As soon as Ciel spoke, the ritualists roared, raising their spears high, their hands slicing through the air, and charged at the marching army. Dust rose in their wake, echoing their fury across the battlefield.
The White Castle ritualists saw them coming and quickened their pace. From walking, they walked faster. From faster, they jogged. From jogging, they ran, each step pounding the earth like a drum of war.
Steel clashed. Blood spilled.
A Black Castle ritualist drove his spear into the abdomen of a White ritualist and twisted violently. The man screamed, a sound cut short as he collapsed in a heavy thud. Another White ritualist lunged from behind, slashing downward, splitting his target in half. Blood erupted outward like the branches of a bursting tree, falling in a crimson rain.
Thunder tore across the sky. Lightning danced, striking ritualists, striking the ground, striking chaos itself.
They all charged, all killed, all died. Mercilessly. Quickly. Evenly. Both sides bled in perfect balance, no side gaining advantage, no side losing more than the other.
And El smiled.
He manipulated their fates, twisted their deaths, ensured the slaughter remained equal. Perfect and balanced.
Behind the forces, the leaders waited, tense and silent. If the White ritualists prevailed, they would march toward the mysterious Black figure. If the Black ritualists won, they would meet the mysterious White figure.
Even El, with all his control, felt a flicker of concern. His own group fought desperately among the Black ritualists. Fate could be bent, destiny guided, but mistakes were still possible.
The man noticed the standoff, but he dismissed it. It did not matter who moved first. Only one thing mattered: who would kill the mysterious one. It did not concern him. Not when El, the Great One, apostle of the Gods, stood beside him.
After a few moments, as the sounds of battle began to fade, El stepped onto the field. He told Ciel to stay behind.
He was missing it all: the screams of agony, the shouts of despair, the pure, red chaos of bloodshed. As silence crept closer, he decided it was time for a massacre.
He stood in the middle of the ritualists, striking themselves, piercing themselves, killing themselves with the calm indifference of inevitability.
He smiled. The smile vanished instantly.
A grotesque, sickening hole opened in his chest. El's head snapped toward the attacker, eyes wide with shock. A White Castle ritualist stood there, smiling, holding a golden-white spear. A high-ranking insignia gleamed on his chest.
"You bastard! I saw you teleport just now. You were not a Black or White ritualist! You are the Apostle!" His voice was bitter, almost insane. He drove the spear into El's thigh. Blood sprayed outward. El did not immediately fall.
He fell. Dead on the ground.
"I killed the Apostle! I killed the Apostle! Hooray! The White Castle is victorious!" The man shouted. Every head turned. Every eye fell on El's lifeless body.
The White ritualists roared. Weapons lifted high. They tore into the Black ritualists with a feral hunger.
"Yesss! Dead! Haaaha! Dead!" they screamed. Their voices ragged from trauma, from shouting, from the screams echoing in their throats.
The Black ritualists collapsed to their knees. The others were slaughtered mercilessly. Leon panted, chest heaving, bloodied hands dripping from hundreds of kills. Only Elias remained by his side, one of unknown survivors of their group.
Seeing his master dead, Leon's sobs ripped through him. Elias held him, steadying, calming, shielding him from collapse.
The two mysterious men did not notice. To them, the shouts were merely the sound of war, nothing more.
…
At the centre of the battlefield stood Fe Yuan and Shingen, surrounded on every side by the ritualists of the White Castle. They formed a tightening ring around them, their solarium swords raised. Flames crawled along the blades like living serpents, spilling violent light across the ruined field.
The air stank of iron and burning flesh.
"Shit…" Fe Yuan gasped.
Blood soaked the front of his robes. His blood. Dark and thick, it clung to the fabric and dripped slowly onto the dust beneath his feet. One hand trembled around the shaft of his spear while the other pressed desperately against his chest. His fingers were slick with warmth.
The wound would not close.
Every breath scraped through his lungs like shattered glass. When he inhaled, a wet sound followed, bubbling somewhere deep inside his chest. His heart had been pierced.
Beside him, Shingen stood at the edge of death.
His body looked as though it had been dragged through a storm of blades. Sword marks carved across his arms and shoulders. Stab wounds darkened his side. Blood ran along the edge of his fingers and dripped steadily from the tip of his sword.
Yet his face held only fury.
An arrogant, stubborn frown was carved into his expression, as though even death itself was unworthy of his surrender. His brows tightened. His teeth ground together until the sound of it was audible beneath the crackling flames of the ritualists' weapons.
