Dylan Vs Zephyr

The sky cracked open like glass. Fractals of dying constellations rippled outward, and in their center, Zephyr ascended—a thing no longer human.

His body shimmered with void-wrought mutation: wings that bent light backward, talons like obsidian anchors, and a skeletal face veiled by drifting static. He hovered in silence, surrounded by gravity-defying shards of reality that pulsed like shattered mirrors.

Below him, Dylan stood alone—his cloak rippling in the tremors of the realm, red hair whipping behind him in waves of chaotic wind. He stared up, his silver-ringed eyes narrowed.

This wasn't just Zephyr.

This was what the Gate made of those who refused surrender but couldn't bear loss.

A god-shaped wound in the fabric of existence.

And Dylan—newborn echo or not—knew what had to come next.

"This ends now," he said softly, raising his hand.

The void shimmered around him. Weapon glyphs spun into being—dozens, hundreds—each a different memory of war. Spears forged from broken timelines. Swords lined with fractal glass. Hammers pulsing with soul-fire. Bows made of bone and regret.

He launched them skyward.

A storm of summoned weapons surged toward Zephyr like a barrage of vengeance, screaming through the void.

And Zephyr just… smiled.

The spears struck first, howling like banshees. They hit Zephyr dead-on—

And shattered harmlessly against a ripple of inverted time.

The hammers crashed next, some detonating mid-air, others slammed by wings of folded dimension before ever reaching their mark.

Dylan narrowed his eyes. His mind spun, calculating new forms. He drew the essence of Lilith's ribbons, channeling a thousand strands of midnight-black cord toward Zephyr's throat.

Zephyr caught one.

And with a simple twist of his claw, he sent every ribbon reeling back into Dylan's chest.

The impact hurled him backward, slamming him into a monolith of bone. Cracks spiderwebbed through the stone—and his ribs.

He gasped, blood flecking his lips.

Zephyr floated lower.

"All that power," Zephyr said, voice echoing like a choir trapped in a machine, "and you still fight like a child."

Dylan forced himself upright. His hand trembled, but another ring of glyphs formed behind him.

"I'll keep fighting until I learn to kill you."

The next wave came faster—blade swarms shaped from collapsed timelines, curved scimitars etched with Necros' bone-forging art, disruption daggers that flickered in and out of visible space.

Dylan weaved them like a conductor, sending them in calculated rotations.

This time, they struck true—two blades sank into Zephyr's chest. Another sliced across his wing. Sparks of corrupted blood flared into the air.

Zephyr laughed.

He reached into his chest and ripped one of the swords out, examining it like a curious child.

"You cut me," he said. "Good. Now I don't have to hold back."

He vanished.

Dylan blinked.

Then screamed as Zephyr's claw plunged through his shoulder from behind.

Zephyr didn't just attack. He disassembled.

He hit Dylan with vectors that should not exist—twisting his form inside a spatial knot and breaking his left arm clean at the elbow. Time slowed, reversed, then fast-forwarded violently as Zephyr shattered the ground beneath him and slammed Dylan through multiple timelines in a single blow.

Blood arced through the air.

One of Dylan's summoned creatures—an avian beast of light—screeched and dove to intercept.

Zephyr snapped its neck mid-flight, reducing it to vapor with a pulse of thought.

Dylan tried to crawl back.

Zephyr hovered above him, hands still crackling with raw entropy.

"You're not even real," he said. "You're a mistake. A footnote written in someone else's tragedy."

Dylan spat blood and pulled himself upright again. Barely.

"Then why are you trying so hard to erase me?"

Zephyr snarled—and dove.

The next seconds blurred into agony.

Zephyr slammed into Dylan like a meteor, claws tearing through summoned weapons, wings flattening the realm. Dylan summoned shields. They broke. He summoned beasts. They were torn apart.

He tried to phase—Tenshin's time-splitting trick—but Zephyr was faster, cutting through the echoes with clean precision.

Dylan fell again, body smoking, ribs shattered, arm limp.

He couldn't breathe.

The glyphs around him began to flicker and dissolve.

Zephyr landed, tall and monstrous, a god in broken flesh.

"Is that it?" he said. "Is that all the 'echochild' can offer?"

Dylan's vision blurred.

He saw Lilith, smiling in that last echo.

He saw Necros holding the line, Tendrils screaming in his bones.

He saw Tenshin's fractured grin, muttering a formula that never got finished.

"You carry fragments of us. Our echoes. Our will."

He reached for that voice.

Dylan's hand twitched. His blood—once red—turned faintly white-gold.

A hum built in his bones.

Zephyr's head tilted. "No."

Glyphs sparked again—only now they came from within Dylan. Not summoned. Inherited.

Lilith's ribbons snapped to life.

Tenshin's fractal calculations burned across his skin.

Necros' bone-forging crown reformed around his skull.

Dylan stood—shaking, wounded, breathing fire through blood—but whole.

"I'm not done."

Zephyr's wings extended.

"Neither am I."

And they clashed again.

This time, Dylan moved first—summoning dozens of weapons at once, not to strike, but to orbit him like a shield wall. Creatures leapt from the fractures around him—wolf-shaped time echoes, scaled monsters forged from collapsed choices, flying shades armed with bows of voidwood.

Zephyr tore through them, but Dylan kept moving. He learned.

One sword struck true—carving into Zephyr's side.

A spell detonated near his wings—Zephyr flinched.

Another creature latched onto Zephyr's back and exploded.

Dylan dove in, blade formed from Necros' will driving forward—

Zephyr caught it mid-swing and broke it in two.

Then drove his elbow into Dylan's face with bone-shattering force.

The world broke again.

Dylan skidded across the fractured ground, limbs flailing, ribs exposed. His left eye was swollen shut. One knee bent the wrong way.

He tried to rise—collapsed.

Zephyr approached slowly now, no longer triumphant.

Just... exhausted.

"You never had a chance," he said. "You can summon all the ghosts you want. You're still not them."

He stood over Dylan's broken form.

"This was always my ending."

Dylan looked up, blood trickling from his nose.

"Then end it."

Zephyr raised his hand—

—and froze.

The ground beneath Dylan pulsed.

White light.

No. Not white—memory.

A voice whispered from deep inside the void.

"Not yet."

Zephyr stepped back.

Dylan's body glowed faintly, barely perceptible. The echo inside him was still alive, flickering like the last flame in a dying storm.

But not gone.

Zephyr's eyes narrowed.

He turned from the body—and rose into the sky again.

Above, the void churned.

The Gate twisted.

The storm began anew.

TO BE CONTINUED...