Chapter 1080. A Broken, Pathetic Little Doll That Won’t Stay Broken

Chapter 1080: 1080. A Broken, Pathetic Little Doll That Won’t Stay Broken

The air in the collapsing domain grew thick with the metallic tang of blood and the ozone stench of failing magic. Kaeleth was no longer fighting for victory; he was fighting for a reprieve from the impossible cruelty being inflicted upon him.

His divine essence flickered like a candle in a hurricane, but that very essence, his connection to the temporal flow, became his greatest curse.

Rex’s eyes burned with a sadistic clarity. He had discovered the god’s weakness: Kaeleth could not die as long as his connection to time remained intact.

His body would force itself back together, rewinding its own damage, but the neurological pathways of pain remained intact. He could feel every nerve ending scream before it was undone.

"Oh, don’t look away yet," Rex growled, his voice a low vibration that seemed to rattle Kaeleth’s very teeth. "We’re just getting to the good part."

Rex lunged. His movement was a blur of controlled violence.

He seized Kaeleth’s left arm, his fingers digging through muscle until they found the bone. With a wet, sucking sound, SHLICK Rex twisted and pulled.

With a roar of effort, he literally tore the arm from Kaeleth’s shoulder socket.

Kaeleth’s scream was inhuman, a sound that shattered what little remained of the domain’s windows. But as the severed limb hit the floor, the air around the wound began to ripple with golden distortion.

VROOOOM.

The flesh knitted together in reverse, blood flowing backward into the veins, bone snapping back into place with audible CLACKS.

Within seconds, the arm was whole again.

But Kaeleth’s face remained twisted in fresh terror. His mind remembered the tearing.

His nerves remembered the separation.

"Still healing?" Rex asked, his grin widening into something demonic. "Good."

"That means we can do this forever."

Rex didn’t wait for a response. He channeled his earthen authority into his fist, turning his knuckles into something harder than diamond.

He drove a punch into Kaeleth’s abdomen, not just breaking ribs but punching clean through the torso.

CRUNCH SPLASH.

His fist emerged from Kaeleth’s back, drenched in golden ichor.

Kaeleth’s body convulsed, his eyes rolling back in his head. Again, the temporal rewind kicked in.

WHIRRR.

The wound sealed, the organs reassembled, and the blood retreated. The process was violent, a physical violation of causality that left Kaeleth gasping, his body shaking with the trauma of being undone and redone.

"Let’s try something more... creative," Rex whispered.

Rex grabbed Kaeleth by his hair, yanking his head back to expose his throat. Rex’s other hand glowed with a volatile mix of earthen energy and raw telekinetic force.

He didn’t punch this time. He pressed his palm against Kaeleth’s face and unleashed a concentrated pulse of gravitational force.

SQUELCH.

The pressure was so immense that Kaeleth’s nose and jaw collapsed inward, the bone turning to powder beneath the skin. Kaeleth’s muffled screams were wet and bubbling as blood filled his throat.

Again, the golden light flickered as the temporal regeneration fought to restore the shattered bone, but Rex kept his hand pressed down, forcing the regeneration to work against his own power.

It was a horrific cycle: the body trying to rebuild while Rex was actively destroying.

"You’re like a fucking toy," Rex laughed, the sound echoing off the groaning walls of reality. "A broken, pathetic little doll that won’t stay broken."

Rex released the pressure and delivered a devastating kick to Kaeleth’s ribs, sending the god tumbling across the floor. As Kaeleth tried to crawl away, Rex summoned jagged pillars of stone from the ground not to kill, but to impale.

THWIP THUD.

Three spikes tore through Kaeleth’s back, pinning him to the floor once more.

"Why do you fight it?" Rex asked, walking toward him with slow, deliberate steps, each footfall echoing like a funeral bell. "Accept it."

"Accept that you are nothing more than a punching bag for someone who has outgrown your entire existence."

Rex knelt beside the pinned god, grabbing one of the stone spikes and using it to slowly pry open a fresh wound in Kaeleth’s thigh. "This is what happens when you try to play God against something that has learned how to kill them."

