Reincarnated as an Elf Prince

He lunged, and for a moment Lindarion thought the god had crossed the space between them. Then he realized — there wasn't any space anymore. Zerathis had simply erased it, turning distance into nothing, and his strike came down at Ouroboros's head.

She caught it. With two fingers.

The concept-blade shook, its edges fraying like burning paper. Lindarion swore he heard it scream. Ouroboros's voice was a whisper:

"You've forgotten the first lesson."

She twisted her fingers, and the blade unmade itself, each shard of its concept scattering into threads that dissolved into the void.

Zerathis's face didn't change, but the space behind him warped, a storm of cutting winds and inverted gravity spinning into being. It reached for her like a living thing.

Ouroboros let it touch her.

The storm passed over her form,and then froze. Not slowed, not stopped, frozen in a way that made Lindarion's stomach twist, as if his body was rebelling against something it shouldn't understand. The storm dissolved into dust.

"I warned you once," she said. "This is the second time."

Her hand rose. Lindarion felt the weight of that gesture, not as mana, not as pressure, but as a shift in meaning itself. His lungs seized, his heartbeat stumbled.

Zerathis struck first. He abandoned blades entirely, instead pulling a single line of light from the void. It wasn't a weapon. It was… finality. The line of an ending, the absolute, unchanging truth that something was over.

He swung it at her.

The void lit up not with fire, not with lightning, but with a pure, searing absence of future.

Ouroboros didn't block. She rewound.

It was subtle at first, the movement of her hair reversing, the cracks in the platform sealing, Lindarion's cut cheek closing. The swing never happened, because the moment it was born, she unmade the decision to make it.

Zerathis stepped back. That was the first time Lindarion had seen him yield even a fraction of ground.

And Ouroboros smiled.

"Third time ends this."

The platform began to shake, not from force, but from instability, like the very rules holding it together were giving way.

—

The platform was collapsing nowc not into pieces, but into possibilities.

Chunks of it were splitting into versions of themselves that didn't agree on what they were. Some cracked, some healed, some turned to smoke. Lindarion's eyes watered, his head pounded, and the system screamed warnings:

[WARNING: Conceptual Collapse in Progress]

[Danger: Observer Integrity at Risk]

But Ouroboros stood at the center of it like it was hers.

Zerathis moved. Not a charge, not a swing, but a statement. The void bent with the authority of a god, shaping itself into a weapon that wasn't made of steel or light, but of inevitability. If it touched you, you were done. No defenses. No second chances.

Lindarion's hands clenched at his sides. Even with all his affinities, astral, fire, lightning, blood, divine, darkness, ice, he knew he wouldn't last half a heartbeat against it.

Ouroboros didn't move at first. She simply looked at the blade.

"You're still playing with endings," she said quietly, her voice almost sad.

She raised her right hand, and snapped her fingers.

The blade stopped existing. Not shattered, not blocked, it simply had never been made.

Zerathis staggered. The void behind him flickered, his form breaking into slivers of shadow and steel before recomposing. His voice was colder now:

"You think I can't make another?"

"You can't make anything I don't allow."

And then she moved.

It wasn't speed, speed was too small a word. This was priority. Reality decided she was more important, and everything else, including Zerathis, was delayed.

Her hand closed around his throat.

The instant she touched him, Lindarion's system went mad:

[Detection: Purification Protocol Initiated]

[Target Classification: Corrupted God-Entity]

[Force Output: Unquantifiable]

Zerathis struggled, but each movement unraveled before it could exist.

The darkness affinity in his body turned to harmless shadow and scattered like smoke. The blades he tried to summon failed because the thought of summoning them was erased before it finished forming.

Ouroboros's eyes were black mirrors, and for the first time, Lindarion saw light inside them, faint threads of white-gold twisting in the darkness. She wasn't just killing him. She was cleansing.

Zerathis's voice became a whisper, then a hiss, then a soundless shape of a word Lindarion didn't recognize. Pieces of him began peeling away, jagged fragments of thought, memory, and will, each one burning to ash before drifting into the void.

"You should have stayed hidden," Ouroboros said.

And then she crushed her hand shut.

The god shattered. Not into flesh and blood, but into a concept of defeat so absolute that the void itself refused to remember he'd ever been whole.

Silence.

The platform steadied. The cracking, the splitting, the impossible structures, all of it faded, leaving behind a flat, empty space.

Ouroboros turned without hurry, walking to where the last trace of Zerathis's essence hung in the air. Something shimmered there, not a soul, not exactly, more like the distilled core of his divine power. It shaped itself into a weapon as she approached, long and curved, black metal veined with threads of silver that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

She picked it up, turning it over in her hands.

"This was his," she said, her tone neutral. "Now it isn't."

She looked at Lindarion. Her gaze wasn't warm or cold, just heavy.

"You touched my disciple's bond. That means you're tied to this now."

Without warning, she tossed the weapon toward him. He caught it on reflex, and the moment his fingers closed around it, his system surged:

[New Item Acquired: Blade of the Severed Oath]

[Affinity Link Established: Darkness — Tier Overridden]

[Warning: Contamination Risk — Purified by Ouroboros]

The weapon felt alive. It pulsed in his grip, not in the way of a beating heart, but in the way of a thought that refused to leave his head.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he asked.

Ouroboros's mouth curved slightly, not into a smile, exactly.

"You'll figure it out. Or it'll figure you out."

And then she turned away, the black folds of her dress stirring as if caught in a wind that wasn't there.

Lindarion tightened his grip on the weapon, feeling the faint echo of Zerathis's rage somewhere deep in its core. He had no idea what exactly he'd gotten himself into. But as Ouroboros began to fade into the shadows, he knew one thing—

Whatever came next, this blade would change it.