“No!” I cried as the pink smoke cleared, only leaving two charred bodies behind.

I looked at the High Arcanist’s visage. Pure stoicism.

I read his soul. Indifference.

There was a clear difference between declaring a war that may end the lives of thousands and directly decimating civilian bystanders with your own hands.

The damned civilians you rule over!

“You fucker!” I rushed En’yen Yagul with an intent to kill I had only felt when that hemomancer had killed Marissa.

My soul ached to see him dead.

I no longer cared for strategy or winning chances, I just wanted to beat him to a pulp.

There were no thoughts on my mind as I rushed at the High Arcanist, just pure rage. Space distorted as my soul vibrated. I jumped high, my legs breaking over the excessive force, only to then be instantly fixed by what felt like instinctual Regenerations at this point.

Reality rippled.

As I rapidly approached him, the distance between us suddenly disappeared. I thought he had teleported in front of me, but seeing his shocked expression, En’yen didn’t have any idea what had happened.

That didn’t stop me from lunging at him.

Yagul reacted far faster than I did, but my concentrated tendrils were faster than my body. They penetrated the arcanist's torso like spears, bright blood coming out of his abdomen.

It didn’t take even a blink for En’yen to grab my tendrils, overload his hand with arcane mana, and yank the tendrils apart, severing them in the process.

He had made a singularity in his hands with raw mana, allowing him to cut a soul. It didn’t affect me, I was used to trimming my soul myself, but I was wary of what he could do on a greater scale.

The High Arcanist raised his staff, and nine spells came from its canopy. Five Leyline Beams and four Leyline Missiles. I had no way to dodge such fast spells at this range.

So, I didn’t.

Explosions of violet and lasers of purple engulfed my body as it screamed in pain and my flesh turned asunder, but I didn’t waver. I pushed forward.

The moment he took a step back, En’yen dissipated from my sight. Instead of slightly moving backward, he materialized higher in the sky.

My confusion was mimicked by his visage.

This wasn’t normal.

An intrusive thought assaulted my mind, one that almost seemed like my own. Why was En’yen the only twelve-star mage in the world? There were older mages around, and with a higher affinity than him at that, but there was only one twelve-star mage.

My return to the River of the Damned flashed before my eyes.

Rifts on the very fabric of reality.

It wasn’t that En’yen was the only mage capable of reaching the twelfth star, I had just brute forced my way there.

It dawned upon me.

The world could only handle one twelve-star mage.

Yet now there were two.

En’yen Yagul looked me right in the eyes as he realized the same. This was no longer a fight about ideals, leadership, or wars. No, it was far simpler. It was a fight for survival, not only our own, but that of the world.

One had to go.

As if announcing his final statement, the High Arcanist opened his mouth for what I felt was the last time.

“It wasn’t ready, but you forced me to do it. Be ready, healer, you’ll now see the true might of the strongest High Arcanist that this city has seen!”

I didn’t know what he was doing, but the tears got worse. Not only space seemed to flow incorrectly, but now the whole planet rocked in unison in an earthquake of never-seen-before proportions.

I had to, no, I must stop him.

Flying forward redirected me elsewhere, the laws of physics stopped working. Space no longer behaved as normal. I tried all other cardinal directions, yet the movements were seemingly random. Left could be right, up, or down. But right may not be left, up, or down.

I gazed upon the glowing figure of the High Arcanist, enveloped by arcane lighting, a surge of power appeared from behind as a crater opened on the channel, revealing a leyline that instantly connected with his body.

Time was running out.

I had no way of knowing what he was spellcasting, and I wouldn’t allow him to tell me.

Flashing True Recall for a way to stop him, I was reminded of another way.

If the corporeal plane had twisted the laws of physics, I just had to go to a plane where those didn’t even exist.

My body dissipated from standard reality, instead manifesting in the spiritual plane. I could see the High Arcanist and the leylines easily, as they both were singularities. Yet my attention wandered to my state.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Before I got critically hurt and almost perished by the forces of the spiritual plane. But now none of it was happening. I feared that I may be more soul than body at this stage.

I dispelled my mind of thoughts.

Only one thing mattered now.

The spiritual plane didn’t bend to the laws of physics, I was familiarized with the non-linear nature of the plane. And I used that to my advantage.

A single step was all that it took, then I found myself before the High Arcanist.

Reality was so fickle by now that En’yen reacted to my presence, even if we were two planes apart from each other.

I unleashed ten more Requiems at him, I no longer noticed the expenditure on my mana pool, but unfortunately, that was my limit on simultaneous castings. En’yen proved to be too focused on spellcasting whatever spell he was but that didn’t stop him from redirecting the leyline, one far more powerful and concentrated than the artificial one in the Arcane Sanctum, to block the attack for him.

The mana singularity was too dense for my Requiems to penetrate through.

Even if Yagul could sense my presence, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint where I was, so I moved around the leyline in the spiritual plane. Casting more Requiems would only lead him to redirect the leyline more, I needed a more hands-on approach.

I situated myself behind the High Arcanist and assaulted him with my tendrils. His reaction was fast and the leyline diverted to attack me, branches tearing through my soul. It ached, but what mattered was that I got a clean shot.

Space rippled.

The spiritual plane shook, and I suddenly found myself out of it. The planes were so close to one another that even a non-mystic like En’yen could influence it.

I cycled mana around my soul, normal spells wouldn’t heal a damaged spirit very well.

