The ruins trembled.
A low hum reverberated through the air, vibrating through the stone beneath Ezekiel's feet. He steadied himself, eyes locked onto the Hunter as she activated something beyond his sight.
Then—
The world changed.
The shattered buildings, the dust-filled air, the remnants of a forgotten war—everything flickered. Like a screen resetting, reality itself blurred, shifting between frames of existence.
Ezekiel's instincts roared.
This wasn't an illusion.
This was a rewrite.
The system wasn't just altering the battlefield.
It was resetting it.
[ System Priority Override: Zone Reset Initiated. ]
A pulse of energy erupted outward, twisting the environment in ways that defied logic. What was once ruin became whole. Shattered structures restored themselves, debris lifted into the air and reassembled like time reversing. The dust in the atmosphere disappeared as if it had never existed.
And then—
The corpses returned.
Ezekiel's breath hitched as figures began to materialize around him. Soldiers clad in armor, their weapons frozen mid-swing. Faces contorted in expressions of battle, as though time had paused them moments before death. Their wounds, their last moments—frozen.
It wasn't just the battlefield being reset.
The war itself was being rewritten.
Ezekiel clenched his fists.
"The system… can do this?"
The realization sent a chill down his spine. This wasn't just an enemy manipulating terrain.
This was control over time and reality itself.
A voice cut through the shifting world.
"You don't belong here."
The Hunter stood amidst the resetting battlefield, her form untouched by the changes. The flickering world settled, the ruins now pristine, as if the battle had never happened.
Ezekiel exhaled sharply. "And yet, here I am."
She didn't respond. She didn't need to.
Her next move made her intent clear.
She raised her hand—
And the system answered.
The Executor Awakens
---
The air turned deathly still.
The battlefield had been rewritten. The ruins erased, the war undone—yet the presence that emerged now felt even more absolute.
A shadow loomed over Ezekiel.
Not the Hunter.
Something worse.
Something that had no place in mortal combat.
A system enforcer.
[ System Directive: Immediate Termination. ]
A pulse of authority spread through the air. It wasn't an attack. It was a statement—one that rewrote the rules of reality itself.
Ezekiel turned slowly.
It descended from above.
Tall. Monolithic. A figure clad in shifting black mist and gleaming obsidian metal. It had no face, only a smooth, featureless mask engraved with a single burning sigil.
And it radiated death.
The Hunter stepped back.
She, who had fought with cold precision. She, who had spoken of his execution.
Even she did not move carelessly in its presence.
Ezekiel exhaled. His body tensed. Every instinct screamed at him.
This… was different.
This wasn't an opponent.
This was a sentence.
[ Designation: Executor. ]
[ Objective: Annihilation of Aberration. ]
It raised its hand.
A ripple of silence spread outward.
Then—
It moved.
Faster than thought.
Faster than the system should allow.
A strike. Not with a weapon, but with sheer force.
Ezekiel barely reacted—he twisted, dodging by a breath.
But even dodging felt wrong.
The air cracked where the Executor's hand passed. Space itself fractured, breaking like glass.
This wasn't just strength. This wasn't just speed.
This was the system enforcing a law.
A single hit—and he would cease to exist.
Ezekiel gritted his teeth. His heart pounded, his mind racing.
I can't fight this head-on.
Not yet.
But the system had miscalculated.
Because if this was an execution—
Then he would do what no condemned man had ever done.
He would make them regret sending the executioner.
---
The battlefield was silent.
Not the silence of stillness, nor the eerie quiet before an ambush—this was something deeper. A silence that pressed down on reality itself, warping the very fabric of the world.
Ezekiel stood frozen, his senses sharpening against his will. Every fiber of his being screamed at him—this is not an enemy you fight.
Yet, he had no choice.
The Executor loomed before him.
A towering, faceless enforcer of the system's will. Its form was barely tangible, a fusion of shifting black mist and gleaming obsidian metal. The sigil carved into its featureless mask pulsed with an unnatural glow—neither fire nor light, but something far more alien.
It wasn't just strong.
It was an absolute force—a law given form.
The Hunter still stood a few feet away, unmoving. Her gaze, hidden behind the smooth visor, was locked onto the Executor. Though she had fought him without hesitation before, now she didn't take a single step forward.
