I might not be able to defeat Caius outright within his own domain—the advantage there clearly leaned toward him—but that didn’t mean I had to keep playing by his rules.

If his control came from imposing his will over the space, then all I had to do was introduce mine and break that control apart from within.

Make him feel it.

What he had been forcing onto me this entire time.

"Tell me this, Caius...What do you think happens when your target summons his own domain?"

The words landed, and I saw it in the way his expression shifted, the meaning settling in as he processed what I had just implied. The calm he had been holding onto twisted, something darker pushing through as the realization took hold.

"What do you mean by that?"

His voice had changed.

There was caution in it now.

And something else.

Disbelief.

But it didn’t stay there for long. I watched it shift, watched the doubt creep in, the tension building as he began to understand that I wasn’t speaking hypothetically.

I meant it.

I stretched both my hands forward slowly, fingers spreading before tightening into a firm clench, grounding myself as I focused. Not on him. On the space.

I envisioned it clearly—my energy pushing outward, not colliding blindly, but breaking into the structure of the world I was standing in, threading through it, forcing its way in and expanding, carving out something that was mine.

And Caius felt it.

The shift.

The intent.

He moved immediately, blitzing forward with everything he had, closing the distance in an instant, clearly trying to interrupt whatever I was about to do before it could fully take shape.

But it was too late.

"Break."

The word left my mouth, firm and controlled, and the space around us responded.

Not violently.

Not all at once.

But in a way that felt... absolute.

The world didn’t shatter outward—it gave way, like something that had already been weakened from within, the structure of his domain splitting apart as my will forced its way through it.

And in that same moment, energy surged.

It didn’t come from outside.

It came from me.

Flooding through my body, steady and overwhelming at the same time, as if something that had been held back was finally allowed to expand without restriction.

Then everything fell into darkness.

Not the absence of light, but a space that felt vast and unbounded, swallowing everything that had existed before it.

And slowly, points of light began to appear.

One by one.

Scattered at first, then multiplying, until they spread across the void like distant stars, faint but steady, illuminating the space just enough to give it depth.

Caius reacted immediately.

The moment the domain began to stabilize, he shifted into defense, drawing his energy inward and forming a structure around himself—an oval-shaped barrier, dense and layered, its surface patterned like a net as it reinforced itself from within, clearly designed to withstand the pressure pressing down on him.

But that wasn’t going to hold.

"Shatter."

The moment the word left me, the structure around him gave way, not collapsing violently, but unraveling, the energy that held it together dispersing under the pressure of my domain as if it had no right to exist there.

And just like that, he was exposed.

Left to face the full effect of it.

Caius groaned, his body locking up as the space around him tightened.

"What... what is this?" he managed, his voice strained, each word dragged out under pressure that was clearly increasing by the second. His legs gave out beneath him, and he dropped to his knees, the impact dull against the void as he struggled to stay upright, his entire frame trembling.

I could hear his heartbeat.

It thumped in steady, heavy pulses, clear enough that it felt like I was standing right beside him with a stethoscope pressed to his chest, every beat echoing through the space between us.

And as it intensified, something else became obvious.

His body wasn’t responding the way it should.

It wasn’t just the pressure pinning him down—it was deeper than that. His movements slowed, then stalled entirely, like the signals weren’t going through, like his body had stopped obeying him altogether.

He couldn’t move.

Not even a little.

How did I know?

Because I could feel it.

It was as if there was a connection between us, something direct and unfiltered, letting me perceive his state in real time—the strain on his body, the instability in his energy, the way his control was slipping. I could see the flow of it as well, the way it moved through him, the patterns it formed, the same patterns I had glimpsed earlier when he constructed that barrier.

And now, it felt within reach.

Like if I wanted to, I could replicate it. All of it.

And that was because of this.

Behind me loomed something massive.

A figure.

It mirrored my face, but on a scale that dwarfed everything around it, its form not fully solid, but structured—holographic, yet defined, its surface built from the same layered patterns that made up the walls of my domain. Its eyes were fixed on Caius, unblinking, focused, dissecting every detail about him and feeding it back to me.

I wasn’t just standing here.

I was there too.

Linked to it.

The body in front, the presence behind, separate, but one.

"What...what...is... this..."

Caius forced the words out, each syllable dragged through the pressure weighing down on him, his voice unsteady as his body remained locked in place.

I stepped forward, lifting slightly off the ground without thinking, the motion natural, effortless, until I came to a stop in front of him, framed by the two massive eyes looming behind me.

"My domain."

"A... domain..." he repeated, struggling to form the words properly. "How... did... you... come... to possess this?"

I let out a quiet sigh, the question barely registering as something worth thinking about.

"What do you mean, ’how’?" I said, my tone even. "I already told you. It’s part of my ability."

Caius’ reaction was immediate.

His eyes widened further, his expression breaking completely now, the disbelief no longer contained. His mind was trying to process it, I could feel that much, but the strain of the domain, combined with what he was seeing, was pushing him past the point where he could keep up.

He was overwhelmed.

And not just mentally.

Physically too.

I understood it.

To an extent.

I had seen what a domain was when he summoned his, had felt its effects from the inside, but even then, I hadn’t expected this.

The power.

It wasn’t just something I was using.

It was something I was inside of.

Something that was responding to me completely.

Energy flowed through me in a steady, overwhelming current, filling every part of me until it felt like there was too much of it, like I was holding more than I should, like I could rupture if I didn’t control it properly.

And with that came something else.

Control. Not vague. Not uncertain....Absolute.

If I wanted to, I could crush Caius right where he was, reduce him to nothing with a single motion.

But...