“Your attempt, whilst futile, is commendable.” The High Arcanist spoke in a ragged voice. Not the one of someone who was winning, but certainly not the voice of someone who had been defeated.

“You can’t kill me.” I retorted.

“In my current state, I cannot, that’s true,” En’yen admitted. “I have never thought how a healer of any affinity might manage in the twelfth star, but this degree of immortality is certainly worrying. Killing something that resurrects infinitely is problematic...”

The diverted leyline around the High Arcanist shifted like the petals of a flower that was opening, showing its pistils to the outside world. The violent movement of the raw streams of mana prompted me to move away.

I wasn’t as immortal as he thought I was, and singularities could still damage me easily.

“In my current state, that is.”

As En’yen reiterated his words, I knew that my time had run out. Space displaced like a dislodged puzzle, and the decay of reality accelerated. And the High Arcanist commanded two words.

“Arcane Records!”

En’yen crackled in power, covered by arcane lightning and torrents of mana. I couldn’t even comprehend what I was looking at. The effect wasn’t really visible, but I felt a pull on my very being as if the world was changing with every spark of energy.

This... it cannot be. Strands of knowledge infiltrated my brain, whispering answers, and the bitter truth. Is this a thirteenth star spell? It defied everything I knew about magic. By all accounts, it should be impossible. Only twelve stars existed, that was the pinnacle of magic, wasn’t it?

For a brief instant, an infinitesimal amount of time, reality itself seemed to stop.

Keyword: seemed.

Then En’yen thundered in anger.

“What do you mean refused?” He talked as if he was referring to someone else. “I have mastered the Arcane and accessed Information, it’s my right to Ascend!”

I couldn’t understand what he was talking about or with who he was talking with, but I recognized an opportunity when I saw it. Yet I couldn't move. It truly appeared as if time had stopped. The leyline crackled with power, but the outside world beyond our fight remained static.

As soon as it came, the stillness ceased, and reality continued anew.

“No...” The thirteen-star arcanist mumbled in lament. “NO!” Then the leylines exploded in rage.

En’yen Yagul looked at me with a deadly intent he had lacked before, even when he proclaimed that he was going to kill me.

“You... YOU!” The very arcane bent around him. “THIS IS YOUR FAULT!”

My consciousness accelerated as the High Arcanist lunged at me. The leyline bent around him in a way that shouldn’t be possible, instead of hurting him or poisoning his body, the stream of unadulterated mana coursed through him as if it were the blood flowing through his veins.

This time En’yen didn’t bother with something as complex as Leyline Missiles, why do so when the energies you wielded were stronger than that?

A sphere of mana gathered in his free hand, the sheer concentration of arcane energy distorted the surrounding space. That simple construct, not even a cantrip, was a singularity.

I dodged to the side instinctively.

I could shrug Leyline Beams and Missiles, but getting hit by a singularity would definitely hurt my soul. No matter how many times I could rebuild my body, I still needed a soul to live.

The projectile flew straight through space, ignoring the tears in reality, even when I had to move through the spiritual plane to keep a sense of normalcy. Even two planes apart, I could feel the aftershock of the impact, electric current flowing up my spine as the singularity detonated.

Yagul looked me directly into my eyes, pure hatred shining in his.

I took a deep breath and seized the opportunity, it was unlikely I would get another one.

My lavender gaze penetrated into his deep purple eyes, the gate to his soul brimmed with arcane. I didn’t have a lot of experience assaulting the soul of others, I had only truly tried it against Eygaz and the Shadow, but even then, the eleven and ten-star mages had been a breeze compared to the thunderstorm that the arcanist of the thirteenth star was.

It was like hitting your head against a lamppost because you weren’t looking forward, but now the lamppost also turned aggressive and threw multiple jabs at you.

Not the best analogy, but my brain was overloaded.

“AARGH!” En’yen shouted, I couldn’t know if it was out of rage, or the pain caused by my intrusion.

His soul was way smaller than mine, but the sheer amount of mana difficulted me from moving around. His mana pool had been substituted for a leyline by now. The whole world’s mana.

“REMOVE YOURSELF FROM ME!” The High Arcanist’s body started shining, like when he spellcasted Arcane Providence, prompting me to dodge once more.

But now he discarded his legendary staff, no longer needing it, and generated spheres of singularities at each hand. Balls of arcane lightning threatened the integrity of reality. The word Kugelblitz rushed through my mind, but I ignored it, I needed all the mental power I could get.

It was getting difficult to see in the corporeal plane, the ruptures becoming too numerous to have a direct, unobstructed line of sight. I wasn’t slow enough to get hit by the spells of mass destruction though.

Goosebumps littered my body in realization.

I turned my head to look at the direction the singularities were taking. Straight to the academy.

I put all my might into my flight.

Not again...

I couldn’t allow to let more people die in this duel, especially before me.

But the arcane constructs were too fast.

Even shifting into the spiritual plane where space didn’t factor in, I wasn’t fast enough. The projectiles bent reality itself. I thought of the people currently in the academy. Monica, Adrian... Marissa. I burned through my soul to speed up my movement, as my very being was disintegrated and reality followed second, I still was unable to make it.

It was as if I was destined to see everyone die.

Not again!

Please!

The world dyed in purple.

It wasn’t a violent purple like that of explosions, but a gentler one.

Someone had answered my prayers.

A veil of arcane energies manifested around the academy, covering the totality of the campus in a single spellcast.

Only one person in the whole world was capable of such defensive prowess.