The shockwave from Chaos's strike tore across the Dimensional Gap like a cosmic tide.
The path beneath the Gremory family buckled. Rias staggered, clutching Koneko tight, her legs folding until she dropped to one knee. Millicas wailed in Venelana's arms, the boy's aura flickering wildly as if even his soul couldn't decide if it existed.
Kiba collapsed, sword clattering uselessly to the ground. "It… it doesn't make sense," he rasped, voice trembling. "The blow—how can it both hit and miss? How can it—"
"Don't think about it!" Sirzechs snapped, blood trailing from one eye as he forced his crimson aura wider, pulling his family and Rias's peerage under its shield. "Anchor yourselves to what you see, not what you understand!"
Gasper curled into Akeno's arms, sobbing incoherently. "Too many… too many versions… I can't—"
Akeno gritted her teeth, hugging him close, tears streaking her face. "Just stay with me, Gasper. Just with me. Don't look out there."
Baraqiel took a deep breath to center himself. Then he kissed Akeno before stepping back... and disappeared. The others not even noticing his disappearance.
Zeoticus's hand trembled where it gripped Venelana's shoulder, his statesmanly calm cracking into raw terror. "So this is what it means to be small," he whispered. "Even devils, even kings… ants before a storm."
Grayfia, kneeling beside Rias, pressed her palm to the ground, etching a ward with sheer willpower. Her voice was steady, but her knuckles were white. "Do not give in to the contradictions. They are poison to mortals." She met Rias's eyes sharply. "Breathe. Hold your rook. That is real. That is enough."
Rias obeyed, choking on her breath, clutching Koneko tighter, whispering her name like a lifeline.
Ophis stood apart from the devils, her small frame unbowed though streaks of her blood still marked her jaw. Her eyes followed Chaos's every movement, not with fear, but with something colder. "The First Child has stopped laughing," she murmured. "The end begins here."
Nyx stepped closer, her dark aura spilling like velvet night around the trembling devils, shielding them from the raw contradictions bleeding through the air. Her lips curved into something fragile — not quite a smile, not quite grief. "Hespera always did like to surround herself with chaos," she said softly, though her eyes never left the battlefield. "But this… this is more than even she could have imagined."
Death, cloak torn and one arm gone, steadied herself on her scythe. Her voice was as quiet as always, but the words cut deeper than any blade. "This is the shape of my friend's fury. Chaos is not cruel by nature. They jest, they twist, they dance. But wound what they hold dear…" She let her gaze drift to her missing arm. "…and the joke ends."
Her single hand clenched tighter around the scythe. "And when Chaos stops laughing, whole realities collapse."
Above them, Chaos surged forward again, serpents lashing, paradoxes snarling as they ripped through Pandora's storm. The black sun spun faster, its annihilation devouring and yet failing, cracking and yet unbroken. Each collision bent the Gap, folding space so violently that horizons inverted and reappeared.
The devils could barely breathe under the weight of it.
Akeno cried out, shielding her eyes. Kiba covered Millicas's gaze with trembling hands. Even Venelana pressed her forehead to her son's hair, whispering prayers she hadn't spoken since her youth.
And then — silence.
Only for a heartbeat.
The silence was worse than the roar. It pressed against their skulls, made their thoughts collapse inward. For that instant, the Gremorys and their peerage felt the paradox touch them.
They were alive.
They were dead.
They were both.
Rias screamed, anchoring herself by sheer will. "No! I choose!" She clutched Koneko tighter, eyes wild. "We are alive! We are here!"
The paradox relented, snapping back to the battlefield.
Gaspar sobbed harder, rocking in Akeno's arms. "We shouldn't be here… we shouldn't be seeing this…"
Zeoticus whispered hoarsely, "Then why are we? Why are we alive at all in the presence of such things?"
Death's gaze turned briefly toward them, her expression unreadable. "Because she wills it."
Ophis's voice followed, steady and flat. "Because Hespera still remembers you."
Akeno shivered, her teeth clenched, heart breaking as she looked at Pandora's form beyond — trinary eyes burning, twenty-four wings flaring, her aunt's laughter long gone.
