Reincarnated as an Elf Prince

The air thickened. The cracks widened. Shadows swelled upward, curling toward Lindarion like serpents about to strike.

And then —

A voice cut through the void.

Cold. Feminine. Amused.

"You shouldn't have touched my disciple."

The darkness behind Lindarion split open like torn fabric, and a girl stepped through.

She looked no older than sixteen, slender, pale, her long hair black enough to drink the light, her eyes two pits of endless night. She wore a dress the same color as the void itself, simple but regal, the fabric drifting as if underwater.

Every instinct Lindarion had screamed she was worse than Zerathis.

Zerathis's expression actually changed, his gaze narrowing, the faintest tension in his stance.

"Ouroboros," he said, the name like a slow exhale.

The girl's lips curled in the faintest smile as her gaze flicked to Lindarion.

The void seemed to grow colder.

—

The air between them didn't move.

Not a whisper of wind, not a stir of shadow, yet every instinct in Lindarion's body screamed at him to run, to claw his way out of this void before it devoured him. His hands tightened on his weapon, but it felt like a twig in a hurricane.

Ouroboros took a step forward. It was delicate, almost lazy, her bare feet making no sound against the black platform. And yet, with that one step, Zerathis's form wavered, his outline flickering like heat distortion.

"You've been meddling in my affairs," she said, her tone casual but edged with something sharp.

Zerathis's grin returned, though thinner now.

"Your affairs spill into my hunting grounds. You can hardly expect me to ignore a prize like this."

His crimson eyes flicked toward Lindarion, and in that instant, he felt his mana coil in panic, as if it knew it had been marked.

Ouroboros didn't look at him.

"You think you're a hunter," she said quietly. "But you're a butcher. Loud. Predictable. And so… very… mortal."

The god of blades laughed, but there was an undercurrent to it, a subtle shift in pitch, like a blade ringing after being struck.

"Mortal? You wound me."

Her gaze didn't waver. "Not yet. But I will."

Lindarion barely saw her move. One heartbeat she was standing still, the next the void was split by a streak of black so pure it hurt to look at. No chant, no warning, just motion that his mind struggled to track.

Zerathis met it. His hands spread, and from the darkness around him, blades burst forth, hundreds, thousands, each unique, some jagged and cruel, others elegant and razor-thin. They collided with Ouroboros's strike, the clash so silent it was deafening.

The platform buckled beneath them. The black stone fractured in long spiderweb lines, revealing swirls of abyssal nothing beneath.

Lindarion staggered back, a hand braced against the cracking surface. The system threw warnings at him in rapid succession.

[CAUTION: God-Tier Combat Environment]

[Survivability: 0% if within 10 meters]

[Recommendation: REMAIN OBSERVER.]

Ouroboros twisted her wrist, a motion so small it should have been meaningless, and the void rippled like disturbed water. The ripples became waves, the waves became spears of pure night, darting at Zerathis from angles that shouldn't exist.

He blocked three, caught two, let one pierce his side, only for the wound to vanish as his shadow drank the damage away.

"You've grown sloppy," Zerathis taunted. "In the old wars, you wouldn't have wasted a strike."

Ouroboros tilted her head, the faintest smile curling her lips.

"In the old wars, you weren't foolish enough to stand in front of me."

Before he could respond, she reached into the void and pulled.

The platform warped violently, twisting as if the entire world was being knotted. The gravity in the space shifted, and Lindarion's boots slid across the stone toward a newly formed abyss. His hands shot out, catching a jagged crack to keep from falling.

Zerathis didn't move. His shadows anchored him to the platform, chains of black steel locking into the void. He swung a blade, no, not a blade, a concept of a blade, at her. Lindarion couldn't follow its motion; he only saw the afterimage, a scar left in reality itself.

Ouroboros stepped around it. Not blocked. Not dodged. Stepped around, as if she knew the cut's exact lifespan and simply walked through the moment it didn't exist.

Her voice was calm.

"You've been collecting disciples again."

Zerathis's teeth flashed in a grin. "Keeps the centuries from getting boring."

"Your boredom ends here."

She flicked her fingers, and Lindarion's vision shattered into colors he didn't have names for. When it returned, Zerathis was missing an arm. The stump dripped black ichor that evaporated into the void.

The god didn't flinch, he simply grew it back, muscle and bone knitting as if time reversed.

"Ah. So we're skipping the foreplay."

"I have no patience for your games," she said, her voice carrying a weight that made Lindarion's knees buckle involuntarily.

—

The problem wasn't speed anymore.

It wasn't that they were moving too fast for him to follow, it was that his mind couldn't process what they were doing. He was seeing effects without causes, hearing sounds from moments that hadn't happened yet, watching pieces of the void remember being broken before the strikes even landed.

The system kept flooding him with new warnings:

[CAUTION: Conceptual Combat Detected]

[Information Integrity: 78%]

[WARNING: Memory Corruption Possible]

Ouroboros and Zerathis moved through each other in ways that made no physical sense. At one moment she was behind him, at another she was above, then somehow both positions at once. Every time they clashed, reality stuttered. The platform beneath Lindarion's feet cracked, healed, then cracked again in the exact same pattern.

It wasn't just about striking anymore. They were rewriting the rules.

Zerathis raised his hand, and the void bent toward it, like every edge, every blade that had ever existed wanted to be in his grasp. The air grew sharper. Lindarion's cheek split open from nothing but the idea of a cut.

Ouroboros didn't flinch. She reached into her own shadow, and instead of pulling out a weapon, she pulled out absence, a piece of space where nothing had ever been. She shaped it into a long curve, almost like a crescent moon, and as soon as it existed, Zerathis's collection of blades recoiled like frightened animals.

"Still clinging to stolen power?" she said, her tone almost disappointed.

"Still pretending yours is pure?" Zerathis shot back, his voice a rasp of metal on stone.