Orion found himself in a foreign environment. The sky was cracked, filled with swirling colors that blended together like spilled ink. It looked like the world itself had been torn apart, leaving behind glowing rifts that flickered with strange lights.
The battlefield stretched on forever. Orion stood at the edge of it, surrounded by huge stone towers, broken but still standing, rising like the ribs of some giant beast. Strange symbols covered their surfaces.
The air was heavy and hard to breathe—not just because of the smell of blood and decay, but because of something older, something ancient.
Orion heard it—a deep, slow breath, steady and powerful. Whatever was breathing wasn't human.
Each inhalation was slow and measured, as if that creature that had no need for urgency. The space around him felt heavier, as though unseen hands were pressing down on Orion's shoulders, rooting him in place. A primal instinct screamed in the back of his skull.
It wasn't just big.
It was colossal.
The creature walked on two legs, its frame humanoid. Thick, powerful muscles shifted beneath its dark, scaly skin as it moved, each heavy step making the ground shake. Its arms were unnaturally long, its clawed hands flexing lazily, absurdly dexterous despite their size. A tail dragged behind it, the spines along its length clicking together as it moved.
And then there were its eyes.
Twin golden slits, burning against the ruinous backdrop.
A predator's gaze.
Orion's breath hitched.
His muscles locked.
The fear of prey before a predator.
His legs wouldn't move. His fingers trembled at his sides. His heart thundered in his chest, hammering against his ribs.
MOVE!
RUN!
His body refused.
The giant lizard took another step, the impact sending cracks through the ground. It wasn't in a hurry. It had no reason to be.
A shudder ran through him, a chill seeping into his bones. He wasn't thinking—his mind was spiraling, consumed by the inevitability of it. The sheer hopelessness of facing something that shouldn't be beatable.
His fingers curled into fists, his nails digging into his palms, drawing blood.
Something in him snapped.
A flood of raw, reckless desperation crashed over him. He clenched his teeth, his breath rasping out in ragged bursts.
Then—
He roared.
A defiant roar that burned through his fear, stripping it down to something else—fury, survival, instinct.
He moved.
The paralysis shattered, and he launched forward.
In his hands, he wielded a double-headed spear—on the right side of one tip was curved like a khopesh blade, honed to a deadly edge, the other tip extending into a retractable chain. The weapon moved like an extension of his body, its shifting forms allowing him to strike, bind, and tear with seamless transitions.
And it didn't matter.
The lizard didn't flinch.
Orion's first strike—the extendable chain from his Wraith spear—snapped forward, wrapping around the beast's throat. The weapon's second tip, a dagger-like extension, gleamed as he yanked it back, aiming to tear into the scaled flesh.
No reaction.
He transitioned—slashing with the khopesh side blade of his spear, aiming for the creature's throat, then twisting into a sweeping arc to carve through the tendons in its leg.
Nothing.
The giant absorbed it all, standing firm like an immovable mountain.
And then—
It countered.
Orion barely saw the attack before it came.
A blur of motion.
Then—
Impact.
A clawed hand slammed into his side with monstrous force.
He wasn't standing anymore.
He was airborne.
For a brief, agonizing second, time stretched—his body weightless, untethered. The air rushed past his ears, his mind struggling to process what had happened.
Then—
Agony.
The ground welcomed him like a hammer to glass.
His back slammed into the ruined battlefield, the impact driving the breath from his lungs in a choking gasp. Pain exploded through his ribs.
Orion's vision blurred, black spots dancing in the periphery. He tasted iron—his own blood.
He forced himself to move. He had to get up.
But—
A massive shadow loomed over him, stretching across the cracked ground like an omen of doom. The air grew colder, heavier, as if the weight of the creature's presence alone could crush him.
The monster started to move slowly from its spot.
Like nothing had happened.
Like Orion was nothing.
A wheezing breath escaped his lips. He rolled onto his side, forcing himself to his knees, his limbs trembling.
The lizard-thing took another step forward, its tail flicking lazily behind it. Then, it spoke. A guttural, otherworldly sound filled the air—a language Orion couldn't even begin to understand. The words slithered through his ears, thick with meaning yet utterly foreign. It wasn't just noise; it was speech. The realization sent a chill down his spine.
And then, something else hit him. He wasn't alone.
Ingrid was there—her breath ragged, her stance tense. But beside her stood two unfamiliar faces.
One was a slightly chubby boy with dark hair and piercing blue eyes, his expression a mix of awe and terror.
The other was a petite girl with pink hair and dark eyes, her gaze sharp, calculating. Orion's mind reeled. Who were they? How had he not noticed them before?
The golden slits remained locked onto him, unblinking. The monster had been watching him—but why was it focusing only on him?
