Sylaphine's Perspective:
In a blink, Kaiser was behind me.
A cold edge brushed my neck — his shadow dagger. I swung my staff, light roaring from its core, the clash sparking gold and black. He didn't flinch. Using a strange martial art, he lifted his leg high and slammed it down, the shockwave throwing me off balance.
Before I could recover, his hand caught my leg — he spun, and I was hurled across the stone floor.
He was already closing in. Another dagger formed in his grip, the shadow swirling up his arm, face pale as death. His strikes came fast — clean, ruthless, no wasted motion.
I blocked, twisted, wings snapping open, using bursts of wind to redirect his slashes. Sparks and feathers filled the air as I countered, striking with the staff's golden end, forcing him to step back.
"Arise," I muttered, tracing a sigil mid-air. Vines erupted from the floor, snaring his leg and slamming him down once—twice—cracking the ground beneath him.
He cut through them without hesitation. I opened portals around him, lightning pouring out in thick arcs. He dodged half, the rest carving burns across his coat. Water magic followed — flooding the ground, slowing his steps.
For a second, the battlefield went quiet. I scanned the smoke.
He was gone.
Every nerve in me screamed. I threw myself through a portal— And then the world split open.
Sixty slices appeared where I'd stood, cutting through air and light itself, tearing reality faster than sight could follow. Even space stuttered, unable to keep up with the slaughter.
Kaiser crouched low, one hand on the floor — the hunter's stance.
I appeared behind him, striking his back. The hit connected, but he didn't fall. I reversed time, appearing again before him, and struck his face this time, sending him crashing into the wall.
He threw his dagger mid-air — it grazed my shoulder, leaving a clean red line.
We stared at each other through the haze. My wings hummed, his daggers pulsed with shadow.
"You really are a cockroach," I said, tightening my grip on the staff.
He wiped the blood from his lip, calm as ever. "And you," he replied, "are a small fry of a God."
We clashed again—this time, the ground vanished beneath us.
I twisted my hand, the space bending around my will. In a shimmer, the world folded upward—space itself peeling open—and we were high above the clouds. Wind roared against my wings, my magic burning through the air.
Kaiser was already there, falling down the sky.
I dashed forward flying with my wings, my staff spinning in both hands, a blur of motion. I struck downward—he blocked. The next sweep came from below, then from the side. Each hit carried wind pressure sharp enough to split clouds apart. He caught them all, deflecting each with his daggers, the clash ringing like iron rain.
I twisted midair, flipping backward, and extended my hand. Water shimmered into being behind me—dozens of crescent blades forming at once. They launched forward, cutting through the air with enough force to split steel.
He spun, daggers crossing, the movements almost graceful. He dodged one, then two, using short bursts of motion—spinning, flipping, sliding through gaps between the blades. One passed close enough to slice a strand of his hair.
The clouds below parted, revealing the world far beneath us. The horizon glowed faint orange—like dawn refusing to die.
I pointed my staff at him. "Your death is here, cockroach. Accept it."
He tilted his head, and that crooked smirk returned. "I am so sad," he said, voice dripping with mock sorrow, "I think I might cry."
The air darkened around him. His expression twisted—half his face turning void black, veins of blue light crawling beneath his skin. One of his eyes flared bright azure, glowing like a star's death.
Then, behind him—wings. Not of light, but of pure darkness, threads of shadow flaring outward like smoke made flesh.
Right before hitting the ground he flew alongside it; flying upward towards me.
I barely moved before the shockwave from his flight sent me spinning back.
He raised one hand, and his daggers melted into shadow, merging into a single curved scythe that hummed with killing intent.
"Don't get full of yourself," he said.
I steadied myself midair, and charged. Our weapons met—staff and scythe—sparks scattering into the wind. Each strike cracked the air like thunder.
He swung wide, I ducked low, countered with a thrust that grazed his shoulder. He retaliated with a downward cleave that split the air open, sending waves of compressed wind slamming through the clouds.
