I stood motionless, watching that monster stagger before the ghost of his own past.
For a fraction of a second, Tsukumo's divine vessel faltered. His mouth hung slightly open, his breaths coming in ragged gasps, and the trembling hand still resting against the torn fabric of my chest betrayed him.
Emotional pain was a slow poison coursing through his veins, weakening his stance.
But that didn't stir an ounce of pity in me.
I didn't care.
I wrapped my dirt-caked fingers around his wrist.
The contact was warm, sticky with blood.
With a sharp, brutal jerk, I tore his hand away from my chest and shoved it back against his own body.
Tsukumo stumbled two short steps backward, his heels scraping against crushed rock until he managed to steady his footing.
"Own up to your mistakes, Tsukumo," I said, my voice tearing from my throat—deep, gravelly, and entirely devoid of hesitation.
I spat a clot of blood onto the ground, keeping my gaze locked onto his.
"Even if they poisoned your mind, the choice was always yours."
I planted my foot heavily onto the ground, feeling the earth crack and give way beneath the ruined sole of my boot.
"Blame whoever you want, Tsukumo. Your father. The world. The gods. But every single inch of ruin on this planet, every trail of blood... was left by your own footsteps."
Tsukumo let out a low, dry chuckle that ended in a muffled cough.
A scarlet thread trickled down the corner of his lips, dripping onto the fractured stone.
He shook his head slowly, the shadows in his golden eyes sealing themselves once again behind an untouchable veil of arrogance.
"I don't know why I thought, even for a second, that you would listen to me..." he muttered, his tone stripped of all warmth.
"You are all the same."
He lifted his chin, fixing his gaze on me with an icy, absolute resolve.
"Suki."
He spread his feet apart with surgical precision, lowering his center of gravity.
His original combat stance.
One arm raised, palm facing forward, fingers slightly curled like claws ready to manipulate matter itself.
"No more words," he declared, his voice echoing with the crushing weight that only a god could bear.
"Let's end this."
The deep, purple darkness that had previously vanished erupted from the ground like a black tide, spiraling between us in a dense, oppressive vortex.
The surrounding air groaned, the atmospheric pressure plummeting in a flash.
I felt the hairs on my body stand on end as that invisible force began to pull me forward once again, threatening to drag me straight into the heart of his domain.
I dug my boots into the stone floor, bending my knees to resist the gravitational pull.
I crossed my arms in front of my body, locking my stance.
"It's about time," I replied.
The fire buried beneath my flesh awakened with supernatural fury.
The luminous markings of the Strength Transformation, previously dormant, exploded across my skin like living circuits—lines of magma-red and glacial-blue tore through scarred tissue, burning my epidermis into glowing ruts.
Thick, whitish smoke began to billow from every pore once more, hissing as it instantly vaporized the fresh blood coating my body.
All the heat, all the pain, every lingering trace of life left in me began to flow in a wild torrent down my spine, converging directly into my right arm.
My fist clenched into a dense core of destruction.
The surrounding energy didn't just agitate; it compressed, snapping like steel under extreme pressure, and the heavy clouds blanketing Ruitan were violently ripped from the sky in spirals, sucked into Tsukumo's open palm as if they were nothing but wisps of smoke.
The blues and grays vanished all at once, giving way to a purple so profound it seemed to devour light itself. He raised his gaze and spoke, his voice as heavy as matter.
"Event Horizon."
In the space between us, a point of absolute black tore open—small, no larger than a car tire, yet so unbelievably dense it made the very air groan in agony.
My hair and his long braids suddenly stood on end, stretched to their limits toward that unnatural blemish on reality, as though hooked by an invisible, irresistible force.
The ground cracked.
Chunks of rock, dust, and even the faint glow of the embers still lingering in the crater were ripped from their resting places, spiraling away into nothingness.
The world seemed to slowly unravel, surrendering itself to that silent, ravenous hunger.
I didn't move.
I squeezed my fingers tight, feeling the crimson and azure energy of the Strength Transformation throb beneath my skin, pulsing in perfect rhythm with my heartbeat.
Every fiber of my being opposed that absurd attraction. My feet dug into the dirt like steel roots, and the strength that allowed me to crush mountains rose up like a fortress inside me—standing against the void, against gravity, against the very order he sought to impose.
My hair whipped across my face and the air howled around me, but I remained standing, resolute, nullifying the lethal pull inch by inch.
A roar tore through the air.
A vibration echoing everything that each of us was.
Tsukumo gritted his teeth, the veins bulging in his neck as the black sphere expanded slightly, ready to be unleashed as a death sentence.
