In a realm that lingers still, though its previous time was unmade.

The sea raged like a sentient god, howling in fury, as if the ocean itself had grown tired of being ignored. Winds screamed across the black waters, slicing through sails and shoving waves high enough to kiss the two moons. Thunder cracked like divine laughter, and the sky above was a writhing bruise—rolling clouds illuminated by bolts of Ryun-laced lightning spiraling from one horizon to the next.

The vessel—the pitiful slab of iron and hope—bucked violently, half-submerged and then hoisted like a toy by the titanic swell. The deck was chaos. Creatures—salt-skinned, skeletal things with gaping maws and tendrils of mist—crawled over the sides, screaming and lashing at anything they could reach. The smell of wet rot and corrupted ryun clung to the air like mold in a forgotten tomb.

On the ship, the small group was scrambling—barking commands, casting attacks, slashing claws, and unleashing Ryun in every direction. Some used elemental force, others their raw aura. Nothing looked synchronized, yet desperation made them dance like one organism fighting extinction.

A black-fanged serpent burst from beneath the waterline, Ryun leaking from its broken eyes. It slammed into the hull, nearly flipping the ship, but a streak of red lightning exploded from above and vaporized the creature before it could hiss again.

The ocean responded.

The waves no longer crashed—they slammed. They didn't rise—they convulsed. This was no storm. This was fury—pure, ancient, and unjustified. As if the very soul of the sea was trying to erase the story unfolding atop it. Not with precision. Not with justice. But with overwhelming force.

And yet they didn't stop. The crew moved like beings who had accepted madness, who had stopped asking "why" and instead screamed "try me."

Reality felt thin here—like the world was folding in on itself, like time would snap if the next wave was just a bit taller.

And they were getting taller.

Waves slammed against its sides as chaos surged through the cabin. The storm outside screamed, but inside, she was deaf to it. She was lost in the moment, in him.

His grip was firm, his touch deliberate, pulling her completely into his world. His eyes burned with focus, sharp and unwavering, the storm paling in comparison to the fire between them. She gasped, breathless, words spilling out like prayers—she loved it, loved him, lost in the rhythm they had built between them. Every thrust was reclaiming her will to win.

Then—the interruption. A sharp knock. A fist banging against the door.

The man snarled, hands cradling her face, before yanking her head back by her purple hair, eyes flickering with frustration as he barked, "WHAT?! I'm busy here!"

A voice from beyond the door. "Jafar! We need you. The storm—it carries Ryun in it."

He continued his strokes unbothered by the rocking of the boat. "Yeah, yeah, there's Ryun everywhere—what's new?" Jafar grumbled, just as a thunderous explosion rocked the boat beneath them.

"The waves take the forms of beast!"

The whole cabin jolted, the walls shuddering as something distant and massive cracked open. A flash of lightning lit the window, illuminating the wild grin on Jafar's face. The woman gasped—whether from him or the shockwave, it didn't matter. Her fingers gripped the sheets like a lifeline.

"Perfect timing," he chuckled, pulling on his half-buttoned shirt with a loose flourish. She muttered something in a whisper. He leaned down, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and added with a wink, "Hold that thought."

He threw the cabin door open to find Lenord already sprinting down the corridor.

"I'll be topside in a second," Jafar called after him.

The peculiar figure of Lenord—a wiry goblin-ferret hybrid with oversized ears and twitchy, black-furred limbs—glanced over his hunched shoulder. His cloak flapped violently. "I'll try not to die before then!"

Jafar smirked and rolled his neck as the storm howled louder. "Such a drama queen."

He glanced over his shoulder as he buckled the final strap of his harness. The princess lay motionless on the rumpled bed behind him, her breath shallow, lips parted. Not from sleep—no, from exhaustion. He smirked.

Cheating on her soon-to-be husband hours before the voyage ended? Now that was royal irony. Of course, no one had asked Jafar if this was a wise idea. Putting someone like him—an outlander, stronger than most, smarter than he let on—alone with a bored, politically engaged noblewoman? Making him a security guard? Bad planning. But what the new king didn't know wouldn't kill him.

Jafar tugged his red cloak into place, the heavy fabric settling over his shoulders like a royal drape. Black leather crisscrossed his chest in sturdy belts, twin swords sheathed at each hip, glinting beneath the dim cabin light. His long black hair spilled down the sides of his face, wild but sharp, and the three red markings beneath each eye gave him the look of someone carved from war itself. Outside, the world was ending, and he'd still took his time lacing his boots.

