The morning light barely touches the courtyard tiles before the calm shatters completely.
One second, the brothers are laughing, catching their breath, and teasing each other about their glowing eye abilities. The next second, every single atom of air in the vicinity drops to absolute zero.
SCHWING.
Before anyone can even register what's happening, Tae, Kd, and Joseph's hands instantly spring to the hilts of their katanas.
It isn't a conscious thought; it's raw, hardwired survival instinct. Their blades clear their sheaths by two inches, glowing with logos, chaos, and time-logic energy before their brains even process why they moved.
Then, the pressure hits.
It isn't just cold—it's a dense, suffocating, pitch-black miasma that crashes down onto the dojo like a collapsing galaxy. It's a dreadful, rotting energy so heavy that the stone ground under their feet begins to spiderweb and groan. It's a aura of pure devastation... almost on par with the Walker and the Prime Clone.
"What... the hell is this?!" Rashad chokes out, his tactical HUD flickering frantically with red error warnings as his knees buckle under the sheer weight of the atmosphere.
"I can't... see a soul signature..." Diego whispers, his amber mind-eyes straining, his fingers shaking as he grips his mental bow. "It's like looking into a bottomless grave."
In the center of the courtyard, space doesn't tear open with a portal—it simply decays. The air warps like melted glass, and out of the black fog, a lone woman steps onto the gravel.
She has a striking, lethal elegance—sharp Japanese features, silky black hair that sways in an ethereal, non-existent wind, and crimson eyes that look like dying stars. Resting casually against her hip is a massive, jet-black scythe, its curved blade dripping with an ancient, dark energy so potent it literally erodes the oxygen around it.
Tae, Joseph, and Diego's eyes widen in absolute horror.
"No way..." Diego mutters, stepping back. "It's her."
"Karai..." Joseph breathes, his Ocular Logic Grid spinning at hyper-speed, trying and failing to calculate a counter-strategy.
Karai. A calamity known across the dark sectors of existence. Ranked No. 3 across the infinite multiverses—sitting directly one spot below the Prime Clone and the Walker. A living extinction event.
Even facing a multiversal nightmare, Ayden can't help himself. He tilts his head, casually resting his hands behind his neck with a smirk, though a bead of cold sweat trickles down his temple. "Well, damn. Hey sweetie... I gotta say, invading our front yard with a death aura is a pretty weird way to ask me out on a date, but sure. I'm free this weekend."
Karai doesn't flinch. Her voice is subtle, soft, almost musical—but every word carries a suffocating, lethal weight that makes the soul vibrate with fear.
"You talk remarkably well for someone standing in a graveyard, little star," Karai says softly, her crimson eyes scanning the group.
Tae steps forward, his Logos Katana drawn, his golden eyes burning with divine anger. "How are you here, Karai? Joseph and I monitor millions of multiverses. Diego tracks spiritual lines. We put overlapping divine energy barriers over this entire complex. How did you slide under our radar?!"
Karai lets out a quiet, melodic laugh, resting her hand on the grip of her scythe. "Oh, Director... you monitor the multiverses by tracking energy signatures and dimensional shifts. It's so cute. Do you know what I've been doing while you sat on your golden roof?"
She takes a slow step forward, the gravel turning to ash beneath her boots.
"I have walked through countless multiverses. Universe by universe... galaxy by galaxy... I absorbed their core existence. I drained them until they withered, collapsed, and died. And as I ate them, I learned. I coated myself in an ancient, silent void energy—a frequency your little radars can't register. I devoured entire multiverses right under your nose, Tae. You were looking at the stars while I was eating the sky."
Joseph's grey eyes narrow into cold rage. "And why come here? To the Prime Sector?"
Karai smiles, looking up at the sprawling orphanage behind them, where the sleeping children rest.
"Because this universe is... plump," Karai purrs softly. "The pure power concentrated in this single reality is staggering. In fact, it's too strong. The pressure of this universe is too dense for me to absorb from the outside. But... if I kill all of you first... it softens up."
Her crimson gaze sweeps over them like a butcher inspecting prize meat.
