The battlefield froze.
For all its chaos — for all the clashing wings of Chaos, the steadying scythe of Death, the smoldering fury of Rebirth, and the laws unraveling around Order's broken form — everything stilled when the Trumpet of Revelations reached the Gap.
It was not a sound. It was the command of existence.
Pandora staggered.
Her trinary irises flickered, breaking into splintered rings of color that bled and reformed. Her smile faltered for the first time since her ascension. The storm of annihilation that spun around her shivered as though uncertain.
"…impossible," she whispered, voice cracking against the silence. "They… stir?"
For the first time, there was something raw in her tone. Not anger. Not arrogance.
Fear.
The Gremorys felt it like glass shattering inside their chests.
Rias clutched her head with a gasp, collapsing to her knees as Millicas cried out beside her. Grayfia caught them both, her lips moving but her voice drowned beneath the thunder of law echoing through the Gap.
Nyx's eyes widened, obsidian nightlight burning in her pupils. "The Thrones…" Her voice shook, a mix of awe and fury. "They dare move again."
Baraqiel's absence had gone unnoticed in the chaos — but now, Nyx realized. She hissed through her teeth. "That fool went to them."
Koneko stirred faintly in Rias's arms, her half-conscious voice a whisper that carried far more than mortal weight: "…Nee-sama… even the Thrones rise for you."
Ophis's face remained unreadable, but for those who could sense her — Nyx, Sirzechs, even Chaos in his many-headed storm — there was a shift. A ripple in the calm void of her presence.
She turned her head toward Nyx, then toward the Gremorys trembling on the reflection-path. Her voice was quiet, flat, yet absolute.
"You will guard them."
Nyx stiffened. "Alone? Against this chaos?"
Ophis blinked, her tone unchanged. "You are Night. You endure."
And with that, she was gone. No flare of light, no ripple of sound. One moment present, the next erased from sight. Her intent carried faintly across the battlefield like a whisper in the bones of the universe:
I will bring Great Red.
Pandora's gaze darted, her wings flaring in serrated arcs that shredded the air around her. She felt it. She knew.
"The Infinite leaves," she hissed. Her voice shook, but her grin returned, jagged and trembling. "The Dragon Gods gather. The Thrones awaken. All of you… all of you crawl like maggots to unmake me!"
Her body convulsed as grief poured outward, a storm of stolen prayers and shattered memories crashing against the battlefield. Chaos bared his many teeth in laughter, even as the torrent scorched against his paradox-flesh. Death tightened her grip on her broken arm, her scythe flaring darker, heavier. Rebirth snarled, flame rising again despite his staggering. Order forced herself upright, her voice breaking as she invoked law to patch the unraveling edges of reality.
Pandora's twenty-four wings spread wide, blotting out even the storm of the Gap. Her voice rang out like a curse.
"Then let them come! Thrones, Dragons, Archangels, Primordials! I will not fall. I AM THE END THEY FEARED!"
Pandora's scream shook the Gap like the cracking of glass across the sky. Her twenty-four serrated wings stretched outward, blotting out even the fractured horizons. The storm of grief and uncreation thickened, each ripple unraveling the rivers of light and shadow beneath the Gremorys' feet.
Nyx's eyes narrowed, shadows flaring around her like living velvet. "She panics," she whispered. "That fear makes her reckless."
But reckless did not mean weaker.
With a flick of her wrist, Pandora drew the battlefield inward. Shards of broken prayers coalesced into blades of memory, screaming with the voices of the dead. They fell like meteors, aimed not at Chaos or Death, but at the path where the Gremorys huddled.
Sirzechs moved instantly, his aura flaring scarlet, a dome of hellfire rising. But the blades pierced through, each carrying the weight of grief itself. His shield buckled, cracks splintering.
"Damn it!" he roared, pushing harder, his body trembling.
Nyx was already moving. She spread her arms wide, and the night itself bent to her will. A dome of shadow deeper than void cloaked the devils, swallowing the incoming shards whole. For an instant, it looked as if she had simply erased them. But Nyx's jaw tightened, her hands shaking.
"They scream," she hissed, voice low. "Every soul she has unmade screams through these weapons."
Rias clutched Koneko tighter, her own aura flaring unstable, tears streaking her face. "She's aiming at us. She knows we're here—"
"Of course she does," Nyx snapped, her voice cutting, sharp as the night. "Hespera's bonds are carved through you. She cannot not see you."
The battlefield vanished behind her like a discarded shadow. Ophis slipped into the deeper flows of the Dimensional Gap, where no light, no sound, no memory lingered. The Gap here was not battle-torn chaos but something worse: silence so absolute that even eternity seemed to hesitate before stepping further.
