Timeless Assassin: Volume 8 — The Last Stand

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"A man will tear down heaven not because it wronged him, but because it dared to exist without his permission.

The universe may call it arrogance, yet to him, it is simply justice, an order restored, a hierarchy corrected.

For men like those, submission is not humility; it is the quiet rot of the soul.

They do not seek peace, for peace is a mirror that reflects their own insignificance.

They seek conquest, not to rule others, but to silence the echo of all that dares to stand above them.

For pride, once wounded, knows no god, no kin, and no end."

— High Chronicler Maeven Rhys, Reflections of the Age Before Sin

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(The Immediate Aftermath Of The Great Betrayal, 2200 years ago, Soron’s POV)

Raindrops fell over Soron’s head, his eyes wide with disbelief, as he stared at the haunting scene laid before him.... A scene he almost couldn’t believe was real.

The corpse of his father lay where thunder could not reach, where the mud had already learned his outline, where the final warmth was abandoning him in quiet streams that met the rain and became thinner and thinner until they were only color.

And above that stillness stood Kaelith, with their father’s origin daggers in his grip, as he displayed no remorse for his actions.

Instead of feeling sad or guilty for betraying the man that had raised them, Kaelith laughed, a wretched smirk fixed upon his face, as Soron could no longer recognise that expression as one that belonged to his brother.

All around them, was a shattered courtyard.... the God Killing Formation taking root upon it, as the ’Chakravyuh’ held strong.

Rings within rings sealed, brightened, and dimmed again, while a lattice of geometry took shape around them, whispering a law that pinned the fourth dimension to the third the way a cruel scholar pinned a butterfly to a board.

The chains it birthed were neither iron nor light, yet somehow both, as they glided through the rain as if the droplets parted in reverence to let them pass.

But the moment they touched Soron, the third dimension clenched around him like a tightening fist, while the fourth turned to glass, visible yet untouchable, as though the path of height, depth, and breadth had remembered a secret axis and sworn never to speak of it again.

He looked first at Kaelith because he almost couldn’t believe that his own brother would turn on their father.

However, as he then lifted his gaze and saw the others, he realized that this was no madness born five minutes ago.

That Kaelith had been plotting to take their father down for a long time now.

And that it was only him, who was learning about his true intentions today.

"He...hehehehe"

The sound of gleeful laughter entered his ears as Mauriss the Deceiver crouched beside his father’s dead body with a hunger that had nothing to do with food, his tongue gleaming as it dragged along the dead body’s open wounds as he licked the bleeding blood as if it were the most divine liquor.

*THRUMM*

*BOOM*

Soron’s aura flared with the first sound and tried to break the chains that currently held him down with the second, as he reached for the fourth dimensional axis, for the small turn inside his skull through which he could access the Time Stream, only to find it locked beyond reach.

The Chakravyuh bit down. It held him in the third dimension forcibly, as no matter how hard he struggled, he just couldn’t break free against the formations overwhelming might.

"One rascal down. One more to go," Mauriss said, his voice skipping across the storm like stones on water. He bent lower and licked the blood again, savoring the fall of a legend as if triumph could be swallowed and kept warm in the belly.

That act was so sick it seared a hole straight through Soron’s moral code, the rage he felt numbing his mind, as his fingers curled until the chain-links holding him back creaked under his power.

"Get off," Soron said, low at first, as if the rain itself had asked it of him.

But Mauriss did not take him seriously, as he simply snickered and behaved like a man who had never paid full price for anything in his life.

"Oh yeah? Or what? What will you do about it?" he murmured, still licking, still nibbling at the edges of a silence that deserved reverence, while Helmuth sneered and lifted the haft of his axe until thunder ran along the grain.

"Kaelith. Kill your brother. Put him out of his misery so we can be done with this mess."

Helmuth’s voice cracked the air, and Kaelith came forward with the origin daggers lowered like verdicts, walking the way a cliff walked toward the sea, straight and inevitable and empty of surprise.

"How dare you betray our father," Soron said, the words knifing their way out as he bled pressure into them.

"After everything he had done for us. For you. How could you. Scum. How could you be the one to kill him."

Soron asked, however, Kaelith did not bother answering, for he felt like he owed Soron nothing.

He simply pressed the dagger toward Soron’s ribs instead, and found his path blocked not by steel but by pressure, his brother’s aura packed dense around his vitals until it became a translucent wall that ate momentum and returned nothing.

"Umpfh–"

He grunted once, then twice, pushing the way a man might push at the sea and call it rowing, but when the vitals remained inviolable, he began aiming for the edges, nicking flesh where it could not end the story, as he carved lines into Soron’s arms, shoulders and lower abdomen with a patience that tasted like hate.

"Look at me," Soron urged, his voice angry as he called for the traitor to show some decency.

"At least look me in the eye while you do it, you fucking coward!"

He cursed, as Kaelith lifted his gaze with anger that wanted to be a language and could not, and in that instant Soron changed the math.

He twisted the pressure, not outward but down, not as a wall but as a slope, as he took advantage of Kaelith’s momentary distraction to slide the dagger towards the binding of his right hand, which the origin metal blade cut through like it were butter.

*SNAP*

With one hand free, his body remembered itself faster than thought, as Soron drove his fist across the small space into Kaelith’s jaw with a force that made rain recoil, a blow that wrote a new rule in the bone and sent the Eternal Sovereign flying backwards.

*BOOM*

*CRUNCH*

That single attack, completely dislocated Kaelith’s jaw from his face, as his bone hung down from loose flesh, while his mind turned blank from the pain.

He had never been hit this hard in his entire life, even by melee weapons, yet Soron’s punch today, carried a force strong enough to shatter entire planets.

"Shit.... He’s broken free!"

