The sky above the coliseum cracked.
A surge of golden light burst upward like a beacon, clashing violently with the crimson smoke pouring from Kieros' throne. The crowd—zealots, war beasts, lesser demigods—screamed as the two forces collided in midair, rippling outward in waves that shattered stone and turned sand to glass.
Jalen stood at the center of it all.
His coat billowed around him, gold flickering at the hem. His eyes burned. The coliseum's chains rattled in protest, as if the very arena knew something old and buried had awakened.
Across from him, Kieros snarled.
The God of War was larger than before, his mane blazing like a battlefield inferno. Blades hovered at his back like a crown of conquest, spinning slowly in divine orbit. His muscles flexed with raw conquest—divine mass made motion.
Around them, the coliseum transformed.
The stands retracted. Stone platforms rose from the sand like jagged mountains. Spears jutted from the ground. Lava fissures opened beneath their feet. The battlefield was no longer made for mortals.
This was a god's arena.
And the gods were ready to clash.
Jalen cracked his knuckles. "You know this isn't going to end like last time."
Kieros snarled. "Good. I was hoping you'd struggle more before I gut you."
He slammed his foot into the ground.
A crater rippled out, cracking the arena floor. Blades rose from the sand—jagged weapons formed from old bones and godsteel. They shifted like fangs, turning the arena into a deathtrap.
Jalen dashed forward.
Lucio broke left. Nathan vanished in a flicker of time.
They struck together—Lucio firing rounds that warped midair, Nathan bending the arena's momentum like it was made of water, and Jalen tearing through summoned weapons like they were paper.
But Kieros was more than a god now.
He was Conquest, he was War. The ideology of these concepts fueled him and elevated him to a new level.
He backhanded Jalen across the pit. Fire erupted where Jalen landed, but the young god rose again, bleeding, panting—and smiling.
Below the coliseum…
Rhea slammed her shoulder into another cell door. It cracked open. The people inside didn't speak—they didn't need to. They followed her. They followed Vexa.
"Keep moving!" Rhea shouted. "We're almost there!"
The entire hall shook as the ceiling above trembled. Dust rained down. Screams from above echoed like thunder through the stone.
Vexa looked up sharply. "Does you're brother really think he can win against that?! We need to be worried about getting out of here!"
Rhea looked at her coldly. "You must not know him, so I'll let that slide. But I will say that we are all going to walk away from this and Jalen isn't just gonna win... he's gonna kill that shitty god."
Back on the surface…
Lucio ducked behind a broken column. "Jalen! You good?"
Jalen laughed through a mouthful of blood. "Better than ever."
Nathan landed beside them, his coat scorched. "He's changing."
The sky cracked.
Kieros was shedding his skin.
His armor burned away, revealing something monstrous beneath—an avatar of war, veins glowing like lava, a lion's mane now crowned with swords. Wings of flame unfurled behind him.
"You face a god of conquest!" he bellowed. "Fall to your knees, or die on them!"
Jalen spit out a cracked tooth and stood taller. "You first."
With a shout, he surged forward.
His fist collided with Kieros' jaw, and the god stumbled.
The arena shook from the impact. The crowd screamed.
Lucio opened fire, bullets bouncing between temporal rifts. Nathan warped gravity around Kieros' feet, throwing off his footing just long enough for Jalen to leap into the air, golden light trailing from his hands.
"DOUBLE IMPACT!"
Jalen's fist landed into the war god's chest, his golden arua surging with trails of violet. The punch forced Kieros back into the wall of the coliseum, and then the shockwave forced him through.
The battlefield fell still.
For a breath.
For a moment.
The gods collided like titans, and the shockwave tore through the coliseum walls, hurling debris and sand into the air. Kieros' body exploded through the arena gates, a blur of divine muscle and fury, trailing smoke and fire. He smashed into the warzone outside with the force of a comet—skidding through blood-slick dirt, leveling half a battalion of his own men.
Everything paused.
Even the sky.
Kullen stood on the ridge, mouth slightly open, the roar of battle around him growing quiet.
"…I think that's our cue," he muttered.
Behind him, Everlock's army stared in stunned silence.
Above, dust curled from the gaping hole in the coliseum wall. A silhouette floated there, glowing gold.
Jalen.
But not as they had seen him before.
He hovered, fully awakened now—his coat whipping in an unseen wind, his aura bending the light around him. His eyes burned like stars, and the runes etched into his skin pulsed with divine rhythm.
Kieros groaned, rising from the crater he left in the ground.
His massive frame stumbled, armor cracked, flames flickering around his shattered crown.
Then he looked up—and saw Jalen.
Hovering.
Waiting.
Challenging.
The God of War bellowed and launched into the sky with a boom, trailing a vortex of heat and fury behind him. The heavens lit red as the two forces rose into the clouds.
