The storm clouds gathering above the Kurieitā's realm never got their chance to break.
Tsuyari raised his hand—not quickly, not dramatically. Just a simple, almost casual flick of his wrist, as if he were brushing away a bothersome insect.
The effect was anything but casual.
Reality convulsed.
Invisible chains of pure negation erupted from the crystalline ground, wrapping around Vorthak's massive frame like living shadows. The beast's confident snarl died in its throat as it felt itself being pulled—not through space, but through the very concept of distance itself.
"WHAT—"
The word was cut short as the void-chains tightened, compressing the beast's essence signature until it could barely breathe, let alone speak.
"You..." Tsuyari's voice was silk wrapped around a blade, each syllable carrying the weight of cosmic judgment. "defied me."
Vorthak struggled against the invisible bindings, its claws leaving gouges in the prismatic ground as it was dragged inexorably forward. Steam rose from where the divine realm's purity touched its corruption, but the beast's pain was nothing compared to the growing pressure of Tsuyari's displeasure.
Within moments—heartbeats that stretched like eternities—the creature found itself suspended directly before the Nullweaver, amber eyes wide with the first flickers of something it had never experienced before.
Fear.
"I gave you one task," Tsuyari continued, his silver eyes reflecting nothing but cold emptiness. "Bring me the boy. Broken, perhaps. Desperate, certainly. But alive and capable of choice."
He gestured toward where Itsuki lay, still unconscious but breathing steadily thanks to Trueborn essence flowing through his veins.
"Instead, I find him here—in a realm of pure creation—beaten nearly to death and traumatized beyond easy repair."
The void-chains tightened further, and Vorthak's roar of pain echoed across the crystalline landscape like breaking thunder.
"Tell me," Tsuyari's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried more menace than any shout. "What part of 'bring him to me' was unclear?"
Before Vorthak could attempt an answer, the realm itself shuddered.
Not physically—the crystalline spires remained steady, the starlight rivers continued their gentle flow. But something deeper trembled, as if the very foundations of this divine shard were rejecting the presence of the two intruders.
The singing waterfalls crescendoed into something that might have been anger.
The aurora-painted sky began to pulse with warning colors.
Even the air grew thick with disapproval.
Neither of you belong here.
The message wasn't spoken—it was felt, resonating through every atom of their beings with the authority of original creation.
This place is for the innocent.
The broken who seek healing.
Not for predators and their games.
Tsuyari's eyes narrowed as he felt the realm's rejection building toward crescendo. Around them, the impossible architecture began to blur, as if the very concept of "here" was becoming unstable.
GET. OUT.
The command hit them like a tsunami of pure creative force.
Reality exploded into blinding white light.
The last thing either of them saw before the realm ejected them was Itsuki, still lying peacefully beneath the singing waterfall, his wounds continuing to heal in the embrace of pure creation.
Then—
CRACK.
Space folded.
Dimensions collapsed.
And suddenly they were falling through layers of existence, tumbling end over end through the spaces between worlds until—
THUD.
They crashed back into the physical plane with enough force to crater the ground for a hundred meters in all directions.
Tsuyari landed on his feet, of course. Trueborns didn't stumble.
Vorthak... did not fare as well.
The beast lay crumpled in the center of the impact crater, its obsidian hide cracked and bleeding essence like liquid shadow. For a moment, it seemed almost... small. Diminished by its violent removal from the divine realm.
But only for a moment.
Amber eyes blazed with renewed fury as Vorthak struggled to its feet, wounds already beginning to heal through sheer predatory will.
"TRUEBORN," it snarled, "YOU THINK YOUR POWER MEANS ANYTHING TO—"
"Silence."
The word carried the weight of absolute command.
Vorthak's jaw snapped shut so hard its fangs cracked.
Tsuyari walked forward slowly, deliberately, his footsteps echoing across the desolate landscape where they'd landed—some unnamed wasteland of black stone and twisted metal that reeked of ancient battles.
"You know," he said conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather, "I've been thinking about punishment."