Then he roared.
"You. You. You. You imbecile!"
His voice broke across the battlefield like thunder.
Before him stood Arroz.
Shingen moved.
He rushed forward with the last strength left in his dying body, lifting his sword with both hands and driving it forward toward Arroz's chest. The strike carried all the hatred and betrayal burning inside him.
It never landed.
Arroz's leg snapped forward without hesitation.
His kick struck Shingen's knee with a brutal crack.
The sound was sickening.
Shingen's leg folded beneath him. His body collapsed instantly, crashing into the dirt in a pathetic heap. His sword flew from his hand and spun across the ground before landing with a cold metallic clang.
Dust rose slowly around him.
"You… you are the spy!" Shingen shouted hoarsely from the ground.
Arroz did not even look down at him.
His gaze remained distant and empty, as if Shingen's voice had never existed.
He bent slightly and picked up the fallen sword.
For a brief moment the battlefield grew quiet.
Even the ritualists seemed to pause.
Arroz lifted the blade high.
Then he swung.
The strike was clean.
Too clean.
Shingen's head separated from his body in a single motion. The blade passed through his neck with a soft tearing sound, like wet cloth being ripped apart.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then blood erupted.
A violent fountain burst upward from the severed neck, spraying the air in a thick crimson arc. The warmth of it scattered across the dirt, across the surrounding armour, across Arroz's unmoving face.
Shingen's body collapsed forward.
It struck the ground with a heavy, hollow thud.
His head rolled slowly across the battlefield before coming to rest in the dust. His eyes remained open, wide with the last trace of rage that had never faded.
Silence followed.
Fe Yuan stared.
His mind refused to understand what his eyes had just witnessed.
Shingen's body lay at his feet, twitching faintly as blood pooled beneath it. The smell of it rose sharply into the air, metallic and suffocating.
Fe Yuan could not move.
His eyes widened slowly. His jaw tightened until it trembled. The grip on his spear weakened as though time itself had wrapped chains around his limbs.
He felt cold.
Cold in a way that seeped through his bones.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, he turned his head.
Arroz stood there holding Shingen's sword.
His expression was calm.
Cold.
Indifferent.
A thin line of blood slid from the edge of the blade and fell to the ground with a quiet drip.
Fe Yuan's lips parted.
"How…"
His voice cracked.
"What…"
The words barely escaped his throat.
His voice had become rough and broken, as though grief had scraped it raw from the inside. Tears slid silently down his face, cutting pale lines through the dust and blood that stained his skin.
The sorrow twisted his features.
His expression slowly collapsed into something darker. The corners of his mouth tightened. His brows sank low over trembling eyes.
Grief distorted his face until he looked less like a man and more like a demon carved from despair.
And still, Arroz did not look at him.
"You bastard!" he shouted.
The cry tore from Fe Yuan's throat with the last strength left in his failing body. Rage, grief, and disbelief twisted together inside him until they became something wild and desperate.
He ran.
His boots dragged across the blood-soaked sand as he rushed toward Arroz, gripping his sword with trembling hands. Every muscle in his body burned. His vision blurred at the edges. Still, he pushed forward, pouring all his frustration and confusion into a single thrust aimed straight for Arroz's heart.
The blade never reached him.
In the final instant, Arroz moved.
His hand rose calmly and caught Fe Yuan by the throat.
Fingers closed around his neck like an iron vice.
The impact stopped Fe Yuan instantly. His body jolted as the air was crushed out of his lungs. His sword slipped from his hand and fell uselessly to the ground.
Arroz tightened his grip.
Fe Yuan's feet lifted slightly from the sand. A horrible pressure spread through his throat as the man's fingers dug deeper into the flesh. Blood rushed loudly inside his ears. His vision dimmed and brightened in violent pulses.
Part of his consciousness slipped away.
His body trembled weakly in the air.
Fe Yuan forced his eyes open and looked directly into Arroz's.
There was nothing inside them.
No hatred. No joy. No guilt.
Only stillness.
Fe Yuan coughed weakly, blood creeping from the corner of his lips as the lack of air clawed at his lungs.
"Were you… on their side all along?" he rasped.
Each word scraped painfully through his crushed throat.
"Were you… also a White Castle ritualist… all along?"
His gaze drifted toward the pale robes Arroz wore, now splattered with the blood of countless men.