"Tae has the sacred Buddha Essence. Kd carries the entire Pandemonium Realm in his chest. Joseph wields the Logic of Time. And the rest of you... your power is so divine, so rich... I simply cannot let it go to waste. Once I harvest your corpses, devouring this universe will be effortless. Oh, and don't worry..." She glances toward the children's dorms. "...the little ones sleeping inside will join you shortly after. Their little souls will make a sweet after-dinner dessert."
The Trigger & The Trauma
The mention of the sleeping kids snaps every single thread of patience in the yard.
"YOU BITCH!" Ayden roars.
The playful troll vanishes instantly. Ayden explodes into a blinding flash of cosmic speed, launching himself straight at Karai's throat, his fist carrying a localized supernova!
Karai doesn't even draw her scythe. Her movement is so impossibly fluid, so unnaturally fast, that Ayden's galaxy-punch hits nothing but a dark afterimage.
Before Ayden can reset his stance, Karai appears right beside him. She doesn't kick him. She doesn't slash him.
She reaches out with a pale, cold hand and grabs Ayden's right arm.
Specifically... the exact arm that the Prime Clone systematically broke every single bone in back during their traumatic war. The arm Kd had to rebuild bone-by-bone using dark demon-realm magic. The phantom pain Ayden spent months burying deep in his psyche.
Ayden's eyes widen in absolute shock as her fingers lock around his wrist like an iron vise.
Karai leans in close to his ear, her cold, rotting void-energy seeping directly into his nervous system, bypassing his galaxy shields. She whispers six words that strike straight into the darkest corner of his soul:
"I remember when he broke this."
The Beast Awakes
Ayden's heart instantly stops.
The traumatic memory hits him like a freight train—the sound of his own bones shattering, the smell of his burning blood, the hopeless helplessness of facing a monster.
"AGGGHHHHHH!"
Ayden lets out a blood-curdling, horrific scream. He yanks his arm back, stumbling away from her like a terrified child, gasping for air as panic fully violently overtakes his mind.
"NO! NO! NO! NOT AGAIN!" Ayden shrieks, clutching his right arm, his chest heaving uncontrollably.
Karai just smirks, watching him break.
But then... the fear twists into something far worse. Something monstrous.
Ayden's panic collapses in on itself, sparking a nuclear chain reaction of pure, unadulterated primal rage. His starry aura turns from deep cosmic blue to a chaotic, violent, jagged violet. His energy TRIPLES instantly, blowing out the surrounding atmosphere with a shockwave that levels the outer brick walls of the courtyard!
His pupils completely disappear, replaced by pure, feral galactic light. He isn't thinking anymore. The High-IQ boxer is gone. The charismatic brother is gone. What's left is a rabid, infinite beast.
He lets out a demonic roar that shakes the clouds, his body warping as his God of Fighting Form, his Galaxy Manipulation Form, and his passive Infinite Adaptation trigger simultaneously, stacking onto each other into a terrifying, unstable singularity of god-tier violence!
Belt to Ass & The Battle Rages
Before the insane, rabid Ayden can leap back at Karai, Kd flash-steps into his path. Kd slams his hand into Ayden's chest, using his Chaos Field to physically push his raving, screaming brother fifty yards back to the edge of the courtyard.
"Ayden! Lock it in! Snap out of it!" Kd roars, trying to hold him down, but Ayden is snarling, snapping his jaws, his energy flaring so hard it's burning Kd's demon skin.
"Kd! Keep him back!" Tae shouts, drawing his Logos Katana completely. "Rest of you—LOCK IN! NOW!"
The fight erupts into pure, chaotic hell.
Karai finally unholsters her massive scythe, and the moment she swings it, she literally puts belt to ass on the rest of the brothers.
Joseph tries to lock her in a 0.001-second Time-Stop, but Karai effortlessly cuts through the frozen timeline with her scythe, the dark blade absorbing Joseph's time-logic and sending him flying through three stone pillars!
Ethan blasts a barrage of Atomic Dark Matter needles, but Karai casually spins her scythe in a circle, generating an ancient void-shield that transmutes Ethan's dark matter into harmless black dust, stepping inside his guard and slapping him across the yard with the blunt end of her weapon!
