The heavy oak doors of the mini-mansion didn't just open—they splintered into a thousand jagged shards.
King Neptune strode through the shattered entryway, his royal blue silk robes billowing behind him, flanked by an elite vanguard of six high-tier imperial assassins clad in pitch-black leather and eight heavily armored royal guards. A cruel, arrogant smirk twisted the King's face as he crossed the threshold, his chest puffed out with absolute triumph.
"Rejoice, you worthless insects! I shall be your new master—!"
Neptune's roaring declaration froze mid-sentence, dying violently in his throat.
Sitting comfortably on a high-backed velvet armchair in the center of the pristine living room was Kira Yagami. His legs were crossed casually, one arm resting over the back of the chair while the other gave a light, innocent little wave. A faint, bored smirk played on his lips.
"Hey," Kira said softly.
Before King Neptune or his elite guard could even process the reality of seeing the boy who was supposed to be chained in an underground vault miles away, the ambient shadows in the room snapped taut.
SCHLIKT!
Virtually invisible monomolecular wire strings—woven throughout the entryway in a dense, lethal web—erupted from the floorboards and ceiling. In mid-air, the six imperial assassins and eight royal guards were yanked off their feet. The razor-sharp strings whipped around their limbs, necks, and torsos, suspending them like grotesque marionettes above the floor. They couldn't move a single muscle; every slight twitch caused the microscopic wires to slice deeper into their flesh, drawing thin ribbons of blood.
Neptune gasped, stumbling backward, but a wire instantly coiled around his throat and wrists, pinning him rigidly in place, forcing his chin up.
"Wh-What... how...?" Neptune stammered, his eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated terror.
The Kira sitting in the armchair suddenly flickered, his form distorting into a swirl of fading dark mana before vanishing completely.
A shadow clone.
"So, King..."
A ice-cold voice echoed directly from the pitch-black shadow cast behind Neptune's back. Kira stepped out from the darkness like a phantom, leaning in close to the King's ear.
"...what now?"
The Weight of Two Lifetimes
Neptune's breath hitched, a cold sweat drenching his silk robes. The utter impossibility of the situation shattered his mind. "K-Kira...? You... you were in the deep vault! The anti-magic array—!"
"Was built on primitive logic," Kira interrupted smoothly, walking past the pinned King to stand beside his family. "I fixed the circuit. It took about two seconds."
Step by step, Kira's five wives emerged from the surrounding rooms, taking their positions around the trapped royal strike force.
Aoi stood with her daggers drawn, her dark assassin eyes calculating the exact trajectory needed to sever every guard's neck simultaneously. Sofia gripped her broadsword, her heavy blade resting casually on her shoulder, a cold, disgusted sneer on her face. Shizu stood with her staff held high, her elven mana crackling in bright, violent arcs of elemental lightning, ready to incinerate the room at a moment's notice. Marry flexed her clawed fingers, her ears pinned back, a feral growl vibrating low in her throat.
But it was Lyira who stepped forward first.
Her physical form was radiating a aura so suffocatingly heavy, so choked with ancient, repressed hatred, that the air in the mansion turned visibly dark.
In the original, erased timeline—before she used spatial-temporal magic to travel back to the past—Lyira had lived through a nightmare no human soul was meant to endure. In that ruined future, when the kingdom fell and the holy heroes collapsed under the weight of the dark invasion, it was King Neptune who had begged Kira for help.
Despite being branded a "useless, power-starved failure" because the holy crystal didn't grant him a flashy title, Kira had stepped up without hesitation. He had fought through a sea of monsters, saved the kingdom, and rescued Neptune's young daughter, the Princess—who in that future would eventually become Iris, taking human form through the system's core.
And how had King Neptune repaid him?
At a victory banquet thrown in Kira's honor, Neptune had betrayed him. The King attacked Kira from behind, terrified that a man with such hidden, unmeasured power would usurp his throne. Kira died in that dark hall, using the very last drop of his life force to hold off the King's royal guards just long enough for Lyira and the young Iris to escape into the night.
