Gods who kneel?

Aarav moved like a storm, golden flames trailing in his wake.

The horde of dead gods surged forward, each titan a monument to forgotten power, their hollow eyes fixed on him. The abyss howled, eager to claim another soul.

But Aarav was not theirs to take.

The first god reached for him—its fingers like pillars of stone, its form shifting between past and present, an echo of its former self.

Aarav twisted through the air, his golden mark burning brighter. With a single step, he landed on the god's outstretched arm and sprinted up its length, defying gravity itself.

The god roared, its voice splitting the air like a celestial earthquake.

Aarav answered with his fist.

BOOM.

His punch shattered the god's shoulder, the force of the impact sending tremors through the battlefield. The titan collapsed, its body breaking apart into dust.

Another god lunged—a figure wreathed in molten chains, its face a mask of endless agony. It swung a burning sword, the sheer heat distorting reality around it.

Aarav dodged, the blade missing him by inches. The very ground where he stood melted into liquid fire.

He didn't stop.

In a flash, he was inside the god's guard.

Aarav's fist met its chest—

CRACK.

The god exploded outward, its core ruptured by the force of his strike.

The other titans hesitated.

For the first time, they recognized what they faced.

Not prey.

Not a mortal.

Something else.

The voice from the abyss returned, deeper than space, colder than eternity.

"Enough."

The battlefield froze.

The titans—who had fought with blind rage—now knelt.

Not in reverence.

In submission.

The abyss shifted.

A figure emerged, stepping from the darkness beyond the battlefield.

Not a god.

Not a titan.

Something older.

Aarav's breath slowed.

His instincts screamed.

This was the true trial.

The voice spoke again, this time directly to him.

"Show me why you do not kneel."

Aarav smirked, cracking his knuckles.

"With pleasure."

The battlefield stood silent.

The kneeling titans no longer roared, no longer clawed at him with blind fury. They had recognized something in Aarav—something that made them halt.

But it was not fear.

It was instinct.

Even in death, even in their shattered, forgotten state, they could sense a higher predator.

And then—

It appeared.

The presence that had spoken from the abyss stepped forward.

Aarav tensed.

The air around him bent and cracked, as if reality itself was struggling to hold its form in the presence of this being.

The figure was featureless, cloaked in endless void, a living wound in existence. But its **eyes—if they could be called that—**were twin spirals of collapsing stars.

Something beyond gods.

Something that had ruled before even the oldest deities had drawn their first breath.

The titans did not kneel to it.

They obeyed it.

"You stand where none should."

Its voice was a decree, not a statement. Aarav felt his very essence ripple, as if the words were peeling apart his existence, layer by layer, searching for something.

He clenched his fists.

"Yeah?" He exhaled, steadying himself. "Then maybe you should move aside."

The entity tilted its head—curious.

"You misunderstand."

It raised a single hand. The movement was imperceptibly slow, yet instant.

Aarav's body shattered.

---

For a brief moment, he was nothing.

No form. No thought. No self.

Abyss.

Then—

His golden mark burned.

The void recoiled.

And Aarav returned.

Whole. Unbroken.

The entity paused.

Aarav grinned, wiping blood from his lip. "That all you got?"

For the first time, the abyss stirred with something close to amusement.

"Interesting."

Then the world split apart.

The real battle had begun.

The abyss detonated.

Aarav barely had time to brace before the world itself collapsed inward, the battlefield folding like paper. His vision blurred—one moment, he was standing on the cracked remains of fallen gods, the next, he was plummeting through endless black.

A new space bloomed around him, vast and impossible.

The sky above was not a sky—it was a gaping wound of stars, each celestial body twisting and screaming. The ground beneath his feet shifted, constantly forming and unforming, as if time itself couldn't decide whether this place should exist.

And at the center of it all—

The Entity.

It no longer wore its former shape.

Now, it was a colossus, stretching beyond mortal comprehension. Its form was a writhing mass of forgotten realities, each fragment of its existence a lost god, a forgotten kingdom, a history erased.

It had no face.

Only a single, abyssal void where a face should be.

And when it spoke, the entire realm shuddered.

"I have consumed gods. I have devoured entire empires. Who are you to stand?"

Aarav wiped the blood from his mouth.

Then, he smiled.

"Who am I?" He cracked his knuckles, golden light flickering along his skin. "You're about to find out."

The Entity descended.

A storm of unmaking raged around it, time and space fracturing wherever it moved. Reality itself screamed.

Aarav charged forward.

Their clash would shake the foundations of the cosmos.

BOOM.

The impact split the abyss itself.

Aarav's fist collided with the Entity's form, golden light erupting against the endless void. The very fabric of reality tore open from the force of their clash.

The Entity did not move.

It simply existed, its presence consuming the force of the blow.

Then, it spoke.

"You are bound by time. I am not."

Aarav's instincts flared—danger.

The space around him froze, locking his limbs in place. The battlefield itself looped, his last movement repeating as if he had never made a choice beyond it.

A trap.

A prison crafted from inevitability.

The Entity did not fight.

It rewrote the past.

Aarav felt himself being dragged backward, his existence unraveling. Moments he had lived began vanishing.

His first fight.

The weight of his master's hand on his shoulder.

His sister's laughter.

The world tried to erase him.

Aarav roared.

His golden mark flared brighter than ever.

His essence—his very being—rejected fate.

"You think I'm bound by time?" His voice burned with defiance. "Then let me show you what happens when time bends for me!"

The mark on his skin expanded, no longer a mere symbol.

It became a law.

The Law of Defiance.

The prison shattered.

The loop unraveled.

The Entity tilted its head—curious.

For the first time, its void-like form shifted—not in power, but in recognition.

It had encountered something new.

Aarav clenched his fists, stepping forward. "Round two."

The abyss trembled.

---