The clash of their remaining energies created small lightning strikes that danced across the floor, gold meeting crimson. Rex was a storm of physical brutality, while Kaeleth’s magic was a dying gasp, a stuttering attempt to reassert control over a reality that now belonged entirely to the man standing over him.

Kaeleth tried to summon one final, desperate ward, a barrier of crystallized time designed to freeze Rex in a stasis field, but Rex was already moving. He didn’t just move fast; he moved with a predatory certainty that anticipated the magical buildup.

Before the amber light could even coalesce, Rex slammed his fist into Kaeleth’s face.

CRACK THUD.

The impact didn’t just shatter teeth; it emitted a shockwave through the god’s skull that rattled his very consciousness.

Kaeleth’s head snapped back, his eyes rolling into his skull. He tried to gasp, to channel power through his vocal cords, but Rex grabbed his throat mid-gasp, squeezing until the tendons stood out like steel cables.

"Still trying to cast spells?" Rex hissed, his breath hot against Kaeleth’s bloodied ear. "Let me help you with that."

Rex unleashed a barrage of strikes that were less like fighting and more like systematic demolition. A left hook shattered Kaeleth’s cheekbone. CRUNCH followed immediately by a knee to the sternum that sent divine ichor spraying across Rex’s face.

Every time Kaeleth’s temporal regeneration whirred to life, VROOOOM Rex was already there to break the newly mended bone.

He was denying the god the mercy of unconsciousness, keeping him trapped in a perpetual loop of breaking and reforming.

"Look at you," Rex mocked, grabbing Kaeleth’s hair and slamming his face repeatedly into the stone floor.

SPLAT. CRACK. SPLAT.

"A god who can’t even hold his own shape."

"You’re unraveling, Kaeleth... Your divinity is leaking out like piss from a broken bladder."

Kaeleth’s body convulsed in agony, his limbs flailing weakly against the stone spikes that still pinned him. He tried to summon a burst of raw energy to push Rex away, but Rex simply grabbed the energy itself, his adaptation allowing him to grasp the magical construct as if it were solid matter.

He twisted the raw power in his hands like a wet rag, dispersing it harmlessly and sending a feedback loop of pain directly back into Kaeleth’s nervous system.

"AAAAAAGH—" Kaeleth’s scream died into a wet gurgle as Rex drove a palm strike into his solar plexus, the force so intense it created a localized vacuum that sucked the blood from Kaeleth’s mouth in a grotesque display.

Rex’s eyes suddenly shifted. The sadistic amusement faded, replaced by a cold, surgical focus.

He saw past the flesh, past the regenerating bone, and past the flickering temporal aura. He saw the architecture of the divine.

Rex extended his right hand toward Kaeleth’s chest.

As his fingers made contact, it wasn’t the resistance of skin or muscle that he felt. It was something far more profound.

His hand began to sink.

"Nnngh... GHRK—" Kaeleth’s body arched violently.

This wasn’t physical pain; this was a violation of his fundamental essence. His eyes bulged as his very identity felt invaded.

Rex’s hand entered Kaeleth’s divine form.

It wasn’t a conventional penetration of tissue. Through the medium that his soul manipulation operated in, Rex’s hand moved through the soul layer structure.

To an observer, it would look as though his arm was dissolving into golden mist, but to Rex, it was a journey through a complex, multidimensional landscape.

He was navigating the soul register’s space not through physical pathways, but through the intricate and daunting structure built over two thousand years by a single god.

It was a cathedral of consciousness, a lattice of divine memories and power conduits. And as Rex’s fingers delved deeper into this sacred geometry, he felt the metaphysical agony of the god, a psychic shriek that echoed through his own mind.

Kaeleth’s body convulsed on the floor, his divine essence flickering wildly as his core was breached.

Deep within that labyrinth of celestial code and ancient power, Rex’s fingers brushed against something solid, something pulsing with the rhythm of the universe itself.

He found it.

The Aethelgard anchor.