Looking down at the woman clinging to him, Decade noted the state she was in with a detached gaze. Blood soaked into the fabric of his shirt, mixed with the damp warmth of tears. Her grip was weak, more instinct than strength.
He slowly raised the Kabuto Kunaigun, switching it to Kunai Mode.
Feixiao had tried to kill him not long ago. Crying now didn't erase that fact. Surrender didn't guarantee she wouldn't try again later. Mercy without caution tended to come back as a problem.
He adjusted the angle of the blade, lining it up with her exposed back.
Before the strike could land, metal met metal.
A sheathed blade intercepted the kunai cleanly, stopping it inches from Feixiao's skin.
Decade lifted his head.
Acheron stood in front of him, her posture relaxed, her grip steady. There was no tension in her expression, no urgency, no accusation, just a quiet certainty.
"They've already surrendered," she said calmly. "You don't need to kill them."
Her tone didn't change, as if she were stating something obvious.
She hadn't joined the earlier fight. She never intended to. Knowing he was an Emanator of Finality, the title Destroyer of Worlds didn't surprise her much once she thought about it. Labels tended to follow power, whether deserved or not.
As an Emanator of Nihility, she was familiar with side effects.
Taste dulled. Touch faded. Memories slipped through cracks she couldn't close. Faces blurred, names vanished, time tangled itself until past and present lost meaning. Emotions followed the same path: flattened, distant, unreliable.
So when she looked at Tsutsumi, she assumed Finality came with its own erosion.
"Like you said," she continued, her voice even. "Whether they die now or later doesn't change the outcome. Their struggle is meaningless."
She paused briefly.
"But that doesn't mean we need to end their stories early."
The words were his.
She repeated them without hesitation, exactly as he had said them before.
Decade stared at her for a moment longer, then lowered the weapon. With a short motion, he pushed both women away from him, letting them collapse onto the floor. They didn't resist with barely any strength left to react.
"Azu," he said. "Patch them up."
His Rider form dissolved smoothly. The thick black coat broke apart, reassembling into Azu's humanoid shape as she stepped forward. Her fingers shifted mechanically as she retrieved the first aid kit, immediately kneeling beside the injured generals.
Acheron watched Tsutsumi, then reached out. Her hand caught his, fingers threading together without hesitation.
The contact was… noticeable.
Because of Nihility, she could barely feel most things anymore. Temperature, texture, pressure, all distant echoes. Yet when she touched him, sensation returned in fragments. Not fully, but enough to register the warmth, weight, and presence.
She didn't understand why. But she didn't dislike it. Until she figured it out, she decided she'd rather not let go.
"What?" Tsutsumi asked, glancing down at their hands.
"I'm directionally challenged," she replied casually. "If I don't hold onto you, I'll get lost."
He looked past her.
The control panel was directly behind her.
He looked back at her face. Her expression was absent-minded, her grip firm enough to be intentional. Whatever she was planning, he wasn't too interest to figure out.
Tsutsumi chose not to comment.
He walked toward the control seat, her hand still in his, and sat down, resting his feet against the panel.
"Azu," he said, "head to Penacony."
The ship turned smoothly, accelerating toward its destination.
"How long until the event starts?" he asked.
Acheron hesitated, then reluctantly released his hand. She reached into her pockets, searching for a bit before she pulled out the crumpled invitation, and handed it to him.
After scanning it, he tossed it onto the counter.
"No rush," he said. "With a Warp Jump, we'll still have about two weeks before the Charmony Festival begins."
The ship continued forward, leaving the aftermath behind without another word.
Acheron leaned down on Tsutsumi again, resting more of her weight against him than before. Their sleeves shifted, fabric brushing aside until their skin touched.
She felt it clearly.
The sensation didn't fade the way it usually did. It didn't dull or slip away after a few seconds. It stayed, steady and real, grounding her in the moment. That alone was enough to make a small smile appear on her face, one she didn't bother to hide. Feeling something so simple shouldn't have mattered this much, yet it did.