Diego and Marcos attempt a synchronized attack—Diego firing five mind-locked amber arrows while Marcos volleys a meteor-density soccer ball at her back. Karai doesn't even look. She weaves behind her back with terrifying magical grace, catching Marcos's ball on the butt of her scythe and redirecting it straight into Diego's chest with double the kinetic impact!
Tae flash-steps behind her, swinging his Logos Katana in a divine, golden arc. Karai parries it with one hand on her scythe's shaft, her dark magic clashing against Tae's Buddha aura with a deafening CRACK of spatial thunder. She's arrogant, cocky, and deadly—smiling right in Tae's face as she parries his light-speed sword forms like it's a warm-up drill.
"Is this the power of the Prodigies?" Karai laughs softly, dark purple magical runes expanding around her floating form. "I expected more from the guardians of the Prime sector!"
Kd's Realization
Meanwhile, back at the edge of the yard, Kd is wrestling with a complete nightmare.
"Ayden! Listen to my voice!" Kd growls, his Pandemonium Fire flaring as he pins Ayden against a cratered wall. "It's over! The Clone is dead! Your arm is healed! Look at me!"
It's completely useless.
Ayden doesn't even hear him. He is screaming, spitting blood, his eyes glowing with that rabid, blind cosmic rage. His Infinite Adaptation is continuously adapting to Kd's grip, making Ayden stronger, faster, and more monstrous with every passing second.
Ayden's aura surges, forcing Kd back three steps. Ayden rears back his fist—a fist now imbued with fused God-of-Fighting impact, Galaxy mass, and feral adaptation—and drives it straight toward Kd's face!
Kd tilts his head just in time, Ayden's punch missing his jaw by an inch and completely disintegrating a 100-foot mountain peak five miles behind the dojo.
Kd slowly looks back at Ayden. He sees the absolute frenzy in his brother's glowing, pupil-less eyes. He sees the infinite adaptation tearing Ayden's body apart and rebuilding it into a killing machine.
Words aren't going to work. The trauma is too deep. The rage is too wild.
Kd's eyes narrow into dangerous, pitch-black slots. The crimson Eyes of the Pandemonium Monarch light up in his sockets. He rolls his shoulders, cracking his neck, and slowly reaches to his hip, drawing his own Katana.
Kd lets out a long, heavy sigh, his dark aura flaring to match Ayden's cosmic fury.
"Alright, Speedster..." Kd grunts, his voice dropping into a dark, deadly whisper. "If I gotta knock you unconscious to bring you back... then so be it.
The orphanage's customary warmth—under which the Prodigies had continued to cultivate and refine their god-tier strength—was completely excised. In its place remained a voided, hollow sky, the surrounding atmosphere suffocating under a dense, smothering pitch-black miasma that carried enough weight to instantly crush an entire island of regular humans.
The perilous crisis the Prodigies found themselves in after the appearance of this overwhelming entity grew exponentially more dire once Ayden was driven into a rabid, beast-like frenzy. Now, the brothers faced an almost hopeless predicament: fending off an otherworldly calamity while simultaneously trying to contain the rabid beast that their own brother had become.
As Tae, Joseph, Diego, Marcos, and the rest engaged in a hazardous, high-stakes battle against Karai, Kd confronted Ayden alone, setting his sights on stalling for time.
"Damn, Ayden... if a few subtle words from a stranger were enough to shake you up to this extent, then you're kinda pathetic," Kd stated, a dark, maniacal grin twisting his lips as his eyes burned with crimson monarch light. "Honestly, after this is all over, I doubt you'll have any room left to run that big mouth of yours."
"AGHHHHHH!"
Ayden unleashed a guttural, primal scream that shattered the localized atmosphere. He lunged forward in a blinding flash of silver-violet light, delivering a lightning-quick jab carrying devastating cosmic force.
Kd narrowly tilted his head, feeling the wind pressure of the punch disintegrate the stone wall behind him, and instantly executed a subtle but sharply impactful low kick into Ayden's knee, causing the beast to stumble backward off-balance.
"Hey, not too shabby," Kd taunted, rolling his shoulders as his duster whipped in the storm. "Your consciousness may have devolved into that of a rabid mutt fighting purely for survival, but at least that's not the case for your fighting skills."
