[Space]
Grimm stood motionless atop a fragment of meteorite. His towering frame remained completely still, his helmet reflected nothing as he loosely adjusted his grip on his sword, in the next second he caught movement.
A disturbance rippled across space.
A comet tore through the black—an amalgamation of force, spiraling with hellish hues, it screamed toward him.
The General did not flinch.
He pivoted his foot ever so slightly—the subtlest of movement, barely more than a sigh through metal—and let his body drift to the side, allowing the searing comet to pass him by.
The attack thundered past with a flare of blinding light, illuminating space. For a single, breathless instant, the dead meteor shard shimmered in borrowed light, and Grimm's long red hair whipped gently behind him from the force.
Comets exploded in the far distance, vanishing into a splatter of scattered energy.
He turned.
His opponent hovered before him—seething.
The being was a fusion of two great powers: Lilith and Reylthorn, their union had taken a name. Omegasul, four arms flexed in tandem.
Grimm observed them in silence, the kind that could only be described as terminal.
"Should you not… alter your approach?" He tilted his head just slightly to the left, an almost lazy gesture, the blade in his hand not moving an inch. "I was under the impression that this… Limit Breaker…of yours was meant to pose some novelty. Something different. Something that might even… entertain."
There was only dull truth.
"But instead," he went on, "you remain content to hurl overcharged projectiles as if the size of your power might make up for the lack of precision. How foolish."
The fusion's body tensed, arcs of energy flaring violently at their form.
"SILENCE!" they roared in unison, the two voices layered atop each other—distorted, ragged and desperate. "You—you still mock us?!" snarled the left mask, its voice steeped in venom.
"I don't mock," he replied. "Mockery requires investment."
The fusion's teeth clenched. Their aura surged outward in chaotic pulses—solar flares. Symbols assembled in synchronized orbit, each one larger than the last, as they gathered enough energy to tear a hole into the fabric of spatial thought.
"You'll regret underestimating us," Omegasul growled.
Omegasul's four arms shot outward with sudden movements, each palm birthing an immense, crackling orb of energy—unstable and pulsing with dark light and streaking arcs of silver. The fused being howled as they launched the spheres into space with a terrifying force, each orb trailing, warping gravity.
Grimm shifted.
The first orb missed.
It was evaded, tilting his body with minimalistic movement, the energy brushing inches past his shoulder. The heat did not even singe his flowing hair.
The second, third, and fourth orbs screamed across space, each followed by brutal waves of force—destructive tides.
Grimm vanished from his meteor, he appeared again on another fragment, then another, skipping between them.
One swipe of his blade.
The destructive wave from the second orb split in two, diverging around him. Another step and Grimm twisted mid-air, his leg brushing a loose stone to pivot into a slow rotation that let him weave through the tail-end of the third and fourth wave. Space distorted from the force, yet he remained unharmed.
Omegasul screamed, hurling themselves forward in desperation.
"You're loud, bud," Grimm noted. "But you're lacking style."
He moved.
The vacuum cracked.
Omegasul didn't even register his approach until it was too late—two of their four arms were gone. Cauterized flesh sizzled in zero-gravity silence as pieces of the severed limbs spiraled off into the distance. A heartbeat later, Grimm's sabaton connected with their chest.
Omegasul shot backwards, body folding over itself as they were launched across the starscape, crashing through an asteroid and splitting it into dozens of chunks.
But they didn't stay down.
Sinew re-knitted. Muscle surged. Their twin-faced mask glared with anger as their arms regrew, tendrils of flesh to bone as they let out a choked gasp of wrath.
"You will pay—! You will—!"
Another shadow swept over them.
Grimm again.
His foot struck their masked face with brutality, this time, the blow didn't send them flying. It drove them down—straight into a drifting continent-sized meteor, which cracked and split like dried earth. The face of the fusion entity cratered into the stone, dragging fissures out in all directions.
Grimm stared down at them.
"Rebuilding limbs is a convenient trick," he said flatly, raising his blade once more. "But I wonder…how many times can you die before you begin to fear the pain?"
Omegasul slowly pulled themselves free—steam rising off their repaired limbs as their dual-faced mask twisted unnaturally. Their chest still rang with pain from the impact of Grimm's kick, through their fused armor with a brutality they hadn't anticipated. Their breathing came ragged.
