The subterranean training hall was echoing with the violent hum of high-tier divine energy. Every single brother was pushing their absolute limits, refining their combat forms and calibrating their abilities for the impending assault on Karai.
Over in the corner of the primary arena, Ayden was working heavily on his footwork and galaxy manipulation, sweat pouring down his face as he threw hyper-dense jabs into a hard-light combat dummy. But despite his outward swagger, his movements were slightly off—his right arm, the very arm Karai had grabbed and taunted him with, trembled ever so slightly whenever he tried to apply full kinetic pressure.
Tae stood near the observation balcony, his golden multi-pupiled eyes watching Ayden's every subtle movement. Deep inside Tae's mind, his newly evolved, sentient Logos was running continuous psychological simulations.
'His physical condition is restored, Director,' Logos spoke smoothly inside Tae's mind. 'However, his subconscious neural pathways remain severely compromised. The trauma from the Prime Clone, reactivated by Karai's void touch, creates a critical delay of 0.04 seconds whenever he faces high-grade void aura. In a fight against Rank 3, that delay is fatal.'
Tae's jaw tightened. His expression turned ice-cold.
He stepped off the balcony, walking with slow, deliberate strides across the obsidian floor toward Ayden.
Ayden paused his drill, wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist, giving Tae a tired smirk. "What's up, Director? Come to admire the footwork?"
Tae stopped three feet in front of him. There was no warmth in his golden eyes.
"Ayden... understand that whatever I do, I do for the team, for the orphanage, and for your survival," Tae said, his voice dropping into a flat, unnerving tone. "So... I'm sorry."
Ayden blinked, confused. "Wait, what are you—"
Before Ayden could even register the threat, Tae's golden lotus eyes flared with absolute, transcendent light!
[LOGOS SUB-SYSTEM ACTIVATED: NEURAL OVERRIDE]
[TARGET: AYDEN]
[ACTION: DISABLE ADAPTATION MATRIX]
In a fraction of a microsecond, Logos's sentient code bypassed Ayden's physical defenses, temporarily placing a hard, sub-atomic lock on Ayden's Infinite Adaptation. With his adaptive ability silenced, Ayden couldn't automatically resist or evolve past the spiritual assault.
Tae slammed his hand onto Ayden's forehead, unleashing an ancient, high-level Tsukuyomi-class Divine Illusion directly into Ayden's mind!
Ayden's pupils instantly went completely blank, his body freezing like a statue as his consciousness was yanked out of reality and plunged into the depths of his own mind.
The Division & The Brawl
The sudden, oppressive flare of divine energy immediately caught the attention of every brother in the training hall.
"Tae!" Joseph shouted, his Ocular Logic Grid spinning rapidly as he felt Ayden's brainwaves instantly flatline into a deep, forced coma.
Within seconds, the entire team rushed over, surrounding Tae and the paralyzed Ayden.
"Tae, what the hell did you just do?!" Kd growled, stepping up with his hand resting heavily on the hilt of his icy star katana.
"I put him in a forced Mind-Realm trial," Tae answered coldly, keeping his hand hovering over Ayden's frozen form. "An absolute, hyper-realistic illusion where he is forced to face Karai one-on-one. He cannot escape until he completely breaks his PTSD and overcomes the fear in his mind."
Joseph's grey eyes widened in utter disbelief. "A mind-realm illusion against a Calamity-level mental projection?! Tae, you locked his Infinite Adaptation! What happens if his psyche breaks in there?! What happens if he fails?!"
Tae looked Joseph straight in the eyes, without a single trace of hesitation.
"If he fails... he dies."
A sickening silence fell over the hall.
"Are you insane?!" Marcos yelled, his kinetic soccer ball igniting with fiery emerald aura. "You're putting our own brother in a fatal death-trap?!"
"We are about to march into war against a entity who eats multiverses!" Tae snapped back, his divine aura flaring to meet theirs. "I cannot—I will not—have Ayden compromising this team when Karai turns her sight on us! If he can't overcome his own fear right now, he will die out there anyway and take the rest of us down with him!"
"That isn't your call to make, Tae!" Kd roared, his crimson monarch eyes flashing with dangerous, lethal fury. "He's our brother, not a soldier you throw into a meat grinder to test his metal!"
"He's right, Tae," Joseph added, drawing his katana halfway. "Undo the illusion. NOW."
"No," Tae said firmly, drawing his Logos Katana with a deafening ring.
The brothers split instantly into two warring factions:
Joseph, Kd, and Marcos completely rejected Tae's extreme methods, stepping forward with drawn weapons and flared auras to physically force Tae to release Ayden.
Ethan, Jax, Diego, and Rashad, while visibly uncomfortable with the lethal risk, understood Tae's cold logic—knowing that an unhealed Ayden was a liability that could get them all killed. They stepped up beside Tae, locking down their own guards.
"STAND DOWN!" Kd shouted, launching forward with a burst of black chaos lightning!
An absolute, chaotic brawl broke out right there in the hall!
Kd swung his cold steel katana in a devastating arc, clashing directly against Tae's golden Logos Katana in a shower of explosive divine sparks! Joseph blitzed Ethan, using his time-logic to freeze Ethan's dark matter needles mid-air, while Marcos exchanged light-speed kinetic strikes with Jax and Rashad!
The room descended into a violent storm of clashing blades, roaring fire, and spatial shockwaves as the brothers fought tooth-and-nail over their brother's fate!
Off to the side, standing casually on a high observation platform, The Walker leaned against the railing, his full 100% power humming quietly around him. He took a slow sip from a teacup he had somehow manifested, watching the brothers tear the room apart with a dark, amused grin.
