Eighteen years had passed. The balance that had once been built quietly and carefully did not shatter all at once. It bent slowly under the weight of consequences.
What had been raised through restraint now stood exposed before choice. And choice, unlike power, could not be taken back.
Ryuk returned to his universe alone. He did not return as a warrior. Nor as Death's student. He returned as a man who had lost everything that once gave restraint its meaning.
The Guardian of his universe created to protect, preserve, and maintain order had violated that responsibility in the most unforgivable way.
Ryuk did not lose Aarsha to war. He did not lose her to chaos. Her end came through authority abused without consequence.
There was no justice left to appeal to. No balance left to restore. The system itself had failed. Ryuk stood among the remains of trust, holding nothing but memory.
Angle's words echoed faintly within him that Death is responsibility. Only now did Ryuk understand something deeper. Responsibility could also mean ending a broken system entirely.
The first world fell silent. Then another. And another. Ryuk moved from planet to planet, not with rage, not with hesitation, but with precision. Life ended cleanly, as if reality itself had accepted the verdict.
There was no resistance. He spared neither children nor elders not because he lacked mercy, but because mercy had already been erased from his universe.
When the final planet grew quiet, Ryuk stood alone. An entire cosmos, emptied. Stars still burned. Galaxies still turned. But there was no one left to witness them. Ryuk looked out into the silence, and for the first time since Aarsha's death, he felt nothing.
Far away, beyond that empty universe, consequences had already begun to move. But Ryuk did not look back. He stood alone in an empty cosmos and the balance he had destroyed did not yet know it was broken.