Chapter 147: Manhattan Crisis - Part 14
Leonard breathed heavily, staring at the Black Moon glaring at him from within the swirling orb of darkness.
And then… it smiled. Slowly, its colossal jaw opened, revealing endless rows of jagged, ivory fangs.
"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEH- !!"
The scream ripped through reality like a blade. A tidal wave of sound, pure and incomprehensible, burst outward from the orb, washing over the city of New York in an instant.
Every human ear that caught the sound collapsed into unconsciousness on the spot. Soldiers, agents, even the demons of the battlefield, all of them fell, their bodies hitting the ground like lifeless dolls.
Helicopters spun out of control, their pilots slumping over as black smoke trailed in the sky before they slammed into towers in eruptions of fire. Vehicles collided in chaotic chains, alarms shrieking for only a moment before the streets went silent.
New York… stopped breathing.
Leonard felt blood pouring from his ears, hot and sticky against his neck. His vision blurred, his body screaming in agony.
He tried to move. To stand.
But before he could, the orb pulsed violently, then surged forward like a living ocean of shadow.
It swallowed him whole.
---
When Leonard opened his eyes, the world was gone.
No sound. No light. No ground beneath his feet. He floated in an endless void, a darkness so pure it crushed the soul, a silence so absolute it made his heartbeat sound like thunder.
Panic clawed at him instantly. He turned, desperate for something, anything, to orient himself.
And then he felt it.
The presence. Behind him. Vast. Infinite. Wrong.
Slowly, his breath catching in his throat, Leonard turned.
Four eyes. Four colossal white eyes burned like moons in the abyss. Beneath them, a mouth stretched wider than thought, a maw carved from nightmare itself, filled with a thousand needle-teeth, gleaming like wet ivory.
The Black Moon.
When it spoke, it was everywhere, inside his head, vibrating through his bones, echoing across the void like the voice of a dead god.
"Administrator… my dear Administrator."
The voice pulsed with something between glee and hunger.
"At last. At long, long last… I have you."
Leonard stared, frozen in primal terror.
"…What do you want from me?"
The smile widened. The void shuddered.
"What do I want?" The Black Moon's laughter shook the darkness. "To kill you, of course. But not yet…"
The void cracked with soundless malice as its four eyes narrowed.
"…Before you die, I will break you. I will make you suffer until death becomes the sweetest mercy you can imagine."
Leonard's voice trembled as he forced the words out:
"Why?"
The void fell silent.
Then, the Black Moon roared. A sound so monstrous, so ancient, that the fabric of the empty space splintered like glass under the weight of its fury.
"WHY?" The voice slammed into him like an ocean of knives.
"Because I HATE you."
The four burning eyes flared brighter, swallowing the darkness around them in their ghastly radiance.
"You… and every single Administrator that ever existed. Across every timeline. Every reality. Every branching world. You and your wretched Foundation have hunted me, chained me, humiliated me, tried to erase me from existence."
Leonard's throat tightened, his breath shallow, the words slicing through him like a blade.
"But now… now I have you."
The Black Moon's maw stretched into a horrific grin, its teeth gleaming like spears of bone. Its voice dripped with a savage, almost sacred ecstasy.
"And I will kill you… with a pleasure beyond comprehension."
The void trembled, then fell still, save for that titanic presence looming above him.
"But first…" the voice slithered like venom into his ears, wrapping around his mind.
"…it is time for you to suffer."
The Black Moon's form began to recede, gliding backward into the eternal black. Its titanic grin lingered for one agonizing moment… then dissolved, leaving Leonard utterly alone.
Silence.
A silence that lasted only a breath-
And then, the scream came.
The Black Moon's roar detonated through the void, a cosmic howl so vast it shattered thought itself. Leonard clutched his skull, convulsing in agony as his mind splintered into shards. Reality itself rippled like water—then collapsed.
---Leonard opened his eyes to the acrid stench of burning metal and fuel. Smoke curled into the blood-red sky, and the distant crackle of gunfire gnawed at the silence like starving wolves.
He staggered upright, his vision swimming, ears still ringing from the explosion. Pieces of the aircraft lay torn and scattered across the blackened soil like the ribs of some dead titan. Among the wreckage, men in civilian clothes, Resh-1 operatives, scrambled for cover, rifles gripped tight, scanning the perimeter with frantic precision.