The ship groaned beneath his boots. Another wave slammed into the hull, knocking a lantern from its hook. He stepped over it, unconcerned, and pushed open the cabin door.

Outside, the hall tilted sharply. Sailors shouted, sprinting past like ants scattered from their hill. He walked casually, hands tucked into his belt like he was out for a morning stroll.

When he stepped onto the top deck, wind and salt hit him like a wall. The storm had fully arrived. Lightning veined the sky, illuminating monstrous waves that towered over the ship. Ryun energy crackled faintly in the air, bleeding from the clouds like an omen.

He surveyed the madness with a calm, unreadable expression.

Then he laughed—quiet and sharp.

This was adorable.

Sea creatures were scaling the hull again—tentacled things with eyes where mouths should be, and skeleton men armed with rusted weapons, shouting curses in lost languages. Lenord ducked a claw, twisting mid-air and letting loose a sharp burst of feral ryun from his palms, the violet energy blasting two abominations off the side.

Chaos reigned.

A woman limped toward Jafar from the center of the deck, a nasty bruise blooming under her eye and her coat soaked with blood and brine. Her eyepatch was cracked. Her glare, however, remained fully operational.

"It's about damn time," she growled, voice hoarse. "Fooling around while we're getting shredded out here?"

Jafar raised a brow, strolling toward her with that infuriating smirk of his. "Define 'fooling around.' Technically, I was entertaining royalty."

She looked like she might actually slap him. "Can you be serious?! Our people are dying!"

"And you're still alive, so let's keep that win streak going. Let's be positive, Saxrea—I need you to realign the aft wards, stabilize the engine seal, and maybe stop pouting while you're at it."

She started to argue.

He snapped his fingers.

A red flash blinked across the deck—louder than thunder, faster than light. In an instant, every enemy on and 40 meters around the ship evaporated into a rain of black ash. Even the waves died down and submitted. The silence afterward was unnatural, broken only by the groaning of the hull and the swirl of seawater below.

Jafar exhaled through his nose. "You were saying?"

Saxrea glared but stalked off, muttering under her breath the whole way.

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He walked to the edge of the ship, boots thunking on soaked wood, and leaned into the salty wind. Lenord, panting and wide-eyed, jogged up beside him.

"We lost Malves," he said grimly. "Storm took the rear starboard. Monsters surged through. He held them back."

Jafar's expression flickered. "Malves, huh? Damn. I'll miss his triple-baked waffles with pepper glaze."

Lenord gave him a flat look.

"Welp, nothing we can do about it now. Maybe put a waffle in a toaster in his honor." He chuckled and looked over at Lenord. "Have Ereka get this mess in order," Jafar said. "I've got Saxrea resetting the wards. You—keep the rest of the freak show off the deck."

Lenord's tail twitched. "And you? What are you doing?"

Jafar cracked his neck, eyes flashing crimson. "There's a legend out there with my name on it."

And with that, he launched himself off the deck, a crimson streak arcing through the chaos and vanishing into the storm-torn sea.

The sea screamed—literally screamed—as his body surged forward, parting the waters with each explosive shockwave as he soared. Waves heaved themselves upward to crush him. Thunder cracked, wind howled. The sky spat fire.

He didn't flinch.

Each element that tried to stop him was dismissed like an afterthought. Wind? He sliced through it. Water? He scorched a path beneath it. Lightning tried to dance on his shoulders and was absorbed into the blood dancing along his veins.

His eyes were bleeding—not from injury, but from power. Twin sigils blazed across his irises, symbols ancient and alive, shifting as if written in liquid geometry. The sigils let him see them—the threads. Fates tangled, destinies half-written, illusions pretending to be paths.

"Cute," Jafar muttered.

He let his Ryun flare, a thick pulse of red-black energy that buffered out the false leads, burning them to static in his mind. What remained was clear: one thread, jagged and gold-edged, leading east across the blood-colored surf.

An island.

Not large, but alive with pressure. The aura radiating from it was massive—dense enough to warp the clouds overhead. A lesser being would have turned back. A smarter and stronger one would've circled wide.

But to Jafar?