Ayden quickly regained his center of gravity, his pupil-less eyes swirling with chaotic galactic light. Once again, he lunged at Kd—but this time, he drastically spiked the gravitational mass of the entire area surrounding Kd's body, attempting to pin him to the earth as his fist rapidly closed the distance.
Kd stood perfectly still. In a soft, dangerously cold tone, he muttered:
"You terrified mutt."
Ayden's fist froze instantly—stopping a mere fraction of an inch from Kd's nose, completely unable to proceed a single millimeter further.
"This is a little technique I created while observing Ethan's training," Kd said smoothly, stepping casually to the side while Ayden's arm remained suspended in the void. "I grew intrigued looking at that absolute barrier around him that disarranges matter right at the point of contact. But seeing as I lack direct atomic matter manipulation, mine works a little differently."
"AGHHHHH!"
Enraged by the obstruction, Ayden frantically unleashed a wild, chained barrage of punches—jab-cross combinations, devastating hooks, and lethal uppercuts. Yet none of them could connect, stopping dead in the air as if hitting an unyielding, invisible wall.
"Woah, slow down there," Kd chuckled, leaning back with a dry smirk. "Are you really not gonna let me explain how it works? I put work into this."
Ayden ignored him entirely, relentlessly bombarding Kd with a plethora of galaxy-infused strikes, each hit heavier, faster, and more impactful than the last, causing the surrounding spatial grid to creak and groan under the feedback.
"Well, imma explain it anyway," Kd continued casually, walking a slow circle around his frenzied brother. "Through precise, micro-level manipulation of specific air particles immediately surrounding my skin, I'm able to hinder and lock down any incoming attack—whether it's raw blunt force or divine magic. But I'm well aware of how absurdly strong the enemies we face are. A simple wind vacuum barrier would be a mere gust of air in front of a true god. And that's why I decided to combine my Pandemonium Chaos Energy directly with the wind particles—creating an ethereal, nullifying air stream. I call this little trick the Chaos Vacuum."
"AGHHHHHH—"
"Huh?"
In the very next microsecond, Ayden pulled back his fist, his Infinite Adaptation overriding the physical rules of the vacuum. He launched a straight right punch that literally phased straight through the chaotic air barrier, connecting clean with Kd's jaw!
BOOM!
The kinetic impact echoed like a thunderclap, sending Kd flying backward through three stone archways before he slammed his boots into the dirt, skidding to a halt.
After regaining his footing, Kd wiped a line of crimson blood from his lip, his eyes narrowing as he thought to himself: 'Dammit... I thought I'd have way more time before his adaptation figured out the frequency. Is the combination of his God of Fighting form and Galaxy form accelerating his adaptive curve? We'd better end this quick before things get completely beyond our control.'
Before Kd could even finish the thought, a silver-violet blur materialized directly in front of his face.
'Damn! Has his raw physical speed improved alongside his adaptation?!' Kd realized in a fraction of a second. 'As much fun as this is... I'm on a tight schedule right now—'
Ayden didn't give him time to react. Pivoting on his heel, Ayden delivered a sweeping roundhouse kick packed with the localized force of 200,000 molecularly compressed galaxies.
THWACK!
The sheer, staggering magnitude of the impact blasted Kd straight off the dojo grounds, hurling him across the sky like a falling star. He shot across the landscape, violently smashing through three separate mountain peaks before violently embedding himself deep into a massive cliffside a good few kilometers away from the orphanage.
Coughing up a heavy spray of blood, Kd slumped against the shattered granite. "Guh...! Dammit..."
He shook the rubble off his shoulders, his obsidian eyes burning bright as he slowly pulled himself up out of the crater. "Damn... this could prove to be way more trouble than I initially thought. I should probably start taking this a lot more seriously."
Regaining his full stance, Kd reached down to his hip and finally unsheathed his Katana.
The blade was forged of dark, cold steel, etched with a mesmerizing, wavy line of tiny, glowing stars that shone bright and razor-sharp like glacial ice. The dark wooden handle was wrapped in tight, pristine silk, fitting his scarred hand like a tailormade glove. The moment the steel cleared the scabbard, a terrifying wave of absolute, unmitigated Chaos Aura flared around Kd, turning the mountain crater to liquid obsidian.