"Boss!"
The voice ripped him back to reality. Leonard turned and saw Alexei, one of his most trusted blades in the dark, his face smeared with soot, eyes blazing with desperation. An MP7 rested tight against his shoulder, finger curled around the trigger, but the weight in his voice was heavier than steel.
"Boss! We need to move, now! The hostiles are coming. We've got seconds before they hit us with everything they've got!"
Leonard's pulse slammed against his temples. He took a slow breath and let his gaze wander over the battlefield… and froze.
He knew this place.
Univer'Isle.
His throat tightened. His jaw locked.
He turned toward the shattered fuselage of the aircraft… and then he saw them.
The passengers.
Dozens of them, huddled in the cold steel belly of the plane. Men. Women. Children. Faces pale with terror, eyes wide, breath fogging the cracked glass as they watched the chaos outside. Silent. Helpless.
And then Leonard's eyes locked onto one face, one that shattered everything inside him.
A boy.
No older than nine. Dark hair matted against his forehead, his small fists pressed against the window. His body trembled like a leaf clinging to a dying tree in the storm. And those eyes, God, those eyes, pleading, burning with fear so pure it carved itself into Leonard's soul.
Leonard's teeth clenched until his jaw ached. His fists curled into iron. He felt the scream tearing at the back of his throat, rage, grief, guilt all braided together until he spat the word out like blood:
"RETREAT!"
The sound cracked through the battlefield like a gunshot. Resh-1 obeyed without hesitation, peeling back into the treeline, boots pounding against the dirt as the engines of approaching death roared louder behind them.
And then-
The world froze.
Like a film reel halted mid-frame, the soldiers froze mid-stride, smoke hung in the air like glass threads, flames flickered without sound. The only motion left was the faint quiver of Leonard's breath fogging in front of him.
And then color bled away.
The world drained to white and black, shadows stretching like claws across the frozen earth.
Leonard's heart slammed in his chest as he turned, just in time to see the boy.
Passing through the shattered glass.
He stepped onto the battlefield as though gravity had never existed, feet gliding across the frozen carnage, his head tilted down just enough for the shadows to mask his face, except for his eyes.
Two pools of endless black.
When he spoke, his voice was a whisper and a scream all at once, a sound that seemed to come from every direction, yet only for Leonard.
"Why… did you leave us again?"
Leonard's breath hitched. His lips parted, words fighting to surface.
"I-"
The boy tilted his head, those abyssal eyes boring holes into Leonard's soul.
"Why?"
Leonard said nothing. Could say nothing. The word carved into him like a blade dipped in acid.
And then the boy smiled. A smile that wasn't human.
"Do you know… what they did to us because of you?"
The battlefield shattered like glass.
Darkness swallowed them whole, only to vomit him out into another reality.
The air was damp. Rotting. The stench of iron and sweat and blood clung to the stone walls like a parasite. Leonard blinked and saw it, cells. Rows of iron bars slick with rust and filth. And within them, shadows. Figures.
And then the screams came.
They weren't human anymore. They weren't just sounds, they were knives, each one slicing deeper into his sanity.
Men chained to the walls, their flesh striped with lash marks, blood pooling beneath their feet. Guards laughed as the whips cracked again and again, their voices a symphony of cruelty.
And the women-
Leonard's stomach heaved as he saw them. Torn clothes. Eyes swollen from crying. Broken bodies dragged across the floor as faceless humans in uniforms used them like meat. Their mouths opened in silent screams, silent only because Leonard's mind refused to let him hear the truth.
But it wasn't silent.
Because the boy's voice cut through it all, soft as silk, sharp as venom:
"They hurt my Mama because of you."
Leonard shook his head violently, his breath fracturing into shards, every nerve in his body screaming denial.
"Stop-"
The boy stepped closer, the black of his eyes widening, devouring the whites, spilling across his face like ink spreading across paper.
"She cried for help. You came only later, after they had done everything."
Leonard dropped to his knees, his lungs clawing for air. His hands trembled like brittle glass ready to shatter.
And then they appeared.
The passengers.
One by one, they emerged from the shadows behind the boy. Men with shattered jaws. Women with hollow eyes and broken spines. Children whose laughter had been replaced by screams they would never stop screaming.
