A violent storm howled across the skies, tearing through the mountains below. Thunder rumbled, shaking the earth. Lightning streaked across the horizon like a beast's claws raking through the heavens.
At the heart of the storm, a massive, coiling figure moved—Storm Dragon Veldora.
His scales shimmered with crackling energy, each one a conduit of pure destruction. His wings, vast enough to block out the sun, carried him effortlessly through the roaring winds.
This was not the Veldora that would one day be sealed inside Rimuru.
This was the true Storm Dragon.
Unbound. Unrestrained. Unchallenged.
And yet—
A presence lurched into existence.
Not a surge of magic.
Not a force of destruction.
Something worse.
Something that should not exist.
Veldora's primal instincts roared in alarm, an ancient, nameless fear clawing at the edges of his awareness.
The storm faltered.
And then—
Everything stopped.
Nothingness Descends
A ripple passed through reality.
It did not come from a direction. It did not arrive from the distance.
It simply was.
Velnova returned to existence.
Not as a presence. Not as a being.
But as an absence.
A void within the world.
Before Veldora could react, before he could even register what had happened—
—Authority Reversal: Dominion Cage.—
The very concept of motion ceased to apply.
An Absolute King ability, sharpened to its peak.
This was not mere sealing.
This was the denial of freedom itself.
Veldora's body, his colossal frame powerful enough to crush mountains with a flick of his tail, was locked in place.
His power did not matter.
His resistance did not matter.
The world itself had agreed: he would not move.
Trapped in frozen time, only his mind remained free, screaming in silent protest.
"What…?"
His instincts—so sharp they had guided him through countless battles—had failed him.
And then—darkness.
Veldora's form vanished.
Not destroyed.
Not torn apart.
Simply removed from reality.
Transported into Velnova's private dimension.
A place outside of time.
Here, there was no sky, no land, no past, no future—only the void.
For the first time in his existence, Veldora was truly alone.
And then, the breaking began.
The process of absorbing a True Dragon was not simple.
It was not just power that Velnova sought.
It was everything.
The truth of the Storm Dragon.
The nature of the endless storm.
As he reached into the depths of Veldora's being, memories flooded him.
—The first breath of a newborn dragon, lightning roaring across the sky.
—Cities reduced to rubble, entire civilizations wiped away like dust in a hurricane.
—The sheer, unrelenting joy of destruction.
For a moment, Velnova was not himself.
He was Veldora.
He felt the unshackled thrill of chaos, the euphoria of pure, boundless power.
It would be so easy to give in.
To embrace the storm.
To erase everything in his path.
But Velnova was not Veldora.
He had already accounted for this.
With a single thought, he imposed Infinity.
An absolute separation.
Veldora's essence was his now.
But his mind belonged to himself.
The hunger faded. The storm obeyed.
And with that, the last remnants of Veldora were consumed.
The Fate Loophole: The World Hesitates
At that moment—
—Warning.
—Future Veldora detected.
—Attempting removal of duplicate entity.
Velnova's eyes narrowed.
"So, it noticed."
This was expected.
The world itself would not allow two versions of the same existence to exist at once.
By consuming the past Veldora, he had created a contradiction.
A paradox that should trigger an immediate correction.
And yet—
The process stopped.
—Error.
—No paradox detected.
Velnova smirked.
"Checkmate."
The answer was simple.
There was still only one Storm Dragon.
The future Veldora—the one inside him—still existed.
The world did not see a paradox.
It saw one continuous entity.
The past Veldora was gone.
But he was always meant to be.
Even if Velnova had not interfered, Veldora's fate was to be sealed away.
By ensuring that his past self would never interact with the timeline again—by erasing his presence from history itself—Velnova had exploited a flaw in fate itself.
There was no rejection.
No timeline collapse.
No resistance.
Only his victory.
He raised his hand, watching lightning coil around his fingertips.
A new storm had been born.
Not as a dragon.
But as Velnova himself.
"You lose this round."
He turned toward his next target.
The hunt through time had only just begun.