The annihilation beam tore through the darkness, and with it came a second strike that carved straight into the demon god Malinākṣa. In an instant, his towering form was ripped apart, shattered into fragments that scattered across the battlefield like broken meteors. His body dissolved into nothingness, but his remnants - dark shards of his essence - fell in different corners of the land, like curses taking root.
For a breath, silence held. Then came a thunderous cheer. Soldiers erupted with wild relief, their voices breaking the air like cracking flames. They believed it was over. They thought the demon was gone.
But then a roar split the world apart.
A roar so deep, so vicious, it shook the ground as though the earth itself wanted to crawl away. "Who did this?" The voice thundered across the field, rolling like an endless storm. Its eyes were burning, searching, cut through distance, moving in rapid blinks until they fixed upon one figure near the ruined statue of the white tiger.
A madman.
Guards saw him too, cornering him like prey. But that madman only grinned, his hands clutching a strange object. His voice rasped through cracked lips with dancing like a joker.
"I only wanted to destroy it… That thing… That thing is huge, it can destroy us, all…"
He lifted what he carried, holding it high in the sickly light. His grin widened, laughter spilling from him like poison. "If you hurt me, I will destroy it! Hehehehehe!"
That man's aura flared, his energy shaping into a monstrous paw that gripped the madman like a rag doll, by pulling it from bottom. His voice broke into a twisted confession.
"I made a mistake that day… when I released you by her words. You—" his tone sharpened into fury, "—you are the real culprit of this war."
The captured man sneered, eyes boiling with madness. "Hehehehe… you will die today…"
With nothing but pressure, pure, crushing spiritual force, the man's hand closed over the madman's skull. Flesh, bone, and thought collapsed into a single burst of blood. The madman's face was erased, reduced to a crimson mist.
The man took back the object in his grasp. It was the statue of the Heavenly Tiger. His eyes lingered on it, hollow and reverent, before he looked to the dome above. The dome was collapsing, fading away like it had never been.
He muttered to unseen allies. "Hide them deep underground. None must came up. Seal them with Śūnya-Chāyāḥ seal. Make sure they remain intact. No one must ever find them."
He spread his senses, cold and merciless. Every living spark nearby he tested. Those who posed even the smallest threat were snuffed out instantly, crushed under the same invisible weight that had splattered the madman's skull.
Far away, a demonic whisper stirred. "The first step is done… but the seal rests in his hands."
Then came the command. The battle surged anew. "Attack them with all might!"
The walls shook with the answering roar of soldiers. War erupted like fire catching dry fields—screams, blades, blood, and shadows. The strong butchered the weak. Death took form in every direction: stabbing, cutting, tearing, howling, choking.
Amid the storm of violence, a lone swordsman stood. He watched from the rooftop of a mansion, gaze locked upon the carnage below. His expression was unreadable, as though this destruction was not new, only a repetition of yesterday.
An eagle descended, wings cutting the smoky air, and dropped a message at his feet. The swordsman unrolled it, eyes flickering with recognition.
"Friend, guard them for one-quarter sand hour. I am coming."
The swordsman's lips curved into the faintest smile.
And below him, the battlefield screamed.
................................
He shouted in all directions, voice like thunder:
"Seal Masters! White Tiger Guardian Seal!"
The seal masters stamped arrays into the ground with their legs, hands raised above their heads. A colossal heavenly tiger flared into being over them, its body of light and shadow, fangs dripping with unseen hunger, like a war general carved from storm and bone.
They answered as one: "Next command!"
"North troops! Four-Fang Execution!"
The earth split. Four titanic fangs erupted upward, spearing the battlefield. They closed like jaws, rushing forward in a snapping motion, a monstrous mouth bent on devouring everything before it. The ground shook like it was screaming.
"East! Heaven-Devouring Fang Seal!"
A black orb churned into existence, a void with no bottom. From its hollow surface, arrows poured in endless volleys, shrieking as they cut the air, burying themselves in flesh like the voice of a grave opening.
"West! White Tiger Spirit! Lock their souls!"
