Before Violet could even blink, pain stabbed her eye socket like a red-hot nail. Blood surged out in a hot rush, and the demon in her mind-sea seized her Aether, sealing the torrent in her left eye like frost clamping a spring.

“What happened?!”

Breath ragged like torn silk, Violet wrenched her gaze aside, pain a wildfire behind her lashes, and hurled the question into her sea of consciousness.

“Your Aphelia pushed further mid‑fight,” the demon said, voice cold as stone under deep water. “She refined her Aether to the razor’s edge. You’re not a True God. Borrowing my sight to look at that will only hurt you.”

“Further? I thought she was already a True God… how…?”

“She never condensed a domain,” the demon rumbled, steady as thunder behind mountains. “She’s standing on its lip. One more spark, and like your Eastern saying—ascend in broad daylight, step into godhood in one leap.”

The words made Violet’s heart lurch like a bird striking glass. Aphelia’s rise had already beggared belief; if she formed a domain in battle and crowned herself a True God, that was defying the sky itself.

Then diving into the Abyss to seek the world’s will suddenly felt like a lantern in sunlight, dazzling yet unnecessary.

Even with her gaze averted, Violet felt the battlefield’s tremors like tides through bedrock. Time kept smearing at the edges, a telltale ripple that screamed of Aphelia’s power.

Pain burned in her left eye like a coal, yet joy still surged in her chest like spring flood breaking ice.

The red‑haired loli stayed statue-still, eyes on the storm of a fight. Gold roared in her pupils like kindled fire; if anyone else stood nearby, they would’ve been crushed by that heat like reeds under a gale.

Compared to Violet’s bright delight, her thoughts were a tangle, like roots under frost.

“Come on then—press the attack!”

A pure‑white greatsword speared down through cloud like a sunbeam turned blade, pinning the towering knight into the earth. Pure Aether surged in wave after wave, and the tall knight only raised his tower shield like a cliff, blocking every strike from Aphelia’s hand.

Aphelia’s body and soul burned at their peak, every motion clean as flowing water. She left no gaps—every form chained to the next like links of lightning—forcing the knight into pure defense.

From the outside it looked like stalemate, a bow drawn and held. Only Aphelia knew how terrifying his defense was, granite under surf. Every blow hit at the True God level; her Aether changed attack after attack like seasons turning, and still he did one thing—raise shield, block.

That one motion sealed the sky and the ground. He even let segments of his armor eat hits like sacrificial plates, trying to turn defense into a sudden strike. Aphelia felt it the instant he tried it and met it without a blink, Ancient Martial Flow folding back like a tide.

Both waited for a single opening, like hunters breathing with a snare. When one faltered, one blow would decide the world.

“Fallen Demon… you’re a far cry from the stories,” Aphelia taunted, words cold as sleet. “Were you a block of stone even when alive? No wonder you got turned into a Fallen Demon.”

He stood like bedrock amid storms, unmoved. He swallowed her tempest like a dark cliff takes waves, the broken sword at his side never once rising.

A high-speed palm flashed like a hawk. A head-on punch thundered like a drum. A pinpoint kick knifed in like a cold crescent. Every barehanded art unfurled in a flowing chain, rain-beads sliding off eaves, never repeating, all scything for the man behind the shield. Yet the towering knight moved with a soul too quick for his bulk, never letting Aphelia slip into a blind spot, shadows stitched tight around him.

“In that case…”

Her heavy fist boomed out like a cannon, and they split a step apart, distance a blade’s width. Her Bracer Gauntlets unraveled like silk stripped from a cocoon, turning into pure-white Aether that spun into blades and spears, still-time shivering around the change. In a single breath, Aphelia seized a new sword and flashed forward, a shadow no eye could hold.

A heartbeat later, thunder cracked out of flat ground.

This time, heaven blinked or fortune bent. Her blade punched through the massive tower shield like a white comet, stopping an inch shy of armor, a whisper from the knight’s heart.

Battle-honed instinct raised her hairs like needles. She snatched the second blade at her side; her draw-cut sang as clean as winter steel.

Metal screamed. Sparks snowed. Aphelia braced both hands on the hilt and met the cleaving arc of the heavy broken sword. The silent knight’s first strike hit like a world-tilting hammer; in his grip the ruined blade wasn’t a sword, it was a falling anvil, and it numbed Aphelia’s palms like icy poison.

He smelled blood and pressed. His iron-tower frame loomed like a mute giant. The broken sword drove down without mercy, and the ground around Aphelia shattered and sank like dry crust under an earthquake.

Life and death teetered on a breath, a leaf over a gorge.

