
In another, he saw himself crowned in a burning city.
He ignored them all. Focused only on the present.
Because this was where the fight mattered.
Kael called upon the Entity the sentient abyssal force within him. "You see him. You've devoured worse. Give me your strength."
The Entity surged with delight, flooding Kael's veins with raw oblivion. His eyes turned black and endless, his aura flaring like a collapsing star.
"Let's end his eternity."
Kael struck Chronovain across all timelines at once splitting the battlefield into fractured layers of possibility.
Chronovain screamed not in pain, but in panic.
"NO! I AM TIME!"
Kael's sword plunged into Chronovain's chest, and for a single heartbeat, time shattered like glass.
The cathedral exploded outward in a shockwave of past and future.
And when the storm cleared
Chronovain knelt, bleeding starlight, the gears of his body grinding to a halt.
Kael stood over him, breathing hard, abyssal wings trailing smoke.
"You're not time," he said coldly. "You're just afraid of what comes after it."
Chronovain looked up, eyes wide with realization… and fear.
And then Kael turned his blade sideways.
"Welcome to the Abyss."
He struck.
And Chronovain the Firstbreaker was no more.
Time began to move again.
But it moved forward now no longer fractured, no longer bound.
And Kael, standing amidst the ruins of what once was a god's throne, had proven one final truth:
Even time must bow… to the King of the Abyss.