Tiger lilies scattered across the blood-soaked soil. Wherever they touched, spectral tigers erupted, blue outlines blazing. They lunged, tearing bodies apart, chewing with deliberate cruelty, their growls mixing with human screams.
"South! Eternal Roar Seal!"
The wall trembled—and then the roar came. Not sound, but obliteration. Those rushing from the south were shattered to dust, flesh peeled into vapor, bones crumbling mid-stride. The roar left only silence and a stench of burning emptiness.
In the centre, the Four Guardians Strike formed. One half-human, half-tiger; another a winged beast of talons and stripes; another a single-eyed tiger scarred from brow to jaw; another a simple beast, but its outline glowed with unholy light. Each hovered, assisting the seals, striking where weakness bled through.
From the horizon, the jesters came. Faces twisted, grins split wide with too many teeth, star-marked brows glowing, eyes empty as pits. Some smiled with sorrow, others laughed with no sound. Their painted faces shifted like masks peeling skin.
He muttered in silence, low, almost breaking:
"One wrong step… marching towards doom. It's fake… she might have taken it away… but why?"
.........
Then came the same mask as before, two jester faces, but this time they fused into one. A hideous contortion, lips twisted into a grin that dripped with rot. From the merging surged a demonic human jester, his body stitched together from the screaming forms of nearby demons. He sucked in the remnants of the so-called demon god, inhaling it like smoke.
His flesh rippled. Bones cracked and tore through muscle, wet pops echoing like snapping branches. Six arms burst out, crooked and swollen, skin stretched tight until it split. This was no illusion, it was real. The thing swelled and evolved, towering skyward in minutes.
The mask warped, peeling into a grotesque eye that twitched and rolled, weeping black ichor. The creature's torso split apart in jagged seams, from which sprouted hundreds of slick, writhing tentacles. Behind its back, something monstrous pushed through—the tail of the black loon, thick as a pillar, thrashing in the air with a wet slap.
Then its hands plunged into the bodies of the demons around it. A chorus of crunching ribs and tearing cartilage filled the air, mixed with the metallic reek of fresh blood. One by one, it ripped free vertebrae and chest bones, dripping with marrow and gore. The bones clattered together unnaturally, rearranging themselves with the grinding sound of stone teeth.
It stabbed a vertebra into the earth. The spine twisted and elongated, hardening into a sword slick with steaming black residue. The chest bones stretched, shrieking like steel being torn apart, six of them thickening into spider-like legs. From the seventh to the tenth bone, they didn't break away—instead, black tissue wrapped them, pulling tight like rotting leather. The bones fused into grotesque wings, membranes bubbling and sagging as if stitched from corpses' skin.
A stench of rot and iron flooded the battlefield. Soldiers gagged where they stood, some vomiting even before the creature roared.
Then came that roar—a heaven-shaking bellow that rattled lungs and split eardrums. The ground trembled, loose stones cracking apart.
The spider-fused human demon hefted its bone-sword and swung once. Everything nearby—soldiers, demons, even human warriors—was cut clean in half. Blood sprayed in sheets, spattering the ground in a steaming haze.
It sprinted toward the wall, its spider legs pounding with a crunch that shook the soil. One grotesque hand spun an energy sphere, its surface crawling with veins of red and black. The demon played with it like a bauble, its claws clicking against the sphere, before hurling it forward.
On the man's fingers, another sphere of blue energy circled, spinning violently. With a sharp motion, he hurled it toward the oncoming mass. The two attacks collided mid-air. The impact shrieked through the sky, splitting the very wind apart. A deafening blast followed—sand, dust, and smoke burst outward in a violent wave, choking every trace of sight.
In that choking storm, soldiers from both sides turned rabid, hacking into one another. Their screams cut through the smoke, wet, gargled, unfinished.
Then that bone sword pulsed. It began to drink. Bodies collapsed like husks, skin shrivelling against bone as their blood and breath were torn away. A reddish-black aura spiralled into the blade, thick as congealed tar, wrapping around it in tendrils. The stench of scorched flesh and burning marrow coated the air.
