Ryusaki floats in the silence, wings flickering. His skin is charred. His chest is blackened. The burns aren't healing.
"...Healing—impossible."
He lowers his head, eyes hidden beneath cracked lashes.
"Attack destroys mana network. Using mana network… killing subject Celestia - rule breaker…"
His grip tightens on his sword.
"Killing Celestia, priority number one"
Celestia takes a deep breath, seeing that Ryusaki survived the onslaught.
Ryusaki snaps his fingers. The gigantic sword erupts from the ground into the sky, then swings down at her. Celestia braces, catching it with her scythe.
Light glows around Ryusaki as his body transforms—gigantic, mechanical. A golden visor conceals his face, his armor radiant like molten metal. Enormous golden wings flare wide behind him.
He charges at Celestia. She looks tiny in comparison.
She warps back, buying time and spills blood.
"We are both killers!" she shouts. "I've slaughtered dozens of your servants, and I'll never stop. It's just so much fun—"
Ryusaki blurs, warping reality itself. A colossal slash follows. Celestia preemptively slashes the atmosphere, summoning another skeleton to block the attack. Ryusaki cuts through the skeleton and cuts Celestia's arm.
Her limb rot black. She kicks the severed arm into Ryusaki's visor—something black begins to ooze from it.
"Misarie—Lantere."
The black flesh vanishes, sinking into his armor.
Celestia snaps her fingers with her remaining arm. Bones twist and form an artificial arm. She catches Ryusaki's massive sword that's still moving and stops it with inhuman strength.
"Argh..."
With a roar, she leaps over the blade.
"How many of those can you summon?"
Ryusaki flies upward, but the corrosive black arm is clinging under his armor. Bones from the destroyed gigantic skeleton are stretching out forming shackles that ground him. He struggles, wings flaring—useless.
Celestia runs, slicing the massive sword repeatedly, a thousand times over, until it breaks in a thousand pieces.
"Gravitas—Rule Break."
Fragments of the broken blade launch toward Ryusaki.
She lands and snaps her fingers—her nose and ears begin to bleed.
Mephisto whispers, "No mana..."
"I don't care."
She raises her hand into the sky... then lets it drop.
The shards rain down on Ryusaki, tearing into his body. He deflects some, but each vanishes in white dust on contact. Slowly, his arms and wings are severed. The broken sword's shaft falls toward him like a final judgment.
"A fireball for you."
A slow-burning fireball descends. When it hits, it vaporizes everything—leaving a massive crater in Emberium. Nothing survives.
And yet... Ryusaki is still standing, without arms, eyes locked on Celestia.
She crumbles.
"Tough… come on, acidic death"
The bone shackles dissipate.
Celestia's arm in the visor disintegrates in black mass and melts through Ryusaki's chest. Destroying his torso.
It didn't work, Ryusaki looks at Celestia.
"Run, Celestia! Flee!" Mephisto urges.
But Celestia just smiles, her eyes wide, free.
"I never run."
"It makes no sense—it's an entity. Call for help. Are you doing this out of spite?"
"Mephisto." she says calmly, "this has nothing to do with spite or rage."
She looks into the sky, her eyes clear.
"I feel free... in this moment."
"I don't understand." Mephisto murmurs.
"You would never understand. Nobody will ever understand."
She smiles toward the heavens—and casts her last spell.
"Stars End—Finis Misarie."
The sky returns to its normal color. Nighttime. Then... meteors begin to fall.
Ryusaki leaps through the air, what's left of his body targeting her—only legs and a shattered torso remain.
"Celestia—this spell!" Mephisto gasps.
"If I die, take revenge."
"I will."
She glances at Ryusaki—her skeletal arm vanishing.
A meteor touches Ryusaki. Celestia jumps toward it—and him.
"Did you ever feel fear?"
Ryusaki's eyes widen in shock.
Celestia tears into him, slicing with insane speed and surgical precision. A brutal kick sends him careening into another falling meteor.
"CAN YOU JUST DIE?!"
She leaps again—delivering a gigantic slash that splits the atmosphere. Ryusaki is severed in two—but his body still twitches.
She lands... too late.
"Changing plans. Exerting massive damage to subject..." Ryusaki's half-torso speaks.
His severed leg rockets toward her red eye—and crushes it.
An explosion engulfs everything. Blood-red light devours her.
Celestia crashes to the ground, unable to stand.
Through blurred vision, she sees Emberium... reduced to a field of flame and meteor craters. Destroyed. Silent.
"Sorry, Mephisto..."
"Celestia—"
She closes her eyes, a faint smile on her lips.
Footsteps echo through the burning silence. Someone approaches.
In the darkness behind her eyelids, a voice whispers—soft, distant, but familiar.
Jarkata (in her memory):
"Surely, you are strong. But come on, Celestia—you're talking about rules and ideals. I see through that. Your true nature... it wants freedom, right? But promise me, try to survive until the very last moment.
I don't know who your enemy truly is. But I hope, someday, I'll learn.
Until then... I'll reach my hand to you."
Her eyes flutter open.
A silhouette.
At first, it's Jarkata.
But the vision fades—standing before her is someone else.
A hand stretches toward her. She blinks.
Kibo.
She takes it.
"...Celestia, right?"
"Yes..."
Kibo's face sinks in sorrow.
"Cerbaz... is dead. My apologies. I—killed him"
Regret chokes his voice. "He showed me my ideal."
Celestia's gaze sharpens, dull with pain.
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because..." Kibo looks away. "I think that's my debt to him."
"Why?"
"I can smell his magic everywhere. The civilians—he killed them."
Celestia's body crumples forward, but Kibo catches her.
"I didn't even protect them, the civilians." she mutters, trembling.
"And" he says gently, "you didn't kill them either."
"I never kill civilians, it's a waste of energy." she whispers.
"Jarkata, wanted to join you through the end."
A faint smile crosses her lips.
"Thank you. I see he gave you a good fight"
Kibo nods.
"What are you gonna do after that?"
Her voice lowers.
"You are an enemy of the circle, so I will ask you"
Kibo looks at Celestia, thinks.
"I will join the circle, I will protect the innocent. I will protect the world, nature and I will not gaslight myself again. The end will never justify the means. "
Celestia grins and answers his question.
"I have some business to do after that."