The colossal hand remained still for a moment—pressing, grinding, sealing Northern into the broken land beneath. The ground fractured in spiraling patterns, as if struggling to hold the weight of the suppression. Dust and debris floated upward, reverse-falling in slow motion due to the domain's warped pressure.
Rughsbourgh stood a short distance away, watching, waiting.
Then the hand twitched.
A sharp pulse of crimson light flared through the cracks—like veins bursting open in stone. One beat. Two. The third came with a deafening crack.
The massive hand convulsed.
A low hum echoed through the sky.
Then the dark hand exploded from within.
Fragments of condensed shadow spiraled outward in controlled chaos. And there he stood, hunched slightly, steam rising from his bare shoulders. One side of his body was scorched raw, bones visible where skin had torn—and even then, it was slowly healing. Threads of Chaos knitted tissue like a tailor working madly under moonlight.
Northern's eyes lifted. The crimson in them now carried streaks of silver. His gaze locked onto Rughsbourgh with the calm finality of a blade mid-swing.
Rughsbourgh muttered something inaudible and pointed forward. The tome beside him burst into flame—not from heat, but from incantation overload. Golden scripts swam across the sky like serpents, forming circles upon circles, spinning in elegant concentric patterns.
A storm of golden monoliths surged into existence behind Rughsbourgh—each the height of towers, etched with holy sigils, vibrating with divine resonance. Each of them was a binding. A seal. A punishment.
"I sentence you—"
Rughsbourgh's voice thundered with divine weight.
"—to obliteration under the Laws of the Founders."
They fell.
The monoliths descended like judgment itself—golden mountains carved from divine wrath, each one trailing streams of molten scripture.
The air itself seemed to bow under their weight, reality bending at the edges where the holy seals touched the world.
Northern didn't move.
The first monolith struck where he stood, driving deep into the fractured earth with a sound like the world's spine breaking.
The second followed, then the third—each impact sending shockwaves that turned stone to powder and powder to nothing.
Dust clouds billowed upward, obscuring everything in a golden haze thick with divine energy. The very atoms seemed to sing hymns of destruction.
Rughsbourgh lowered his arm, breathing heavily. The divine scripts still swirled around him, but slower now, their light dimming as he whispered:
"It is finished."
The words carried the weight of absolute conviction. But the dust was moving wrong. Not settling downward as it should, but spiraling—drawn toward something at the crater's center.
The golden haze began to darken, threads of flame weaving through it like infection through blood. A laugh echoed from the depths. Low, rasping, utterly without humor.
"That one's new… the Founders? Are they from the Age where Spell Art originated? And what exactly is finished? If that was the best of your ability, Rughsbourgh, we are a long, long way from finished."
Northern flew.
Rughsbourgh gritted his teeth.
He was not going to lie—this was beginning to get tiring. How was the bastard emerging unscathed through every attack thrown at him?
He clicked his tongue irritably and moved his hand to wipe his forehead. However, Rughsbourgh stopped mid-motion.
He moved one finger and touched his forehead, then brought it to his face.
"...I'm— sweating?"
Northern flew down and collided with him, causing shockwaves to fly outward with clouds of scattered debris.
Rughsbourgh was gripping Northern by the neck when the clouds cleared.
He drew his other hand back and unleashed a devastating punch, crushing Northern's face once.
The first blow generated a shockwave and blood exploded from Northern's face. But Northern was grinning.
Rughsbourgh clenched his hand even tighter and threw another punch into his face. The fist kept flying and Rughsbourgh kept reshaping Northern's face with his knuckles, blood arcing and spraying into the air.
However, Northern did not stop grinning.
The sound of the punches soared through the air like terrifying thunderclaps. At some point, Northern's face was dismantled and unrecognizable—blood had pooled and veiled his entire visage.
However, his mouth was wide open, grinning, blood dripping on and between his teeth. He was like a macabre and vile demon existing to relish in the splendor of pain and bloodshed.
For a moment, as Rughsbourgh prepared to throw another punch, he hesitated.
And that right there seemed to be what Northern was waiting for.
"Ab...solute Heat."
The air around them didn't just heat up—it became heat.
Pure, unfiltered thermal energy that existed beyond the concept of temperature itself.
The very molecules began to scream as they were forced beyond their breaking points.
Rughsbourgh's eyes widened. His divine essence, his carefully constructed defenses, his spatial protections—all of it began to buckle under the assault of infinite thermal energy.
The golden scripts that had been circling him started to melt mid-air, their divine inscriptions bleeding like golden tears.
"Impossible—"
He began, but even his voice was being consumed by the heat.
Northern's grin widened, blood still streaming down his face, but now it was evaporating before it could fall. His wounds were cauterizing instantly, then tearing open again from the sheer intensity of his own power, creating a grotesque cycle of destruction and regeneration.
The ground beneath them didn't melt—it sublimated directly into plasma. The air itself caught fire, not from combustion but from the sheer presence of thermal energy so intense that reality itself began to unravel at the quantum level.
Rughsbourgh felt it then—true fear. Not the tactical concern of a difficult opponent, but the primal terror of facing something that existed beyond the natural order.
His divine nature, his very existence as a being of higher power—all of it meant nothing when faced with the fundamental force of infinite energy.PartofaserieshostedbyMyVirtualLibrary
Empire(MV&LEMP&YR).He released Northern's neck and staggered backward, his hands already beginning to blister despite all his protections. Golden holy sigils appeared across his skin only to burn away, not from external heat but from the impossibility of containing such power within the same space.
Rughsbourgh's voice cracked.
"What is this? What… are you?"
Northern's laugh was a sound like solar flares given voice.
"Rughsbourgh. There are laws… and there is me."
He took a step forward, each footfall leaving molten glass in his wake.
"I am become Heat. Infinite. Eternal. Absolute."
The very domain around them began to collapse. Not from structural damage, but because the space itself could no longer contain the contradiction of infinite thermal energy existing within finite boundaries. Reality bent, twisted, and started to tear at the seams.
Rughsbourgh raised his hands, golden light flaring around him as he desperately tried to invoke another binding. But his tome was already ash, his scripts were vaporizing at a terrible rate.
"Divine Sanctuary—"
He began to chant, but the words turned to steam before they could take effect.
Northern was walking toward him now, unhurried, inevitable. Each step caused supernovas of heat to bloom around his feet. The air rippled with thermal distortion so intense that space itself was bending.
"Tell me, Rughsbourgh…"
Northern said conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather rather than the fundamental breakdown of reality.
"Whoever created laws, did they ever consider what would happen when someone chose to embody the very forces those laws were meant to contain?"
The distance between them closed. Five feet. Four. Three.
Rughsbourgh's entire body was beginning to break down at the molecular level. His perfect, eternal features were starting to blur and distort as the proteins in his body approached their thermal breaking point.
"I am... eternal..."
He gasped, pouring every ounce of his divine essence into maintaining his form.
"I cannot... die..."
Northern stopped just outside arm's reach. His crimson and silver eyes locked onto Rughsbourgh's with the calm finality of entropy itself.
He said softly.
"Eternity… is just another word for a very long time. And time... burns."
He reached out with one hand, palm open, fingers spread.
The gesture was almost gentle.
The effect would not be.