And still, the black mass spread, stitching itself into the weapon, into the wings, into the legs—faster and faster, until the thing was no longer just a demon, but a walking apocalypse.
..................
The abomination leapt with impossible force, its warped limbs cracking the air like splintered whips. In its many hands the bone-sword gleamed, wet and pulsing as if alive, and with one downward swing it cleaved the sky itself. The two generals met it mid-air, steel flashing, their own strikes converging in a desperate cross. But the grotesque blade carved through them as though they were brittle clay, the sound sharp and wet, and hurled their armoured bodies like broken dolls into the fortress wall. The impact rang like a funeral bell, stone cracked, ribs shattered, dust poured down like falling ash.
Then the night was torn apart by a sudden arc of searing blue. A light so sharp it stung the eyes screamed across the battlefield, striking the creature's warped body head-on. The demon, now a twisted fusion of human, spider, and mask, braced itself on two malformed legs while 12 grotesque spider-limbs drove into the earth like blackened stakes. The clash detonated with a howl—flame, dust, bone fragments flying. The ground boiled, leaving the battlefield stinking of burnt marrow and scorched hair.
And then—
A roar.
From the rooftops, the man strode down, each step splitting the stone beneath him as though the world were nothing but parchment. His every steps ,as if they could be called paws and struck the ground in measured cadence, each thunderous step carrying him further than the last, as though distance itself bent to his will.
By the seventh step, the man stood before the broken wall, his form backlit by moonlight fractured through smoke. He paused. His voice was a low murmur, but it carried like a curse through the carnage:
"Still… I can't do it."
"Check the inside. Surround them," he commanded.
The two generals, coughing blood, dragged themselves from the shattered wall and bowed. "Yes… sir." Their voices shook but they obeyed and vanishing into the smoke.
The man walked on, the battlefield parting before him. The lesser monsters rushed him like starving vermin, their screeches piercing and metallic, saliva hissing as it struck the heated ground. Yet before they could reach him, their bodies burst apart, sliced open by unseen seals that blazed across the air by seal masters. Each shriek cut short was replaced by the wet splatter of melted organs and the acrid stench of charred blood.
But the swarm did not thin. For every monster obliterated, ten more crawled from the shadows. Their hunger was endless.
Then came the laughter.
That same jester's mask, the one that waited beside the river, appeared again, many of them this time, all grinning with teeth too sharp, too human. Their mouths opened wide but the sound was not laughter, not entirely, it was shrill, metallic, almost insectile, a saw rasping against bone. From their masks erupted the Kṛtimamāṁsajanmā, shadow-born monstrosities. One became two. Two became four. Four became sixteen. And then countless—a writhing tide of black bodies, dripping and shrieking, rushing toward him as though eager to devour not flesh but the very soul.
The jokers stood behind them, heads jerking unnaturally, smiles stretching until the skin around their lips tore.
That man placed one hand on his sword, lowering his body into a stance. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark haze.
"Heavenly Tiger… Claw Slash."
The words were a growl, and the world seemed to hold its breath. His sword slid free with the whisper of tearing silk. His other hand clawed the air, and spectral talons manifested, four burning arcs etched across the night. He thrust forward.
The strike split the swarm. Not just cut—it shredded. The monsters burst open, black ichor raining down like molten tar. Limbs twisted in the air, bodies split and contorted mid-scream, some still alive even as their halves slithered apart, burning in fire that clung like oil. The stench was unbearable: singed hair, boiling bile, charred skin peeling like paper. The sounds were worse, wet cracks, bubbling screams, whispers echoing unnaturally from the shadows as though the swarm itself was mocking its own death.
Behind the waves, the jesters still smiled. And with each slash, the battlefield began to resemble her. Burned, torn, nothing but fragments, scorched to the marrow, a vision of endless ruin repeating itself.
The swarm thickened once more.