Warnings were just the world's way of sending him an invitation. And he never turned those down.

The moment Jafar set foot on the island, the ground pulsed.

Two colossal guardians—statues given cruel life, their forms shaped from obsidian and old magic—lurched forward to intercept him. Each stood over twenty feet tall, their shoulders jagged with crystal and bone, eyes glowing with warding glyphs.

Jafar didn't stop walking.

He raised one hand lazily, fingers glowing with inner heat. "FieNare," he whispered, the word rolling from his tongue like a curse older than language. He'd fight magic with magic.

The guardians didn't scream. They simply ceased—turning to ash mid-step, their existence scrubbed from reality like bad chalk on cracked slate.

Silence fell.

Then a single, deliberate clap echoed from the mountain peak above.

Jafar turned his head upward, unsurprised. A figure stood on the edge of a carved platform, swathed in a heavy robe of stitched purple cloth. The wind caught the garment just enough to make the stranger look like some stitched-together deity waiting to cast judgment.

The figure smiled, sharp and knowing.

Jafar grinned back.

"Oh," he said, flexing his fingers. "You're gonna be fun."

The figure stepped forward, moonlight carving soft silver into his long black hair, which spilled freely over his mismatched robe. His green eyes glinted with the sort of humor that preceded either a drink or a duel.

"You killed my cook," Jafar said, pointing a casual finger like he was recounting a mild inconvenience.

"I did?" the figure replied, not bothering to feign surprise. "Apologies. I didn't know you had culinary royalty on board."

Jafar sighed. "He made Flamewhip stew. Do you know how hard it is to get Flamewhip tentacles off-market? And that ship—we had it on loan. Loan." He gestured to the horizon where the broken ship still floated like driftwood.

The man shrugged. "This is my territory. Trespassers tend to get eaten."

"I'm aware," Jafar muttered. "Beast of Rituain. Controls the tides, swallows fleets, whispers to the old bones of the deep. That bedtime story."

The figure chuckled. "And yet you came anyway."

"You're not the only one with stories." Jafar smirked. "I've heard all about the elusive beast playing god in these waters. But I guess you've heard of me too."

Rituain tilted his head, voice dipping into mock contemplation. "How arrogant, but yes I have. A prince with no throne. A troublemaker burning maps just to redraw them wrong. The bastard bard of the blood realms."

Jafar burst out laughing. "That's rich coming from a glorified hermit. Did your cave finally run out of conversation?"

Rituain's smile widened. "Keep talking like that, and I might just feed you to the trench."

"Only if you season me first," Jafar shot back, folding his arms.

"I like you, Red Prince," the figure said at last, voice almost drowned by the sea's distant roar. "Though your actions elude me. You could've taken any number of safer paths to your destination. Yet you chose this."

Jafar tilted his head, unbothered, a crooked smile playing at his lips. "So?"

Rituain raised an eyebrow. "So, you brought your crew through a war tide, wasted precious resources, risked the wrath of a domain-bound beast… all for what? Sport? Ego?"

Jafar shrugged. "Selfish? Sure. But what isn't in these realms? I'm just honest about it." He turned, glancing toward the sea. "Besides, as much as I'd love to keep chatting, I've got a princess to finish fucking—and then deliver her to her very lucky husband."

He shot Rituain a grin, and with that, the temperature dropped. The air around him tightened like an inhaled breath. The waves stilled in unnatural reverence. "Plus, while I'm out here," Jafar added casually, "might as well go hunting."

Rituain's smirk thinned. "If that's how you'll have it, Jafar… this is exactly why I don't waste time with others."

"Understandable," Jafar replied, stepping forward, hands in his cloak pockets. "Rhan."

Rituain's head cocked. "How—?"

But Jafar just kept walking, that same smirk carved deep. "The world just doesn't speak to you, does it? The wind may whisper in your ear… but the world?" He tapped his boot against the ground. "It moves for my intent."

Rhan's green eyes narrowed into something less human. Green. Piercing. Primal.

What at first glance appeared as simple irises now gleamed with layers of meaning—threads of verdant energy winding like vines around deep pupils that no longer mirrored a human soul. They pulsed faintly, like coiled stars bound in flesh. And then, Rhan smirked.

It was not a warm expression. It was a challenge.

In a realm that still exists, though the timeline in which the battle unfolded has long since unraveled, two forces met in thunderous opposition—two anomalies that had no business clashing, yet every right to.