Orion exhaled shakily. His body hurt, every muscle screaming. His mind was fraying, breaking apart at the sheer absurdity of it.
This wasn't a fight.
It was toying with him.
His fingers dug into the dirt. His breath ragged, uneven.
No.
The weight of defeat pressed down on him, but he fought against it. Pushed back.
This wasn't over.
He wasn't finished.
The monster may have been stronger, but Orion still had his will.
His rage.
He steadied his breath, ignoring the pain lancing through his ribs. He adjusted his stance.
And he lunged again.
Orion surged forward again.
He moved with flawless precision, his body flowing as though guided by something deeper than instinct, deeper than thought. The Wraith Style was his own—not a borrowed technique, not an imitation of Varun's movements, but something uniquely his.
Every shift of his weight, every twitch of his fingers on the spear's grip, felt perfect. Seamless.
He twisted into a feint, his spear a blur in his hands. A pivot. A sudden change in trajectory. His body responded flawlessly, almost too flawlessly. His stance adjusted mid-motion, his balance shifting.
The spear's edge sang as it sliced through the air, carving toward the creature's flank with terrifying speed. His footwork was so precise, so devastatingly efficient that for a fraction of a second, he felt like he was watching someone else move.
The momentum was perfect. The angle, the execution—flawless.
The creature's claw twitched.
Orion never even saw the counter.
One moment he was moving.
The next—
Impact.
The world blurred. A single, effortless swipe of the creature's claw sent him hurtling through the air, pain erupting in his left arm.
He was airborne again.
Before he could think, he was on his feet.
Gasping. Bleeding. But standing.
Orion's fingers trembled around his spear. He exhaled sharply, trying to steady himself, but his chest ached. His ribs screamed in protest, his lungs struggling to pull in breath.
His fingers clenched around his spear, and for the first time, he felt it.
His body was somehow different.
He could see it in the way his hands gripped the weapon—how effortlessly it rested in his palms. His stance felt stronger, his muscles taut with power that hadn't been there before. And his reach—his range—
He was taller.
Not by much—maybe four inches, maybe more. But he could feel it. His frame was broader, more defined, his muscles sculpted into something more refined than he had ever known.
His footwork had been inhumanly efficient.
His spear had moved with more than just his skill.
Somewhere, somehow, something had changed.
Orion swallowed, his grip tightening on the weapon as his heartbeat pounded in his ears. He didn't have time to question it.
The monster took another step.
Orion's breath came in ragged gasps, his ribs screaming in protest with every motion, the taste of copper thick in his mouth. His vision swam, black spots flickering in and out of the fractured world around him, but he forced himself up, spitting blood onto the scarred earth. His limbs trembled—not from exhaustion, not yet, but from the shock of the impact that had nearly torn his body apart. His bones ached, his nerves burned, his muscles screamed. Every fiber of his being urged him to stay down, to stop, to submit.
But he adjusted his stance instead.
He had no other choice.
The beast exhaled—a deep, rattling sound that rumbled through the battlefield like a distant landslide, shaking Orion to his very core. It was not the growl of an animal, not something born purely from instinct.
This was a mocking sound. And now, it watched him, waiting, as if giving him time to process the sheer absurdity of this fight.
Orion swallowed against the rawness in his throat. He could feel the weight of the creature's gaze pressing down on him like an invisible force. There was no underestimation in those slitted, reptilian eyes, no carelessness in the way it stood before him. It knew what he was capable of. It had read his movements, absorbed them, dismissed them. He could feel it now—this wasn't just a battle.
It was massive, a towering nightmare of muscle and scales, but its speed was impossible. One moment it was a looming shadow against the fractured sky, the next it was upon him, tearing through the battlefield like a storm.
Orion's body reacted before his mind could even process the movement. His spear twisted in his grip, his feet gliding across the bloodstained dirt with unnatural precision. His stance shifted in a way he had never quite felt before, like muscle memory that had never belonged to him, like movements honed over years that had not yet passed.
Second Form: Dance of the Wraith.
He executed it flawlessly—his footwork sharper, his timing impossibly precise. His body felt different, taller, stronger, faster than it had ever been before. He moved like liquid shadow, slipping beneath the beast's crushing momentum, aiming to use its own weight to unbalance it, to send it stumbling forward.
For a single, fleeting moment, Orion thought—this is it.
It saw through the feint before Orion had even finished moving, before he had even begun to pivot into the final step of the technique. The beast shifted its weight, planting its clawed foot down with surgical precision, halting its momentum in a way that should not have been possible.
Orion barely had time to comprehend what that meant before the counter came.
His entire body was wrenched into the air, twisted like a broken marionette, spinning out of control. He felt his shoulder rip from its socket with a sickening pop, pain roaring through his nerves in white-hot agony.
