The blinding light from the ribcage archway was not a welcome; it was a barrier. As the Trinity of the End moved to cross the threshold, the sky above the Graveyard of Sovereigns—already a vortex of violet shadows—shattered. Seven streaks of golden light, like falling stars of absolute judgment, slammed into the earth between Yun and the Forge.
The impact was so violent that the pillars of bone for miles around disintegrated into dust. From the golden craters emerged the Seven War Gods of the Empire. These were not men, but living concepts of slaughter, each representing a different facet of the Emperor's divine mandate. They were the ultimate failsafe, the hunters of singularities.
In the center stood the leader, General Kratos, the God of Iron Will. He held a shield that mirrored the sky and a spear that hummed with the frequency of the Heavens. To his left and right stood the twin goddesses of Silence and Screams, and four other behemoths clad in armor made from the scales of extinct dragons.
"Yun Caos," Kratos's voice was not a sound, but a command that forced the very cells in Shara and Meilin's bodies to tremble. "You have consumed the past, but you shall not touch the future. We are the wall that the Titan could never climb."
Yun stood his ground, the Void Reaver vibrating in his hand. The constellation-skin on his arms glowed with a frantic intensity. He looked at Shara and Meilin. They were pale, their spiritual bases buckling under the combined pressure of seven Peak-Sovereign cultivators.
"They aren't here to capture me anymore," Yun whispered, his violet eyes narrowing. "They are here to erase us."
"Then let them try to erase a fire that has already tasted the Void!" Meilin roared, her Cinder-Wraiths exploding into a pillar of white flame. But as she lunged toward the Goddess of Silence, Kratos simply raised his shield. A wave of golden "Order" rippled out, snuffling Meilin's flames as if they were a mere candle in a hurricane.
Shara tried to intervene, her Thorn of Providence weaving a complex web of emerald protection, but the God of Iron Will thrust his spear. The golden light pierced through the jade barriers as if they were made of parchment.
"Your companions are anchors of mortality, Yun," Kratos sneered. "Without them, you are a monster. With them, you are a corpse."
Yun felt a surge of cold fury. He saw Shara being pushed back, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and Meilin's white fire flickering into grey. The Empire wanted to take the only things that made his void feel like a home.
"You speak of anchors," Yun said, his voice dropping into a register that made the golden armor of the War Gods crack. "But you forget what happens when an anchor is cut. The ship doesn't sink... it drifts into the deep."
Yun didn't rush forward. He closed his eyes and reached into the Void Reaver. He didn't use the blade to attack the gods; he used it to attack the Mandate that powered them. He began to devour the space between the Seven Gods, breaking their formation.
"Formation! The Trinity Strike!" Yun commanded.
Despite their exhaustion, Shara and Meilin moved. They had practiced this in the resonance of Odis. Shara slammed her staff into the ground, not to create life, but to act as a drain. She began to pull the golden "Order" of the War Gods into herself, her skin turning a translucent green as she suffered the agony of containing their divine energy.
Meilin used that moment of diverted attention to manifest the White Nirvana Sun. She didn't throw it; she collapsed it into a single, microscopic point of heat on the tip of her daggers and struck the Goddess of Silence. The explosion of refined heat was so concentrated it bypassed the golden wards, searing the divine armor.
But the War Gods were too many. Kratos roared, and his spear glowed with the light of a thousand suns. "ENOUGH!"
He swung the spear in a horizontal arc, a wave of golden annihilation meant to decapitate the Trinity.
Yun stepped in front of his queens. He didn't raise his sword. He raised his bare hand. As the golden wave hit his palm, the violet mark on his neck fully bloomed, extending thorns of shadow across his face. He didn't block the attack; he inverted it.
The golden light turned violet, then black, as Yun's bones absorbed the "Order" and spat out "Chaos." The resulting shockwave sent four of the War Gods flying back, their dragon-scale armor shattering.
"You are not gods," Yun said, his voice now a chorus of a thousand dead Sovereigns. "You are just obstacles in the path of a new law."
Yun swung the Void Reaver. A single vertical line of silver-and-violet light divided the Graveyard. It passed through the God of Screams and two others. There was no blood. They simply split into two halves of grey dust and were sucked into the blade.
Kratos looked at his dwindling army, his iron will finally flickering with the shadow of doubt. He saw the boy with the constellation-skin and realized that the "Calamity" was no longer a prophecy. It was standing in front of him, and it was hungry.
"The Forge... it's opening," Shara whispered, pointing behind Yun.
As the battle raged, the ribcage archway had begun to pulse with a heartbeat of pure violet light. A woman's silhouette appeared within the glow—the Memory of the Void.
"The King has arrived," a feminine voice echoed from the Forge, sounding like the chime of a silver bell. "But the price of the crown is the blood of the false gods."
Yun looked at Kratos. "You heard her. Your blood is the final offering."