BELIAL NAME IS DAIKI
They never saw him approach.
One second the air trembled with residual energy from their discussion—Suna's conviction, Azire's quiet resolve, Daiki 's fury—and the next...
A ripple.
Like a crack in reality itself.
The temperature dropped. The sky dimmed.
From the heart of the ruined temple, light bled sideways—turning violet, then black, then something wrong. The structure groaned, and with a shuddering collapse, the entrance burst open like a gate unhinged.
And from the dust…
He walked.
Thal'Zir.
The Hollow Star.
A man-shaped silhouette draped in robes that moved like liquid void, his body flickering like a mirage. In one hand, he held nothing—and yet the space around it bent, screaming in silence.
His face was obscured by shifting shadows, but from within his chest radiated a dim, pulsing star—the same cursed glow that had surrounded Uno at the moment of possession.
Azire felt it instantly. The Voidshard Visage at his side screeched. Not in sound—but in pressure. A warning. A memory. Draumir's own soul recoiling from the presence it once called master.
Suna gasped, staggering back, her instincts screaming. "It's him."
Daiki didn't wait.
The Eclipse Gauntlet burned bright, snapping into Dusk Form as he launched forward with a roar. "I don't care what you are!"
He swung.
A brutal arc of twilight energy split the battlefield.
Thal'Zir raised a hand lazily. A pulse of unseen force rippled out.
Daiki stopped mid-air.
Frozen.
Then with a flick of Thal'Zir's wrist, he was slammed into the mountainside with bone-shattering force. The impact shook the ground, and Daiki didn't rise.
Maya screamed his name and cast a wave of lunar energy toward Thal'Zir.
It never reached him.
Her magic bent around his body—reflected—and struck her instead, sending her sprawling with a gasp.
Suna summoned vines from the Verdant Fang, calling on roots and thorns to restrain him. For a second, it looked like they held.
Until they withered.
The earth itself rejected her magic—devoured by an ancient void far older than life.
Thal'Zir tilted his head, amused.
"You raise blades and branches against a god?"
His voice—an echo across time—spoke in layered tones. Male, female, alien, all at once.
Azire stepped forward, breath steady, even as his knees quivered. The Voidshard Visage hovered behind him, runes glowing furiously.
"Then let me speak your language," Azire muttered.
"Box Realm: Phase Breach!"
Reality twisted. A rift opened behind Thal'Zir, attempting to pull him inside.
For the briefest second, the god hesitated.
Then he looked directly at the Voidshard Visage.
And smiled.
"Draumir," he said, softly. "Still whispering in cages?"
The mask shattered. Not fully—just cracked. But it screamed in Azire's soul.
Thal'Zir extended one finger toward Azire's heart.
BOOM.
Azire flew backward like a meteor, smashing through rock and landing in a crater of his own blood and steam. His body didn't move.
Suna screamed. "Azire!!"
She ran to him, her hand glowing with Luna's healing light, but the moment she touched him, she felt it:
Half his soul had been severed.
Not killed.
Claimed.
By Thal'Zir.
The Hollow Star stepped forward, walking calmly among the broken warriors.
"You were never meant to win this."
He turned to Suna.
"You still cling to hope? You think that flicker of connection will save him?"
His voice dripped with amusement. "It's the rope I'll use to strangle him."
A wave of darkness rose behind him, shaped like tendrils of collapsed constellations.
Suna stood, still shielding Azire's body. "We're not done."
Thal'Zir tilted his head. "You are."
The shadows fell.
The battlefield lay in ruin.
Cracked stone. Wilted earth. Bodies motionless beneath flickering stars.
Azire's breath was shallow in Suna's arms, his eyes vacant. Daiki lay unconscious beneath a pile of shattered rock, blood painting the Eclipse Gauntlet. Maya stirred faintly, her earrings flickering with fading light.
And above them all stood Thal'Zir.
Unbothered. Untouched.
The void swirled around him like a cloak of dying galaxies, and the starlight bent to avoid his presence. He looked down at the fallen warriors—the last hope of this fractured age—and smiled.
"Do you feel it now?" His voice echoed across the broken land, impossibly loud yet coldly intimate. "That unbearable weight pressing into your bones? That is not fear."
He extended his arms as if embracing the heavens.
"That is truth."
The void pulsed.
"You called me a god as if that meant something. You sought to defy me as if your lives ever mattered. But you misunderstand what I am."
His eyes—twin stars, hollow and ancient—burned into their souls.
"I am not a conqueror. I am not wrath. I am not vengeance."
He stepped forward, and with every step, the ground blackened beneath his feet.
"I am the natural end to things. The quiet when the music fades. The dark between stars. I do not come to punish the living—only to remind them of what waits when their candles die."
He gestured to the sky. The constellations flickered—one by one—then blinked out.
"You built kingdoms. Loved. Fought. Bled. Believed. And still, every tale ends the same. With silence. With void. With me."
He looked down at Azire, unconscious and still.
"This one... tried to defy the current. To shape the flow of destiny with fractured tools and borrowed power. Admirable."
Thal'Zir kneeled beside him. "But even his artifact screams in fear."
The Voidshard Visage—hovering weakly behind Azire—dimmed, cracking further.
"You were not chosen to stand against me," Thal'Zir whispered. "You were born to witness me."
He stood once more, towering in silhouette.
"So rest, little mortals. Return to your prayers and desperate schemes. Watch the skies grow cold. Curse my name if it helps you cling to meaning."
His arms stretched wide.
"Because I am not here to fight you."
"I am here to end everything."
And as the last word left his lips, the stars themselves began to weep.