For five agonizing years after Kira's death, Lyira and Iris had run through the mud and blood. Hunted by the world, branded as witches, with sky-high bounties placed on their heads by Neptune's propaganda machine. They had never slept a single night in peace. Five years of paranoia, cold nights, starvation, and endless grief, listening to the world call her innocent, heroic husband a traitor.
Lyira's silver hair swayed gently as she stopped directly in front of the bound, trembling King.
Her eyes were not filled with wild rage. They were filled with something far worse—an endless, icy abyss of total detachment.
"Lyira..." Neptune choked out, trying to pull against the wire around his neck. "Lyira, listen to me! I am your sovereign! This boy... he is a rogue element! He is a threat to the realm! Help me, and I will grant you high nobility! I will—"
SLAP!
The sound echoed through the room like a crack of thunder.
Lyira's hand struck Neptune across the face with enough raw, mana-infused strength to snap his head back, bursting his lip and sending two teeth flying across the wooden floor.
"Shut your pathetic mouth, Neptune," Lyira whispered. Her voice was terrifyingly calm, but every word carried the weight of a million tears shed in a forgotten timeline.
Neptune spat a mouthful of blood, looking at her in sheer shock. "You... you dare strike your King?!"
"King?" Lyira let out a hollow, bitter laugh, her eyes flashing with a dark, necromantic aura. "You are no king. You are a sniveling, arrogant coward who hides behind better men until the danger passes, and then stabs them in the back when they no longer serve your greed."
She took a step closer, towering over the pinned monarch.
"Do you know what you are, Neptune?" Lyira continued, her voice trembling slightly with the ghost of memories only she remembered. "You are a parasite. In every reality, in every timeline, you leech off the strength of true heroes. When the world fell, Kira bled for you. He saved your kingdom. He saved your daughter. And when he stood exhausted, you murdered him in cold blood because your fragile, bloated ego couldn't handle his existence."
Neptune blinked, his brain completely unable to comprehend what she was talking about. "What... what timeline?! What are you babbling about, woman?! I haven't done any of that!"
"You didn't get the chance to do it in this world," Lyira corrected, her gaze turning as cold as steel. "Because this time, Kira didn't let you play your little games. This time, he built a family that won't ever let you touch him again."
The Judgment
Inside Kira's mind, the system interface suddenly flickered, shifting from its standard neon blue to a deep, resonant gold.
< System: Temporal memory synchronization at 100%... >
The childish, energetic voice of Iris echoed in Kira's consciousness, but for the first time, her tone carried a quiet, profound solemnity.
< System: Papa... Lyira-mama remembers everything. The five years we spent running in the mud... the cold nights... the bounties... I remember it too, Papa. The way he called us monsters after you died to buy us time... >
Kira's eyes narrowed slightly as he felt his future daughter's emotions resonating through his core. He reached out, gently placing a reassuring hand on Lyira's shoulder.
The moment Kira's hand touched her, the dark, suffocating aura surrounding Lyira softened. She turned her head, looking at Kira. The icy abyss in her eyes melted into profound, tearful relief. In this timeline, he wasn't dead. He wasn't lying in a pool of his own blood in a royal banquet hall. He was standing right beside her, strong, alive, and unyielding.
"Kira..." Lyira murmured, her hand coming up to rest over his.
"I've got it from here," Kira said gently.
He stepped forward, standing face-to-face with King Neptune.
The King was sweating profusely now. Looking into Kira's dark, emotionless eyes, Neptune finally understood the sheer magnitude of his mistake. He hadn't trapped a weak, useless hero. He hadn't cornered a rogue tamer. He was standing in front of an absolute predator who held his life on a literal wire.
"Kira... wait..." Neptune begged, his voice cracking, the arrogant monarch completely vanishing as raw cowardice took over. "Listen to me! I am the King of this realm! If I die here, the entire kingdom falls into chaos! Foreign empires will invade! The nobles will fight for the crown! Thousands of innocent people will die in the civil war!"
