The first sign was the light.
Not the sun.
Not moonlight.
But a silver glow—soft, cold, and orderly.
It didn't spread like energy.
It didn't radiate like power.
It declared.
High in the clouds above the Sky-Rift Wastes, space opened without tearing. A perfect vertical line split the sky in two, and from it stepped something wrapped in celestial cloth and silence.
No heartbeat.
No aura.
No presence.
But the moment it appeared… every beast fled. Every sect leader who still had a soul shivered.
It wore no armor. No crown.
But its eyes were stars—and its hands were bound in golden rings.
Not shackles.
Restraints.
Because even Heaven feared it going too far.
Raizen saw it from a distance.
He was meditating by the black-flowered Rift, absorbing the faint echoes of the Void Emperor's memory, when the silence hit.
It wasn't threatening.
It was correction.
The kind you feel when nature itself says: "You're not supposed to exist."
He opened his eyes slowly.
"So they finally sent one."
The Warden descended slowly, its feet never touching the ground.
Its voice didn't speak in words.
It spoke in judgment.
"You have entered realms sealed to your kind."
"You have invoked laws not meant for mortals."
"You have bloomed what should remain buried."
"You are an anomaly."
Raizen stood, dusting off his cloak.
"I'm still alive."
"So I haven't broken anything yet."
The Warden raised one hand. The sky bent around it.
Time paused. Even the wind stilled.
Then it stepped forward, and the world shifted.
They weren't in the Wastes anymore.
The battle zone was a mirror-world—an isolated plane created by the Warden itself. Here, laws could not bend, and cheats could not work.
Even Raizen's void energy felt slower. Stiffer.
It wasn't being blocked.
It was being challenged.
"You will be judged in isolation," the Warden said. "No interference. No inheritance. No survival."
The Warden moved first.
Not fast.
Just perfect.
Every movement it made obeyed a higher rhythm—as if Heaven choreographed the fight before it began.
Blades of compressed law formed around its body, slicing through dimensions. Raizen barely twisted time to dodge, his sleeve cut clean in half before he stepped back through folded space.
He couldn't teleport.
He couldn't erase.
Even his Void Collapse bent slower here.
"So this is pure stability…"
The Warden struck again, this time with a sweep of its hand. Raizen blocked, but the impact didn't hurt—it corrected.
His bones realigned. His void energy twisted into the form Heaven thought it should be.
He was being reshaped.
Bit by bit.
He retreated.
Let the Warden walk forward.
Then he whispered:
"Wrong battlefield."
His eyes glowed.
Not with fury.
With logic.
He dropped to one knee—and touched the floor.
The entire mirror-dimension rippled.
And cracked.
Void energy returned.
Not violently.
Not in volume.
But in purity.
Heaven had made a stable cage.
But Raizen wasn't chaos.
He was void.
Which meant if Heaven made walls…
He could remove them.
The mirror realm shattered into glass-like fragments, and both were thrown back into the real world—above the Rift.
Now the rules were fair.
Raizen stood tall.
The Warden no longer glowed. Its restraints unlocked.
It looked at him.
And—for the first time—moved faster.
The second round was not quiet.
They clashed mid-air, shaking the Wastes.
Raizen's strikes bent through folded space, redirected through lightless gaps.
The Warden met every blow with perfection, adjusting angles at the last instant. But its footing was slipping.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Because Raizen wasn't fighting stronger.
He was fighting incorrectly.
No pattern. No law.
And that's when he won.
Raizen vanished.
Appeared beneath the Warden.
And struck upward—not with a fist, but with a gap.
A hole in existence.
A slit that swallowed the idea of movement.
The Warden didn't cry.
Didn't bleed.
It just paused.
Then said:
"You cannot be catalogued."
"You will remain a threat."
"But for now… you remain."
It dissolved into silver dust.
And d
isappeared.
Raizen landed back near the Rift, chest rising slowly.
He didn't smile.
He didn't brag.
But he understood.
This wasn't just a test.
It was a warning shot.
And Heaven… wasn't done yet.