He gestured, and chains materialized around the beast—not physical bonds, but constructs of pure void-light that sank into Vorthak's essence core like burning needles. The creature roared, a sound that shattered nearby stones and sent tremors through the ground.
"The problem with simple death," Tsuyari continued, circling his captive prey like a shark scenting blood, "is that it's merciful. Quick. Final. All suffering ends when the heart stops beating."
More chains appeared, wrapping around Vorthak's limbs, its throat, its very soul. Each one carried the weight of conceptual binding—not just holding the beast in place, but preventing it from accessing its own power, its own identity, its own sense of self.
The mighty Tier 4 predator was reduced to little more than a whimpering animal.
"PLEASE," it gasped, amber eyes wide with the terror of something that had never before experienced helplessness. "PLEASE, JUST... JUST KILL ME. END THIS."
Tsuyari paused in his circling.
His silver eyes met the beast's amber ones.
And he smiled.
"Death?" His voice carried a note of genuine amusement. "How merciful of you to assume you deserve an ending."
The Nullweaver resumed his predatory pacing, each step measured and precise. When he spoke again, his voice was silk dipped in poison, elegant and cultured and absolutely terrifying.
"Do you know how long I've been planning this, Vorthak? How many centuries of careful manipulation, subtle influence, and strategic patience have led to this moment?"
He gestured toward the distant horizon, where the white void still flickered like a distant star.
"The boy—Itsuki Naoya—is the key to reshaping this stagnant world. His power, properly guided, could rewrite the very foundations of reality. Under my tutelage, he could become something greater than even the Trueborns themselves."
The void-chains tightened, drawing another scream from their captive.
"But that requires finesse. Careful psychological conditioning. The gradual erosion of hope until despair makes him malleable. What it does not require is some ham-fisted beast traumatizing him so severely that he retreats into catatonia."
Tsuyari stopped directly in front of Vorthak, close enough that the beast could see its own reflection in those merciless silver eyes.
"You nearly unraveled years of design with your crude methods. Years of careful planning, reduced to ash because you couldn't resist playing with your food."
His smile widened, becoming something that belonged in nightmares.
"So no. I will not kill you. Because death is erasure. Death is forgetting. And I want you to remember this moment for eternity."
He leaned closer, until his lips were almost touching the beast's pointed ear.
"I want you to carry the knowledge of your failure like a stone in your chest. I want the memory of your helplessness to poison every dream, every waking moment, every breath you take from this day forward."
The void-chains began to sink deeper, not into flesh but into the very concept of what Vorthak was. Rewriting its nature at the fundamental level.
"You will live, Vorthak. Oh, you will live for a very, very long time. But you will live as a reminder—to yourself and to any other creature foolish enough to think they can defy my will."
What Tsuyari whispered next was too quiet for any ear to hear, too dark for any mind to fully comprehend. Words in a language that predated speech, carrying concepts that had no names in any mortal tongue.
But Vorthak heard.
Vorthak understood.
And for the first time in its long, predatory existence, the mighty Tier 4 beast experienced something worse than pain, worse than death, worse than the heat-death of the universe itself.
True despair.
The kind of hopelessness that ate at the soul like acid, that turned memories into torments and dreams into nightmares. The certain knowledge that no matter how long it lived, no matter how far it ran, no matter what it did or didn't do...
This moment would never end.
The beast's amber eyes widened with primal terror so pure it was almost beautiful.
And Tsuyari straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his robes, his expression returning to that familiar mask of amused elegance.
The slow, serpentine smile that had marked the end of kingdoms spread across his features like oil on water.
"There," he said pleasantly, as if he'd just finished arranging flowers. "I think we understand each other now."
He turned away from the bound beast, already dismissing it from his thoughts.
There were more important matters to attend to.
A boy to retrieve from a divine realm.
Plans to salvage.
A world to remake.
Behind him, Vorthak's broken sobs echoed across the wasteland like a funeral dirge.
The smile never left Tsuyari's face.
After all...
Some sins demanded more than death.
They demanded eternity.