A sharp cry tore through the silence of the woods, followed by the sickening shrrkk of flesh being ripped apart. Midnight-blue lightning surged through the air, slicing bodies in half, their blood splattering across tree trunks and painting the forest in deep crimson.
Desperate screams filled the clearing—chaotic, frantic—but they were silenced in seconds by a deep, resonant laugh. It wasn't manic. It wasn't cruel. It was simply... indifferent.
"What weak subordinates. Why bother challenging me?"
The voice was smooth, almost casual—like someone commenting on the weather rather than walking through a massacre.
Shiran, the storm-born half-giant, stepped over the mangled corpses with calm precision. His towering frame radiated raw power, yet his expression was blank, eyes devoid of pity. The oppressive bloodlust in the air barely seemed to register with him. The stench of death? An afterthought.
He snapped his fingers, the gesture casual—almost lazy.
The few remaining enemies, panicked and desperate, charged forward. It was suicide.
Invisible blades of wind and lightning tore through them mid-step, rending flesh from bone and vaporizing what remained. Their lives were snuffed out like fragile candles caught in a gale.
Shiran paused and looked skyward. The thunderclouds above churned violently, mirroring the storm within. But he wasn't angry.
He was bored.
They weren't even warm-ups.
None of these so-called warriors had posed a challenge. Not one had been worthy of his time. They were distractions. Pawns sent to delay him from his real purpose—hunting the one who carried the other half of the Storm God's divinity.
He resumed his path forward, the air around him crackling with magic so dense it warped the world itself. Wind blades cut through dimensions, carving across realities and slicing apart his enemies' alternate selves in every conceivable timeline. There would be no escape. Not in this world. Not in any.
Then he saw it—a castle rising from the gloom like a monument to overcompensation. Grotesque and melodramatic, it looked like something a teenage demon would build after watching too many horror flicks.
Shiran sneered. "Tacky."
His storm-blue eyes sparked, lightning dancing across his skin. Though massive, even by giant standards, it wasn't his size that made him terrifying—it was the ancient, celestial spirit-bloodline coursing through his veins. A power he rarely spoke of. A secret that made him a target across countless worlds.
His shimmering translucent blue hair swayed in the wind, catching the flickering stormlight. He hadn't always known his origin. Abandoned as a child, left to survive or die alone—only later did he learn the truth. His parents had discarded him.
That rage had unlocked his first skill.
It was so potent, so violently divine, that it had vaporized his home planet in a single lightning strike.
He hadn't regretted it.
Chosen by the Storm God as a favored dependent, Shiran's mastery over elemental forces—wind, lightning, ice, even molten skies—had long surpassed that of mortal comprehension. And now, as his aura fully merged with the Storm God's essence, he approached the castle cloaked in dark blue energy, seething with the fury of a thousand tempests.
Then—BOOM.
A thunderclap shattered the sky as the castle exploded. Rubble scattered like confetti, but at its heart, untouched and unmoved, sat a lone figure on a crumbling throne.
The man's body was wrapped in a shimmering aura of pure violet magic. His magic felt alien—different—and that alone piqued Shiran's interest.
"Your little storms don't compare to my destruction,"
the man said, his voice unnervingly soft, melodic—too calm for someone surrounded by ruin. His skin was a deep, fiery orange, and his glowing red eyes radiated malice.
Shiran chuckled.
"Phew. You're hilarious. My storms are your destruction."
With no warning, the man flicked a finger, sending a beam of dark energy hurling toward Shiran. Effortlessly, Shiran sidestepped and retaliated—three intersecting wind blades shrieked through the air, converging toward their target.
And so began a clash of titans.
Storm met destruction in a ballet of annihilation. The sky split open. Earth cracked. Magic shattered reality itself. Shiran unleashed elemental devastation—cyclones of molten lightning, glacial spikes of wind-imbued ice, tectonic pulses of thunder that ruptured the atmosphere.
But his opponent was no amateur. A dependent of the Destruction Goddess, his magic bore the signature of primordial entropy—crafted by the first Destruction God, whose essence predated even the multiverse.
He met Shiran's fury with apocalyptic spells—black novas, collapsing space, collapsing logic. His destruction didn't just erase matter. It erased meaning.
But Shiran didn't falter.
What the man hadn't noticed was that Shiran's earlier wind blades weren't just attacks—they were surgical strikes, precise cuts that had severed key magic circuits, crippling the man's ability to form spells on the fly.
Desperation crept into the man's eyes.
He snarled, conjuring a morning star wreathed in abyssal energy, and charged forward in a last-ditch assault.
But Shiran was already gone.
In a blur, he vanished—and then appeared behind the man.
One clean motion.
The man's head dropped from his shoulders before his body could react.
The corpse slumped forward.
From the decapitated body rose a dark purple light, the echo of divine destruction. It hovered for a moment, then shot into Shiran's chest, merging with his storm magic.
The surge of power was instantaneous.
Shiran's strength multiplied twentyfold. He absorbed the man's magic like a feast. His blade—Takemikazuchi, the Storm God's personal weapon—glowed with renewed fury. The katana's runes shimmered, whispering with electric echoes of the storm.
He let out a slow breath, surveying the carnage.
"One step closer."
Then he vanished.
His body blurred into nothing, folding into the winds between worlds.
Moments later, the battlefield—the corpses, the ruins, the castle, even the land beneath it—imploded. Reality caved in on itself, the remnants collapsing into a singularity of storm and void.
All that remained was silence.
And the memory of a storm that once shattered a god.