"And?" Kira asked, his expression completely flat.
"What do you mean, 'and'?!" Neptune screamed, tears of fear finally spilling down his cheeks. "You're a hero! You were summoned to protect this world! You can't just let the kingdom burn!"
Sofia stepped forward, letting out a loud, contemptuous snort as she rested her heavy sword on the floor.
"Hero? You threw him away the moment he didn't fit your little holy crystal standards, old man. You branded him useless, locked him in a dungeon, and came here to slaughter his family. And now you want to preach about heroism?"
"He doesn't owe your kingdom a single damn thing," Marry snarled, her ears twitching with rage as her claws dug into the armrest of a nearby chair. "You treated him like trash when he was quiet, and now that he's strong, you beg for mercy? Pathetic."
Shizu raised her staff, a localized anti-magic barrier snapping into place around the room to ensure no spatial messages or distress signals could escape to the capital. "Your reign ends here, Neptune. Not as a martyr, but as a black-market rat who got caught in his own trap."
Aoi glided behind the King, the cold edge of her dagger lightly resting against his primary artery. "One word from Kira, and your head rolls."
Neptune trembled violently, looking at the five women, then back at Kira. "Kira... please... I'll give you everything! Titles! Gold! Half the kingdom! Just spare my life! I'll dismantle the syndicate! I'll give you the royal treasury!"
Kira looked at the weeping King for a long, quiet moment.
"You know, Neptune..." Kira said lazily, digging a ear with his pinky finger before flicking it away. "...you talked a lot of big game back in that dungeon. You talked about making me watch my wives suffer. You talked about skinning them alive. You talked about becoming an immortal god."
Kira leaned down, his face stopping just inches from Neptune's ear, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that chilled the King's very soul.
"In my old world, do you know what we do with megalomaniacs who try to touch our families?"
Neptune shook his head frantically, his eyes wide with absolute horror. "N-No... please—"
"We erase them."
Kira made a microscopic twitch of his index finger.
SCHLIKT!
The monomolecular wires snapped taut simultaneously.
In a single, quiet fraction of a second, King Neptune, along with the six imperial assassins and eight royal guards suspended in the air, were cleanly severed. No screams, no dramatic final words. Just a sharp, metallic sound, followed by fourteen bodies collapsing to the wooden floorboards in a quiet, bloody rain.
A New Horizon
The silence that followed was absolute.
Outside the mansion, the ambient darkness swirled as Alaska, the Divine Shadow Wolf, emerged from the perimeter shadows. With a single, holy breath, Alaska channeled his ancestral Divine Mana, sweeping a gentle wave of golden-white light through the room.
The blood on the floorboards, the severed remains, and the lingering scent of iron were instantly cleansed and dissolved into harmless, evaporating light particles, leaving the mini-mansion as pristine and spotless as it was before the King's arrival.
Kira turned around, looking at his five wives.
The weight of the past timeline, the threat of the corrupt kingdom, and the shadow syndicate had all been completely extinguished in a single night.
Lyira walked over to Kira, putting her arms around his waist and leaning her head against his chest. She closed her eyes, listening to his steady, strong heartbeat—the heartbeat she had lost in another life, but saved in this one.
"It's finally over," Lyira whispered softly.
"No," Kira replied gently, wrapping his arms around her, while Marry, Shizu, Sofia, and Aoi stepped in, surrounding him in a warm, shared embrace. "It's just beginning. We've got a peaceful life to live... and a lot of waterfalls to visit."
Deep within his mind, Iris's voice chimed in, bright, happy, and filled with tears of pure joy.
< System: Temporal threat neutralized! Future timeline successfully rewritten! Current happiness index: 100%! Congratulations, Papa! We're finally home! >
Kira smiled, holding his family tight under the quiet moonlight. The fallen hero had finally claimed his peace.
To be continued..