Bakuzan blocked his father's blow with one arm, their two forces colliding with a sharp crack. A shockwave, light but perfectly circular, spread around them, raising dust and rock fragments like a sudden breath of the world.
Erasa, standing back, spoke clearly:
— Don't try to demolish him immediately! Watch him. We need to understand how Azazel manipulates the dead. The more we know, the better we can prepare for what comes next!
Bakuzan nodded, tightening his guard.
The fight truly began.
Niyus — his father, or rather what was left of him — attacked without restraint. Each movement, each gesture, carried a raw power capable of destroying laws, cracking concepts, breaking fundamental orders. This wasn't a mere confrontation: it was an ancient cataclysm trying to take shape again.
He was exactly at the same level as when he was one of the most terrifying Deviants.
Bakuzan stepped back, watching attentively. Niyus then raised his hand toward the sky. The air trembled. Colors distorted.
— He's preparing an Order...
The Order of Superiority: where the Dreamer can consider any being as a mere element of his dream... and utterly erase it by pure decree.
But Bakuzan was no longer a simple existence.
He was an Ineffable.
A being who transcended all categories of Dream.
He was not only out of reach: he stood beyond any level where a Dream could claim to erase him.
Niyus's attack faded into a silent void — useless, powerless, crushed by Bakuzan's very nature.
— Trying to erase me with an inferior dream... murmured Bakuzan. Bad choice.
On the other side of the field, Adam took action.
His body contracted, light twisted around him, and a spear shot from his hands: a golden light, too pure, too ancient, almost burning the reality that contained it.
— The Spear of Apollo... breathed Erasa. Made from the authority of the primordial gods themselves...
Adam threw the weapon without hesitation, each attack carrying the echo of the first deities, a conceptual force capable of toppling entire worlds.
Erasa dodged.
Graceful.
Precise.
Disconcerting.
She moved as if she knew every trajectory before it was even launched. Every movement of Adam was avoided by an almost insolent anticipation.
But she was watching too.
Between two dodges, her gaze hardened.
— I understand... Azazel doesn't just animate corpses. He restores the exact power of their Prime... the one they had at their peak.
Adam advanced a slow, mechanical step, but every breath of energy around him recalled what he had been: the supreme Apostle of all gods of the Dream.
In a fight, that meant something terrifying: he could embody any god of the Dream, and unleash their powers through his own body.
Erasa watched his movements, the flashes of light changing hue, the shifts of authority around him.
She understood quickly.
— He only uses primordial quaternary levels... she whispered to herself.
No trace of an original god.
It confirmed what she suspected.
The original gods were not simple deities.
They were not even part of the Dream.
They belonged to the Out-Dreams, where no narration, no cosmic rule of the Dream could apply.
For this reason, becoming an apostle of an original god was almost impossible.
Most existences—even the most powerful—were simply incompatible with these indifferent entities, whose logics were as remote as bottomless abysses.
Yet Erasa felt a certain pride.
She, as an Ineffable, stood beyond the reach of all gods of the pure Dream, even the oldest, even the most violent.
If Adam had had the possibility to embody an original god, then she would have been forced to fight seriously.
— Fortunately... that's not the case, she breathed.
Because yes:
Ineffables were beings whose true bodies could not even be narrated in the Dream.
They existed only through conscious projections of themselves, measured reflections, controlled fragments.
For the gods of the Dream, they were practically untouchable.
But the original gods...
They did not respect that invulnerability.
Their principles even defied the notion of "projection."
They were not limited by the Dream — nor by what it could or could not touch.
And that was precisely where Erasa had an incomparable advantage.
A discreet smile stretched her lips beneath the mask.
— I had the honor of being Mü Thanatos's Apostle, she murmured.
An original god.
A being whose mere conceptual presence made the Realms of the Dream falter.
That didn't just make her untouchable to attacks from the gods of the Dream.
It made her...
incomprehensible to their eyes.
And Adam, even manipulated by Azazel, could do nothing against that.
Erasa spun between the assaults of the primordial Apostle, each impact of his power crushing further the animated corpse of Adam. Even drained of all will, even reanimated by Azazel's art, Adam remained... Adam. A fragment of the gods. An abyss of power.
But facing an Ineffable, that wasn't enough.
Erasa had already noticed something else:
each time one of the corpses lost advantage, something — a dark push, a foreign intention — tried to overlap their flesh.
Azazel tried to reinject his power, forcing their bodies to exceed their limits.
