"Odin! A High-ranking Demon has appeared in the Najarin Forest!"
Argos practically spat the words, his face etched with urgency. In stark contrast, Odin remained composed on his flower-draped perch. He picked up a small pastry, chewing slowly, his eyes never leaving the city skyline.
"Call Ares,"
Odin said simply.
Somewhere else, the heavy steel door of a small room creaked open. Ares stepped out, looking thoroughly satisfied, like a man who had just finished a delightful hobby.
"Oops... I wonder if anyone noticed I snuck away?"
He muttered to himself.
Argos immediately cut in.
"That's not an option. This demon has the power to nullify abilities. Its strength is beyond anything we expected."
Odin's brow twitched ever so slightly before a thin, cold smile played on his lips.
"Nullification, you say? Well then... I know exactly who to call."
Najarin Forest
Shinji—or rather, the entity inhabiting his body—stood casually before Brutal, as if they were merely sharing a polite conversation.
"So, you're Brutal? One of Kronos's little lapdogs?"
Brutal answered with a feral roar and lunged. Shinji didn't move an inch to evade. His arm warped with sickening speed, elongating and hardening into a razor-sharp scythe.
"How rude."
Brutal's massive fist came crashing down. Shinji raised his transformed arm to meet it. Upon impact, a violent shockwave erupted, rippling through the entire forest. The remaining candidates felt the sudden, crushing pressure. Akidou and his team shuddered, wondering what kind of nightmare had just been unleashed.
With a flick of his wrist, Shinji swatted Brutal away like a bothersome insect.
"Show some respect. I'm old enough to be your master."
Brutal, caught between predatory caution and blind rage, roared again and prepared to strike.
In somewhere else, a strange, fragmented world, Shinji suddenly jolted awake.
His body was back to normal. He sat up, dazed, and looked around. The world was a landscape of smoke and fire; the ground was torn apart, plowed into deep furrows as if by a cataclysmic war.
Shinji stumbled through the heat and the stench of scorched earth.
"Where am I...? Lio? Where are you?"
He shouted, but only the crackle of flames answered him. Suddenly, a violent explosion thundered in the distance. Shinji ran toward the sound.
What he saw was a battlefield of nightmares. Bodies were piled high, and the horizon was a wall of fire. Men and demons lay scattered like discarded stones on the blackened earth.
In the center of the carnage stood an elderly mage. His hair and beard were white as bone, his frame frail, yet he radiated an aura of unfathomable power.
Before Shinji could approach, a chill ran down his spine.
Facing the mage was the Demon King, Kronos. He stood like a monolith, his two long horns silhouetted against the flames.
Before Shinji could even process the shock, the mage thrust his arm toward the heavens. Instinctively, Shinji looked up.
His body went rigid.
High above, a colossal magic circle began to manifest, blanketing the entire sky. Ancient runes covered its surface, spinning in a frantic, hypnotic rhythm, emitting a heavy, pulsing light that seemed to compress the very air.
The mage lowered his hand, pointing a single finger at Kronos.
In that instant, the sky erupted.
A massive pillar of light descended, swallowing the Demon King whole. The earth shivered violently as waves of pure energy lashed out in every direction. Shinji was forced to shut his eyes against the blinding glare, but he pried them open just enough to see.
Amidst the brilliance, Kronos was being unmade. His massive form shrieked in agony. From deep within the scorched earth, countless black chains surged upward, coiling around the Demon King, tightening link by link before dragging him down into the abyss.
[SFX: BOOM!]
The shockwave hit Shinji like a physical wall, tossing him backward. Dust and debris filled the air, burying the battlefield in a gray shroud.
As the chaos settled, the sounds of falling stone faded into a heavy silence. Shinji crawled to the top of a nearby ridge. Before him lay a wasteland: the entire area had been leveled, leaving only a gargantuan crater in the heart of the earth—dark, silent, and terrifying.
At the bottom of the pit, Shinji spotted the mage.
The old man was on his knees, his body swaying. Without thinking, Shinji slid down the crater's edge. By the time he reached the bottom, the mage had collapsed, lying motionless among the charred rubble.
Shinji reached out to help him, but then—
Strange sounds began to emanate from the mage's body. They weren't words or growls, but a rhythmic, ancient whispering that echoed directly inside Shinji's skull. His head throbbed with white-hot pain; he clutched his ears, feeling as if his mind were about to fracture.
He looked up.
A plume of black smoke was drifting out of the mage—thick, cold, and possessed of its own sinister intelligence. All sound vanished. The world fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.
Shinji let go of his ears.
In that heartbeat, the black smoke lunged. It surged into his nose, his mouth, and his eyes. Shinji screamed in silent desperation, his limbs thrashing, but his body refused to obey. A localized explosion of agony erupted within him, as if every muscle and vein were being rewoven by a dark hand.
Finally, the smoke vanished into him.
The world went black. Shinji collapsed into the ash and debris, motionless