Su Ren said, as he and the other Gods present on the scene converged on Soron’s location.

Su Ren moved first, his blade splitting through the rain in a silver arc as Mu Shen followed behind with his palm raised, his attack promising to erase not the body but the moment it existed in.

Du Trask and Lu Han came from opposite flanks, their synchronized swings forming an X that would have decapitated any mortal caught between them, while Ru Vassa weaved a spatial snare from refracted steps meant to fold Soron back into stillness.

Yu Kiro lunged forward with the precision of a surgeon, his needle strike seeking the artery beneath the collarbone, as Mauriss smiled darkly and circled the edge, eager to desecrate another legend, while Helmuth thundered forward last, each footfall shaking the courtyard like a collapsing fortress.

But Soron no longer saw them in motion.

He no longer saw anything as linear.

The world around him slowed, not because time stopped, but because his perception slipped between its cracks. To him, each droplet of rain fell one lifetime at a time, the air stretched thin enough to make thought feel endless.

He reached for the fourth-dimensional stream once more, not through desperation this time, but through instinct. He bent the edges of perception, unspooling the temporal current that flowed around him like invisible light, and the instant he touched it—

Everything ceased to move.

Rain froze mid-fall, divine spells halted mid-birth, and eight gods were suspended mid-attack, their faces stretched between focus and fear, as Soron’s voice carried softly through the void.

"[Domain Expansion: Seconds Walk]."

The air rippled. Reality folded. The silence deepened.

He stepped forward, each movement precise and absolute, like a sculptor shaping eternity itself.

He brushed Su Ren’s sternum, right where he began gathering mana for his upcoming spell, disrupting it completely.

Before then shifting past Mu Shen, striking the angle of the wrist that turned killing intent into hesitation.

Du Trask’s stance he disrupted with a heel pressed upon the instep; Lu Han’s breath he twisted by tilting his chin, sealing his throat for when the world would resume.

Ru Vassa’s net of reflections he tore apart by touching a single knot, dissolving its logic into chaos. Yu Kiro’s arm he redirected with a palm against his elbow, turning the blade into betrayal.

Mauriss he slashed across the cheek, the intention being to slice apart his tongue that dared lay on his father.

And finally, Helmuth.

The Berserker.

The mountain wrapped in flesh, who stood tall even in frozen time, his grin unbroken, his fury eternal.

Soron moved to him with no sound but the soft break of suspended rain.

He began with the collarbone, his knuckles pressing into it until the bone hummed, and the vibration traveled through Helmuth’s frame like a curse.

Then came the ribs. One short, dispassionate hook that landed beneath the floating cage, a blow so precise it turned breath itself into rebellion.

His thumb found the joint of the shoulder and pressed until the socket whispered surrender.

Two knuckles brushed the mastoid, painting a brief star at the edge of vision.

A strike to the solar plexus followed, not in rage but with the calm of inevitability, as if teaching the body to remember weakness.

He tapped the back of the knee, letting the ligaments know betrayal, then tilted the jaw slightly so the next roar would load in the wrong direction.

Each touch was a word.

Together, they formed a sentence.

And that sentence meant defeat.

Before finally, withdrawing right before his spell ended.

*CRACK*

Reality lurched back into motion, and the courtyard erupted.

Su Ren folded at the chest, spitting a mouthful of blood.

Mu Shen’s wrist twisted, his strike recoiling into nothing.

Du Trask screamed as bones shattered under his own weight, Lu Han gagged on stolen air, Ru Vassa’s mirrored net broke apart like smoke, Yu Kiro’s blade tore through his own thigh, while Mauriss fell backward clutching his cheeks and tongue, and Helmuth—

Helmuth staggered three steps before roaring, a roar that was half anguish, half disbelief.

He raised his axe, only for his arms to fail him. His shoulders betrayed him, his ribs convulsed, his breath caught halfway to fury, and then Soron appeared before him again.

A blur, silent and absolute.

He struck once to the ribs, once to the jaw, once to the spine, and once more straight through the air between them, the last blow heavy enough to bend the storm around it.

Helmuth’s body lifted from the ground, twisting before crashing down through stone, his axe rolling from his limp hand as rain poured over him.

Silence followed.

A silence so deep that even thunder dared not interrupt it.

Soron stood there, rain dripping down his hair, his father’s blood still painting the courtyard beneath him, as he placed his father’s fallen body over his shoulder.

He looked at the gods gathered around him one final time.

His gaze showing that this wasn’t over just yet.

"This isn’t where it ends," he whispered before stepping away, as the fourth dimension responded to him like a loyal beast.

Space folded inward, light curved in reverence, and a dull token flared within his palm like a tired star.

The ground beneath him cracked, the storm dimmed, and then—

He vanished.

Only the rain remained.

The Chakravyuh dimmed, its circles unraveling, their once-perfect geometry now broken and ashamed.

Around the empty space where Soron had stood, the surviving gods reassembled their faces and stared into the quiet void he had left behind.

"This is not over," Mu Shen said, his voice trembling.

"It cannot be."

"It is worse," Su Ren rasped, coughing blood into the mud. "We let his equally strong son walk free."

Mauriss wiped his cheek, staring at the smear of black blood on his fingers as if just finding his new number one opponent.

While Kaelith stood apart from them all, jaw shattered, eyes hollow, staring at the space where his brother had vanished.

*KABOOM*

The rain fell harder, as if the heavens themselves mourned what they had allowed.

And beneath it all, the righteous alliance finally took root, its founding gods allied not through common interests, but through the common act of betrayal they had all committed today.

But even though the Timeless Assassin was dead, none of them celebrated.

For Soron still lived.

And they knew very well.

That leave one wolf alive, and the sheep were never safe.