She moved without ripple, her small frame drifting as though carried by invisible tides. And yet, every step she took reshaped the paths around her.
The Infinite Dragon God walked where no one else could endure.
The currents thickened. Chains of radiant script twisted through the dark — the remnants of divine work. They pulsed like veins of poisoned light, humming with the wills of countless gods bound together in blasphemous unison.
At their center, buried in a cocoon of fractal stone and astral fire, Great Red slumbered.
The Apocalypse Dragon, the Dream of Infinity, reduced to a prisoner. His titanic body was coiled in knots of reality itself, wings nailed to the void by runes of absolute denial. His chest still rose and fell faintly, each breath straining against seals meant to silence universes.
Ophis's face did not change, but her aura trembled. Not in fear — in fury.
She reached out, brushing one of the glowing shackles with a fingertip. It hissed, burning her skin with the distilled malice of pantheons united. For the first time in an age, her lips moved with something close to emotion.
"They touched… my friend."
Her aura surged.
Ophis lifted both hands, and her presence — calm, infinite, unyielding — expanded until the very seals groaned. The runes strained, divine words unraveling against a silence far older than their gods.
One by one, the chains began to crack. Not loudly, not violently. Simply unmade, stripped of permission to exist.
The first shackle dissolved. The second followed. By the third, the void itself shook.
The prison shattered in quiet ruin, like glass vanishing into dust.
Great Red stirred. His colossal eye opened, a burning horizon of crimson and gold. For a moment, the Gap itself recoiled, reality folding to contain his awakening.
His gaze fell on Ophis. Recognition flared.
"Yo tiny dancer," his voice thundered, not through sound but through dream. "It was them, wasn't it? The cowards. The gods."
Ophis only nodded. "They feared her. So they shackled you. Why didn't you break free yourself?"
Great Red uncoiled, fragments of broken reality raining down like meteors. His laughter rumbled, sharp and terrible.
"They used my own blood on the chains. It empowered the seals. But they should have shackled me deeper." His massive wings spread, tearing apart the remnants of his prison. "Because now I am pissed."
Ophis turned, her expression unreadable, though the void itself bent reverently around her. "Then come. Pandora rises, and the Thrones stir. You will have plenty to release all that anger on."
The Apocalypse Dragon roared, a soundless quake that rippled across dimensions. The infinite currents bent, clearing a path.
Together, they moved toward the storm.
The clash raged without pause.
Chaos's paradox-hydra heads tore through Pandora's grief-storm, twisting plagues into song, despair into burning laughter. Rebirth, though staggering, wreathed the battlefield in violet-gold flame, dragging erased fragments back into trembling half-existence. Order clung to law like a bleeding soldier to a broken shield, trying to stitch reality's cracks. Death stood at the center, her cloak shredded, scythe dripping eternity, her one remaining arm held aloft as she barred Pandora's endless tide.
And still, Pandora pressed forward.
Her trinary irises blazed, every flap of her wings collapsing more of the Gap. "You cannot stop me! Not Chaos, not Death, not Rebirth, not even Order! I will drag the multiverse down with me!"
The storm peaked—
—and then the sky broke.
Lightning carved itself across infinity. The Trumpet of Revelations rang once more, and the very architecture of Heaven tore open above the battlefield.
Through clouds of burning gold, the first ranks descended. Armored seraphim, wings blazing brighter than suns, swords angled downward, their voices a hymn that split the storm in two. Behind them came the Choirs of Angels, ten thousand strong, radiant forms fanning outward like rivers of light. Their descent made even Chaos's hydra heads pause, hissing and laughing at once.
And at the heart of it, four towering presences stepped forward — not seraph, not archangel. Thrones.
Elysion's Dominion pressed down like law itself. Selaphiel's Judgment burned into every heart, making the Gremorys tremble with their own sins. Orifiel's Memory crackled, shadows of past wars flashing across the Gap. Seraphion's Will simply was — an unbreakable command that even Pandora faltered before.
The lightning did not stop. It crowned them.
The battlefield had a new axis.
And then came the roar.
Soundless yet deafening, a quake that bent horizons. The infinite currents of the Gap peeled open as Great Red burst forth, scales blazing like apocalypse made flesh. His wings shattered the remnants of his prison, every beat sending meteors of broken law cascading outward.
At his side walked Ophis, calm and silent, void folding around her small frame. Her eyes met Pandora's with perfect stillness. "Your tantrum ends."
Great Red laughed, his voice like collapsing stars. "And here I thought I'd missed the fun. I see my favorite little niece has been naughty, eh? You know what that means, right?"
Pandora's wings quivered. For the second time since her unbinding, nervousness crept across her face.
Why did she want to cover her bum all of a sudden? And why did the image of a belt flash in her mind!?