To say that Arden was confident would be a lie. He spoke to Domah like he was assured of his victory, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Even with the power of his inviolable soul behind him, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stop the Archon of Submission. She had almost ripped him to spiritual scrap just by imposing her cosmic will on his soul.

  Now they were both inside of his soul.

  It was dangerous for both of them. Arden had bestowed enough power to offset the power disparity between them with his home field advantage, though he was incredibly reluctant to do so. He was almighty in here, but he didn’t want to give a god-like being some of its powers for a fight inside of his own soul.

  But it was the only way he figured out how to end this nightmare.

  He didn’t believe that a being like Domah would forgive and forget Arden for trapping her, and banishing her from Sya’s body. Arden knew.

  These deity-like bullshit entities were not dignified.

  Arden remembered the story of the Great Grave Archwood, whose domain over death was usurped, to the point where the Archwood’s followers refused the call of death out of respect for the Archwood, and hatred of the new Sovereign. Nux Valtorin, who was supposed to be the hero of the world and was going to be given a shard of a god’s power was scum who got off on torturing Arden.

  That was why he suggested a fair duel.

  Though, the fight was anything but.

  Arden was a human for most of his life, and only just began to use supernatural abilities.

  Domah was an entity who existed long before earth.

  Still, Arden wouldn’t surrender. He had a plan, and he had to stick to it. He’d already invested far too much for it to go awry. His hail mary pass was already thrown.

  Fighting was the only thing he could do at this point.

  So he fought.

  The puppeteering haze settled back into Sya. The fight didn’t even take a second. Domah did not move an inch.

  By the time Arden tried to dash forward, it was over.

  A beam of white light fell from Domah’s symbol. It carried the weight of heaven and the power of hell as it fell on Arden.

  For a brief moment, he felt his insides boil and his bones melt, before he lost all feeling.

  When the light dissipated, Arden was gone. There was nothing that remained. Not even ashes. Arden’s body was completely erased in Domah’s profane purge.

  A pillar of blood rose from the floor and rapidly took the form of Arden under Domah’s indifferent stare. The blood lost its red hue, and Arden was standing before the Archon again

  “Surrender.”

  Arden, slightly pale from the shock of being killed and quickly reborn by the power of his soul, smiled back at her.

  “No.”

  “Then die.”

  Another beam fell before the words finished leaving Domah’s mouth.

  Again, Arden could do nothing. His body was destroyed again without any resistance. There was not even the smell of immolation lingering in the air.

  When Arden returned for the second time, his body didn't last a second before it was cut apart by invisible wires. The bloody chunks of flesh that were left over fell into the ocean of blood.

  When Arden returned for the third time, he screamed in agony as his limbs were ripped from their sockets by Domah herself.

  Every time Arden came back to life, he was immediately killed again.

  He was burnt. He was smashed. He was torn apart. He was vaporized.

  After one hundred attempts and one hundred deaths, Arden hadn’t managed to take a single step towards Domah. All of his attempts were mercilessly destroyed, alongside his body.

  On his 101st life, Arden heard the words of Domah slip into his ears.

  “I thought you wanted a fight.”

  Determined light entered Arden’s eyes, having been finally given a moment to act. The light in his eyes died shortly after, along with his body.

  His heart was ripped out. His head was torn from his neck. The air was choked out of his lungs.

  Death always came.

  It was the fate of anyone who refused to bow to the natural order.

  On his 10,000th life, Arden took a single step, before he felt his leg explode in pain, and it bent in an odd direction. The last thing he saw before his vision turned black was the indifferent look on Domah’s face.

  Domah hadn’t moved an inch. Not once over the course of thousands of deaths. She hadn’t even blinked, much less taken a step.

  She let him take a step.

  She was looking down on him.

  She was playing with him.

  ‘No,’ Arden realized. ‘She’s trying to get me to submit.’

  Rage boiled inside of Arden.

  “That’s!”

  “Not!”

  “Gonna!”

  “Happen!”

  It took Arden another ten thousand deaths just to say those four words.

  How many would it take for him to take a step forward with his own power, not because she let him?

  An even worse thought entered Arden’s mind.

  How many deaths would it take to defeat her?

  Twenty thousand lives of his had been ended by the cruel hand of Domah. In those twenty thousand lives, he hadn’t managed to do anything.

  ‘Can I do it?’