Their faces melted into masks of hatred, mouths opening in unison as their words bled into the void:
"Why… Did you abandon us there?"
Leonard screamed.
And the void screamed back.
---
Leonard hit the ground hard. The void spat him out like rotten meat, and the shock of impact stole the air from his lungs. Gasping, he pushed himself up on trembling arms, feeling the grit of sand grind into his palms.
He froze.
A canyon. Jagged walls rose like the teeth of a dead god, swallowing the sunlight in their shadows. Dust curled in the air, stirred by a wind that tasted of ash and iron.
Leonard knew this place.
Every muscle in his body went rigid. His pulse quickened, pounding like war drums inside his skull.
Univer'Isle. Again.
But this wasn't the wreckage. This was… after.
When they marched.
All around him, warriors stood in formation, their armor gleaming with the dull sheen of blood and dust. Banners of the Kingdom of Univers'Isle flapped in the dry wind, their inked sigils like black scars against the red sky. Hundreds of boots crushed the earth in unison, a tide of steel and flesh flowing forward through the canyon floor.
Leonard felt their presence like a weight on his spine. And then, the sound.
A high-pitched whistle.
SHHHHHRRRREEEEEE-
And then the world erupted.
BOOM.
The earth heaved as a fireball tore open the ranks like a ravenous beast. Men screamed as the blast swallowed them whole, flinging armor and flesh skyward like broken dolls.
And then, another whistle.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The sky became a throat vomiting fire. Explosions blossomed like red flowers blooming in hell, their petals made of blood and molten steel.
Leonard staggered back as dust and gore painted the canyon walls. His heart was a snare drum, each beat hammering against his ribs.
He knew this.
God help him, he knew this.
The bombardment.
The inferno he had unleashed.
The plan he had authorized.
Every missile, every shell, his word had been the trigger.
He watched as men were ripped apart mid-scream, their bodies shredded before the air could carry their cries. Others ran, panic carving trenches into their faces as the ground beneath them split open in geysers of fire and stone.
Some crawled, their legs gone, dragging themselves through rivers of their own blood. Others clutched at burning faces, their eyes melting like wax as their hands clawed for a salvation that did not exist.
The smell hit him then. Burned flesh. The stench of war crimes disguised as victory.
And then-
Something landed at his feet.
A hand.
Still clutching something in its mangled fingers.
Leonard stared at it, his stomach twisting into knots. Slowly, almost unwillingly, he bent down and pried the object from its dead grip.
A piece of paper. Crumpled. Stained red.
He unfolded it with trembling hands.
A child's drawing. Lines of ink shaky but full of life, a stick figure man, holding hands with a small girl. Both smiling. Above them, words scrawled in the looping letters of Isleen script:
"In hope of your return, Daddy."
Leonard's throat closed. His vision blurred, the paper trembling in his grip as his hands began to shake. His heart twisted like a blade of glass turning slow in his chest.
Then, a voice.
Cold. Hollow. Coated in venom.
"You have no heart."
Leonard's head snapped up.
They were rising.
The soldiers. The ones who had fallen seconds ago, bodies broken and burned, they were standing again.
Their armor cracked, their skin charred, yet their forms moved with impossible fluidity. One by one, they closed in, black eyes bleeding across their sockets like ink in water.
The nearest one stepped forward, his face a melted mask of hatred. His voice was a hammer pounding truth into bone:
"You kill. You butcher. And then you soothe yourself with pathetic lies."
Leonard's lips moved before his mind could stop them, words spilling out like blood from an open wound:
"Th-that's not true! You… you attacked us first! I… I only did what I had to… to defend us-"
The soldier tilted his head, a grotesque smile splitting his charred lips.
"Defend?"
The word dripped with poison.
Then the others parted like a curtain, leaving a narrow path through their ranks.
At the end of it, Leonard saw him.
A boy. No older than eighteen. Armor too big for his frail frame. Curled in a shell of fear inside a crater gouged by fire. His body shook with sobs as he hugged his knees to his chest, whispering through broken breath:
"…I just want to go home… I just want to see Mama again…"
Leonard's stomach turned to stone.
The bombardment ceased. Silence fell like a blade.
The boy rose slowly, his steps weak, uncertain, dragging his sword like a corpse. His eyes darted to the sky, as if begging the gods to spare him.