From the fog of shrill laughter and warped footsteps, more than fifty jesters slithered into sight. Their faces were smeared with cracked porcelain grins, each mouth a gaping wound that stretched too far, teeth like shattered glass. They encircled him, bodies twitching in unison, heads jerking as if tugged by invisible strings. The air grew rancid, heavy with the stench of spoiled meat and charred leather.
But he did not flinch.
Gripping his sword with both hands, he stabbed it into the soil. The steel pierced deep with a dull metallic groan, and from that wound in the earth burst a storm. Blue-white lightning cracked upward, coiling and snapping like rabid serpents. A thunderous dome of energy erupted outward, vaporizing the jesters nearest to him. Their screams splintered into shrieks of bone grinding against bone as their flesh blistered and peeled, blackening to ash. The dome hummed with a sound like grinding teeth, and what remained of those creatures dripped away in cinders, sucked toward the looming beast that towered beyond.
That monster stretched out its dozen legs, grotesque appendages pulsating like wet roots torn from soil. Its torso rippled unnaturally, bulging with stolen limbs and faces of devoured soldiers pressing against its skin, mouths still silently screaming. It sucked the burning remains of its jesters into its core, bloating further. The stench was unbearable, copper and bile mixing into a nauseating perfume. Then it charged.
It slammed against the dome, twelve limbs hammering down with insectile precision. The impact cracked the air itself, but the dome held fast, lightning flickering madly across its surface. The beast roared, a sound like tearing fabric and gushing blood combined, and opened the eye engraved into its torso. From that eye blasted a beam of molten red light, hissing as it collided against the barrier. Still no fracture—only the stuttered convulsions of the monster's body as arcs of electricity sank into it, making its flesh bubble and split.
The man lifted his sword, muscles coiled like iron cables. His voice, cold and thunderous, spilled into the air:
"Heavenly Tiger: Chapter Six—Annihilation Beam."
The swing cracked reality itself. A torrent of blue energy surged forth, widening into a colossal lance that tore clean through the demon's body. The blast carved a hollow tunnel, shredding muscle and bone in its wake. The hole sealed shut with horrifying speed as it gorged on nearby corpses, dragging them into itself, bones snapping, heads rolling, flesh merging like wax.
Then, impossibly, the abomination leapt skyward. Its limbs folded grotesquely, then shot out like a spider's legs, propelling it upward. Wings unfurled from its back—if they could be called wings. They were membranes stretched too thin, veins glowing red like molten wires. The sky split as it soared, shrieking, before crashing down with a force that rattled every bone in the field.
He followed with his eyes closed, silent, unbending.
And when he opened them, the colour was gone. His irises were drowned in pale, unnatural blue, like the eyes of something not human. He gripped the sword once more, voice like a curse carved into stone.
"Heavenly Tiger: Chapter Seven—Emergence of the Heavenly Tiger."
The blade howled. Energy spun wildly along its edge, whirling into a hurricane of azure flames. Each rotation expanded, devouring space itself, until it loomed like a storm-god's weapon. He swung—and three forces collided in one instant: his slash, the monster's downward strike, and the sky-born dragon's crimson descent.
The world detonated.
Dust blasted outward, thick as coagulated blood. The earth split open with a shriek, fountains of soil and flesh rising into the storm. Within that miasma, a shape tore free—vast, burning, unholy. A tiger of blue fire ad thunder, born from the clash, roared with a voice that shredded nerves, shaking marrow loose from bone. Its claws raked across the demon's body, tearing through limbs and wings, each strike searing wounds that refused to close. The monster's shrieks turned into choking bellows, its body unravelling, burning to nothingness.
But then—agony.
A roar, not of triumph but of torment, came from both the beast and the man. The tiger's flames sputtered, and blood poured from that man's mouth in a hot, metallic stream. Their voices overlapped into one grotesque cry, man and phantom sharing the same pain. The sky itself seemed to recoil.
He staggered, sword trembling, throat ripping raw with curse:
"You… bastard!"
...................
Why did both of them scream? What truly happened in that split second? And why did she take it—what purpose does it serve?
The answers lie ahead… in Nirbindra.
To be continued…