The chapter begins, The wind had gone dead.
Huey and Julius stood shoulder to shoulder, the sky behind them bleeding with crimson twilight as the central front fell into an eerie, ominous silence.
Huey tilted his head just slightly, voice low and resolute.
"You ready?"
Julius didn't speak immediately, his chest rising once then still.
"Yes."
He took one step forward.
FWOOOM!
A shockwave erupted from beneath his feet, cracking the stones in a perfect ring around him.
"Seven Seal of Heaven: Seventh Gate—Open."
TCHHHHHHH-KRAK.
His entire form halted, rigid—like the universe itself held its breath. Then, without warning, a burning, roaring RRRRRRRRRRRRAHHHHHHHH!!! tore through the field as crimson fire burst from his pores. His muscles twisted, tendons warped, his legs tore open and reformed into the galloping limbs of a divine stallion—massive hooves slamming into the ground. His torso remained human, but his skin glowed white-hot with angelic fury. Two horns spiraled from his brow like blades of obsidian glass.
His voice came again—quiet, apocalyptic.
"Seven Heavenly Seal: 4 Horse Chariot of God."
WHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOM!!!
Above him, space bent inward like glass under pressure. Then—crack by crack—it shattered.
First: a White Horse, blazing with radiant judgment, its breath steaming with divine light.
Then: a Red Horse, burning with endless war, its mane like writhing lava.
Then: a Black Horse, cloaked in famine and sorrow, its eyes pits of greed.
Finally: a Pale Horse, skeletal and silent, wrapped in the mists of plague and death.
They circled Julius above in wide, celestial arcs, each leaving trails of ruin behind them. The ground quaked.
Julius's eyes flared pure gold. "Go."
The horses screamed and launched downward.
The roar of the heavens peeled outward.
Across the battlefield, Sir Varion stood still his armored cloak fluttering against the sheer force rolling toward him. His eyes widened, voice caught between awe and dread.
"Impossible…"
His gaze locked onto Julius. "The Seven Seals of Heaven…? He's channeling Seals One through Four simultaneously—manifesting all their horse avatars in one attack?"
His hand drifted instinctively to his blade.
"I must be very—"
SKRAAAAAAAAOOOOOOM!!!
A howling flash. White, red, black, and pale—a quadripoint of unseeable energy surged forward in a formation more tidal than solid, faster than photons.
Sir Varion's sentence never finished.
KA-THOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
Impact.
A blinding nova of light detonated where he stood. The land ruptured like cracking obsidian—mountains sheared, clouds split down the middle as if by divine command. Wind screamed as it fled the impact zone. Trees turned to ash before being sucked upward.
The explosion towered into the heavens—a blooming sphere of raw force swallowing the sky in white light and static thunder. The ground was scorched smooth, stripped down to stone and dust a terrain reborn in the first breath of a new world.
Inside SUHA Headquarters, alarms blared.
Red lights flashed across the war room. General Soren's knuckles turned white against the console as he shouted,
"—We lost him! Sir Varion—he's gone! Tenzy, we lost Sir Varion!"
Minister Tenzy didn't respond immediately. His eyes stayed locked on the monitors, lips drawn thin. Inside his mind, a thought echoed.
Dammit… Did you use that technique, Varion?
I couldn't even see it just the blast.
Goddammit… please tell me you survived that…
The Southern Gate was drenched in silence until the blood moon wept.
Above the shattered plains, that ghastly crimson sphere began to liquefy, bleeding slowly into a thin, winding stream of red that dripped into a small pool on the ground all that remained of Silas.
Asger stood still, her breath caught in her throat. The blood hissed and pulsed unnaturally, forming spirals.
"…That's not normal," she whispered.
Sakamoto's gaze sharpened as he adjusted his grip on the Luton sword which had just manifested again.
"What's going on?"
PLOOSH.
The pool suddenly rippled, and Asger screamed, "Destroy the moon now!"
Sakamoto raised his blade and swung it in an arcing strike, light streaking through the air—until
SHRRRRRRAAAAKKK!
From the pool of blood below, a black slash of liquid blade erupted. It zipped forward in a perfect, horizontal cut—thirty meters long, silent, precise aiming to intercept Sakamoto sword attack from destroying the blood Moon.
Sakamoto's instincts screamed.
He halted mid-swing, the Luton sword dragging sparks through the air as he leapt backward.