We spun through the air, chasing and clashing—his scythe carving arcs of shadow, my staff weaving trails of light and flame.
I unleashed a burst of magic, condensing the water vapor around us into massive blades that fell like rain. He sliced through them, one after another, spinning through the storm with savage precision.
The fight carried us downward, both of us blazing through the clouds, leaving a twisting scar in the sky. The sea appeared below—a vast mirror of stormlight.
We hit the air above it hard, wings cutting through mist and lightning.
He swung again; I blocked with both hands, the force sending ripples across the ocean beneath.
We hovered there, circling, weapons drawn, the reflection of our battle shimmering on the water below—one half darkness, one half light.
"End this already!" I shouted.
He smiled—calm, mocking, patient. "After you."
And the sea exploded upward as we collided once more.
This was impossible.
How could he—someone without magic—grow wings?
Those weren't divine, nor cursed, nor even elemental. What I sensed was something else… older, heavier. It wasn't mana—it was the absence of it. A hunger that devoured energy itself.
And that smile—gods, that smile.
It wasn't Kaiser anymore. It was as if the devil itself wore his face, mocking me with the satisfaction of someone who already knew the ending.
I raised my staff high, "Disgusting."
The sea roared at my command, rising like a living wall. The waves coiled, spiraling into a massive shape—an ancient sea beast, scales glimmering beneath the stormlight. Its mouth opened wide, swallowing him whole and dragging him into the depths.
I dove after, encased in a bubble of air, light shimmering around me. The creature's glow guided the way—until, suddenly, it exploded apart.
My eyes widened.
He hadn't even moved. His scythe was strapped to his back.
From behind him, tentacles of darkness erupted, slicing the beast cleanly into tiny pieces.
"...Ahh… Seriously…" he said, his tone almost bored.
"You're so pitiful," I snapped. "I can't even laugh at that."
But his expression—those eyes, burning with twisted cruelty—froze the thought in my throat.
What is that magic?There's no mana flow, no source, no structure… it shouldn't exist!
He raised his hand. The sea around us began to twist—not obeying me anymore—but him.
I clenched my jaw. "Then I'll tear your reality apart."
I opened four portals at once—space folding, time bending—the ocean itself trembling. I struck from every direction, my staff blurring, space slicing like glass.
Kaiser's response was instant.
Dark tendrils formed sigils midair—moving sigils—feeding from his shadow. Each one consumed my attack, reflecting bursts of null-light.
The water began collapsing inward, pressure building until the ocean split open.
A crater formed beneath us, a yawning sphere where water no longer existed—only air and silence. The sea bent around it, a perfect hollow world in the middle of the ocean.
We fought there—floating inside that sphere, where the only light was the reflection of our power.
I warped behind him—he parried. He swung upward—I vanished through a portal and reappeared above, staff slamming down. The impact cracked the seafloor.
His shadows followed me, intelligent, relentless—each strike I dodged was countered by another unseen slash.
He moved like a reaper, no hesitation, every swing designed to kill.
I knew I couldn't overpower him, so I set the trap.
Using time compression, I left a copy of myself—a mirage woven from light. When he struck it, the energy burst outward, sending him spiraling down through the sphere's floor into the deep again.
I closed the portals, sealing him beneath the waves.
Then I rose, breath heavy, floating above the surface.
The sea was quiet.
My eyes adjusted—then froze.
All the creatures I'd summoned… every guardian, every beast—they were dead. Floating lifelessly around me.
And then—drip.
A sound.
I looked up.
Blood.
Falling from above like rain.
It drenched me, crimson soaking through my robes, dripping from my wings.
And there, standing at the edge of the horizon—Kaiser, motionless, watching me through the storm—his shadow spreading wider, darker, until the ocean itself began to tremble again.
The blood kept falling — a crimson storm painting the land around us.
He stood there, half-void, half-man, the scythe resting lazily on his shoulder, eyes gleaming through the rain like a predator savoring its prey.
My face dark, we slowly drifted towards the nearby land.