I opened my mouth and yelled with him, feeling the pent-up energy sear my bones, the heat surging up my chest until it overflowed.
He primed the strike, arm outstretched, the vortex spinning faster by the second.
And without hesitation, I thrust my right arm forward, supercharged with more power than I ever imagined possessing, ready to collide head-on with the end of all things.
...And then...
...CRACK...
A black line sliced through Tsukumo's vortex like a razor shredding thin silk.
The Event Horizon collapsed all at once, swallowed by a bluish rift that tore open in the air. It wasn't a wound in space; it was a door.
The ground beneath it immediately caved in, sinking several meters under the sheer weight of something that didn't belong in this realm.
Time itself seemed to collapse.
I saw Tsukumo, who only moments ago bent space to his whims, and I saw myself, a man who could lift mountains with a punch, plummeting to the ground as if we were made of pure, unadulterated tons of lead.
We smashed face-first into the cracked earth, entirely unable to brace for the impact.
The gravity he commanded simply evaporated.
The strength I had just awakened sizzled away like water poured over hot coals.
My muscles refused to respond. My heart hammered against my ribs with such violence that every single beat was pure agony.
The pressure bearing down on us wasn't physical. It was the sheer presence of those two beings, something so ancient and unfathomably immense that we couldn't even put a name to it.
*What kind of power is this?* The thought echoed in my mind at the exact moment I saw pure shock bloom in Tsukumo's eyes beside me.
My face sank into the dust and dried blood.
The Strength Transformation unraveled like smoke in the wind, slipping through my grasp entirely.
The larger figure, cloaked in what looked like solid shadow, took its first steps.
Beside him, the red-haired man remained perfectly still, yet his presence was a breathing fortress, so dense that the surrounding air compressed against it.
"Master," the red-haired one said. His voice was calm and frigid, brutally clashing with the suffocating weight he exuded.
"What should we do with these worms?"
The larger man didn't answer right away.
His attention was stolen by footsteps echoing through the ruins like hammer strikes.
Arthur emerged.
He held Laura by her hair, dragging her along as if she were a lifeless object.
She was completely limp, bathed in blood, clothes shredded, with deep cuts crisscrossing her entire body.
There wasn't a single trace of guilt, hesitation, or pity on his face—only an icy resolve.
The world seemed to stop within me.
"LAURA! WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?!" I roared, shoving my face against the dirt with every last ounce of strength I had left.
"PICK HER UP PROPERLY, ARTHUR! PICK HER UP!"
He approached without rushing, knelt, and tossed her body at the feet of the two strangers like a man offering up a tribute.
"The plan is complete," he said.
"Very well, Morokian," the larger figure replied.
His voice slammed into me like a sledgehammer, driving me even deeper into the crater.
"Who the hell are these bastards?!" Tsukumo snarled beside me, grinding his teeth with such force that his own front teeth cracked and shattered in his jaw.
Arthur was no longer in my field of vision.
Neither was Laura.
I wanted to stand up.
I wanted to tear the world apart to get to them.
But my body felt like it was pinned to the earth by tons of lead.
"ARTHURRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"
The scream tore out completely, shredding my vocal cords. The sound crashed against the crater walls, ricocheted, climbed all the way to the clouds, and rained back down, sweeping across the ruined valleys and mountains.
Sensing his silence, I called out to Laura. She had to wake up.
Blood trickled down my throat, but I screamed again, and again.
"LAURA! GET UP, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE GODS, GET UP!"
My tears mixed with the blood leaking from my nose and mouth.
I felt the gaze of the towering figure shift onto me.
Arthur merely nodded at an order only he could hear and didn't look back.
He didn't spare a glance at me, let alone Tsukumo.
He stepped through the bluish portal. I heard a wet sound, as if he were passing through an immense curtain of water, and then he vanished.
The red-haired man crouched and picked Laura up.
As he hoisted her, her arm dropped lifelessly... until a single finger twitched.
The tip of her nail brushed against my arm for an instant. Weak. Almost imperceptible.
As if, even unconscious, she was still trying to reach me.
A final, involuntary movement, as though she were still fighting to hold onto me.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
I roared.
The crimson and azure energy erupted once more, but this time shrouded in a darkness I knew all too well—something crawling from deep within, devouring me and feeding me all at once.
"I'M GOING TO KILL ALL OF YOU! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!"
I buried my fingers into the rock until my bones bent, pushing down on the earth with enough force to shift this dead planet.
The ground fractured all around me.
