The air was thick with smoke and tension. Ace stood motionless, suspended in the middle of the throne room, white eyes blazing with a fierce light. The purple aura around him surged like a storm barely contained. Across from him, the Demon King stepped down from his throne, every movement calculated, quiet, deadly.

For a moment, neither moved. Then, without warning, Ace launched forward. The Demon King barely managed to block the first strike, but the force was enough to shatter the ground beneath them. The entire palace trembled.

Ace’s fists were a blur. He wasn’t thinking,  he couldn’t think. Something else was driving him. Something cold, instinctive, and impossibly powerful.

The Demon King ducked under a strike, blasting a surge of dark energy. Ace didn’t dodge. He walked through it. The blast dispersed against his aura like smoke in the wind. The Demon King’s eyes narrowed.

'You’re not in control,' the king said. 'Are you even conscious?'

Ace didn’t respond.

Each blow was faster, more precise, more ruthless. The king tried to retreat, but Ace was relentless, every move designed to end the fight. The walls cracked. The ceiling groaned.

Finally, the Demon King caught a lucky moment,  he landed a full-force strike against Ace’s chest, sending him back through a pillar. The entire chamber echoed with the crash.

Ace stood again.

But his glow flickered.

His steps slowed.

He reached forward… and collapsed.

The aura vanished. His eyes faded. Ace dropped to his knees, chest heaving. Every muscle ached. His vision blurred. The overwhelming surge of power had left him completely drained.

The Demon King wiped blood from his mouth and grinned. 'Looks like that was all you had, weakling.'

He stepped forward to finish it—

And was blindsided by a bolt of blue.

Raiden.

He hit the Demon King like a flash of lightning, sending him crashing into a stone wall with enough force to crack it.

Raiden skidded to a stop beside Ace and helped him sit up. 'Don’t worry. I got you.'

Ace blinked slowly. 'What… happened?'

'You don’t remember?'

'Everything’s a blur.'

Raiden looked back toward the king, who was buried under rubble. 'You lost control. Something took over. Not just anger. Not just instinct. It was like your god side took the wheel.'

Ace looked shaken. 'I didn’t know I had a god side.'

'thats what I had been telling you all of this time, you are a god and now you have proof.' Raiden said quietly.

The two of them didn’t wait around. They left the palace with Raiden half-carrying Ace and made their way through broken woods and ruined paths, putting as much distance between them and the demon territory as possible.

Eventually, after what felt like hours of walking, they reached a quiet town tucked into a mountain valley. it had stone houses, dirt roads, flickering lanterns and peace, for once.

They found a bench near the edge of town. Raiden sat beside Ace, 

'I wasn’t myself back there,' Ace said finally.

'No,' Raiden agreed. 'You weren’t. Your voice changed. Your face didn’t even look like yours. It was like something older, stronger, took your place.'

Ace looked down at his hands. 'So I have powers. But I can’t control them.'

'Yet,' Raiden corrected. 'You will control them. But we have to be careful. That thing inside you, it’s not just power. It’s dangerous. If it had gone any further… you might not have made it...'

They were quiet for a long time.

'What happened to the Demon King?' Ace asked eventually.

'Still under a pile of stone, hopefully. i was too scared to look back'

Ace nodded slowly. 'good'

Raiden gave a dry laugh. 'If you told me a week ago we’d be fighting demons and unlocking divine powers, I’d have told you to go take a nap.'

'No kidding.'

'I mean, I still want a nap. But yeah.'

Ace leaned back against the bench, exhausted. 'We’ll train here?'

'For a while. We lay low, recover. Figure out how to keep that other version of you from taking over again.'

Ace didn’t respond. His mind was too full of what he’d done, of the voice that had echoed in his head, of the feeling of being gone inside his own body.

'We’ll get through this,' Raiden said, his voice steady. 'You’re not alone, alright?'

Ace finally nodded.

'Raiden? Ace?'

someone shouted from a distance