"MOVE!"
He grabbed Asger and Madagascar and blurred out of range, barely clearing the cut's trajectory. The air itself split as it passed—no explosion, no blast—just a soundless surgical cleave that left a vaporized deep line across the battlefield.
The blood was no longer red.
It was black.
Asger's eyes narrowed. "That's not blood anymore. That's blood in Ascension." She hissed a breath through her teeth. "No… no, he accessed it. That's Blood Ascension."
Sakamoto landed beside her. "What does that mean?"
She turned, her voice deadly calm.
"My brother Silas is entering a state we call Ascension. It's rare temporary but in it, he gains power that mirrors a celestial force, the Blood God himself my father once told me about this but he himself didn't believe it was possible "
She looked into his eyes.
"In this state, he can control the blood of every human in the world. He'll become something close to a living curse."
Sakamoto's jaw tightened. "Then how do we stop it?"
"We liquidate the blood in our own bodies, thus preventing him from having any access to it.."
Sakamoto stared. "And that's not just gonna kill us?"
"I'll keep us alive, using my tissue bending, I promise."
But he shook his head slowly, eyes burning now.
"No need."
Asger blinked.
"Because I'm going to kill him before he comes out the way he wants."
A low, metallic hum rippled through the air, and the blood pool began to rise.
The liquid now tar-black levitated in spirals, ascending like reversed rainfall. As it floated, it hardened mid-air with a crackle, forming into rigid black plates, then shattered like obsidian glass—
KRAK! SHHHH!
—revealing the figure within.
Silas.
His body was draped in a white garment, seamless, glowing faintly like moonlight trapped in cloth. Across his forehead gleamed a black cross, etched into flesh. His eyes were no longer human—each pupil had taken the shape of a cross, narrow and radiant with unblinking menace.
A tail flicked behind him—long, slick, entirely black, the tip sharpened into a perfect triangle blade. He floated several meters above the ground, his body still as death.
Silas exhaled slowly. His breath fogged white despite the heat.
Then he spoke—his voice calm, unnervingly serene.
"Blood Ascension State: Voremortis… the Duke of Death."
He raised his hand, pale and long-fingered, toward his face.
"Gratitude is rare for me… but to you, boy—"
He pointed a single finger at Sakamoto below.
"—I owe thanks. Pushing me this far… it is a feat."
A faint pulse escaped from his fingertip.
Then—
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The earth detonated. A blast of invisible force struck where Sakamoto had just been, vaporizing the ground beneath in a perfect dome. Stones turned to steam. The crater left behind stretched ten meters wide, six feet deep nothing survived.
Silas's eyes flickered briefly pale. His head tilted. His breath trembled, just once.
Sakamoto was gone.
Far off to the side, kneeling in a pile of gravel, Sakamoto's eyes shot open wide.
"What… just happened?!"
A voice echoed inside him—ancient, tired, knowing.
"You'd be dead now if I hadn't moved your body myself."
Jushin it was,
Sakamoto's hands trembled.
Jushin continued.
"That boy up there? That's not Silas anymore. He's channeling power directly from a Celestial—one of the creators of this world. And if I'm right… he's carrying a Devil's Curse Mark. I don't know how, but—"
Another thunderous crack as Silas's tail whipped down, faster than vision.
Sakamoto's form blurred and vanished—reappearing twenty feet away just as the tail struck the ground and caved in the entire surface. Debris flew for miles.
Jushin's voice hardened.
"He's not fully awakened yet. We end him now, or we don't get another chance."
Sakamoto's eyes narrowed, both hands opening.
Jushin's energy flooded into him.
"Channel your Shen. Focus your Hybrid Art. And when I say go, you Shadow Swap—then blast."
Sakamoto dropped into a crouch, his left palm stretching forward.
Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvmmmmmm—
A deep frequency buzzed through the air as black energy surged from his hand, spiraling with tendrils of orange and blue light. Shen and dark matter fused into a miniature sphere, floating just above his palm.
"Focus," Jushin's voice echoed in his mind. "Don't fight the energy. Let it rotate."
The orb spun, faster and faster, its surface roiling like a newborn planet. It grew, and with every heartbeat it pulsed—
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
It doubled in size.
Then tripled.
Then it became a planetary mass a blinding ball of volatile energy now rivaling Jupiter in scale, floating in a cocoon of gravitational distortion heavy even on Sakamoto as the ground scattered beneath his feet.