Tsutsumi noticed the change immediately. He tilted his gaze toward her, studying her expression for a brief moment, then looked away. His eyes settled on the wide glass viewport in front of them, watching the endless stretch of space slide past in silence.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The ship hummed softly around them, its sound blending into the quiet.
"Can you tell me," Acheron said at last, her voice calm but deliberate, "why you have the title of Decade, the Destroyer of Worlds?"
She wasn't accusing him. She wasn't afraid. She simply wanted to understand.
"That's because I am Decade," Tsutsumi replied without hesitation. "The title comes naturally with it."
He didn't attempt to deflect or soften his words. There was no point in hiding something that would surface eventually.
If she turned on him now, then so be it. If she didn't, it would happen later.
The outcome wouldn't change. His fate had never been flexible.
"My current power is incomplete," he continued. "What you've seen is only a fragment of what Decade truly is. Once I fully become Decade, the boundaries between worlds will start to collapse."
"When that happens, the worlds merge," he said. "And that process destroys them."
He leans back.
"To put it simply," he added, "as long as I exist, the destruction of all worlds is only a matter of time."
Acheron frowned, her brows drawing together.
"So you don't actively try to destroy them," she said. "You don't seek it out."
"That's difficult to answer," Tsutsumi replied. "If simply existing is enough to cause the end, then I don't know whether choosing to live counts as actively causing it."
His tone remained level, but something underneath it wavered, just enough to be noticed, but there was a faint heaviness in his voice.
He hadn't meant to say this much.
But this was the first time he'd spoken about it to someone who wasn't preparing to fight him, or feeling conflicted facing him, or trying to stop him, or already resigned to killing him. For once, he wasn't beingjudged. He was simply being listened to.
"As a child," Tsutsumi said after a moment, "I admired heroes. Their justice. The idea that someone could protect others just by being strong enough."
He paused.
"But growing up changes perspective," he continued. "Once I understood what I was capable of, and what I was meant to become, I realized I was never meant to save anyone."
His gaze remained fixed forward.
"I'm just a demon wearing human skin," he said quietly. "I can admire justice, but I can't embody it. All I ever do is delay endings that are already decided."
As he spoke, Acheron leaned closer. She shifted into his seat without asking, her back resting against his shoulder. Part of her weight settled against him, and before either of them acknowledged it, she was half-sitting on his lap, comfortably enclosed within the space of his right arm.
He didn't move away.
"Making friends," Tsutsumi went on, "and learning to care about people, to love someone… it's always been difficult. Either tragedy finds them, I couldn't be honest with them, or they reach a point where protecting their world means raising a weapon against me."
His voice didn't carry bitterness. Only acceptance.
"Is that why you're telling me this?" Acheron asked softly. "Because you already know that one day, we'll be on opposite sides?"
Her chest felt tight as she spoke, though she wasn't sure why.
"You could say that," he replied. "I'm telling you because I know you'll forget."
She stilled.
"Due to Nihility," he continued, "you'll forget me. You'll forget this conversation. When that day comes, you won't hesitate. You'll do what you believe is right."
That was the part that hurt the most, not because he expected it, but because he had already accepted it.
Acheron frowned, her expression tightening. From where she sat, he couldn't see her face, couldn't see the sadness she didn't bother to hide, the sadness that even she didn't expect to feel.
What neither of them realized was that as Tsutsumi aligned more closely with his role as a Destroyer, the blessing granted to him by Terminus continued to deepen. His presence as an Emanator of Finality quietly grew stronger.
Like Nihility, Finality carried side effects.
A faint aura spread outward from him, subtle and easy to miss. A sense of endings approaching. Of time narrowing. Of death not as something violent, but as something inevitable.
At the moment of their end, everyone and everything is equal.
The only difference is how people would react to this feeling of the end reaching so near to them.
But to Acheron, when her end arrives, Nihility loosens its hold on her. And during that moment, her memory and sensation return. The feeling of having your entire life flash before your eyes.
For that brief moment, everything becomes clear again.
But this wasn't death, only its shadow. Just a feeling similar to it.
She didn't feel the chill and fear many would experience during their final moment, but she felt a sense of warmth settle in her chest. A quiet relief. A rare sense of completeness.