The pain was everywhere, a throbbing, overwhelming thing that crushed him beneath its weight. His ribs, his shoulder, his arm—everything hurt.
Orion could feel it—this was deliberate. The monster had seen his movements, read his techniques, dismissed them, toyed with him just to show him how futile it all was.
Orion gritted his teeth, his jaw tightening even as blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. His fingers dug into the dirt beneath him, his muscles shaking from the effort of simply trying to move.
The monster exhaled again, that same mocking rumble vibrating through the air. It was enjoying this.
Then he saw her.
A head.
Rolling past him.
His breath stopped. His mind refused to comprehend what he was seeing. His stomach twisted violently, a hollow, wrenching feeling spreading through his chest.
Ingrid.
Her body still stood motionless where she had been just moments ago, her stance still frozen in place, the battle-ready tension still locked in her lifeless limbs. But her head was gone—severed cleanly, detached, as if reality itself had rejected the idea that she had once been whole. Her eyes…
Still wide. Still frozen in horror. Still seeing.
A choked noise clawed its way out of Orion's throat, something between a gasp and a strangled cry. His knees nearly buckled, his stomach convulsing as something in him broke, splintering into shards of raw, visceral agony.
Then another body fell.
Then another.
And then—
The monster smiled.
It stood there, looming over the carnage it had wrought, its twisted grin splitting its face. Blood dripped from its claws in slow, languid rivulets, trailing down its blade-like claw—a monstrous scythe extending from its forearm, freshly slick with the remnants of the fallen. The battlefield was painted red, and yet, to the beast, this was nothing more than… play.
He would die today.
The realization settled into his bones like ice, a cold and merciless truth that strangled the air from his lungs. It crushed him, paralyzed him, suffocated him.
His fingers twitched. His pulse pounded against his skull. His body locked into place, muscles rigid, frozen between the instinct to flee and the futility of it all.
A deep, sorrowful weight that crushed his chest, heavier than any wound, more unbearable than any pain. It wasn't just his life that was ending here. Ingrid. The others. They had dreams, hopes, lives beyond this battlefield. All of it gone in an instant. Reduced to nothing more than corpses, forgotten in the shadow of this monster.
Then came the rage.
A slow ember at first.
Then a roaring inferno.
A fire that burned away the fear, the sadness, the doubt—until nothing remained but the singular, all-consuming desire to fight back.
He would not die like this.
His fingers clenched so tightly around his weapon that his knuckles turned white. His breath came sharp and fast, heat searing through his veins, his body thrumming with raw, unrestrained fury.
Then he roared.
The sound ripped from his throat like a war cry, but it was more than that. It was defiance, a rejection of the inevitability of his own death. It was a declaration, a refusal to accept his fate.
And he moved.
And the monster—
Tore off his right arm.
For a moment, the world shrank to a singularity of pure agony, his mind barely able to register the reality of what had just happened. One moment, he had been moving, his spear lashing out like a storm—the next, his arm was gone. Severed at the shoulder, torn away as easily as one might pluck a leaf from a branch.
Blood exploded from the wound splattering against the dirt in violent bursts. A strangled gasp escaped his lips. His vision blurred, his body nearly faltered.
But—
He didn't stop.
His legs coiled, his muscles reacting on instinct. He launched himself up, twisting through the air, locking his thighs around the beast's thick neck in a reverse triangle choke. His remaining hand shot down to his boot—
Knife.
A flicker of steel. A heartbeat of movement.
And then—
He stabbed.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Straight into the monster's eye.
A shriek—monstrous, inhuman, deafening.
The beast reeled, its body convulsing as its grip faltered. Orion didn't stop. He couldn't. The world was nothing but blood and chaos and pain, but he kept stabbing. Again. Again. Over and over, driving the blade deep into the soft, vulnerable flesh.
Then—
Snap.
The knife broke.
The beast roared.
Its massive claws closed around his left leg, lifting him like a ragdoll, preparing to slam him into the ground with enough force to break every bone in his body. The creature won't give him a quick death.
But Orion was ready.
In the fraction of a second before impact, he wrenched his Wraith free—
And drove it deep into the monster's throat.
For a moment, there was only silence.
Then—
A wet, gurgling noise.
A tremor.
And the monster—
Collapsed.
Orion barely had the strength to pull his weapon free before he hit the ground, his body spent, broken, drenched in blood—his own, the monster's. He noticed that his leg also was missing.
His locket.
The one his mother had given him on his fifth birthday.
His vision blurred. The photo inside—his family.
His fingers clenched around it.
Then—
It vibrated.
A pulse, weak at first. Then stronger.
Then something stabbed into his chest—
A pang of energy, ripping through his heart.
His breath caught. His eyes widened.