And then the roar came.
The AC-130.
It carved across the heavens like a demon in steel. Its cannons opened their black mouths and spat fire.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT-
The boy's body exploded in a hail of tungsten and blood. Limbs torn like paper, flesh liquefied under the storm of bullets. His scream was cut off before it even reached the air.
Silence again.
Until the soldier spoke.
"After slaughtering us all… you could have taken prisoners. You could have spared the innocent. But no."
He stepped closer. The others followed. Their voices merged into a single, bone-chilling roar:
"Butcher."
Another voice:
"Assassin!"
Another:
"Murderer!"
And then the chorus.
"MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER!"
They surged forward as one, a tidal wave of rage and rot, their weapons slashing through the air, their hands tearing at his flesh.
Leonard screamed as they fell upon him, ripping skin from muscle, muscle from bone. His blood sprayed like rain, painting the canyon in shades of red that no sun could ever burn away.
He fell, piece by piece, his agony echoing into infinity-
And then the ground beneath him collapsed.
A black maw opened at his feet, swallowing him whole. The world vanished.
And Leonard was falling.
Falling into the void.
Leonard fell.
He didn't know for how long.
Time had dissolved the moment he plunged through that hole of nothingness, and now he was weightless, tumbling into infinity. There was no wind, no ground rushing up to meet him. Only silence so thick it crushed thought, and a blackness so complete it devoured meaning.
His body spiraled in slow motion, his arms clawing at emptiness like a drowning man tearing at water that would never hold him.
Where am I…? What… what is this place…?
The question echoed in his skull like a whisper trapped inside a coffin.
And then he realized something.
The silence wasn't silent.
It was breathing.
A low, steady rhythm, like the ocean inhaling and exhaling beneath a dead moon. The sound curled around him, crawling inside his ears, pulsing in the marrow of his bones.
Then came the whispers.
Not one voice. Millions. Layered over each other like a swarm of insects buzzing in perfect unison, words leaking through in tongues older than language:
"Administrator… liar… butcher… failure…"
They gnawed at his thoughts, stripping them raw, digging trenches into his mind where doubt festered and multiplied.
Leonard opened his mouth to scream-
And that's when the black ocean rose up to meet him.
No splash. No impact. The void swallowed him like warm tar, thick and choking, clinging to his skin, crawling into his mouth and eyes and ears. He thrashed violently, kicking and clawing, but the abyss was alive, it coiled around his limbs like serpents, pulling him deeper.
He tried to hold his breath. He tried to resist. But the darkness invaded his lungs, sliding down his throat like liquid knives, burning and freezing at the same time.
Leonard screamed, but the scream was inside his head now, ricocheting off the walls of his skull as the black tide dragged him down, down, down-
And then, a voice.
Cold. Vast. Older than light.
It came from everywhere. From the ocean. From inside his blood. From the hollow space where hope used to live.
"Welcome home, Administrator."
The darkness peeled itself back like wet skin.
And there it was.
Black Moon.
It wasn't a creature. It wasn't even a thing that could exist. It was a wrongness given form, a shape carved from the screaming geometry of a nightmare that had forgotten what waking meant.
Its eyes, four vast white orbs, burned without light, and its mouth… oh God, its mouth stretched wider than reason allowed, teeth curving into infinity, grinding against each other with the sound of continents breaking.
Leonard froze. His mind skidded against the sight, failing to comprehend it, like an insect trying to understand the sun.
And then it smiled.
A slow, deliberate, cancerous smile.
"You've fallen far, Administrator." The voice was an earthquake whisper, shuddering through bone and nerve. "Far enough that no light, no god, no Foundation will ever find you."
Leonard tried to speak, but all that came out was a ragged choke.
Black Moon drifted closer. Its size was impossible, one moment it was a titan looming over him, the next it was close enough that Leonard could see his own reflection in the slick blackness of its teeth.
"You want to know what this place is?" it asked. "This is the marrow of oblivion. A sea where broken truths sink to rot. And you…" Its grin widened, splitting reality like paper. "…you are about to drown in yourself."
Before Leonard could react, the ocean convulsed.
Something wrapped around his wrists, chains of solid darkness, cold as a dead star, biting into his flesh. They yanked his arms outward with bone-snapping force. Another set coiled around his ankles, tearing skin as they locked him in place.