"Fascinating..." the Walker purred softly in his smooth British accent. "So much passion. So much divine hypocrisy. A family truly is a marvelous disaster."
The Mind Realm: Ayden vs. The Fear
While the physical world around his body erupted into chaos, Ayden's mind was trapped in a nightmare.
He found himself standing in a pitch-black, endless void. The air was freezing, suffocating, and dripping with that exact, terrifying Null-Void Decay.
Steps echoed in the darkness. Out of the fog walked Karai, her crimson eyes gleaming with cruel delight, her massive void scythe dragging along the invisible floor.
"Look at you, little star," Karai whispered, her voice echoing from every corner of his mind. "Frightened. Trembling. Broken."
"Get away from me..." Ayden panted, his chest heaving as he stumbled backward. His right arm felt like it was on fire—the phantom memory of every bone being shattered by the Prime Clone violently tearing through his psyche. "Get away!"
Karai vanished, reappearing directly in front of him. She reached out with her pale, cold hand and grabbed his right arm again.
"AGHHHHHHHH!"
Ayden screamed in pure, unadulterated agony. The trauma flooded his brain stem. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, his vision blurring as his energy began to collapse in on itself.
In the real world, Ayden's physical body began to bleed from his eyes and nose.
'Tae!' Logos warned inside Tae's mind while Tae parried a heavy strike from Kd. 'Ayden's mental core is collapsing! Neural shutdown in 10 seconds! If his mind gives out, his brain will die!'
"AYDEN! GET UP!" Tae roared across the mental link, his voice echoing into the illusion.
Inside the void, Ayden was drowning in the dark memory. He saw the Clone's face. He heard the sound of his bones breaking. He heard Karai's mocking laugh.
'I'm weak...' Ayden thought, tears of pain mixing with the black void rot seeping into his skin. 'I can't beat her... I can't protect anyone...'
'Is that what you really think, speedster?'
A voice echoed inside his head—not Tae's, not Karai's, but his own voice. The voice of the charismatic, undefeated boxer who trained night and day with his brothers.
Ayden looked down at his trembling right hand. He saw the scars. He remembered Kd using demon realm magic to heal those bones. He remembered Rashad putting a backpack on him to save his life. He remembered his brothers fighting side-by-side with him through every apocalypse.
'They saved my life... Kd rebuilt this arm... Rashad held me down... Tae put his faith in me...'
Ayden's breathing slowly stopped being frantic. The panic in his chest began to cool into something far denser. Something unbreakable.
'I'm not the terrified kid in that factory anymore,' Ayden whispered.
Karai raised her scythe, bringing it down toward his neck with lethal speed. "Die, little star."
Ayden's eyes snapped open.
The fear vanished. The trauma shattered. Twin supernovas of blinding, cosmic galactic light ignited in his pupils!
"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, YOU BITCH!"
Ayden's right arm—the very arm he had feared—exploded with the localized density of a billion collapsing galaxies! With his sheer willpower, Ayden forced his locked mental pathways to shatter Tae's illusion lock!
THWACK!
Ayden caught Karai's massive void scythe with his bare right hand! The dark decay magic splashed against his skin, but it didn't burn him anymore—his aura completely vaporized the rot on contact!
Karai's illusionary eyes widened in shock. "What?!"
"I am Ayden!" he roared, his voice shaking the entire mental realm. "The God of Fighting! The Speedster of the Prodigies! AND NO CALAMITY IS EVER MAKING ME SCREAM AGAIN!"
Ayden drove a straight left jab right through the illusionary Karai's chest, shattering the entire Tsukuyomi Mind-Realm into a million glowing shards of light!
Ready for War
BOOM!
In the real world, a massive shockwave of pure galactic energy erupted from Ayden's physical body!
The force was so immense it blasted Tae, Kd, Joseph, and the rest of the fighting brothers backward, forcing them to plant their boots into the shattered ground to hold their balance.
Ayden stood upright in the center of the crater. His body was covered in sweat, but his eyes were clear, bright, and radiating an terrifying, absolute confidence. There was no tremor in his arm. No hesitation in his stance. The PTSD was completely gone.
Ayden wiped the blood from his nose, looking over at Tae with a confident, cocky grin.
"Damn, Tae..." Ayden cracked, rolling his right shoulder. "That was a pretty harsh way to give me a wake-up call... but thanks. I needed that."
Tae let out a long, heavy breath, sheathing his Logos Katana as the divine lotus aura around him faded. Kd and Joseph lowered their weapons, looking at Ayden, then over at Tae, silently acknowledging that Tae's insane method had actually worked.
Up on the balcony, The Walker tossed his empty teacup aside, clapping his hands together with a slow, impressed rhythm.
"Bravo," the Walker drawled smoothly, stepping down from the balcony and joining the nine Prodigies in the center of the ruined arena. "A truly exquisite performance, speedster. Now... every single one of you is fully locked in, fully powered, and thoroughly motivated."
Joseph stepped up to the main tactical console, his Ocular Logic Grid humming as he synced his vision with the Walker's unsealed aura.
A massive holographic star map opened up above them, highlighting a dark, rotting void rift sitting at the edge of the multiversal Canvas—The Ruined Core.
"Coordinates locked," Joseph announced, his tone cold and sharp. "Karai's location is confirmed."
All nine Prodigies stood side-by-side alongside the Walker. Tae walked to the front of the line, his evolved Logos syncing seamlessly with his golden eyes, while Kd flared his resurrected chaos fire, and Ayden bounced on his toes, ready to move at the speed of thought.
Tae looked back at his brothers, a sharp, deadly smirk on his face.
"Alright, boys," Tae commanded, drawing his blade halfway. "Let's go kill a Calamity."