And then her gaze shifted to Chaos, serpents roaring, contradictions spilling like oceans.
Hespera's "parent."
Her paradox given form.
Her inheritance revealed.
And for the first time, Akeno and Rias wondered if even victory would mean salvation.
Chaos pressed forward, serpents roaring, paradoxes twisting through the Gap until entire horizons flickered in and out of being. Their laughter boomed, thunderous and terrifying, a chorus of contradictions shaking every law.
Pandora staggered under the storm — wounds that healed and bled, truths that both struck and missed. For the first time since her awakening, her trinary eyes wavered.
And then… she smiled.
"You think paradox is yours alone?" she whispered.
Her black sun dimmed, folding inward, condensing into a single point. Twenty-four wings closed around her body like a cocoon. The battlefield shook — not with destruction, but with remembrance.
The sound came first.
Weeping. Laughter. Screams. Begging. The voices of mortals and gods, every prayer ever given to the pantheons she had erased. Their faith twisted into grief, grief into memory, memory into weapons.
Her hands spread.
And from the void before her, a box appeared.
Bound in black stone, chained in gold, each link inscribed with a story of suffering. Every lock bore the crest of a god she had unmade — Shiva's flame, Odin's spear, Ra's sun, Athena's owl, Thor's hammer, Zeus's bolt. Their symbols turned to seals.
Pandora's Box.
The original sin of creation. The last gift she had taken from the scattered gods as she unwrote them.
The Primordials froze. Even Chaos's laughter dulled for a heartbeat.
"No…" Death whispered, her one hand tightening on her scythe. "Not that."
Pandora's smile widened, her voice silk and ash.
"You destroyed her for power. Now I will show you what true power costs."
She snapped her fingers.
The locks shattered.
The chains fell.
The box opened.
The Gap screamed.
From the box poured everything.
Plagues of sorrow and disease, infecting not flesh but meaning. Names began to rot, titles losing significance, legends collapsing into parody.
Shadows of betrayal that crawled into hearts, amplifying every hidden doubt and self-loathing.
Wars unending, memories of every battlefield in history spilling outward until the ground beneath the devils turned to mud and blood.
Famine, not of food but of hope itself, gnawing at the spirit, leaving the Gremorys clutching each other as their strength drained.
Despair, falling like ash, settling in lungs and eyes, making every breath a weight.
And then — last of all — something different.
A single light.
Frail. Trembling. Yet unyielding.
Hope.
It drifted upward, golden and warm, even as the horrors spread. For Pandora had not removed it. She had unleashed it as well.
But her voice was merciless.
"Let them choke on it. Hope is the cruelest curse of all — to believe there is light when only darkness waits."
The Gremorys collapsed under the onslaught. Rias gasped as Koneko's body convulsed in her arms, whispering her sister's name. Millicas cried until his voice broke, clutching Venelana's gown. Kiba fell to his knees, sword shattering.
Akeno clung to Gasper, both of them trembling violently as the plagues of memory clawed through their minds.
Sirzechs bled freely, his aura flickering, even his Luciferian strength bowing under the flood of despair. "She's—she's breaking the weave!" he roared.
Death snarled, cloak whipping as she cut through swathes of curses with her scythe — but even she stumbled, her body still weakened from her lost arm.
Ophis stared, her small frame rigid, eyes narrowing. "This… is not Hespera. This is the box using her."
Nyx's eyes shimmered with fury, her night aura burning brighter to shield the mortals. She whispered, voice trembling but defiant: "My starlight, what have they done to you…"
Chaos reeled back, serpents thrashing as the plagues bit into even their paradox. Some heads roared with triumph, others whimpered with sorrow, some laughed while others sobbed.
Their golden eyes narrowed.
And then, slowly, their smile returned.
"Now that's funny," they whispered. "Because even in despair, even in rot, even in the end…"
Their serpents surged, weaving paradox through the storms pouring from the box.
"…hope is still mine to twist."
The battle was no longer paradox versus annihilation. It had become paradox versus despair.