The Red Prince of the Blood Realms stood at the bottom of the mountain. Waves rose in defiance only to kneel mid-crest, the ocean itself obeying the call of the one opposite him. The air thickened as currents bent sideways, spiraling unnaturally, forming maelstroms in midair like the lungs of giants exhaling wrath.

The firmament convulsed… and from it, the beast-face was born.

Torrents coiled like serpents through the skies, ink-black winds shrieking across horizons ruptured by antlered specters of aura and ash. The heavens tore open, not with flame—but with breath. Breath that roared. Breath that commanded. A storm no longer bound by storm. Out from that breach, shaped of swirling clouds and cosmic bones, emerged a body not born but imagined—stitched together by the will of a being who had tasted the void and spat it back.

The eyes burned first. Then the crown of tangled horns. Then the jaw—unhinged, gaping, devouring thunder and memory alike. Around it, great feathered omens shrieked and spiraled, circling a phantom beast too vast to be real, too ancient to be false.

Rhan stood at its heart—smiling.

His aura snarled like a leviathan made of stormroots and spectral fur, each breath forming battalions of beasts behind him. Taloned clouds clawed the two moons. The seas bowed. The air sang his name in languages lost beneath extinction.

Rhan Xas, the Beast of Rituain.

Landmasses—entire islets, ridgelines, and stone gardens—shifted subtly, humming in tune with their master's will. They then began to float in the air.

Above him, the sky warped. The clouds, once a placid grey, were now an eerie greenish-purple, roiling with arcane intent. It was as if the atmosphere itself had been poisoned with Ryun, too corrupt to be understood. Powerful native creatures of Rituain—spectral manticores, mirror-scaled serpents, and shrieking falcons with scaled heads—circled and dove like heralds of divine punishment. Beside them, phantasmal summons took form: hunters made of wind, giants formed from sea-salt and regret.

Jafar only laughed.

It was not the laugh of a man shaken or even amused. It was the laughter of one bathing in thrill.

"You'll be remembered by your arrogance," Rhan warned, voice like thunder. "Not your strength."

"I know," Jafar replied, eyes burning like comets crashing. "But the realms won't remember me as a fool. They'll remember me as a king."

And then it began.

The explosion of aura wasn't a wave. It was a declaration.

Red lightning surged from Jafar's body in torrents, his veins glowing with black-and-scarlet light. Reality twisted, groaned, then submitted. Overwhelming Power Amplification roared to life within him—multiplying his strength, speed, durability, and magic by forty thousand fold. The ground where he stood ignited, turned glass, then reformed into glimmering obsidian shards under the weight of his presence. He bled willingly—flicking his hand as droplets of his blood sizzled against the air.

The Dominion Seed took root.

Crimson veins spidered across the battlefield like a living diagram, sanctifying the entire landmass beneath him. A new law was written in blood: no foreign forces would hold sway here. This was now his throne.

Then came the Spell Booster—his blood acting as the ultimate amplifier, pouring into the latent energy around him and turning every ambient particle into weaponized devotion.

From the heavens above, the sky cracked. Parting even Rhan's clouds.

Flickering rift-stars—red and white, unstable and eternal—bloomed open like malignant flowers. From within, obsidian chains tore into the realm, jagged and curved like the ribs of a great celestial beast unhinging its maw. They spun with gravitational hunger, hungry to consume any defiance.

Rhan's eyes widened.

To defeat the beast before him, he realized, he'd have to go all out. No restraint. No titles. No pride.

And Jafar—Jafar smiled because he felt the same.

They clashed.

The wind screamed. Tides were upended and continents broke into new pieces. Rhan fought with ancient elemental magic, sky based constructs, and metaphysical summons crafted from the ocean's depth. The world's beast aiding him in a full on assault. Jafar met each one with blood-forged blades of lightning, aura storms that scoured memory itself, and battle chants stolen from the First Flame. His maw of star forged obsidian chains devouring everything it touched.

They fought for three days.

On the fourth, both bled into the ocean.

And on the fifth, Rhan—pride dimmed but not broken—nodded once, the salt of the sea and iron on his lips, looked up to a blade in his face, and said:

"Alright. I lost."

Jafar wiped the corner of his mouth, grinned through cracked teeth, and replied:

"I know."

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