Asmodeus did not move at first; he merely stood still, his eyes fixed upon the figure in front of him, the man whose presence seemed to warp the very rhythm of the air itself. Grand Scholar Lazarus, widely regarded as the wisest mind within the kingdom and second only to the king in raw power, yet set apart by something that none could properly account for.

He was the only man not merely in Eterna but in the whole known world who had managed to reach into the domain thought forever untouchable, the dominion of the greatest gods, and make it answer to him, the domain of time.

For Asmodeus, who had lived centuries and endured the schemes of mortals, this was not a fact taken lightly. Lazarus was dangerous, perhaps more so than any single figure still alive, and his name stood first on the list of enemies who needed to be erased.

Yet Asmodeus was not reckless, and he did not underestimate what stood before him, for even when he still possessed the security of many lives he had known that Lazarus might well have been able to corner him; now, with only this single vessel remaining, defeat meant nothing short of annihilation.

He knew too well what made the man fearsome. The breadth of his knowledge was so vast that even entire libraries dedicated to runic study felt impoverished compared to the depth of his mind, and the sheer versatility of the combinations he had mastered made him an opponent against whom simple strength alone would not suffice.

"Baron Detrim Serkik," Lazarus said at last, his voice calm, almost conversational, though the weight of memory clung to the words. "He was once the oldest living man in Eterna, and a rank zero knight besides. More than that, he was my closest friend."

At the name Asmodeus allowed himself a faint smile, for he remembered well the knight Lazarus referred to, and he understood where this conversation was headed.

"In the same clash in which you scarred Jeremiah," Lazarus continued, his gaze unwavering, "you killed the baron, and ever since you have remained buried in these prisons, hidden from the world. I searched for you, and though you concealed yourself well, it was inevitable that I would find you at last. It is a pity, perhaps, that time has forced me to act quickly, for if it were not so then your punishment would have stretched on for years."

As those words settled, Asmodeus moved. He drew every ounce of aura into himself, pulling it from marrow and breath alike, and when that still did not feel enough he reached for his faith, calling upon it until his veins burned, and finally he fed even his life into the conflagration, all to force out more power.

Around him a dome began to form, thick and oppressive, a sphere of reddish-black energy that stretched over him like the shell of some monstrous cocoon, sealing him away from the world outside.

Lazarus only watched, expression unchanged. "I have been refining something new," he said evenly, as if commenting on a theory in a lecture hall rather than in the heat of battle. "A rune I have long wondered about, and it seems fitting that its first use should be against you. There is nothing else to discuss."

Behind him, runes began to flare one by one, vast sigils suspended in the air, their light shifting and folding over each other until the very space behind him was filled with a lattice of symbols.

At first they burned with clarity, but slowly they began to fade, not disappearing so much as becoming transparent, as though the world itself refused to register their presence. Soon they were little more than impressions, distortions in the air, visible only in the way they made the space seem uncertain, as if reality itself was being rewritten.

"Clockwork Emperor," Lazarus intoned, and the words seemed to reverberate not only through the air but through the fabric of the world itself, a vibration that made the ground shudder and the atmosphere bend, the mana in the surroundings quivering as though caught in a current too strong to resist.

The landscape twisted under the weight of the invocation; in one patch the grass dissolved into nothing, bare earth exposed as if centuries of erosion had passed in an instant, while in another the blades grew unnaturally tall, reaching the height of a child, swaying in rhythms that did not match the wind.

His eyes began to glimmer with a deep violet radiance, and above his head there materialized a faint, translucent crown, a symbol not merely ornamental but sovereign, carrying with it the unspoken recognition of dominion.

The aura that bled from him pressed down on the world with suffocating weight, a pressure that carried the quiet certainty of divinity, as if one stood not before a man but before a god whose authority extended beyond simple destruction into the very ordering of existence.

The dome that Asmodeus had conjured to shield himself began to unravel, its structure fading away as though it could no longer anchor itself in a world where time itself had been rewritten. Left exposed, Asmodeus turned his gaze outward and for the first time his expression betrayed not confidence or arrogance but something that lingered closer to disbelief, even awe, though the faint tremor of fear behind his widened eyes revealed what the sight had truly impressed upon him.

"This… this is beyond the reach of a rank zero," he murmured, and though he scarcely admitted it aloud, the truth weighed on him like stone. He could feel it clearly, as surely as he could feel his own blood moving sluggishly in his veins: all of time, its pace and its weight, its rhythm and its endless stream, had been seized by Lazarus and bound beneath his hand.

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This was not the application of a few runes strung together to mimic temporal adjustment; this was domination, a raw mastery over time's passage on a scale that no human, nor even half-god, should ever have commanded.

"Warden," Lazarus said quietly, his voice stripped of any grandeur, as though he were simply considering an experiment. "I wonder how you might appear a thousand years from now."

At once the warden felt it. His body trembled as centuries cascaded through him in an instant, his flesh forced forward through the ages as though his life had been fastened to a reel and spun beyond his will. He was half demon and his lifespan was formidable, longer than the longest-lived of mortals, yet even he faltered at the weight of such an artificial advance. A thousand years passed in a heartbeat, and though his form held, the terror of it lingered.

"No change," Lazarus observed, tilting his head almost curiously. "Then perhaps five thousand."