It was vain.
A bandage on a cosmic wound.
Erasa leapt back, her great black wings spreading with a crash, and declared in a voice muffled by the mask:
— I understand.
She then stretched her hand toward Adam.
Her mana exploded in a dense, saturated maelstrom, like a veil of abyss descending from the sky.
In an instant, Adam was enveloped, immobilized, frozen as if caught in absolute stasis.
Without delay, she did the same for Niyus.
Bakuzan, surprised, interrupted his own duel and jumped back.
— Erasa! What are you doing?!
She didn't answer.
Her two mana spheres closed harshly, suffocating them — not to destroy, but to stifle something else inside them.
Then, suddenly, her mana disappeared as if it had never existed.
The two bodies collapsed immediately, like puppets deprived of their strings.
A heavy, almost sacred silence fell.
Bakuzan rushed to Niyus.
He knelt, gently placing a hand on the inert chest... and slowly, Niyus's eyelids lifted, revealing two black, deep but living eye sockets.
— Ba... Bakuzan...?
His voice, even altered, resonated like the one Bakuzan had known.
The son widened his eyes.
— Father... you... you recognize me?
Niyus weakly nodded, still lost.
Meanwhile, Erasa positioned herself before Adam, who had just also risen, dazed, as if coming out of a dream that wasn't his.
— Where... where am I? he asked, voice heavy with ancient echoes.
Erasa slightly bowed her head.
— You are freed from Azazel's grip.
Adam frowned behind his mask. A shadow of anger and disbelief passed in his empty gaze.
— The grip... of Azazel?
Erasa answered calmly but gravely, as if each word was a cosmic verdict:
— He pushed your corpse beyond its own memory, using your power as a channel. He forced you to exist in a state no longer yours. But that... has just ended.
On the other side.
Niyus breathed like someone rediscovering movement. His shoulders rose at a hesitant pace, as if trying to relearn what existence was. Bakuzan remained frozen for a moment, unable to take his eyes off his father returned from a silence of twenty-five years.
— Father... he whispered.
His voice trembled despite himself.
— You've been dead for more than twenty-five years... I was... I was still a kid then. So... how can you recognize me? After all this time... after all I've become?
Niyus gently stretched out his hand. A heavy, cold hand but alive in an inexplicable way. Bakuzan took it without thinking and helped him to stand. Once upright, Niyus placed his palm on his son's shoulder. His black, empty but internally warm gaze rested on him.
— Look at yourself, he said almost whispering.
— When I look at you... I recognize myself. I recognize the blood that runs through you. It's mine. I could never mistake one of my children. Even if you'd become an old man... even if you'd become a beast or a shadow... I would have recognized you. Always.
He placed his second hand on Bakuzan's other shoulder, surrounding him in a gesture full of pride.
— How are your brothers? Your sister? Your mother?
Then he smiled lightly, almost mischievous:
— Has... one of you tried to make me a grandfather? Hm? A grandson... before I leave for good?
Bakuzan opened his eyes wide — then broke down.
He threw himself into his father's arms, holding him with a strength contained for decades.
— Father...
His voice cracked.
— I am so happy... I... Seeing you again after all this time... you are here, in front of me... I can't believe it... I can't believe it...!
Niyus embraced him in return. His grip was solid despite his dead body. As if love, itself, had never disappeared.
Erasa arrived behind them, Adam at her side, both motionless like silhouettes brought back from the past. Her muffled voice came from the mask, cutting their reunion moment:
— Don't rejoice too quickly, Bakuzan.
Your father regained his memories... and his consciousness. But he remains... a corpse.
Bakuzan jumped. He released his father and stepped back, raising his eyes to him.
Niyus answered with a sad smile, silently confirming Erasa's words.
Bakuzan turned to her, breath still unsteady:
— Then why... why are they moving? You didn't give them life... not really?
Erasa shook her head slowly.
— No. I cannot bring them back to life for now.
Azazel still holds their Sources, the essence that makes them living beings. What I have done... is give them autonomy. I removed Azazel's authority over their bodies.
She pointed slowly at Adam, then Niyus, with a gesture.
— But they have no soul. No Source. They are only shells... vessels that still remember, that still think thanks to their mental echo.
She paused.
— To bring them back to life... we would need to retrieve what was stolen from them. Directly at the root.
Bakuzan looked at his father.
Niyus smiled — a true smile despite everything.
But in that smile, there was a void...
A void that needed filling.