“Ahhhhhh!”

Under that crushing weight, Aphelia laughed instead of breaking. Her roar tore the air like a storm-wind. Her slender arms locked under delicate plates, her Bracer Gauntlets catching light like frost on blades. Her sword, thin as a cicada’s wing, scraped the broken steel and threw a chain of sparks like a comet’s tail. She dropped her hips, turned into a streak of light, and cut as she surged in.

For an instant, something in her nerves cracked like lake ice. Her world stripped down to black and white lines, lattice and void. Her sword did not hesitate; even inside that monochrome, Aphelia would not falter. She closed her eyes and trusted the pull, like a swallow riding wind.

Two figures crossed like scissors.

Her pure-white edge came away stained with ink-black blood. The knight’s heavy armor writhed and buckled like heated tin, and even his blade lost its shape, slumped like melted wax.

“Hah… hah…”

She opened her eyes to find herself wreathed in pure Aether so dense it fogged like winter breath. Ecstasy flooded her nerves like warm wine. The towering knight began to spasm, a puppet shuddering on frayed strings.

On the killing field, mercy is a broken bow. Strike when the enemy’s weak, and end it. Aphelia knew this like the taste of salt.

She drew her blade back to her waist, breath sinking like an anchor.

If she was going to kill, it would be with one stroke.

In memory there lived a cut that could unmake sky and earth. Her flesh and soul cheered like drums at dawn. She believed she could cast it now. No—stronger.

Perhaps that world of black-and-white lines was the foundation, the bedrock under that unreasonable, world-breaking strike.

Aphelia didn’t bother to look at the knight, already twisted inside his armor. She shut her eyes, and let spirit and flesh fall back into the line-world, quiet as snow.

What makes the strongest technique?

Is it a thousand cuts in a blink, sealing every way to run? No.

Is it landing before the opponent even moves? No.

Is it striking after they strike, yet arriving first and reversing cause and effect? No.

She recalled the Valkyrie’s one blade, striking her heart like a bell. Her Aether edge shifted with her will, changing like clouds over water. The pure-white sword began to waver, hovering at the seam of being and not, like a mirage over desert stone.

“Ancient Martial Flow.”

Her step snapped down like thunder. In that heartbeat, her black eyes turned pure white, blank as fresh snow.

With this one blade, shatter heaven and earth. Let life and death balance on a breath and a year.

Thus it is named:

“Heaven and Earth.”

Her body walked the edge of the unreal, a lantern-flicker between presence and void. Every gaze pinned to the True God battlefield flinched as if seeing lightning split a sacred tree.

Aether too pure for mortal sight poured out like a river from a broken glacier. Aphelia’s form flickered in and out, and under her feet bloomed countless Crystal Blossoms, gem-bright flowers opening like stars.

She no longer cared about strays or splinters. She wanted only to pour her heart’s blood into this one cut.

“An Instant!”

The unreal edge twined through air like smoke. Pure-white Aether detonated like a silent bloom, and Aphelia slipped back into reality between breaths.

Silence. Tomb-quiet, world-still.

One sword fell, and everything else in existence gave way. The pressure alone sat on every chest like a mountain; no one dared breathe.

The twisted knight stopped twisting. He froze like a statue cast in ash. Aphelia stood before him, holding a nothing-sword, eyes shut, and did not swing again.

Silence broke into a voiceless explosion. The sword mark on the knight’s armor flared wide in a blink, from crown to heel. He split cleanly in two, rust-dark plates bursting like kiln-fired clay, and the earth heaved with the force like a beast waking.

“Abyss Peak—look at Abyss Peak!!!”

All the soldiers watching snapped their eyes to the heaven-piercing mountain. Terror filmed their gaze like cold sweat. After one sword, the colossal peak seemed to lift and hang, then shattered into a thousand fragments. They fanned out like a storm of slate as the ground convulsed.

The earth under Aphelia’s feet cracked like dry riverbeds. Fine lines spidered together into a chasm, vast and jagged, like a wound ripped in the world’s hide.

She stood unmoved, ringed by those gorgeous Crystal Blossoms. A silver-white swell of Aether tore the air like a curtain and lifted her, so she didn’t drop into the yawning rift.

The unreal sword dispersed like mist at dawn. Only then did Aphelia open her eyes. One pupil had already dimmed, a star gone cold. Her foot caught on nothing, and she pitched forward, hitting the ground hard.

“What… happened?”

With her fading sight she looked at her legs, as if some root had tripped her. And then—

From the knees down, her legs had become pure-white crystal. They had shattered into a scatter of gleaming shards, like frost broken under a boot.