Above, Silas floated still, his white robes fluttering in the rising turbulence.
His eyes narrowed.
"Black Blood."
A sliver of blood hissed from his tail—pure obsidian fluid, twisting in the air.
"Death Syndrome."
It hardened in an instant shaped into a crescent scythe of pitch-black doom.
The air shrieked as it launched downward, slicing through reality like a guillotine from another plane.
Jushin's voice rose inside Sakamoto.
"NOW, Saka! GO!"
"Shadow Swap!"
WHHHHHOOOOOOM—!
Sakamoto vanished in a blink.
In the same instant, the Death Syndrome scythe struck the earth—
KRRRRRRRRRRRAKKA-DOOOOOMMM!!!
The world shook. Trees hundreds of meters away split, the dirt cratered into a jagged gash across the battlefield.
Then—
Sakamoto appeared directly behind Silas.
He roared:
"Hybrid Art: JUPITER CHERUBIM!!!"
The titanic energy orb unleashed with a howl—its surface vibrating, glowing, tearing space apart as it shot forward.
Silas spun midair his tail surged around to intercept.
BAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOM!!!
The tail met the blast—and shattered.
Silas's scream tore the skies as the cherubim burst over him, wrapping his body in a planet-sized inferno. He was swallowed in an instant.
The orb did not stop.
It pierced the clouds. It tore through the stratosphere. It passed the mesosphere—then the thermosphere—and into the Kármán line.
Beyond Earth.
In space, it exploded—
KRRRAAAAKKA-KOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!
A billion microbursts. A white-gold nova. A heat wave as hot as quasars, burning beyond measurement.
Silas was gone.
Disintegrated atom by atom, scream ending not with a word—but a silence so complete it rang across the heavens.
Back on Earth—
Wind tore across the Arctic plains. Greenland trembled. The hot shockwave spread through the upper atmosphere and touched the ground, causing trees to bow and icebergs to crack.
Sakamoto dropped to one knee,his right hand burnt.
He was gasping. Hard.
His chest heaved like it might collapse. Hands trembling. Fingers curled into the dirt.
Inside the SUHA headquarters minister Tenzy spoke.. " Everyday I thank God that boy is on our side" he said and general Soren said " yes I definitely agree"
Inside SUHA Headquarters, silence had returned—but it was a silence laced with unease.
In the lower levels, sealed behind glass-titanium walls, a medical operation was underway.
Boris lay unconscious on a cold steel slab, bare-chested. His body was slick with sweat and stained with blood—but it was the ice arrow protruding from his abdomen that drew every eye.
Its shaft gleamed translucent blue. Tiny frost patterns etched themselves across his skin in slow spirals—alive.
Three doctors in white sealed suits worked furiously.
"Core vitals holding," said the lead surgeon. "But… it's still in him. And we can't move it. Every time we try to melt it, it regenerates."
Doctor Lasek peered closer at the monitor, fingers racing across the keyboard.
"Wait a second… Look at this."
He pointed to the scanner. "The ice isn't freezing anything else. No frost damage. No internal trauma. That's not natural."
The third doctor frowned. "You're right… it's as if the ice is targeting only him to torture him while he's alive—"
CHK.
They froze.
From the arrow—from within the frozen shaft itself—something moved.
It extended.
"Wait—what is that—"
THHHHK!
Without warning, a spike of ice erupted from the main arrow, straight forward into the stomach of the lead doctor.
SHUNK!
The second spike slammed sideways, spearing the second doctor into the wall.
Blood splattered across the sterile lights.
The third doctor turned, horror stretching across his face—
CRACK!
The final spear shot through the chair, impaling him from behind, through spine and chest.
SQUELCH.
Alarms screamed as red light flooded the operation chamber.
Marcus sprinted down the corridor, his boots slamming against the metal floor.
"LET ME IN! Let me in there!"
He reached for the door panel—
But a hand grabbed him back.
Minister Alfred's voice was steel.
"Don't."
Marcus twisted in rage. "That's Boris in there!"
Alfred didn't blink. "And if you open that door, we all die."
Marcus stared through the glass.
Inside, the ice had spread. The arrow was growing roots, stretching tendrils of frost through the walls, the lights, the equipment. It was a living organism.
Alfred's voice was low. "That ice… it's alive."
End Chapter: "The Seals and the Blood: Gatefall"