She leaned into him slightly more, allowing herself to stay and feel this complicated feeling slowly growing in her heart.
...
"You sure you don't want to take the room with me?" Acheron asked again, her gaze lingering on him a little longer than necessary. There was something uneasy in her eyes, though she didn't explain it.
The faint clarity she had felt earlier was already slipping away. With no direct contact, her senses dulled once more, touch and presence fading back into something distant and unreliable.
"I'll be fine," Tsutsumi replied casually. He didn't comment on her expression, instead shifting his attention toward the far corner of the room. "I'm just a driver and cameraman. I'll avoid any fights or trouble unless it directly involves me."
Whether that reassurance was for her or for himself wasn't clear.
He turned away and walked over to the two women resting against the wall. Their wounds had been wrapped and treated, though the bandages still carried dark stains beneath them. Tsutsumi crouched down so he was level with them, his posture relaxed, almost detached.
"So," he said plainly, "what should I do with the two of you?"
Feixiao didn't hesitate.
"You can do whatever you want to me," she said, her voice steady despite the tension in her body. "My life is already in your hands."
The words came out cleanly, but the emotions behind them were tangled: shame, helplessness, frustration, and something close to acceptance. She had said similar things before in her life, though she had hoped she'd never need to again.
While Azu had been tending to their injuries, both Feixiao and Jingliu had overheard Tsutsumi's conversation with Acheron. They hadn't meant to listen, but it wasn't exactly possible to tune it out.
Thinking back to how he had stood before the Xianzhou forces and stated, clearly and without hostility, that he wouldn't attack unless provoked, the memory only made things worse.
They hadn't believed him.
And who could blame them? If someone bearing the title of an apocalypse arrived at your doorstep and claimed they were merely passing through, would anyone truly be able to sit still and accept that at face value?
Still, after hearing how he came to bear that title, neither of them felt justified anymore. If anything, the weight of their actions pressed down harder.
"I… I'm the same as her," Jingliu said quietly, her head lowering. "My life is also yours to decide now."
Unlike Feixiao, Jingliu hadn't grown up on the battlefield or under chains, being used as a war slave. Her life before everything fell apart had been structured, disciplined, and, by comparison, gentler. Accepting this new position didn't come easily to her.
There was hesitation in her voice. A pause she couldn't fully hide.
But in the end, she still said the words.
They had already begged him to spare the Xianzhou and its people. They couldn't take those words back now, nor could they afford to provoke him further. Whatever pride or resistance remained had to be set aside.
In that sense, they were alike.
Both women are powerful, but carried incurable afflictions that defined their lives.
Jingliu's was mara, also known as the Long-Life Curse. A degeneration that struck long-lived species when their bodies and minds could no longer remain in balance. It manifested through uncontrolled cellular changes, physical distortions, and eventually, the collapse of sanity.
She had only maintained her consciousness through sheer discipline. The black silk blindfold she wore blocked visual triggers that could accelerate her condition. Her hatred for the Abundance, and her singular goal of slaying the Aeon of Abundance, Yaoshi, acted as anchors, giving her mind something to cling to.
Her deal with Luocha, whose healing abilities were tied to the Abundance itself, further stabilized her state.
Feixiao's condition was different, but no less destructive.
Blood Rage, a hereditary affliction born from her bloodline, turned her into something terrifying on the battlefield. It granted overwhelming speed and strength, pushing her body far beyond safe limits. Each use brought her closer to permanent madness, a point where allies and enemies would become indistinguishable.
Outside of combat, the cost on her body lingered. Chronic exhaustion, unstable qi circulation, internal injuries from repeated overextension. She kept herself functional through strict medical treatment, relentless self-discipline, and constant internal struggle.
Both of them relied on external support to keep their conditions in check.
Support that now remained behind on the Xianzhou.
Being dragged away from it meant something simple and unavoidable: their lives were officially on a timer.
They knew it.
Still, neither of them protested. Whatever they were now, prisoners, burdens, or something worse, their survival depended entirely on the man crouched in front of them.
Whether they were allowed to live or ordered to die was no longer their choice.