CHAPTER 22 (HEART BROKEN)

"Long time no see, brother and sister-in-law, or should I say Sophia and Damian," he said.

"H-how?" I asked, feeling shocked at the sudden appearance of my brother who was thought to be dead.

"What? Shocked to see me? Well, I guess you should be, considering the fact that you abandoned me, your only brother when I needed you the most," he said while smiling bitterly.

"You're wrong. I searched, but I couldn't..."

"No!" he shouted. "Don't bother lying to me. You didn't search. The big brother I know has never failed to find anything when he puts his mind to it. And that's how I know," he pointed at me. "That you didn't bother searching for me."

"You're wrong, Daniel. We searched, but..." Sophia tried to say, but...

"Lies! Tell me, sister-in-law, if you were the one who got trapped in that place, don't you think big bro would have found you?"

"I-i tried " I tried to say

"Don't bother trying. Do you remember that day? The day we gained our abilities? Remember what the voice said?" he asked.

"We promised to ignore it," I said.

"We also promised to stand by each other no matter what," he replied, turning to look at Sophia. "And I know what I have to do to keep that promise valid."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Look at that expression. If only you could make that same face for my sake," a swirling blob of dark matter appeared on his hand.

"Hey, what are you doing with that?" I shouted.

"You know what I'm doing, bro. I'm going to eliminate anyone and anything that stands between me and my brother," in a split second, he appeared before Sophia, hurling the black blob at her face.

BOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!

A massive explosion rocked the area, and a formless wave spread out, obliterating anything above ground level within 3km of the blast.

"Tch, enough with the tricks, sister-in-law. I know you're still alive," Daniel said, frustration evident in his voice.

"Why are you doing this?" Sophia said as she appeared from another location, missing one tail.

BOOM!

Another explosion resounded, but this time Sophia blocked the attack.

BOOM! BOOOM!! BOOOOM!!!

Multiple explosions continued to go off, causing the already cracked space to begin collapsing.

____________________

Far away in the gods' abode, many gods were watching the battle between Sophia and Daniel.

"Wow, is that truly a battle between demigods? I'm very sure none of my fights have ever produced such effects."

The gods continued to comment on the battle until suddenly an overwhelming pressure descended on all of them.

"I-is that...?"

"How can this be?"

"ENOUGH!" An authoritative voice resounded in their ears.

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"ENOUGH!" I shouted.

"Oh, congratulations, brother. You've finally..." his eyes shrunk as he saw a red aura emanating from my body.

"Hahahahaha," he began to laugh like a mentally ill person. "Look at that, brother. You're actually burning your life force for her, hahaha."

"..."

"I get it now. You chose her over me, your own blood brother," tears fell out of his eyes. "I-I see now, that's what you meant by destiny can only be delayed, not averted," he said, looking up to the sky.

My eyes shrunk as a thought came to my mind. "No, don't."

"I think it's time for us to fulfill the fate assigned to us," Daniel said.

"No, brother, don't."

A robotic voice resounded in the ears of every living creature present.

[THE BATTLE OF THE FRAGMENTS HAS BEEN INITIATED]

________________

(REGULAR DAMIAN'S PERSPECTIVE)

I woke up from my nap today after having one of those weird dreams again. I got a notification from my phone, and it was a message from Diana telling me to meet up with them outside the dormitory. I had asked them to help me in my search for the soul-stabilizing flowers.

I got up from bed and went to meet them.

"Yo Damian, we got some info for you," David said as soon as I got there.

"What did you guys find?"

Diana handed me a scroll. 'Who still used scrolls these days?' I thought. Apparently, the soul-stabilizing flowers were extremely rare and were known to appear in places that have been visited by a divine being before. After reading the entire scroll, I got a list of places they could possibly be:

- The inverted island (Dimension 76-I)

- The Bermuda triangle (Dimension 54-I)

- Idanre hills (Dimension 54-I)

- Mt Shirakumonomine (Dimension 54-I)

These were the first four places I was going to check. The funniest thing was, three of them were in my home dimension.