My body trembled, gasping for air, and slowly, against all that crushing pressure, against all the laws of reality they commanded, I began to rise.
I saw Tsukumo's eyes widen.
Not even he, with all his might and absolute dominion over gravity, could move a muscle. He was watching just how far I was willing to destroy myself to save the one I loved.
"Ren," the larger man said, low and firm.
A movement faster than a thought was executed.
Two simultaneous slashes to my wrists.
Two to the tendons in my legs.
The blade cleaved through skin, muscle, and bone as if they weren't even there.
The energy drained from me all at once, erupting into hot blood that splattered against the parched dirt.
I collapsed again, my face slamming hard against the ground, completely stripped of any control over my own body.
I heard the soft click of a blade returning to its sheath. The red-haired man hadn't even changed his stance.
"Let's go, Master," he said, turning toward the portal.
The towering figure lingered for a moment longer.
He took a few steps, and without glancing back, spoke with a voice that seemed to resonate directly inside my own skull.
"It's good to see you, little brother."
My eyes bulged to their absolute limit.
The pain, the exhaustion, the utter despair—everything stopped for a split second, replaced by a violent chill that raced through every nerve, every strand of hair, every beat of my heart.
*What?*
It was the only thought I could muster, choked between tears and the staggering weight of those words.
Before I could lift a finger, open my mouth, or even draw a proper breath, the bluish rift began to narrow—slowly, inexorably, like a wound being forcefully sealed shut.
And the scene shifted, tearing through space and time, until it landed on a world that had absolutely nothing in common with the carnage of Ruitan.
Lavinsk.
There, the skies bathed in gold at dawn and shifted to a deep, star-speckled blue at nightfall.
The air was light and pristine, carrying the sweet scent of flowers and grass. It was a place where peace was not a hard-fought victory, but a fundamental law of nature.
Inside a tavern built of pale wood and bathed in soft lighting, Silver was quietly enjoying a meal beside his wife, Kania.
"The food here is wonderful... how do they manage something like this?" he commented, leaning across the table.
She swatted his shoulder, but a playful glint danced in her eyes.
"Are you trying to tell me this beats my cooking?"
Silver laughed, his silver strands swaying with the motion.
"No, never. Yours will always be the best. I only brought it up because..."
He stopped mid-sentence.
The entire world ground to a halt.
The clinking of silverware ceased. The songs of the birds died in their throats as thousands of them suddenly fell, paralyzed mid-flight.
Wild beasts in the farthest corners of the planet collapsed all at once, their hearts simply stopping at the mere brush of that presence.
An aura so impossibly ancient, so forbidden, that it seemed to desecrate the very essence of that sacred realm.
In the highest palace, the Queen of the Gods, who had been sleeping peacefully, jolted her eyes open. A massive surge of energy erupted from her, yet it wasn't enough to smother what she was sensing.
Lesser deities, walking among villages or returning to their homes in neighboring worlds, dropped to their knees and blacked out, completely unable to withstand even a spark of what was radiating from Ruitan.
The golden sky hovering over the City of the Gods darkened instantly, smothered by heavy black clouds—an anomaly that hadn't occurred in millennia.
"This energy..." Silver whispered. The blood seemed to freeze in his veins, dragging up memories he had sworn to bury forever.
"It's coming from Ruitan," Kania said. Her voice was firm, yet trembling with alarm.
"The children, Silver."
He didn't answer.
In a motion that didn't even look like movement, he vanished.
The tavern shattered around the spot where he'd been sitting, the air ripping apart like thick canvas, and the black clouds themselves were violently swept away in his wake.
He tore through the void between worlds, faster than light, faster than destiny—but deep down in his soul, he knew he was already too late.
By the time Silver materialized above the crater in Ruitan, the portal had already shrunk to a final, trembling thread of blue light.
There was only a single instant, an eternal blink of an eye, where that being slightly turned his head, and his eyes met Silver's.
Not a single word was spoken, yet everything was understood.
He plummeted through the air like a flaming shooting star, crashing exactly at the epicenter where the rift had snuffed out.
The impact carved out a brand-new crater, swallowing up debris and dust, punching nearly to the planet's core. The ensuing shockwave sent Tsukumo and me flying backward.
The oppressive pressure that had pinned us to the ground like insects dissipated instantly. But in its place descended something far heavier—a terrifying, absolute calm, carrying the promise that nothing here would ever be the same again.
The very last thing my eyes managed to focus on was the silhouette of Silver, walking slowly in my direction.
Then... everything faded to black.