He struggled. He screamed. The chains only tightened, grinding against his bones until he felt them splinter.
Blood bubbled up through the void, floating in thick crimson globes before sinking into nothing.
"Do you know what you really are, Administrator?" Black Moon whispered, gliding closer. Its voice slithered into his brain, curling like smoke around every synapse. "A mask. A hollow frame filled with Foundation lies. You call it order. You call it containment. But what you really are… is a parasite."
The words pierced deeper than the chains.
That's not true… Leonard tried to think it, but the thought was weak, brittle, and Black Moon heard it anyway.
"Oh, but it is. Every world you touched, every life you manipulated, you fed on them, bled them dry for your illusion of control."
Leonard clenched his teeth. "SHUT UP!"
Black Moon's laugh was a sound that shouldn't exist, a rupture in the fabric of sanity itself.
"Shut up?" The abyss writhed around Leonard like a nest of serpents. "No, Administrator. Open up."
The chains dragged him under.
And then the torture began.
First came the heat.
The black ocean boiled, bubbles of molten shadow scalding his flesh. Leonard screamed as his skin blistered, peeling away in wet sheets, exposing raw muscle. The smell of himself cooking filled the void, and he gagged on the stench.
Then came the cold.
The water froze solid in an instant, shards of ice spearing through his muscles, his organs. His blood turned to frost, veins snapping like glass. He tried to curl in on himself, but the chains held him taut, his joints cracking under the strain.
And then the fire returned.
And the cold.
And the fire.
Until he couldn't tell which was worse, only that his nerves were screaming, splitting, burning until pain became a language and that language was all he knew.
But the torment was only the beginning.
When he thought he couldn't take more, the visions came.
Not illusions. Not tricks. Memories. Ripped raw from the deepest parts of him and weaponized into blades.
He saw their faces.
Every soldier who died in the canyon. Every hostage who screamed for help that never came. The boy clutching his sister's hand. The woman in the Isleen prison cell, whispering prayers through broken teeth as guards dragged her away.
They stared at him through blackened eyes, lips sewn shut with strands of his own guilt.
And then their mouths split open, vomiting words like acid:
"You left us."
"You burned us."
"You smiled when we died."
Leonard shook his head violently. "No… no, I didn't… I- I never-"
But then he saw himself.
Standing there in the command tent giving the order. His lips curling into the faintest smile as the shells fell.
"That's not real!" he roared, but his voice cracked, splintered, broke like old glass.
Black Moon circled him like a shark, its grin stretching wide enough to carve new horizons.
"Real? Administrator, reality is the cruelest lie of all. And I am here to peel it from your bones."
The visions deepened.
Now he wasn't in the canyon. He was in the rooms.
Rooms where screams never stopped. Where Foundation scientists cut into living flesh in the name of containment. Where anomalies cried for mercy in voices like children and died with numbers instead of names.
Leonard saw himself in every reflection. Smiling. Signing the orders. Watching without blinking as blood soaked the walls.
He vomited, choking on bile, but the void drank it greedily.
And then he heard it.
Another voice.
His own.
"You loved it."
The words slithered from his mouth, but he hadn't spoken. His reflection had.
"You loved the newfound power. The authority. The feeling of being a god with the right to kill in the name of 'order.'"
Leonard thrashed, chains slicing deeper into his wrists, blood spiraling away into black nothingness.
"STOP IT!" he screamed, but it sounded like a child begging the storm not to come.
The reflection leaned close, its face twisting, teeth lengthening into razors.
"You are not a savior."
The words came like a verdict, each syllable a hammer on bone.
"You are the cage."
And then Black Moon struck.
Its mouth opened wider than worlds, and from that abyss of teeth and hunger came tendrils of pure nothingness. They speared into Leonard's chest, his eyes, his mind, ripping through layers of self until there was nothing but screaming and darkness and blood turned to dust.
He felt his memories tear loose, ripped from the roots, scattered into the void like ash. Faces blurred. Names dissolved. Even his own voice began to sound alien, like something borrowed from a man who no longer existed.
And through it all, Black Moon whispered, soft and infinite:
"This is only the beginning."
Leonard hung there, broken, bleeding in more ways than flesh can bleed. His mind was a shattered mirror, jagged edges cutting into what little remained of him.