"For someone worshipped because of divinity," he said coldly, "you look rather human… drowning in blood."
Then that smile deepened — cruel, deliberate. "How poetic."
My stomach twisted. The feeling was so foreign — disgust, but not for him. For myself. For letting a mortal make me feel small.
Every step he took sent waves across the ground. The scythe on his shoulder hummed softly, as if eager to taste more blood.
I couldn't read him. His fighting style… it was chaotic yet precise — born not from training, but instinct. Each movement carried intent to kill, nothing wasted, nothing spared. No guard. No hesitation.
It wasn't magic — it was murderous intent.
Then realization struck like lightning.
Wait… Every time I've fought him before, he adapted — instantly. He never repeated the same mistake twice.
He was cursed…Yes. That's it.
He was cursed to never use magic — because some deity feared his potential. But if that were true… how was he doing this now?
No, that doesn't make sense. Someone who couldn't channel mana shouldn't become the embodiment of death itself.
He stopped a few paces away, eyes darkening until there was nothing human left.
"You will accept your punishment," he said, voice low, steady. "For toying with human lives without compassion."
"Don't disgust me further," I hissed, wiping blood from my cheek. "As if you're any different. You're a heartless human who'd slaughter anyone for vengeance."
"If you were in my place, you would've done the same."
"Indeed." His tone was almost… calm. Too calm.
Half his face turned void black, the other still faintly human — like two souls arguing for dominance.
"If I had the chance to slaughter your entire labyrinth," he said, "to prevent another Asura — I'd do it without hesitation. Just as you did to those innocent lives."
"You hypocritical piece of filth," I spat. "You condemn me for the same thing you'd commit without remorse."
He smiled faintly, but there was no warmth in it — only truth.
"I never claimed to be righteous," he said. "Life is not fair, is it?"
"Go to hell," I whispered.
"Oh honey… where do you think I come from?" His scythe began to fade, melting into shadow. He tilted his head, voice dripping with mockery
The air trembled again — our magic, our hatred, pulling the sea apart once more.
I stared at him, fury burning through my veins.
If I cannot bend him to my divinity… then I will rise beyond space itself.
I had folded a ring of time itself — a perfect circle of past and future looping over the battlefield. Anyone who stepped inside saw dozens of versions of themselves die, arguing silently with their own potential.
To break him.
And yet, when I looked at him, Kaiser merely hovered there, eyes sharp, scanning every phantom, every fractured history, like a predator amused by his prey.
I conjured Elfie — a perfect, breathing illusion — floating before him. Slowly, I crushed her soul. I drained her essence right in front of him, piece by piece, savoring the way his eyes flickered with something unnameable.
"Stop," He whispered to himself, the words trembling, but he… he touched the chock at his neck, and that twisted grin unfurled.
"You truly have bad taste in everything," he said, tongue flicking between words like venom.
Unaffected.
That was impossible.
Then I saw it — the ground itself unraveling beneath me. Fragments of the battlefield shattered like glass, revealing not darkness, but the Depth.
A conceptual ocean, empty of coordinates, time, and structure. I tried to weave my space around it, tried to anchor time to something I could grasp — but everything collapsed before I could even form the words.
Magic… doesn't exist here.
I realized, my mind panicking. My incantations failed as if I had never known them. Mana itself refused to bend. My body reacted, instinctively, but I felt my own abilities slipping away, evaporating like mist.
"The Ninth Depth."
Inside that void, I could not stand. I could not fly. Time no longer mattered; seconds became centuries, centuries disappeared in a breath. Space folded in impossible ways. Directions I trusted — up, down, forward, back — all dissolved. My wings tried to sweep the air, my staff cut nothing, lightning arced uselessly into nothingness. Even light and sound fractured and refused to obey their own rules.
And through it all… he stood. His scythe a black extension of the collapse itself, slicing causality like paper. My illusions, my portals, my elemental attacks — all devoured before they formed.