For a moment, the battlefield felt strangely quiet.
Arroz gave no answer.
No denial.
No confirmation.
His expression did not change in the slightest.
Then he moved.
His hand twisted sharply.
The sound that followed was short and dreadful.
A dry crack split through the air as Fe Yuan's neck snapped.
The life drained instantly from his body.
Arroz released him.
Fe Yuan collapsed to the sand like discarded cloth. His limbs landed heavily, his body twitching once before falling completely still. A thin stream of blood crept slowly from his mouth and soaked into the dry earth beneath his cheek.
The battlefield returned to silence.
"You did well, son."
The voice came from behind Arroz.
Soft. Calm. Almost gentle.
A man stepped forward and placed a hand on Arroz's shoulder. His touch carried the careful weight of reassurance, as though offering warmth to someone who might have needed it.
Or forgiveness.
Arroz turned his head slightly.
For a brief moment, a faint smile appeared on his face. It was small and quiet, barely there, like something that did not belong to him.
Then it vanished.
He looked away from the man and toward the battlefield.
Bodies lay scattered across the desolate sand in silent heaps. Limbs twisted in unnatural shapes. Blood darkened the ground until the earth itself seemed wounded.
Shingen's head lay several paces away from his body, staring blankly into the sky.
Fe Yuan rested nearby, unmoving.
Arroz watched them without expression.
The wind moved slowly across the battlefield, carrying the smell of blood and ash into the empty horizon.
…
"Hahahahahahah!"
Seraph's laughter tore across the battlefield like a war cry, loud and unrestrained. It pierced the ears of every surviving fighter and echoed across the ruined sands.
He grinned widely.
The smile stretched across his face in a way that felt almost unnatural, as though the joy of slaughter had pulled it too far. In his hands he held two swords. One black as burnt night in his right hand. One pale and gleaming white in his left.
Around him the battlefield lay in ruin.
Bodies covered the sand in broken heaps. Some were twisted together, some lay alone, and others had collapsed into shapeless piles of flesh and armor. Blood soaked deep into the earth until the sand had turned dark and sticky.
Seraph sat comfortably among them.
The corpses beneath him formed a crude throne. A mound of dead flesh that lifted him above the battlefield like a king presiding over carnage.
From that grotesque seat he watched the ritualists of both castles continue their slaughter. They fought with fading strength and hollow determination, their movements slow and desperate.
They looked like men already dead.
Men whose bodies had simply not realized it yet.
Seraph's grin widened as he watched them fall.
Then suddenly his heart skipped.
His laughter stopped.
A strange cold passed through his chest, sharp and wrong. His eyes widened slowly, confusion spreading across his face. His jaw loosened as he turned his head.
A man stood behind him.
Silent.
Still.
He looked down at Seraph with an expression so indifferent it seemed almost empty.
Seraph's gaze dropped to the sword in the man's hand.
Then he followed the blade downward.
Its tip disappeared into his chest.
The steel had already entered him.
The sword had pierced his heart.
For a moment Seraph did not understand what he was seeing. His mind struggled to accept the reality of the blade lodged deep inside his body.
Then the pain arrived.
"Gurgh!"
Blood burst from his mouth and spilled down his chin. It ran across his teeth and dripped onto the corpses beneath him. His body convulsed violently as the warmth of his own life poured outward.
The man behind him was Arroz.
"Sorry," Arroz said softly.
His voice was quiet, almost gentle.
Tears slid slowly down his cheeks as he tilted his head slightly, as though apologizing for something that could never be forgiven. His eyes did not seek mercy. He did not expect absolution.
"It's all for him."
His grip tightened on the sword.
Then he pulled.
The blade slid free from Seraph's chest with a wet tearing sound. Blood followed the motion, spilling down Seraph's robes and spreading across the mound of bodies beneath him.
Seraph's strength vanished instantly.
His swords slipped from his hands and fell into the sand with dull metallic thuds.
His body slumped forward.
"Out of the three members I killed, including you," Arroz said quietly, "you had the best death."
Seraph's vision darkened.
The battlefield blurred. The sounds of distant fighting grew faint and hollow.
Arroz's voice continued, calm and strange.
"Is it not a blessing for the betrayed to remain ignorant of who betrayed him rather than to live knowing he was betrayed?"
He leaned slightly closer.
"You have been blessed."
A faint giggle escaped him.
Soft.
Mad.
"My sweet friend never even knew I killed him."