  *****

  Domah made a movement for the first time since the beginning of this duel.

  She smiled.

  The process of submission took varying amounts of time depending on who was submitting. But it always followed a process, and the first step of submission was a feeling of self-doubt.

  Doubting one’s capabilities broke their confidence. It was from losing confidence that they realized how little they could actually amount to. The feeling of inferiority would eat them alive until they met something above them. Then, they would truly submit.

  And right now, Domah could tell that her youngest sibling was losing confidence.

  His defiance was dying.

  *****

  Over a million deaths had come to Arden now. His lives had not begun to last any longer. More and more, he asked himself that insidious question. And every time he asked, it took longer and longer to admit that he could.

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  But he still continued.

  For now.

  Arden set the board. He already rigged the game in his favor. Domah agreed to play the rigged game.

  He had hoped that it would be enough to defeat Domah, but it was not so.

  Even with every advantage, he couldn’t even make a move.

  He was so far beneath Domah that she hadn’t even needed to make a move.

  Arden was killed again. And again. And again.

  At no point did Arden get any further, and at no point did dying become any easier. Pain still permeated his existence every time his spiritual avatar was killed.

  Domah was so much stronger than him.

  But why?

  She was an Archon, and like it or not, with his own legacy, he was one as well.

  What made them so different?

  Why was she so much stronger than him?

  What gave her the ability to use all of this power even under a huge limitation like being in someone else’s soul?

  Arden began questioning this more and more.

  When his death counter had extended by another digit, he was no longer asking if he could win this. His mind, nearly broken from the massacre of his avatars, only asked about the source of her power.

  His bones were powderized. His body exploded. His blood flow was reversed. He choked on his own innards.

  He heard the taunting words of Domah for the first time in millions of deaths.

  “Why are you still here? Why haven’t you given up yet? You have been killed by my hand millions of times, and you haven't made any progress. You’ve only lost ground. Surely you know that the pain will end if you just give up.”

  Arden coughed up blood and fell to his knees, despite no attack being launched.

  Domah appeared right in front of him.

  “I can make the pain stop.”

  She extended a hand and left it hanging in front of Arden’s eyes, dulled with a thousand yard stare.

  Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes came into focus staring at the hand in front of him.

  It represented an ending. Salvation from this slaughter. He wouldn’t die by her hand anymore.

  But it wouldn’t be a happy ending.

  Domah would still infest Sya’s body, and he would live a life of submission. But his pain would end.

  Was it worth it?

  Arden looked up at Domah’s face, Sya’s face. Under normal circumstances, Arden would have loved to see a happy emotion on her face. But not now. Not when she was being used as a puppet.

  Domah’s expectant eyes gave him the push he needed to answer her invitation.

  “Fuck off,” he said, batting her hand away.

  The confusion on her face told Arden it was the right choice.

  “You were the one to do this to me for so long. And now you offer me a way to make the pain stop? Your agent has more tact than you.”

  Determination returned to his pale face. Strength returned to his body and he stood up.

  “I don’t know how many deaths it will take, but I will beat you. I don’t know how you have that much power, but it won’t matter. I have an infinite amount of lives. You can kill me as many times as you want, but it won’t matter in the end. I only have to beat you once.”

  Space folded in on Arden, crushing his body to a perfectly smooth cube of flesh.

  Arden appeared before Domah again. Despite his grisly death mere seconds ago, his eyes didn’t lose any of their luster like they had before.

  Domah’s eyes narrowed.

  “I see. You truly are incredible. Almost no one has ever refused to submit after this much torture. It almost makes me want to take you as a vessel as well.”

  Arden’s own bones shifted inside of his own body, skewering him alive from the inside out. His dead body fell into the ocean of blood, and another one appeared.

  This one drowned in his own blood.

  Over the next million deaths, Arden continued speaking as he tried to take a single step towards Domah who was once again on the far side of his soul cluster.

  “I’ll win! I’ll figure it out! Even if it takes me a billion deaths. I’ll see through your attacks!”

  “O pitiful brother mine. This isn’t a game. You can’t figure out attack patterns by dying to them. You haven’t realized it yet, have you?”

  She spoke no more words as she continued to massacre Arden in billions of distinct brutal ways.

  *****

  Arden realized it early on. He knew that he would never see through her attack pattern, because she didn’t have an attack pattern.

  Every single one of Arden’s deaths was as unique as it was brutal. There were no repeats, nor were there any tells.