I screamed into the void, a sound that never left my throat. Every breath stretched across infinity and collapsed simultaneously. Every heartbeat multiplied into endless echoes of itself. My mind clawed at the edges of coherence, fracturing as every version of me across erased timelines screamed silently.
And yet, I tried. I forced portals, folding space to attack him, weaving fragments of time to shield myself — and every move was met with an uncanny calm. Shadow tendrils, born from him, snapped through the void and obliterated every attempt.
I realized, in terror, that this wasn't about strength. This wasn't about speed or skill. It was about existence itself.He was the origin, the singular point, and I was nothing but a concept, trapped inside his anti-realm.
Blood rained down on me from the sky of nothingness, phantom echoes of the lives I had tried to use as leverage. It soaked my wings, my hair, my robes. The scent of iron and saltless water burned in my nostrils. I could barely tell where the illusion ended and reality began.
And above it all, his voice — calm, cruel, unshakable.
"This is the beginning," he said, echoing not just around me but inside me. "Of the never-ending torture I promised."
I fought to breathe, to move, to exist.
But inside the Ninth Depth… all of that, all of me, was optional.
And he was the only constant.
I clenched my staff, tried to call upon my magic, my time, my space — but it was gone. I was nothing.
Slowly my staff even disappeared.
I drowned in the emptiness.
Not in water — in absence itself. The kind that steals your thoughts before you even know you had them.
My body was hollowed out, strings of existence snapping one by one, and in their place… visions came. Torturous glimpses — my kin, my kind — their cries echoing through the unformed space.
I watched Kaiser tear through them, slicing, devouring, erasing — each of their deaths a scar I couldn't even scream for.
Tears stung, but they had nowhere to fall.
"No… please… stop this… don't hurt them…" I begged, my voice cracking through the silence.
Then a whisper slid across my mind, smooth and merciless.
"Not a single soul shall escape the crimes they've committed. Your kin will suffer your punishments. And for eternity, you will watch them suffer — as I resurrect them only to torture them again."
"No… no…" This was worse than death.
This was forever.
I tried to scream, but my voice was gone — erased, like I was never granted permission to speak. The silence mocked me.
And it hit me, sharp as irony itself.
This was exactly what I'd done to him. In the White Room — when I had stripped him of his voice, his words, his defiance.
But this… no. This was not retribution.
This was a massacure.
Then I saw Lily.
Her wings — torn off, bleeding light.
Then Aliana.
Her eyes empty, her body burned to death.
And then… my wings — one by one, severed. I could feel the phantom pain crawl down my spine.
He raised his arm, unknown rod in his hand, and said—
"Time for your physical torture."
"This rod will pierce you from your behinds, forgotten depths... straight through your guts, until it reaches that trembling mouth of yours. But you won't die—not yet. My magic keeps you alive, trapped inside your own body, a living prison of flesh and agony."
From the rod he was holding some sort of thing moved.
"The fungus on the rod will feast on your innards, gnawing and grinding, turning your muscles to ash, your veins to ruin. You'll feel it crawl under your skin, breaking bones and eating flesh like acid, all while your senses scream in nightmare pain.
"You'll watch your own race, helpless, screaming in torture, your mind drowning in the slow decay. Every inch is agony... every moment is endless."
"And I will be here to witness your endless torment."
A cruel grin cut across his face. The void twisted with it.
And then— everything broke.
Reality cracked open like fragile glass under pressure, and from its shatter emerged a being so vast the void itself recoiled.
"Myriacron… Save me…" I breathed — or thought I did.
His form was translucent, half divine, half abstract — like a constellation given life. His gaze locked onto Kaiser, and the air — if there was any — trembled.
"Sylaphine… the tide of void has risen beyond what you can hold," Myriacron's voice resonated through me, past me, in me. "Step into me, and let the weight of all beginnings remind you why you were chosen."
Kaiser turned, expression dimming from cruelty to disdain. Rod disappearing into the air.
The scythe on his back pulsed once, a ripple of black energy distorting everything around him.
