Ra'Khan's confidence did not shatter all at once. For centuries, every mind he touched had unfolded the same way. There was nothing special.
But Henry's mind was not a puzzle.
It was a void.
Not empty in the sense of nothingness but clear, deliberate, still. A mirror with no dust to grip onto. Ra'Khan pushed on harder, forcing his awareness deeper into Henry's cognition, expecting hidden panic or survival instincts to bloom under pressure.
Instead, Henry spoke again.
As if he were describing something that already existed long before Ra'Khan noticed it.
"Everywhere you are, everywhere you think you exist… is still a cage."
The words spread into the mist like ripples across still water.
Ra'Khan narrowed his glowing eyes, trying to map the intent behind them but Henry continued before he could respond.
"Look at your forest. Look at your domain. Every root, every leaf, every place you claim to see… Are you trapped by your own perception… or by me... or their?"
Something snapped.
The forest convulsed violently in response.
Illusions erupted into existence without warning. The ground beneath Henry twisted into scenes of death. His own body split open, limbs torn away, flesh reduced to ash.
Dozens of versions of him appeared around the clearing, each dying in grotesque ways. Trees bent into skeletal shapes, branches formed grasping fingers that clawed at his silhouette.
Visions meant to break instinct. Henry did not flinch yet.
Not because he lacked fear but because he refused to acknowledge the illusions as truth. The horrors around him were no more real than reflections on water.
Ra'Khan's voice burst through the chaos, laced with irritation.
"Your little tricks will not work on me either, human."
The forest went silent for half a second.
Then everything exploded.
A pulse of violent energy erupted outward from Ra'Khan's position, swallowing trees, ash and earth in a blinding gray detonation. The ground ruptured upward like shattered glass, shockwaves ripped through the terrain with catastrophic force.
Henry reacted instantly before the detonation happened.
He launched upward. Slamming boots against the trunk of a nearby tree. With one precise step, he pushed himself higher along the bark.
Using the elevation to escape the direct center of the blast.
The explosion swallowed the base of the tree beneath him.
He succeeded but only barely. The shockwave struck like a moving wall of iron.
Henry's body was torn free from his footing, thrown violently through the air as splinters of bark and ash spiraled around him. The force ripped the breath from his lungs. His grip on the katana tightening instinctively as gravity reclaimed him.
He spun midair, vision blurring from the velocity. Then he crashed down.
The ground struck his back with bone-rattling force. Sliding him across broken earth until he came to a violent halt several meters away. Dust and gray leaves rained down around him like dying snow.
The spot where explosion happened was now surrounded of blue-black flames. Cratering the earth and ripping off plants.
Far in the distance, Ra'Khan's glowing eyes burned brighter through the mist.
Henry rolled onto one knee. The blade steadied him before his body did. He planted one foot into the fractured soil and rose into stance.
Ra'Khan did not give him time to recover.
The parasite-child blurred forward, movement snapping across space like a skipped frame of reality.
One moment he stood across the clearing—next, he was already mid-swing, elongated claws tearing through the space toward Henry's throat.
"You are slower than your thoughts, human. And your thoughts are already failing you."
Henry did not retreat straight back. Instead, he pivoted sideways. His astra rose in a tight arc. The blade met Ra'Khan's claws with sparks scattering into the gray air.
The impact shuddered through Henry's arms but he redirected the force rather than resisting it, turning the clash into motion.
With the same movement, he twisted his wrist and released a compressed wind slash from the Astra's edge.
The crescent blast cut low toward Ra'Khan's legs.
Ra'Khan leapt over it effortlessly. His body twisted midair with unnatural flexibility.
As he landed, the surrounding ash erupted upward into spear-like fragments, dozens of gray spikes fired toward Henry from multiple angles.
Henry reacted instantly.
He spun the Astra in a tight defensive circle, generating layered wind currents that deflected the incoming spikes.
But instead of merely blocking, he angled the currents outward. Redirecting the ash-spears back toward Ra'Khan in a chaotic counter-volley.
Ra'Khan slid sideways, narrowly avoiding the redirected attack.
Henry seized the moment.
He drove the Astra into the ground briefly. Wind pressure burst outward from the blade's contact point, launching him forward in a sudden acceleration burst. The motion shortened distance faster than running ever could.
Henry slashed upward, aiming across Ra'Khan's torso, forcing the parasite to retreat for the first time in the exchange.