But what unsettled them more than the wounds…was the sword.
Their gaze shifted upward, locking onto the long, gray blade hanging at Grimm's side.
No gleam. No reflection. It drank in light.
That blade was not forged in mere metal. No magic-forged artifact. It carried something else entirely—a presence that twisted the space around it.
"That sword…" Omegasul rasped, their voices—both of them—slipping into one for a moment of clarity. "That sword is wrong. It does not belong here. It does not belong to this plane. What are you?"
Grimm, far above now—standing on the edge of a fragmented meteor, his red hair fluttering—tilted his head just slightly. There was a pause, and then he responded with dryness of someone commenting on the weather.
"Hm. Family heirloom."
Omegasul's arms launched forward in anger at the bluntness.
Singularities bloomed like flowers around Grimm. Five miniature black holes, each no wider than a cathedral, burst into existence in the space he occupied. Their gravitational pull immediately distorted nearby constellations, dragging smaller moons, asteroids, and even light toward their infinite mouths. One distant star visibly died, crushed inward into a pinpoint collapse before detonating like a supernova.
Yet Grimm was no longer there.
High above. Higher than reason allowed.
He stood atop a drifting fragment, Omegasul appeared behind him.
Instantly.
There was no sound.
Four arms raised, ready to strike, twisted energy gathered into chaotic spears—but before they could even commit to the lunge—
Schlaaang.
The sound of the cut resonated.
It echoed through space, a crescent arc of black split the emptiness behind Grimm. Omegasul's torso flared open, a diagonal gash running across their chest—then came the kick.
An elegant spin.
Grimm twisted, his right leg coming around in a slow arc before it slammed into Omegasul's mask with titanic force.
The dual-faced being was sent careening downward. Their body crashed through meteoric fragments like a cannonball, tearing a path through a dozen miles of rock, metal, and ice, before smashing into a dormant husk that split apart from the force.
Chunks of the rubble drifted into orbit.
Grimm followed at a measured pace, descending without urgency—one sabaton gently touching each suspended chunk of debris before stepping to the next, as if descending a staircase.
Below, Omegasul writhed, hands clutching their gashed chest, red ichor and mist pouring from the wound. Their twin voices trembled.
"You—! What is that sword?!"
Grimm said nothing for a long moment.
His blade rested lazily at his side again.
"Hey I'm fightning too, it hurts my feelings if you give all the attention to my friend here."
Omegasul snarled. "You think your disregard makes you stronger? You're just a man with a weapon! That's all!"
Grimm's reply came without hesitation.
"Nuh-uh."
"Be erased!" Omegasul shrieked.
"Nah," Grimm muttered.
In a blink—less than a blink—Grimm became a black streak, a bolt of compressed momentum. The velocity shattered the fragile rubble behind him. A halo of scarlet light expanded in his wake, leaving a sonic fracture as space buckled and recoiled from his acceleration.
He didn't appear in front of Omegasul.
He materialized with his hand gripping their face, palm pressing into both masks with crushing force, fingers digging into the fusion of Lilith and Reylthorn. The stars behind him stretched into blurs, and then—
BOOM.
Grimm launched them downwards, meteor fragments exploding in their trajectory as he used them as stepping stones. He leapt from one, angled himself, adjusted with fluid twists of his body—then slammed both sabatons into Omegasul's chest, using them like a battering ram, accelerating their descent to terminal velocity.
The dead, desolate planet below was waiting.
And it met them as they broke though the atmosphere with a sonic boom.
The instant their forms collided with the surface, the world ruptured. The crust of the barren planet split, mountains cracking apart like glass, entire valleys upending into the sky as fire surged upward from the planet's core. Shockwaves rippled outward with concentric force, ripping the atmosphere into red ribbons and sending chunks of planet sailing into orbit.
A silence followed the cataclysm.
Ash rained.
Stone hissed.
Fire moved across craters.
Standing in the crater, Grimm released his grip and stepped away with the casualness of a man brushing dust off his shoulder. His sabatons sank slightly into molten earth. His helm turned down.
Omegasul lay broken—split.
The fusion had failed.
In their place now lay Lilith, body trembling, breath ragged, eyes dazed. And next to her, barely conscious, the young Reylthorn.
Grimm exhaled slowly, as though even speaking again required effort.
"…Finished."