The ruins of the old city smoldered under a red sky. Buildings sagged like broken teeth. Smoke clawed at the heavens. In the center of it all stood Apocalypse, arms folded, blue skin gleaming with the confidence of an eternal. He had seen empires rise and fall. He had burned worlds for less than this.
“This city is mine now,” he said. His voice carried like stone grinding against stone.
Scipio walked barefoot through the rubble, the Chaos Iklwa loose in his left hand. Ash clung to his cowl. Children hid in the shattered shells of houses behind him. He did not raise his voice.
“You will not touch what is under my protection.”
The First Clash
Apocalypse moved with the arrogance of eternity. He grew as he charged, body swelling to a giant’s frame, fist the size of a car. Scipio blinked forward, vectors snapping. The punch met empty air. Scipio’s blade whispered across Apocalypse’s wrist. Flesh and armor split. Blood welled up dark.
The Iklwa pulled free with that familiar sound. iklwa.
Apocalypse didn’t flinch. His body reformed even as the wound bled. He swung again, shockwaves breaking windows for blocks. Scipio inverted momentum, sent the blow sideways, and countered with a thrust that hit like a meteor. Apocalypse staggered, stone cracking under his knees.
Evolution
The warlord roared. His body shifted, bones thickening, skin turning to plated steel. He adapted in real time, his wounds knitting in ways even Scipio hadn’t seen. Energy coiled in his palms. He loosed a beam that wasn’t heat, wasn’t plasma, but something older, pure evolutionary force.
Scipio’s aversion field bent it away, but the magick laced within burned through. His skin split, chest scorched black. Regeneration fought to keep pace. He blinked free, reappeared at Apocalypse’s back, and drove the Iklwa deep.
The blade sang again when he pulled it free, but the warlord laughed through the blood. “Do you not see? I am evolution. I am forever.”
The War
The city became their battlefield. Apocalypse reshaped the ground with a gesture, turning streets into spikes of steel. Scipio blinked through, vectors bending him around every trap. He cut with surgical precision. Shoulder. Thigh. Spine. Every strike permanent, but every wound met with adaptation.
Apocalypse swelled larger still, towering over the skyline, hurling blasts that could erase battalions. Scipio flew faster than light, carving through beams, reversing trajectories, slamming into the giant with the weight of collapsing stars.
They fought for hours. The Iklwa sang again and again, every pull writing a chapter in blood. Scipio’s regeneration burned hot, keeping him whole where lesser men would have died ten times over. But even he felt the grind. Apocalypse would not stay down.
The End
At last, Scipio forced him to ground. He blinked vectors, stacking speed and mass until he struck like inevitability itself. The Iklwa drove through Apocalypse’s chest, the blade humming with the silence of the In Between.
Apocalypse tried to reform. His body fought to adapt. But the Iklwa cut what could not be healed. It cut not just flesh, but the concept of survival itself.
Apocalypse gasped, light dimming in his eyes. “You… are not evolution. You are… the end.”
Scipio pulled the blade free. The sound was final. Apocalypse’s body collapsed into dust and ruin, the eternal undone by inevitability.
Scipio stood barefoot in the rubble, children emerging from the ruins behind him. He did not raise his voice. He did not celebrate. He simply stood, ready for the next war.
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