CHAPTER 61: The Sixty-First Fracture

We charged simultaneously. Karna’s fist blazed with sunlight, colliding against Thanatos’s blackened hand. The force was a planet smashing into a star—light and shadow clashing in a deafening shockwave. I used gravity to fling debris at Thanatos, but his aura absorbed it, pieces vaporizing before they hit. My fists met his torso, and for a fraction of a second, I felt bone against immovable bone. He smirked, barely moving. Every strike I landed was like hitting the edge of a black hole—painful, but ineffective.

Karna’s sword flashed like molten gold as he swung, cutting the air. Thanatos moved with blinding speed, and the blade passed through empty space where he had been a heartbeat before. I surged forward, twisting mid-air, slamming my fists into Thanatos’s side while bending gravity around his legs to pin him. His form wavered for a split second—and then his hand shot up, black magic searing through my shield, sending me crashing into the shattered floor. Pain exploded through my ribs, and I coughed blood.

I forced myself up, gravity rippling around me like a storm. I slammed my palm into the ground, pulling the tiles beneath Thanatos toward me. They didn’t stop; they bent and broke, but Thanatos walked through them, unaffected. Karna leapt into the air, a solar flare erupting from his body. I pushed off the ground, propelling myself into him, trying to combine gravity with sunlight, but Thanatos raised a hand, and the world shuddered. We both froze mid-air, held in place by a force I couldn’t counter.

Pain radiated from my chest as my muscles screamed. Karna gritted his teeth, golden light flickering around him like a corona of sunfire. “We’re not strong enough… yet,” he muttered, more to himself than me. Thanatos laughed, a sound that ripped through my skull. “Pathetic. Mortals clinging to the illusion of power.”

I slammed my fists into his chest, each punch sending ripples through reality itself. But each strike barely moved him; each blow burned my own bones, the feedback of resistance tearing me apart. I tasted blood, iron thick on my tongue, and the floor beneath me was slick with my failure.

Thanatos countered, black tendrils lashing out like living blades, each cutting through the gravity around me. I barely dodged, feeling the sharp edges scrape my shoulder. I spun, kicked, swung my fists, anything to force an opening—but Death itself was fluid, uncatchable. Karna fought beside me, his punches shining with the brilliance of the sun, each one thrown with precision, each one blocked or absorbed. The air around us heated and froze in impossible waves of light and shadow.

A sudden strike tore through me—a black blade, intangible yet crushing, slicing through my stomach. Pain roared in my chest as I hit the floor again, vision flickering. Saaya’s voice screamed in my mind, calling me to stand—but Death had its own rules. Healing magic, causality, it was all meaningless here. My body refused to respond. I tasted my own blood, and for a moment, thought I might die here, witnessed by the only person I wanted to protect.

I gritted my teeth, pushing gravity outward in a violent explosion, sending debris and shards flying, hoping to pin Thanatos. For a split second, the world seemed to hesitate. I saw Karna’s eyes widen—the first flicker of worry. My body screamed, bones cracking, ribs fracturing. I was stretched to my limit. The weight of existence itself pressed down on me, but something… deep inside… something that had lain dormant… stirred.

Scalar energy.

At first, it was subtle. A chair midair distorted slightly, bending away from reality as I focused. Thanatos’s shadow flickered, as if reality around him wavered. Karna glanced at him, sensing the anomaly. I took another shuddering breath, blood dripping from my face, wounds burning, and I pushed a fraction harder. Gravity pulsed like a heartbeat, and the edges of the battlefield—the debris, the air, even the shattered tiles—quivered.

Thanatos’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?” he hissed, reaching for me. But my mind was elsewhere, attuned to something older than gods, older than death itself. I could feel the threads of existence bending around me, trembling, sensitive to my intent. Another strike from Thanatos smashed into my ribs. Pain exploded, forcing me to my knees, but the scalar energy responded, bending space around me, letting my hands twitch upward.

Karna rushed to my side, slashing with sunlight-infused fists. Thanatos blocked, yet the space around his arms seemed… wrong. Fractured. I focused harder. With every pulse of scalar energy, reality near him began to distort—his feet vanished from the ground, fleetingly, and then returned. My body screamed for release, every nerve alight with agony, but the power was building.

Saaya’s voice, distant yet crystal clear, pierced my mind. Sukara, you can do it… you have to!

I roared, gravity spiraling violently outward, the battlefield tearing at itself. Thanatos lunged, black magic slicing through, but reality shifted around him. His form flickered like a candle in a storm, his attacks phasing through emptiness. I pushed, pain scorching my veins, scalar energy bending existence itself. Karna’s light burned brighter, but even he stumbled as the very rules of reality wavered.

A scream tore from Thanatos’s throat as he realized what was happening. My body, battered and broken, moved purely on instinct and willpower. Every last ounce of life I had left, every shuddering heartbeat, I directed at this single, impossible act: erasing him. My scalar energy roared through the battlefield, folding space and time around him, erasing the threads that made him real.

I felt my limbs quiver, nearly giving out. Pain hammered into me from every angle—my lungs, my chest, my shattered arms—but I didn’t stop. Thanatos’s shadowed form stretched, flickered, and finally… snapped out of existence. A void where he had stood rippled, the air trembling violently before snapping back into silence.

I collapsed onto the broken tiles, gasping, blood pouring from every wound. Karna dropped to his knees beside me, golden light flickering in exhaustion. “You… you did it…” he muttered, awe mingling with disbelief. “You erased him… from reality…”

Saaya’s eyes were wide, tears streaking down her face, but relief flooded her. She ran to my side, her hands shaking as she tried to touch me. I managed a rasped laugh, too exhausted to speak.

“Scalar… ability… it’s… beyond gods…” I croaked. “Beyond death… beyond causality…”

Karna leaned back, exhaustion visible in every movement, his sunlight dimming. “I’ve never seen… power like that. Not even Surya… not even a god…”

Saaya finally knelt beside me fully, holding me as I tried to breathe. “You… you almost died, Sukara. I couldn’t help you… not here…” Her voice trembled, grief and awe tangled.

I gave a weak nod, feeling my life hanging by a thread, yet filled with the knowledge that we had survived the impossible. The battlefield lay in ruin, reality itself bruised and bent. Yet I had won—through sheer will, through the raw, terrifying power I had only just begun to understand.