"You think yourself the arbiter of death," Myriacron continued, his tone lowering like a judgment carved into time, "yet here stands the inevitable. Her life is bound to me. And in that bond, no cruelty you wield can penetrate. Move your hand, and you will understand the weight of eons pressing upon you."
Kaiser's eyes narrowed — his right glowing faintly blue, his left drowned in shadow.
"This is hell's territory," he muttered, his voice laced with static. "And I am beholden to no god."
The world — or what was left of it — trembled.
"Then I will peel you out of reality," Myriacron said, raising his hand, his tone neither threat nor mercy. "And the universe will close the wound."
Time trembled.
I felt centuries condense into a moment — then burst.
Myriacron's presence erupted, a celestial storm that shattered the Depth. Chronological threads unwound like ribbons, reversing the void's laws, overwriting the impossible.
The Ninth Depth folded inward, erased completely.
And then—
Silence.
We were back.
A world untouched, sealed within Myriacron's own realm — invisible to mortals, isolated from consequence.
I gasped, the first true sound I'd made since the Depth.
And in the center of it, stepping through the collapsing darkness, was Kaiser — his scythe dissolving into mist, his body outlined by faint blue and black fire.
He smirked, eyes gleaming.
"Do I look like the kind of man that dies?"
"I am fully aware of your defiance. I know the hell beneath is empty… for the true devil stands before me."
"Only a monster can deal with another, isn't that right, moth?"
My breath froze.
Did… did he just call my lord — a moth?
Disgusting. I wanted to speak, to tear his arrogance apart, but Myriacron's voice pressed against my mind before I could move.
"Remain calm, Sylaphine."
The cosmos trembled as Myriacron turned his gaze toward Kaiser. His form no longer shimmered faintly — it dominated the void, his voice echoing across the folds of existence itself.
"I am no monster to be mocked," he said, each word shaping galaxies from the silence. "I am the creator of ages — the keeper of the lattice where time and space are woven. The silent eye that sees every beginning and every end. I stand above pantheons and their quarrels; I am a god, the beholder of time and space upon all deities."
Reality snapped.
The battlefield shattered like glass — we were no longer within a world, but outside one. Stars hung like dust, frozen. Time bled into spirals of blue light. The sheer pressure of Myriacron's power erased the concept of distance itself.
And still, Kaiser stood there.
Unaffected.
Grinning.
He tilted his head, sticking his tongue out — slowly wetting his lips like a wolf before the feast. His eyes gleamed with mockery, the blue glow burning through the cosmic dark.
"Some moths," he muttered softly, "are simply born with tragedy in their blood."
Myriacron's form dimmed slightly, his gaze sharpening, and I instinctively hid behind him — my body trembling though I didn't understand why.
Then he said something that shattered the last fragments of certainty I had.
"I have no desire to contend with you… for I have gazed into the abyss of your making... and still… this hour comes, and I know you will be the devil incarnate — the heartless reaper of worlds, the harbinger of punishment."
For a moment, everything fell silent. Even the stars seemed to pause, waiting.
Kaiser chuckled, the sound crawling through my spine.
"Afraid? Ha. It takes more courage to suffer than to die, doesn't it? Tell me, moth… are you quivering already?"
Myriacron's tone didn't change, but it carried the weight of inevitability.
"I do not wish to face…"
"The Mighty God Killer."
Then— Space bent.
The universe itself warped like paper in a flame. Stars shattered in silent arcs, their fragments drifting through twisted time streams. Clouds folded into themselves; oceans rose and fell though there were none to command them.
Myriacron's presence expanded, stretching beyond sight — his form consuming constellations, bending every law of creation around him.
"Child of death…" he said, voice deep enough to silence existence itself. "How many millennia deep does your wound run?"
Kaiser's smile only widened. His tone dropped, soft and steady — the kind of calm that belongs to executioners.
"I do terrible things… for the people I love, moth."
He lifted his hand — that same faint smirk twisting into a cruel crescent.
"Welcome to my hell."
And in an instant—
Everything was erased.