The acceleration struck again, harsher this time, and Asmodeus collapsed to his knees. His muscles withered beneath his skin, his strength bled out as if stolen, and a terrible fragility settled over his frame.

The endurance of his bloodline was vast, but not infinite; five thousand years tore most of it away, and what remained was a hollowed echo of what he had been, his body leaning into frailty, his breath shallow and uneven, his life narrowed to less than a single decade.

"It works exactly as I theorized," Lazarus murmured, his tone thoughtful rather than triumphant, as though he were merely recording the results of an experiment rather than bending the fabric of existence. "I can move the subject forward through time, yet deny him the natural increase in strength and refinement that would have come with the years. Now, let us see what happens if I move you backwards… say, to when you were ten."

Asmodeus felt the shift ripple through him, an inversion of being that left him unsteady and disoriented, and when his vision cleared he looked down upon a body that was no longer his own.

The skin was smooth, unscarred by battle, the muscles underdeveloped, the frame slight and almost frail. He was once again a boy, stripped of the power and resilience he had built across centuries. Worse than that, he reached inward and found nothing, no aura, no rank, not even the faint spark of the strength that had once defined him. And worst of all, the gnawing absence remained: his lifespan had not returned. He still had less than a decade left to live, even in this childish form.

"Now," Lazarus continued as if in idle curiosity, "what happens if I cut away the future in which you ever climb again, the path where you reach Rank Ten and beyond?"

Another wave passed through Asmodeus, more subtle yet infinitely more cruel. A moment ago he had at least felt the faint possibility, the sense that with effort and endless training he might one day claw his way back to power.

But now that possibility was gone, not by failure but by erasure; he could sense it clearly, the truth engraved into the marrow of his being, he would never advance again, no matter how he struggled. He was locked to this helpless level until the end of his short life.

"And now," Lazarus said, raising one hand almost lazily, "with these changes in place, what will become of you if I return you to your original age, with a body designed to be sustained by aura yet now utterly devoid of it, and with a lifespan already broken down to its dregs?"

Asmodeus' face paled, his mind racing not only with terror but with the sick realization that Lazarus was not even trying to kill him, he was using him, turning him into a test case to measure the reach of his new dominion. And worse still, the conclusion was inescapable. If he were forced back into his true age while bearing no rank, no aura, and almost no years left to live, he would not simply weaken, he would die.

"Wai—" he tried to speak, to plead or to curse, but the word never reached completion. Lazarus simply turned his hand, a small gesture as casual as brushing aside dust, and the reversal was done.

Asmodeus felt himself stretch again into the shape of his true body, but it was wrong, entirely wrong. His frame, once broad and terrible, sagged under its own weight, his flesh already brittle, his bones groaning as though centuries of decay had caught him at last. There was no aura to sustain him, no strength to anchor him, only the truth of his age pressing down like a death sentence. He was living beyond the boundaries of his natural span, and his body was crumbling in real time.

His skin flaked and cracked, his limbs withered, every nerve screaming as though burning from within, and his heart beat so violently against the failing walls of his chest that it was no longer a rhythm but a torment. He understood then, with a clarity beyond denial, that he was finished.

"That rune…" he forced the words out through the ruin of his body, his voice thin and ragged, "that is the closest to godhood you will ever reach. Savour it." And with that final admission, his body collapsed in on itself, crumbling into dust that drifted no further than the ground, falling in a heap of grey fragments clothed only in tatters.

Lazarus looked down at the remains for a long moment, and though his expression revealed little, the faint exhalation of his breath carried a weight of finality. The violet light faded from his eyes, the spectral crown above his head dissolved, and the warped world around them shivered once before settling back into its natural rhythm.

"Four and a half years," Lazarus muttered quietly as he walked towards the pile of dust that had once been Asmodeus. When he reached it, he extended a hand to the side, fingers curling around empty air until a rune flared briefly, opening a rift.

From that pocket of space he drew first a plain wooden chair, which he set down with careful precision before lowering himself into it, and then he reached back again and pulled out a bottle of wine.

"Four and a half years is not such a terrible sacrifice for revenge," he said, speaking as if to himself though his eyes never left the scattered remnants on the ground, "and I still have dozens left, perhaps more if I can find the needed rune." He smiled faintly as he spoke, uncorking the bottle with ease.

"It is fitting, I think, that you died to a spell whose seed was planted by the baron," he went on, his tone even, almost contemplative. "In a way, he killed you just as surely as I did. Perhaps that would amuse him if he were here to see it." Lazarus raised the bottle, took a small sip, and let the liquid linger a moment before swallowing with an expression that showed no enjoyment.

"Tastes as horrible as ever," he said flatly. "I never understood why he loved it so much." For a long while he sat in silence, staring at the small heap of dust that was all that remained of his enemy, his hand steady even as his thoughts grew distant. Then, with slow deliberation, he lifted the bottle once more, tilted it forward, and poured it over the ashes until the last drop was gone.

"Shitty wine isn't worth drinking," he said at last, his voice calm, almost weary. "Better it soak into a shitty corpse."

And there he sat, unmoving, his gaze fixed on the remains, letting time slip past unnoticed as the wine seeped into the dust and the silence of the world reclaimed the battlefield.

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