And then-
A new horror bloomed.
The chains tightened again.
The ocean boiled again.
The visions multiplied.
And Leonard realized with a sinking terror that there was no end.
No waking.
No rescue.
No death.
Only this.
Forever.
Leonard no longer thought.
His mind was not a battlefield anymore. It was a graveyard, and the graves were shallow, filled with rotting echoes of what he once was. His eyes, dim, hollow, devoid of fire, stared into nothing.
He screamed again.
Not because he believed someone would come. Not because he believed screaming mattered. He screamed because pain demanded it, because his shredded nerves remembered the shape of agony even when his mind was gone.
The torture rolled over him in waves, relentless, merciless. His skin had been peeled and rebuilt a hundred times. His memories had been broken, remade, broken again until truth and lie were indistinguishable. His name was a wound now, festering and bleeding somewhere inside the black ocean.
And still Black Moon watched, silent, its mile-wide grin stretching across the void like a fracture in existence. It drank his suffering the way wolves drink blood, slowly, savoring every drop.
Leonard was nothing but a whisper about to die.
And then-
[Ding! Forced activation of the fragment of The Administrator (Supreme Divinity) initiated.]
The words burned themselves into reality, glyphs of living light spiraling across the void, carving sigils into the darkness itself.
Black Moon froze. Its grin faltered, just slightly but enough for the abyss to shiver.
Leonard felt it before he understood it.
A pulse deep in his marrow. A tremor in his soul, like a drumbeat echoing from a time older than stars. His chest cracked open, not flesh, but concept and from the wound surged blackness.
But this was no mere void.
This was structured darkness, a geometry of annihilation, threads of living shadow coiling like serpents around his broken frame. They wrapped his limbs, his spine, his skull, burning his nerves with a force so pure it erased pain, replacing it with power.
Leonard's scream twisted into something else, a roar, guttural and infinite, spilling from his throat like thunder caged for centuries.
The ocean recoiled.
Black Moon hissed, a sound that made galaxies wither. It drifted back, its grin cracking, its teeth grinding with unease as the shadows took form.
From Leonard's body rose a shape, a colossus of darkness, vast and impossible, its silhouette blotting out the remnants of existence. Its frame was humanoid, but wrong, stitched from the night between realities. Its edges bled ink into space, its presence bending gravity into submission.
Then came the eyes.
Two blazing white orbs ignited in the creature's face, cutting through the void with a stare that unmade meaning. They fixed on Black Moon, unblinking, merciless.
And then, the voice.
Not a sound. A verdict. Spoken by existence itself.
"You disappoint me, Leonard."
It came from nowhere and everywhere, slipping under Leonard's skin, worming through his bones.
"I thought you would be stronger than this. Mentally at least."
Black Moon reared back, its titanic jaws snapping in rage. It screamed, a scream that split time like glass, a howl so deep the ocean of voids boiled with it.
"YOU!"
The humanoid shadow tilted its head. Slowly. Almost amused. Its eyes narrowed into crescents of white fire.
And then, it smiled.
"You've grown arrogant, little wolf."
The words dripped with mockery, heavy with the weight of ages older than causality.
Black Moon lunged forward, its black tides convulsing, its endless maw vomiting hurricanes of entropy.
"HOW DARE YOU?"
The fragment laughed.
A laugh colder than entropy. A laugh that remembered the first silence before the first word was spoken.
"Dare?"
The shadow moved, not fast, but inevitable, like a law of reality descending. Its darkness unfurled like wings, blotting out the fractured stars.
And then, the collision came.
The impact was not an impact. It was a rewriting.
The void itself convulsed as the two infinities collided. Black Moon's abyssal tides smashed against the fragment's structured darkness, and the universe screamed.
Waves of raw concept tore through everything. Not matter. Not energy. Meaning itself shattered. Colors that had never existed bled into sight, then died screaming as logic folded in half and burned.
Leonard, still dangling in chains, though now dimly aware, felt the collision tear through him, splitting his perception into a thousand overlapping timelines. He saw every version of himself, all at once.
Above him, titans clashed.
Black Moon expanded, swelling like a cancer, its four eyes blazing, its grin vomiting storms of anti-light that ate entire planes. Its laugh was a plague.
The fragment answered with silence.