"From this point onward, Ayden... I'm taking you seriously," Kd muttered into the cold air, his blade humming with lethal intent. "So try your best not to get killed."
Suddenly, across the multi-kilometer distance, a bellowing, apocalyptic scream echoed through the sky:
"AGHHHHHHHHHH!"
Kd's head snapped toward the direction of the orphanage, his eyes widening slightly.
"Dammit... I got way too enthralled in the spar and forgot about his actual rampage," Kd growled, adjusting his grip on his katana. "I'd better hurry the hell back before he sets his sights on someone else... and if he does... hopefully, it's Karai."
The Target Shifts
Back at the ruined perimeter of the compound, the air was a apocalyptic warzone.
With Kd launched miles away into the mountain range, the rabid, screaming entity that was Ayden skidded to a halt in the center of the cratered yard. His pupil-less eyes, swirling with violent galactic light, scanned the chaotic battlefield.
He didn't see brothers. He didn't see friends. His broken, trauma-flooded mind only registered targets.
Tae was currently mid-air, his Logos Katana clashing violently against Karai's jet-black scythe in a dazzling shower of divine golden sparks and dark void magic. Joseph was hovering nearby, his Ocular Logic Grid spinning rapidly as he deployed sub-zero ice traps to freeze Karai's escape routes, while Ethan bombarded her flanks with volatile, dark-matter atomic bursts. Marcos was performing light-speed kinetic step-overs, volleying his emerald soul-soccer ball directly into Karai's blind spots while Diego kept a steady stream of soul-locked amber arrows pinning her down.
Karai was laughing—a cruel, beautiful, melodic sound—effortlessly parrying Tae's divine slashes with one hand while using her scythe's dark arc to deflect Marcos's ball and slice Ethan's dark matter into dust.
"Is this the absolute limit of the Prime Sector?" Karai mocked, her crimson eyes flashing with arrogant delight. "You swing your blades with such emotion, Director! It makes your pattern so... easy to read!"
Before Tae could reply, the atmospheric pressure in the yard dropped by another thousand tons.
Ayden's feral gaze locked onto the nearest massive power signature. The rabid beast didn't pick Karai first.
His glowing galactic eyes locked directly onto Diego and Marcos.
"AGHHHHHH!"
"Wait—Diego, look out!" Marcos yelled, his Kinetic Vision flaring bright red with extreme warning.
In a fraction of a millisecond, Ayden vanished from his spot, leaving a vacuum crater where he stood. He reappeared instantly in the space between Diego and Marcos, his God of Fighting adaptation automatically calculating the exact pressure point to shatter both of their guards simultaneously!
He threw a double-strike—a gravitational collapse palm toward Diego's chest and a lightning-fast kinetic hook toward Marcos's jaw!
"Damn it, he's completely out of his mind!" Diego cursed, manifesting a double thought-shield at point-blank range while Marcos scrambled to bring his emerald soccer ball up as a kinetic guard.
BOOM!
The impact sent both Marcos and Diego skidding backward across the liquid glass floor, their boots leaving smoking trails in the dirt.
"Tae! Joseph!" Diego shouted, wiping sweat and blood from his brow as he pulled back his mental bow string. "Kd lost him! The speedster is completely rabid and he's attacking us!"
Tae parried another lethal sweep from Karai's scythe, his golden eyes flicking down to see Ayden snarling, his body warping as his Infinite Adaptation began generating localized gravity armor around his fists.
"Joseph! Ethan! Restructure the field!" Tae commanded, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "We hold Karai with three, and contain Ayden with the rest until Kd gets back! DO NOT LET AYDEN NEAR THE ORPHANAGE DOORS!"
Karai spun her scythe, leaning back with a dark, amused smirk as she watched the internal chaos unfold. "Oh, how divine... a family tearing itself apart at the seams. Please, don't stop on my account."
Ayden let out another earth-shaking roar, dropping into his hyper-evolved, rabid boxing stance, ready to tear through anyone standing in his way.