Ra'Khan's grin widened despite the fresh wound forming along his side.
"Good. Struggle harder! It makes your body more valuable when I take it."
Ra'Khan attacked in bursts. Appearing from Henry's blind spots, slashing from impossible angles, vanishing into thin folds of distorted space before reappearing again.
"If you are omniscient, why are you still reacting to me… instead of predicting me?"
Ra'Khan's next strike came faster. More aggressive than before.
Claws scraped along Henry's shoulder, slicing fabric and skin but Henry stepped away before the wound deepened.
Blood streaked across his arm, yet he did not slow.
Instead, he stepped sideways into a patch of shadow where shattered branches formed unnatural intersecting lines.
Henry angled his Astra downward, letting reflected light flicker across its black surface in jagged patterns. The reflections created warped silhouettes.
False positions of his body scattered across Ra'Khan's vision like overlapping voices.
Ra'Khan snarled, senses flaring.
"Stop speaking as if you understand me!"
Henry's voice remained steady.
"You said you exist everywhere here… but look at yourself. You attack like a prey cornered."
For a fraction of a second, Ra'Khan hesitated cognitively. His awareness surged outward, scanning the forest to reaffirm dominance. To correct the imbalance.
And that was the moment Henry had been waiting for.
Ra'Khan unleashed one of his spatial rifts—wide, violent, indiscriminate. Space twisted into crushing layers meant to trap and erase him inside a collapsing dimensional seam.
But Henry moved toward it.
His Astra slashed at a precise angle. T redirect the vector of collapsing space. The wind pressure from the blade shifted the forming rift by inches. Just enough to alter its closure path.
Ra'Khan realized too late.
The spatial collapse he initiated corrected itself... automatically based on his own omniscient calculations.
But his calculations were now unstable.
Because doubt had entered them. The rift went toward its source back.
Toward him.
And for the first time in centuries, Ra'Khan felt something that did not belong to gods or parasites.
UNCERTAINTY
Ra'Khan staggered backward as the spatial rift crashed into himself. The distorted seam folded like a dying star before snapping shut with a deafening crack.
The parasite-child's body trembled violently, limbs jerked as fractures of warped space crawled across his burned flesh like glowing scars. For a moment he remained standing, swaying as if refusing to accept the damage his own power had inflicted.
Then his knees struck the ashen ground.
Slowly.
He knelt there, head lowered, claws digging into the soil as thin strands of gray mist leaked from his wounds.
The forest around them trembled. Branches sagged as though whatever force sustained the territory had begun to weaken.
Henry approached cautiously. He stopped just outside striking range, gaze sharp and unyielding.
"Where are my allies?" Henry demanded, voice firm despite exhaustion.
Ra'Khan let out a dry, distorted laugh that echoed like two voices speaking through broken glass.
"Your ally… the girl…" he rasped. "Too clever… She slipped through cracks I left unguarded. Escaped my reach before I could close the net."
Henry's jaw tightened slightly.
"And the boy?" he pressed.
"Trapped… in a 4D cell. But he was… too smart. He solved what was meant to ensnare him."
Relief flickered behind Henry's composure but only for an instant.
Ra'Khan coughed, dark fluid spilling from his mouth as his gaze hardened with something colder than hatred.
"You call me monster…" he whispered hoarsely. "But humans… humans bury children alive… experiment on corpses… bind souls to suffering for power. Tell me, savior of humanity… in every age… who are the real monsters?"
The question lingered like poison in the air.
Henry did not answer.
Instead, he reached into his coat and withdrew a set of metallic nails etched with sealing sigils.
He drove them through Ra'Khan's limbs into the earth. One through each wrist, each ankle, pinning the parasite firmly to the ground. Faint golden light pulsed along the nails as containment energy spread across the immobilized body.
Ra'Khan struggled once.
Henry activated the communicator on his wrist, voice steady despite the ruins surrounding him.
"Containment unit required immediately. Priority anomaly. Territory is unstable so bring suppression gear."
Static answered briefly before confirmation returned.
As Henry lowered his arm. The forest began to normalize. The ashes dissolved into ordinary earth.
Henry stood alone at the center of the devastation. Watching the sky above the broken canopy slowly reveal itself.
He slowly muttered, "A God was never born or created to EXIST in the first place. God simply WAS, IS and WILL BE."