The Glorious Evolution

”He used the chasm on himself...” Gamble muttered as realization struck him, then his voice rose across the venue. ”Whatever Celestial has done, Burden Collector would be wise to interrupt it!”

The giant needed no warning... he tore two enormous masses from his stomach and hurled them simultaneously, intensifying their gravitational pull until the air screamed around them.

Levi ignored them as he placed the bow against the strings, letting out a soft exhale... he had been practicing the violin and learning new melody techniques in his spare time. Some were useful; some were purely artistic for enjoyment.

Almost rarely, he was inspired to create a tune that fulfilled both conditions when he was alone... but at this moment, in this arena, standing in front of a behemoth, with memories still intact but an empty, peaceful heart... Levi drew the bow and filled that emptiness with a low, soft note.

It couldn’t overpower the shrieking air or rumbling arena, yet it slipped through both and settled inside everyone who heard it.

Breaths slowed, eyes stung, and old grief stirred... the sound contained no words, but it found the scars left by their burdens.

The vibration traveled from Levi’s fingers into his Harmonic Spine, then entered the Void shrouding him... rather than command it through spiritual force, he used his Melody Aspect to tune every strand into the same rhythm.

Darkness answered.

Black ribbons uncoiled around his boots, curved with each sweep of the bow, and joined into a river when he played the next phrase.

The river plunged into the Endless Fall Chasm, vanished beyond its amethyst rings, and erupted from the other side as a raging ocean of darkness!

Deep tones widened the tide, sharper pitches turned it, and sustained vibrations drove it forward as though pulled by the bow.

The two gravitational masses crashed into the black flood.

Their pull ripped stone from the arena and dragged the air into rumbling spirals, yet the darkness tide split around them and closed once they passed without losing volume or momentum.

Their true target was the twenty-meter behemoth, and as long as Levi’s melody remained, they would not stop or tire... neither would Levi, who started walking behind the darkness flood.

’No mass...’

Burden Collector’s expression hardened as he studied the hooded figure approaching through the darkness.

’Has he become one with it?’

He might never have known fear before, but the burdens he had consumed contained Levi’s terror of losing everyone he loved, the dread of bearing an impossible fate, and the helplessness of confronting a fated Death he had a near-impossible chance of stopping.

Darkness and Void were among the few Aspects dreaded by the Gravari, since their users resisted gravity while Gravari bodies couldn’t absorb anything possessing neither mass nor energy.

’I can’t let him get near.’

As the advancing ocean swallowed more of the arena, Burden Collector unleashed one of his strongest ultimates.

’Center of Ruin!’

Whoosh! Whoosh!...

His enlarged core turned white and released a gravitational pull so powerful that enormous slabs peeled from the arena, collided, and began spinning around him until he resembled a small planet surrounded by a ring of rubble!!

Yet Levi continued forward... unafraid and unbothered.

His steps were nothing like ordinary ones... no, no, no. His form had become nearly massless, allowing each stride to propel him ten meters in a shadowy blink!

He wasn’t teleporting; he simply possessed almost no weight, leaving gravity with nothing to grab.

All the while, Levi continued playing... going with the flow of freedom and what it meant for him once embraced.

The melody translated his intentions into motion, making the ocean expand with the deeper register, turn with his fingers, and weave through the spinning rubble untouched.

The audience gradually fell silent... even Gamemaster Gamble stopped his commentary, allowing the scene to unfold without any interruption.

For several seconds, battle and performance became one. Colliding stones supplied the percussion, gravitational pulses deepened the rhythm, and black waves rose and fell with Levi’s bow.

Jasmine heard nothing, yet Nocturn’s dimensional bridge sent each vibration through her bones... her tightened shoulders loosened and her eyes closed shut as she felt the rise and fall of a song her ears could never receive.

A captivating smile tugged at her lips as she listened and understood the conversation Levi was having with himself, with the dark, and with everyone willing to listen.

Levi heard none of their reactions... the first movement 1belonged only to him, and with every soft note, he explored the unfamiliar silence inside his heart.

’So this is who I am without them.’

His parents remained dead, his eyes remained stolen, and an impossible future still waited for him, yet none of it hurt.

The peace was beautiful, but as the tune took shape, Levi understood that emptiness alone wasn’t freedom.

He had grieved because he loved, worried because others mattered, and feared because he had found a world worth protecting.

’This pain was born from everything I care about,’ he thought as the bow glided across the strings. ’It is part of me, but it is not my master. These burdens are mine, this life is mine... and I accept all of it.’

The song changed, its gentle understanding hardening into certainty as the black ocean rose with the second movement... Conquest.

Burden Collector launched his ring of rubble in a gravitational storm, but Levi’s Harmonic Spine mapped the descending slabs even when the world of frequencies had transformed into dancing melodic notes.

The frequencies still remembered their job and helped Levi to step onto one and then another without interrupting the performance.

Each weightless footfall launched him ten meters higher, turning the attack meant to crush him into a staircase leading straight toward its creator.

The darkness flowed through the meteor shower untouched, wrapped around Burden Collector’s ankle, and climbed past his knee.

Distressed, He ripped away part of his leg, yet the severed mass fell through the flood while fresh darkness currents invaded the wound.

Levi raised the pitch, sending the black tide across the giant’s stomach, chest, and shoulders before it poured into every pore.

”It’s possessing him...” Gamble’s voice dropped to a whisper as the behemoth staggered... he wanted to be part of the symphony, but not ruin it, not when the audience remained captivated, and especially not when the livestream viewers’ numbers almost doubled.

”He has freed the Celestial of his shackles, and now... he is paying the price dearly.”

As Gamble’s whispered commentary faded into the melody, the enthralled audience watched in breathless silence as Levi stepped from the final falling slab into open air... his dark, misty form floating before Burden Collector just as the song rose toward its crescendo.

’My burdens can follow me. They can shape me...’

Every dark current covering the giant vibrated in unison.

’But they will never conquer me.’

Levi dragged the bow sharply across the strings in one swift motion.

The final note of the second movement struck, and two crimson eyes opened within Burden Collector’s pitch-black face.

The giant froze before slowly lowering himself onto one knee in front of the small figure floating at eye level.

Then.

”Your orders, Master?”

”...”

”...”

”...”

Movement: a major, distinct section of a large musical composition.