This time when they collided, Jorghan unleashed something new.

[Carnage Requiem—Form Two]

The moment their exchange began, he channeled blood through his own body in a way he'd never attempted during combat.

His physical form became secondary to the sorcerous manifestation.

Blood flowed across his skin like a second armor, creating barriers that intercepted El'ran's blade strikes before they could reach his actual body. The blood absorbed impact force and redistributed it, creating a defensive system that was completely different from blocking or deflecting.

El'ran's eyes widened as he recognized what was happening. "What in the abyss are you? I have never see—"

Jorghan didn't let him finish.

He twisted sharply, using the blood armor as leverage to redirect El'ran's blade, and then pressed his counterattack. His hands moved with supernatural speed, striking at vital points, trying to force the patriarch into a completely reactive defensive mode.

For the first time in the duel, El'ran was forced to retreat.

He moved backward, his footwork never faltering despite the increasing damage to the arena floor. Where stone had fractured, sand had become unstable, creating sinkholes that would have trapped normal combatants.

But El'ran navigated them with the precision of someone who'd learned to fight in every conceivable terrain.

Jorghan pursued, pressing his advantage, driving the patriarch across what remained of the arena floor. The crowd had retreated to the very edge of the amphitheater now, pressed against the walls, some of them wondering if the entire structure would collapse before this duel concluded.

Sarhita was maintaining her barrier with growing difficulty, her liquid gold eyes straining as she channeled more and more power to contain the collateral damage.

Around the arena, the natural stone was crumbling. Entire sections of the amphitheater were collapsing, falling inward as the ground beneath them destabilized.

"They need to end this," Kal'thun said grimly, gripping the edge of his seat.

"If this continues, the entire valley will be reshaped."

El'ran, faced with an opponent who was literally pushing him across the battlefield, made a decision. He stopped retreating and instead drove his power inward, channeling energy into his own body the way Jorghan had done.

His form began to shift.

The armor he wore integrated with his physical body, becoming not a separate piece of equipment but an extension of himself. His muscles became visibly more defined, his skin taking on a faint luminescence as magical power suffused his entire being.

When he moved again, it was with a speed that surpassed anything he'd demonstrated previously. His blade came around in a strike that split the very air, creating a visible wound that remained suspended for several seconds before closing.

Jorghan barely blocked it, his blood armor taking the full force of the impact. The shockwave from that single strike sent him sliding backward twenty feet, his feet carving furrows through the arena's surface.

"Now we're truly fighting," El'ran said, and his voice had changed—deeper, resonating with power that made the assembled crowd feel like they were in the presence of something genuinely dangerous.

"Now you're seeing what seven hundred years of mastery looks like."

Jorghan stood, assessing this new version of El'ran.

The patriarch had integrated his power and his physical form into a unified whole, creating a hybrid state that was more efficient than anything Jorghan had managed.

It was a master-class demonstration of magical control.

And Jorghan realized, in that moment, why El'ran had survived seven centuries while most mages burned out or destroyed themselves through power addiction.

The patriarch understood balance in ways Jorghan was only beginning to grasp.

But Jorghan had something El'ran didn't—a bloodline that existed outside normal magical paradigms, abilities that had been forged through reincarnation and survival, and power that came from a legacy so ancient it predated the modern classification systems.

Pulling on his true power, letting it flood through his system like a tidal wave.

His body transformed.

It wasn't a smooth integration like El'ran's.

It was a violent, chaotic reassertion of his true nature.

Blood erupted from his skin—not the controlled manifestation of his sorcery but something raw and primal. It formed a second body around him, a silhouette of pure hemomantic force that made the assembled crowd gasp in horror and awe.

It was like a red storm erupted from a single point and burst out in all directions. It was swift and destructive.

[New bloodline Ability unlocked: Sanguine Sovereignty]

Jorghan's eyes glowed with blood-red light, and when he spoke, his voice echoed with harmonics that shouldn't have been possible from a single throat.

"Now," he said, "I'll show you what I actually am."

He didn't move forward.

Instead, he reached into the blood that formed his armor and pulled outward, reshaping it into something new.

The manifestation coalesced into the form of a massive weapon—a scythe with a blade forged from crystallized blood, each edge sharper than any mortal metal could achieve.

It was a move so advanced, so technically complex, that El'ran actually paused mid-stride to simply observe it.

The patriarch recognized what he was seeing—a complete reinvention of combat methodology in real time, the transformation of external sorcery into something that functioned like a natural extension of the user's body.

"What are you?" El'ran asked, genuinely curious despite being in the middle of a death match.

"Something older than your elf clans combined," Jorghan replied.

"Something that you would have seen in your nightmares."

He moved.

This time his movement was different. Where before he'd been human-speed elevated by magical enhancement, now he was moving through space in ways that seemed to bend reality. The blood scythe trailed afterimages as it cut through the air, creating wounds in reality that hung suspended for heartbeats before closing.

El'ran met him with his blade, and when they collided, the impact was catastrophic.

The entire remaining structure of the amphitheater shattered. Stone exploded outward in a radial wave, forced away from the collision point by power that had exceeded every possible limit. The tiered seating that had hosted countless duels collapsed into rubble. The natural walls that formed the valley's boundaries cracked and destabilized.

Sarhita screamed, throwing every ounce of power she possessed into expanding her protective barrier, desperately trying to prevent the valley walls from completely collapsing onto the evacuated crowd.

And the two warriors at the center of the destruction continued their dance, neither willing to give ground, both pushing themselves to the absolute edge of their capabilities.

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