No roar. No fury. Just dominion. The shadow surged forward like a tidal wave of knives, its edges slicing through voidstuff, carving wounds into infinity.
When they struck again, the blast of force was so absolute that Leonard's world changed.
The void ripped apart-
And suddenly-
They were back on the rooftop of the Empire State Building.
This was a corpse of steel and glass, a tower of ash rising above a dead Manhattan drowned in darkness. The air vibrated with the echo of broken laws, gravity hiccupping, sound stuttering like a damaged record.
Above the ruin, Black Moon and the fragment fought, their fields colliding in cataclysmic bursts of power.
Each clash was a cosmic genocide, reality peeling back like paper, exposing the raw screaming code beneath. Time fractured. Streets melted. The horizon looped and folded as two titans carved their hatred into existence.
And Leonard… Leonard crawled among the ruins, barely breathing, his body a sack of splintered bones and blood. He stared upward with eyes that could no longer comprehend what they saw.
The Empire State Building shuddered under the weight of their battle, its spine cracking, its steel ribs twisting like molten wax. Then, with a scream of metal, it collapsed, plunging into the abyss below.
Leonard fell with it, choking on dust, on blood, on the terror of gods.
But the fight above did not stop.
Black Moon howled, its voice a maelstrom that shattered skyscrapers into grains of ash.
"HOW?! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!"
Its form bulged, warped, tearing through dimensions as it thrashed against the fragment's expanding shadow.
"I AM COMPLETE! I AM WHOLE! AND YOU! YOU ARE ONLY A FRAGMENT OF YOURSELF"
Another strike, another detonation of concept, silenced the void.
The fragment's laughter spilled like oil across reality.
"Whole?"
The word dripped venom, heavy with contempt.
"You call yourself whole, little wolf, when you are still gnawing at the roots, fighting for scraps in the dirt."
Black Moon's eyes flared, spitting storms of annihilation. The fragment ate them whole.
"You are a Supreme Divinity, yes," the voice continued, rolling like thunder from the first dawn, "but you are a child clawing at shadows. While I…"
The eyes blazed brighter, searing through Black Moon's essence.
"…I existed before the Tree even came to existence by the Three Brothers."
The fragment surged forward, its shadow spears plunging deep into Black Moon's form. The wolf screamed, its voice ripping skyscrapers from foundations.
"And you," the voice hissed, "are barely fit to even challenge that three-legged Crow"
And then, the end came.
The fragment's darkness exploded outward, swallowing the last shards of Black Moon's abyss. The wolf's scream broke, splintering into static. Its titanic jaws snapped shut one last time then vanished, its body imploding into a pinprick of dead light.
Silence.
For a moment, the world was a wound.
Then, the voice spoke again, soft now, almost playful:
"Oops. He slipped away. I am only a fragment, after all."
The shadow collapsed inward, folding into Leonard's broken body like ink soaking into paper. The light died. The winds stilled.
And Leonard-
Leonard woke among the ruins.
Ash rained from the hollow sky. The Empire State Building was a carcass of twisted metal and shattered stone. Entire blocks had melted into black glass, reality still twitching and bleeding from the battle.
Leonard stared at it all with empty eyes.
He remembered nothing of victory. Only pain. Only screams that still crawled in the corners of his skull like cockroaches.
He stood, swaying, the dust clinging to his bloodied skin.
Above, the sky was dead.
And deep inside him, something whispered.
Not done yet.
Leonard noticed the giant red cocoon of the juvenile god that had caused all this chaos.
He walked toward it. And, he noticed a demon in a tuxedo, clearly uneasy, waiting.
The demon raised his hands to show he was unarmed and pointed at a hole in the cocoon.
Leonard looked at it, then entered the cocoon.
Suddenly, he fell and landed in a large pool of red liquid, which he immediately recognized as red wine.
He looked ahead and saw a very seductive woman sitting on a throne in front of him. She smiled, despite slight tremors in her movements caused by the fight outside.
She snapped her fingers and a chair appeared behind Leonard, on which he sat. She then stood up and walked toward Leonard. Before stopping a few meters in front of him, she knelt:
"I am Queen Iblis, one of the incarnations of Satan and ruler of one of the realms of Hell. I wish to submit unconditionally to the representative of one of the Supreme Beings."