Arjuna uses Spiral Power to resist time stop and Stillness

"So that's how it is..." He muttered. You stepped backwards through hyperspace, just in time to avoid sudden bonds of light shooting up around his feet. His posture hadn't changed in the slightest, his face was still the same as it'd always been, and even The Way felt unchanged about him-no, it felt Still. Ah, so that's what he was doing. He was keeping himself Still in such a way that you couldn't perceive anything about him until after he'd acted.

" ̷̕ ̷҉ ͞҉̵͜ ̷̵̢͝ ̸̶͘ ̴̧͞ ́͝ " He spoke, and you winced. It wasn't an alien concept he spoke, just several dozen words spoken in the exact same instant of time. Literally the same instant. His Barrier flared to life and full power without any delay in the slightest, and he seemed to...glide towards you in a way, his steps occurring out of sync with his movements. The heck? And then something truly scary happened; one moment your Eye continued to make good progress towards discerning him, and then next he was gone from it entirely once again. Yup, this just keeps getting better and better.

"I had wondered what ritual the Wizard Martial had enacted a decade ago that was so drastic that it'd supposedly 'bring hope' to all of humanity." He began monologuing. Because of course he was going to monologue. Your Aura flared and your Light Hawk Armor flashed into existence, Reinforcement and Prana Burst active and ready for you. "And upon discovering you I understood. He had tapped into that one principle that was uniform in all life, even among Types...the existence of an Aristotele, an Ultimate One. Humanity is a feeble existence, but even we should possess our own Ultimate...and yet we seemingly didn't. Until I discovered you."

Light...no, something other to light flashed out from his body and the world went gray. It was only the strange temporal nodes in your cells and the immense drain on your prana that kept you mobile, and even then a sudden weight fell on you. You grit your teeth; why was he doing this?

"Humanity is a virus in the eyes of the planet, and we spread much like one. So numerous...so how would it even be possible to find that one Ultimate that surpassed all others when it'd still be just slightly larger than its insignificant brethren? Humanity's strength has always been in our numbers and cooperation, not our singular existence. But what if...that wasn't true? What if that Ultimate began to swell, to grow and shift so rapidly that it was undeniable in its existence? And what if...the soul of that Ultimate was the sacrifice, the first and final of humanity that the rest may grow as well?" His arm lashed out, and his physical body peeled away to reveal...structure. Bones, veins, sinews, flesh, and even the most transparent of skin. Your own soul structure. "I do not learn as fast as you do, but I do not need to." He admitted, his flesh knitting back together over his soul.

"Once I realized the truth of the Wizard Marshal's ritual, it was trivial to tap into its benefits. The quiet and careful sacrifice of a thousand souls, gathering up their tiny and insignificant connections to your own to forge a mirror straight into your existence. One way, unfortunately, but even you cannot move in a world that is utterly Still."

And it was true. You could feel your body slowing, your mind quieting the longer you were kept in this grey miasma that seemingly encompassed all of reality. You tried to step away but higher dimensions no longer seemed to exist, and you tried to move backwards but it was already too far back. Forwards...did nothing as well. You were trapped.

He had never stopped walking towards you, and his dark eyes stared into your own now. "This is not done out of cruelty, please understand. Your soul...is simply exactly what I need to access Akasha. The origin of Hope in a world of Despair." His hand reached forwards, and as it did so you could feel everything it came into contact with Still; your etheric mitochondria, the raging currents of your armor, your aura of prana, and the world began to grow dark...

...

...No.

You wouldn't allow this.

Just before the skin, Araya's fingers stopped.

"Murderer." You accused him, forcing lips to move past Stillness. It hurt, so much, but...

Your soul began to boil with green light, light that decided the impossible didn't exist.

And suddenly Souren was flying backwards, the impression of a fist embedded in his chest as your arm burnt with golden prana and green willpower. You grit your teeth hard enough to hear something crack and growled, forcing more of the pure determination within your Reality Marble to rise up and empower you. Whatever strange abilities Souren had developed by studying and replicating you, they stopped you cold at first but now you could move.

He stood back up from the edge of the street, grimacing a bit. "Unexpected, but no matter." He declared, the world around him visibly growing black as time itself seemed to wither. He wiped a hand in the air and you were forced to dodge as instantly an impossible force seemed to manifest in the path of his swipe. The Way wasn't working as it should, declaring that such abilities were utterly outside his purview. What you could deduce...

He was nowhere near as fast as you, as strong as you, or could endure as much judging by the impression still on his chest. Yet he had abilities you had no idea about, an awakened Origin of Stillness that seemed to grant him way more power than he had any right towards, and this strange miasma he'd summoned up over the city was shutting down higher dimensional travel. If you lost focus for even a moment, you lost. If you lost consciousness, you lost. If you got distracted, you lost. Spiral Power was the only thing keeping you on your feet right now, and your prana felt incredibly sluggish and unreliable here.

Alaya's Eye was blind right now, and no matter how much prana you poked at it there was no response. If you summoned Altria then she'd just get caught up in the timestop as far as you could tell. You were on your own.