And the Gap itself trembled, caught between the joke and the curse.
The Gap bled red lightning. Sigils etched themselves into the void, burning and unraveling at once. Pandora's Box poured endlessly, spewing despair and grief in all their forms, blanketing existence in curses that should not have been survivable.
But Chaos laughed.
Not the bright laugh of a trickster. This laugh was guttural, multi-throated, each of his serpents shaking the void with mirth so sharp it cut.
"Ahhh, I see! You brought toys."
The horrors lunged first.
Phantom figures swarmed Chaos — mortals screaming for lost loves, gods begging not to be erased, broken prayers clawing at his serpents like desperate hands.
Chaos's golden eyes blazed. "You want to remember? Fine. Remember differently."
One serpent bit into the tide of ghosts. When it exhaled, the memories shifted: cries of despair became laughter, pain became triumph. The ghosts turned and attacked Pandora, their agony now burning with joy at her destruction.
They crawled into his scales, whispering treachery, trying to poison Chaos against Death, against Rebirth, against Order. Each serpent writhed, some hissing, some roaring, some weeping.
Chaos chuckled, claws flexing. "You think betrayal frightens me? I invented loopholes."
He plucked the shadows from his flesh and wove them into a net. Then he hurled it over Pandora, and suddenly every betrayal ever committed by her erased gods lashed into her — knives of treachery wielded by those who once prayed to her pantheon.
The battlefield beneath them convulsed into endless battlefields — a thousand armies across all ages charging at once, swords raised, shields clashing. The clash of wars past and present crushed the void, forcing even Primordials to step aside.
Chaos's serpents dove headlong into the fray. They devoured both sides, swallowing armies whole, and when the serpents exhaled, the soldiers reappeared — but now every blade pointed at Pandora.
"Fight yourself," Chaos jeered, his voice a chorus of delight. "Every war is your war now."
The armies howled and surged against her twenty-four wings.
This horror struck deeper. The plagues of famine gnawed at the soul, draining meaning and joy. The devils on the path buckled, Millicas's sobs fading to silence, Rias clutching Koneko as her arms felt suddenly hollow, her love stretched thin like paper ready to tear.
But Chaos's laughter cut through it.
He bit into the famine itself, devouring the gnawing emptiness, and spat it back as hunger for Pandora. Every void of spirit turned into a ravenous craving for her undoing.
"You starve them? Then let them feast on you."
The worst came last. Despair fell like ash, burying everything under its weight. Even Chaos faltered, his serpents hissing as some heads drooped low.
Pandora smiled faintly, trinary eyes burning. "Despair cannot be twisted. It is the end of ends."
Chaos's grin split wider, fangs gleaming.
"Endings? You dare speak of endings to me?"
His body split in two again, one collapsing into despair, the other rising into exultant mirth. Both were true. Both endured.
"Despair only exists if hope is lost," Chaos thundered. "And hope—"
One serpent unhinged its jaw and swallowed Hope whole as it drifted from the box.
For a moment, everything stopped. Even Pandora's smile faltered.
"—is mine now," Chaos finished.
His serpents erupted with golden light. Every paradox sharpened into fury. The horrors of the Box shrieked, caught in the feedback of their own contradictions, and turned inward on Pandora.
The battlefield cracked open, collapsing under the weight of horrors reversed. Pandora's twenty-four wings flared desperately, her black sun pulsing harder, trying to contain the curse she had unleashed. But the Box itself trembled in her hands, its locks and chains rattling as though mocking her.
The Primordials steadied themselves. Death stood tall despite her missing arm, scythe glowing faintly. Order clutched her fractured chest, holding the lattice together with sheer will. Rebirth flickered in and out of stasis, feathers sparking with defiance.
And Chaos — serpents writhing, golden eyes blazing — stepped forward, laughter booming.
"You think despair is the end, my little paradox? No. Despair is the punchline."
His serpents lunged all at once, not for Pandora's wings, not for her sun — but for the Box itself.
The horrors screamed as Chaos's paradox fangs closed around the ancient relic.
And the Gap itself held its breath.