Above it all—Kieros conjured a brutal glaive, the shaft forged from bone, the blade shaped like a screaming mouth.
Jalen answered with a weapon of his own.
He didn't summon it.
He became it.
The light around his arm condensed, forming a massive chained gauntlet etched with living script. Each swing echoed with the beat of every heartbeat he fought to protect.
And then—
They clashed in the sky like gods reborn.
Steel and fire. Light and fury. Glory and death.
On the ground, the world stirred once more.
Rhea and Vexa burst through the lower access gates with dozens of freed prisoners in tow—many bruised, weak, and staggering, but alive. Lucio and Nathan immediately broke from their fight and ran to meet them.
Lucio skidded to a halt, eyes wide. "You did it."
Rhea smirked, sweat slicked across her face. "Yeah. He's still kind of naked, by the way."
Lucio blinked. "Why?"
"Don't ask."
Vexa waved them forward. "Help move them—we're not out yet."
Nathan activated his timefield and began pulling people out by the arm, helping them move faster through slowed time. Lucio fired covering shots over their heads, clearing stragglers and scout reinforcements.
Overhead, golden and crimson trails spiraled through the clouds as Jalen and Kieros collided again, the sky trembling with every blow.
Kullen raised his sword and turned to the Everlock front line. "NOW! PUSH FORWARD!"
The army roared.
They surged down the slope, cutting through Kieros' remaining forces like a tide of silver and fire. Kuromi led the charge, leaping from a ledge and bringing her blade down into the heart of the enemy ranks. Magic rippled behind her. Archers fired. Shields locked.
It was chaos.
It was war.
But the tide had shifted.
Above them, gods battled in the air, their voices thundering through the storm.
Lightning cracked the sky.
Jalen twisted midair, golden light flaring from his fingertips. The chained gauntlet on his arm expanded and contracted with each strike, shifting from a blade to a hammer to a whip of molten light. He spun, wrapped the chain around Kieros' glaive, and yanked him downward.
Kieros crashed into a spire.
Stone exploded. The god of war burst free, roaring with fury. Wings of burning conquest erupted from his back, trailing arcs of fire that scorched the clouds themselves.
"You are nothing!" Kieros bellowed, voice shaking the realm itself. "You walk like a god—but you are a child playing king!"
Jalen grinned. His left hand summoned a glyph-like ring of radiant script in the air—no longer channeling power the old way, but as a mark of instinct. His own godhood was now reflex.
"You know, Veyrunn said the same thing," Jalen smirked.
He launched forward, slipping between flame and steel. Each step he took left behind echoes of light, as if time itself struggled to contain him.
Their weapons collided—
Glaive against gauntlet.
Light met conquest.
Sound vanished under the weight of their clash, replaced by a thunderclap that split the sky in two. Below, soldiers ducked, blinded by the radiant aftershock.
Kieros dropped lower, dragging Jalen through the air with him.
They spun through the storm, exchanging a barrage of punches, kicks, slashes, and pulses of divine wrath. Kieros slammed Jalen against the broken husk of a floating platform—but Jalen rebounded mid-spin, uppercutting the war god through the next one.
Down below, Vexa and Rhea had taken up position at a shattered tower, helping the last of the prisoners over the broken barricade. Ember snarled and hissed at anything that got too close, flames curling around her fur like armor.
Nathan's voice echoed through the debris. "Keep them moving!"
Lucio shouted from a rooftop, "We're clear on the eastern corridor—take the wounded that way!"
Kullen barked commands at the front. "Form lines! Reinforce Kuromi! Don't let them regroup!"
Everlock's army surged like a second heartbeat.
The war was tilting.
But overhead, the sky still burned.
Kieros tackled Jalen through a wall of flame and spun, slamming him down into a floating slab of stone. He conjured his glaive again, now twice as large, shaped like a siege weapon.
"You're out of tricks!" he roared.
Jalen's hand reached up.
Golden light surged outward in a dome—a radiant shockwave that froze the moment around them for half a second.
Jalen stood.
Breathing hard. Bleeding. Glowing.
Then, with a voice calm but cutting, he said:
"You lost the moment you let me rise again."
He launched forward, wrapping the chain of his gauntlet around Kieros' weapon, shattering it with a twist of divine force. Kieros bellowed and summoned a new blade—but Jalen was already on him, fists glowing, eyes wild.
Left hook.
Uppercut.
Elbow to the jaw.
Jalen's strikes broke through the god's defenses like water through fire.
And then—
He surged his entire body into a final blow.
One punch.
Straight into Kieros' core.
Kieros screamed—not in pain, but disbelief—as cracks spidered through his chest. Divine light leaked from within, his form splintering at the seams.
"You think you're different?!" he shouted, desperate.
Jalen stared him down. "I don't need to be different. I just need to end you."
With a roar, he brought his chained gauntlet down like a meteor—slamming Kieros into the earth below.