Even she won't interfere.
Ezekiel clenched his fists, steadying his breath.
Every opponent he had fought up to this point had limits. Even the strongest enforcers, the system's creations, the aberrations he had encountered—they all had flaws.
But this thing?
It wasn't a warrior.
It wasn't a soldier.
It was an executioner.
And it had only one purpose.
[ System Directive: Immediate Termination. ]
The voice wasn't spoken aloud. It rang inside his mind, inside his very existence. A declaration issued not as a warning, but as an inevitability.
Then—
It moved.
Not with speed.
Not with acceleration.
It was just there.
One moment it stood a dozen paces away—the next, it was in front of him.
Ezekiel barely reacted in time. He twisted his body, instincts taking over, as the Executor's arm passed through the air he had occupied a fraction of a second ago.
And where it passed—the world broke.
Not just force. Not just power.
The very fabric of space fractured like shattered glass. A jagged rift in reality lingered where the strike had missed, distorting everything around it.
Ezekiel gritted his teeth.
One hit.
Just one hit—and he would be erased.
The Unavoidable Execution
Ezekiel landed a few feet away, barely steadying himself. The Executor didn't pursue. It didn't need to.
Its attack had already rewritten the battlefield.
The jagged fracture in space pulsed, the air around it bending unnaturally. The ground beneath it had been removed from existence.
Not destroyed. Not obliterated.
Simply erased.
Ezekiel's eyes flickered.
This wasn't an enemy that could be worn down. He wasn't fighting a person. He was fighting the system's judgment itself.
Another step.
The Executor turned toward him, mask tilting ever so slightly, as if it were… calculating.
[ Error: Target Exists Outside System Parameters. ]
The words burned into his mind. A cold, absolute voice that neither questioned nor doubted—only recognized.
Ezekiel exhaled sharply. "Yeah. I figured that out myself."
The Executor didn't hesitate. It moved again.
This time, Ezekiel had no time to dodge.
It wasn't fast. It wasn't sudden.
It was inevitable.
His body reacted on instinct—he raised his arms, reinforcing them with everything he had. System energy surged through his veins, every fiber of his being screaming to resist.
Then—impact.
A force unlike anything he had ever felt exploded through his body.
His arms shattered.
Not just the bones—the very concept of his arms broke.
Pain—raw, unimaginable pain—ripped through him, but it wasn't just physical. It was something deeper. A wound that didn't bleed but still tore through existence itself.
Ezekiel was sent hurtling backward, the impact throwing him through the air like a discarded rag. His vision blurred, his mind barely processing what had just happened.
His arms—they were still there.
But at the same time—they weren't.
His body had registered the hit. The pain told him he had been injured. But there was no physical wound.
The Executor hadn't broken his bones. It hadn't damaged his muscles.
It had erased the concept of resistance.
His arms had simply failed to exist in the moment they had tried to block.
Ezekiel coughed violently, the sheer force of the attack leaving his entire body reeling. The ground beneath him cracked as he skidded to a stop.
This wasn't a battle.
This was an execution.
And he was the first condemned.
A Choice Beyond Death
He struggled to his feet, every fiber of his being trembling. His mind raced.
This wasn't a fight he could win.
Not with strength. Not with speed. Not even with skill.
This was a force beyond all of that.
So how the hell was he supposed to survive?
The Executor turned toward him, raising its arm once more. The same motion. The same inevitable strike.
Ezekiel's thoughts spun.
This thing—it followed rules.
Everything in the system had rules. No matter how powerful, no matter how absolute—there was always a condition.
The Executor's strikes erased resistance. His arms had still been there—but the moment he had tried to block, they had simply… failed to function.
Meaning—if he fought within the system's laws, he was already dead.
So he had only one option.
Break the rules first.
As the Executor's arm descended, Ezekiel moved—not to block, not to dodge.
But to do what the system had never accounted for.
Reject its authority.
The moment stretched into eternity.
The system had declared his death inevitable.
But Ezekiel had already made his choice.
If fate had sentenced him—
He would carve his own path instead.
And for the first time—
The Executor hesitated
---