Black.
Not emptiness—curation.
The Black Light did not merely consume the fourth wall; it pulled from it, peeled it back like a veil woven from perspective and limitation. What lay beyond was not void, nor abstraction.
It was a place.
Reality bled into color.
Ground emerged first—soft, living soil blanketed in flowers that glowed faintly, petals breathing with inner light. Each bloom pulsed like a heartbeat, synchronized with the world itself. Luminous trees rose in spirals, their bark translucent, veins of gold and teal running through them like starlit arteries. Leaves chimed softly when the wind passed, singing notes too complex for mortal ears.
This was Sentel.
A world once gentle.
A world that remembered peace.
Then—
The flowers were crushed.
Boots thundered through the glowing field, snapping stems, smearing light into the dirt. A group of humans burst from the forest line—awakened, their bodies reinforced by mana, runes glowing along their arms and armor.
They were young.
Too young to have accepted this as normal.
"Don't stop!" one of them shouted, panic cracking his voice. "The barrier's gone—we can't outrun it!"
Magic flared around them—wind spells, reinforcement sigils, blood-fueled accelerations. One stumbled, another turned to help, and that was when the forest screamed.
The ground split.
Six massive serpentine heads tore through the undergrowth, scales black and wet like obsidian soaked in oil. Its body coiled endlessly behind them, crushing trees as though they were reeds.
A Hexa-Serpent.
A monster bred for eradication.
One head lunged forward.
There was no warning. No time.
Jaws closed around a human's neck—
Snap.
The sound was clean. Final.
The body collapsed without resistance, magic dispersing like smoke. Blood soaked into the luminous soil, dimming the flowers where it touched.
The others screamed.
Another head snapped down, fangs tearing through a mana shield like paper. The forest echoed with terror, the once-harmonious chimes now drowned beneath death.
Above it all—
Something watched.
The Black Light stirred.
Ashura felt it.
Not as surprise.
As offense.
"…So this is what remains," he said quietly.
Sentel existed within a universe once ruled by the All-Denying Father—a domain left to rot beneath his indifference, monsters proliferating while mortal civilizations were culled like weeds.
That authority was gone now.
The universe belonged to Ashura.
And it bled.
His gaze sharpened.
"Armageddon," Ashura said, voice carrying through layers of reality.
The apocalyptic general straightened beside him, wings flickering faintly into existence.
"Prepare," Ashura continued. "We're going to Sentel first."
Armageddon's eyes burned with restrained annihilation.
"Then," Ashura added, "to the Dimensional Rifts."
"As you command, Sovereign."
The transition was instant.
No portal.
No tear.
One moment they stood beyond perspective—the next, they were above Sentel's sky.
Clouds recoiled from their presence. Gravity bent inward, as if the planet itself recognized something it could not afford to offend.
Ashura looked down.
Below them, the Hexa-Serpent writhed among corpses and shattered trees, its heads snapping at the remaining humans as they fled in desperation.
Disgust crossed Ashura's face.
Not anger.
Not rage.
Disgust.
"See that they are no more," Ashura said calmly.
Armageddon's wings flared.
"It will be done."
Ashura stepped forward—and descended.
No fall.
No acceleration.
He simply walked downward, reality forming beneath his feet as if existence itself refused to let him drop.
He landed gently among crushed flowers and blood-soaked soil.
The air froze.
The Hexa-Serpent sensed him.
All six heads snapped toward Ashura at once, pupils shrinking in predatory focus. It roared—a sound meant to break minds and shatter courage.
Ashura did not stop walking.
One head lunged.
It never reached him.
The instant it crossed into his presence—
It ceased to exist.
Not burned.
Not erased violently.
It was as if the concept of that head had been denied by something greater.
The second head struck.
Gone.
The third, fourth, fifth—
Gone. Gone. Gone.
The final head hesitated, instincts screaming something it could not comprehend.
Ashura took one more step.
The serpent collapsed—not dying, not destroyed—
Unwritten.
Its body vanished segment by segment, space snapping shut behind it as if it had never been allowed to exist in the first place.
Silence fell.
Then—
The forest shook.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Monsters poured from the treeline—beasts of bone and flame, aberrations stitched together by corrupted mana, creatures that should not have survived their own creation.
They rushed him.
Ashura walked forward, hands at his sides, coat stirring in the wind.
Each beast that entered his path—
Ceased.
No impact.
No struggle.
They vanished mid-leap, mid-roar, mid-existence—removed by proximity alone.
The ground cleared before him like the tide retreating from a god.
Ashura continued walking.
Sentel watched.
And for the first time since the Father's rule ended—
The world felt hope.