  It was always rebirth, then an almost immediate death.

  But his goal was never to learn her attack patterns.

  It was to learn how Domah was able to wield such power.

  They were both Archons, after all. He should have some power as well.

  There were a few things Arden learned over the course of the near-infinite cycle of death.

  Domah wasn't using any special power. She wasn't using any Stellar Essence, Blight Essence, or anything else. It came from her.

  But then it came to him during Domah’s last monologue.

  Arden couldn't stay dead.

  It wasn't exactly a great revelation, but he thought about it. Why couldn't he stay dead?

  Was it because the soul was inviolable, and right now, because he was here, he was a representation, an avatar of his soul? Was it because his soul was marked by both the Archon of Eternity and the Archon of Life, so his life here was eternal?

  It was neither.

  It was confusing. He couldn't come up with an answer, but once he took a step back it became clear to him.

  It was his soul.

  It didn't matter that his soul was marked by a pair of transcendent beings. It didn't matter that he was an avatar of his soul.

  What mattered was the soul itself.

  It was unyielding. Steadfast. Inviolable. It adapted to whatever came its way. If he came close to breaking, he would get stronger. He would heal. Improve. Evolve.

  His powers were a representation of his soul. It stole life, but it didn't always kill. The life energy, biomass, was used more to keep himself alive than anything.

  That was Arden’s soul.

  And Domah’s was dominant. It inspired submission in everyone and everything. None of her attacks in the real world were meant to kill. Her goal was to make things submit to her will.

  In here, Arden was immortal. So the only way to make him submit would be to kill him as many times as it takes.

  Her attacks were representative of her soul.

  No.

  Her attacks were her soul.

  Once Arden realized that, he knew what he had to do.

  He had to improve. He had to evolve. He had to use the unique traits of his own soul to strike back.

  He had to learn how to change his attacks from being a representation of his soul, to being his soul itself.

  A spear of white energy flew towards Arden, carrying with it the promise of another death. It flew towards him with the speed of a jet. If it hit him, his body would cease to exist again.

  A column of bone rose from the bloody floor, intercepting the spear. Both the weapon and the shield disappeared in a fantastic explosion that seemed to rock the soul cluster.

  A new emotion colored Domah’s face as Arden stepped out from behind the small pile of singed bones that was left from the attack.

  Rage.

  She glared at the boy who had managed to survive her attack.

  Long lost light filled Arden’s eyes. Phase two of his plan was complete. Now he just needed to survive until phase three.

  “Finally!” Arden cheered.

  He laughed. Joy of this intensity was unheard of for him, with the only moment to come close was his reunion with Vera. Tears fell from his eyes as he realized the totality of what he'd done.

  He survived an attack from an Archon that was trying to kill him.

  An attack from a god.

  “Tell me how.”

  This was not a discussion. It was an order, as were all of her words infused with her soul.

  Now that Arden knew what she was doing, her words felt a lot less threatening. Arden spoke using the same trick. By imposing his will on this most unwelcome guest.

  “No.”

  The rage on Domah’s face was joined by two more emotions: shock and indignation.

  Somehow, this weak, miserable, pathetic human had managed to match her power. It wasn't possible. It had to be a trick.

  But even if it was, how was he able to figure out the principle behind it?

  “You wield powers beyond your station, human.”

  “What happened to being an Archon?”

  Arden asked this with his voice and not his soul. It took a lot out of him.

  “You are no Archon. Just a miserable human following in the footsteps of the firstborn.”

  “Bipolar much?”

  “Silence, human!”

  “I don't even know how many times you've killed me in my own soul. You don't get to be upset that I'm rude to you. You don't have the right.”

  Domah’s rage cooled and froze over. With an icy glare that showed how much contempt she held for Arden, she spoke.

  “You will die trillions of times by my hand. You will submit. Then I will rip your Legacy from your soul.”

  A red glow blazed to life from the depths of Arden’s eyes. For a moment, Domah thought she saw a hint of gold. Arden spoke with his soul.

  “You are welcome to try, Archon of Submission. Many lifetimes ago, you called me the Archon of Greed. That was wrong. I know what I am now.”

  The Soul cluster strained under the pressure of the two Archons, as if they were threatening to test the validity of the inviolable soul.

  “You are no longer facing Arden the Starborn. You now face RedShift, the Archon of Evolution.”