Seraph's eyes trembled.
The world dimmed slowly, like a candle fading inside a dark room. The last thing he saw was Arroz's tear-stained face standing above him.
Then the darkness took him.
His eyelids sank shut.
The battlefield lost another soul.
Arroz stood there for a moment longer, watching the still body before him.
Then he turned and walked away.
He did not look back.
The wind moved quietly across the battlefield, brushing over the corpses and carrying the scent of blood into the endless horizon.
And just like that, he left.
The battle raged. Silence weakened as victory cries erupted with every Black ritualist that fell. The Black ritualists were surrounded, outnumbered, pressed into the crush of blood and steel, but they refused to break. Even with the Apostle dead, they fought.
They fought for the Black Castle, not for a man they had known for only a month.
It hurt. Yes. It saddened them. Yes. But surrender? Never.
They still cried. They still fought. The combat ritualists thrust their spears forward, desperate, hoping to delay death even for a heartbeat. The magician ritualists crouched low, tiny sticks in hand, drawing symbols in fevered precision. Their lips moved rapidly, chanting, praying for a saviour, for fate to bend in their favour, for life itself to be granted.
It was utterly useless.
Numbers fell. Hundreds became a handful. A handful became mere tens. Blood slicked the earth. Limbs littered the ground. The screams never ceased. Some were torn apart before they could even finish a prayer. Others staggered, bleeding from wounds that should have killed them, but still moving, still fighting, still screaming.
From a distance, their figures looked like clusters of white and black atoms, scattered across a void of blood and earth, collapsing under the overwhelming flood of White ritualists. Ciel noticed it. The tide had turned.
The White ritualists advanced, a wave of steel and rage. The one who had killed El carried their flag high, crimson dripping from spear and armour alike. Their march was a feast of triumph. The remaining Black ritualists were left behind, battered, trembling, their deaths savoured for later amusement.
And then, a voice stopped them.
"Stop."
The battlefield froze. Spears hung midair. Chants died in open mouths. Ritualists slowly turned their heads toward the voice, their bodies trembling, limbs slick with sweat and blood.
"Kneel."
They fell. Knees struck the scorched, mud-caked ground with a hollow, echoing crack. Faces pale and stark under the thunderous sky, lightning splitting clouds in jagged bursts, moonlight falling cold and silver across bloodied armour.
With a flick of his hand, they appeared; countless, formless swords, white as the void, rising from nothingness like wounds torn in reality itself. Smoke curled around their edges. They hovered in the air, motionless, waiting.
The ritualists tilted their heads upward in confusion. Sacred. Confused. Afraid. Then, instinctively, their heads tilted down.
There he stood. Red and white robes drenched in shadow and blood. Hair matted with gore. Depthless black eyes that consumed light. A cross, stained, across his chest. Madness etched into every line of his face.
He smiled. Maniacally.
Slowly, deliberately, he raised his hands. The air itself seemed to tremble. With a single movement, his index finger drew a horizontal line.
It flared red. A thin, impossibly fast streak of blood moved across the battlefield, cutting through air, through flesh, through bone. No eye could follow it.
Heads fell. Hundreds. Thousands. A storm of them, tumbling like grotesque hail. Blood erupted from severed necks, arcing in thick, dark rivers. The smell of iron filled the lungs, a metallic scream that stung the eyes. Every thud of a head hitting the ground resonated like a drum of doom. The line never slowed. It carved, it slaughtered, it swept with precision impossible for mortal hands.
The last white ritualist collapsed. Silence. Solemn. The line stopped.
Then the swords moved. They fell like falling stars, tips piercing the ground in unison. Thousands of them. The hilts sharp, jagged, perfect thorns of fate. Heads rose, terror frozen on their faces, only to be impaled instantly. Skulls cracked, brains splattered, eyes staring at the sky as blood spattered across the swords, across mud, across moonlight.
Every sound amplified: the sickening crunch of bone, the hiss of blood on hot metal, the screaming air forced from mouths silenced in a single instant. Thunder rolled overhead, lightning flashing, illuminating mountains of bodies, rivers of red, the sheer chaos of life extinguished in one sweeping act.
Every sense was assaulted: sight by rivers of blood and severed heads, sound by bone-crunching impact and frozen screams, smell of iron and charred earth, touch of mud and gore coating the ritualists who fell kneeling before the inevitable, taste of fear hanging in the air.
Today would be remembered.
Today would be the White Doom.