The air howled, escaping the epicenter of darkness. Stones underfoot melted, unable to withstand the pressure of the nascent nightmare. Akira was the first to rush forward, his body, impervious to energy flows, cutting through the raging storm. Behind him, overcoming exhaustion and terror, Ryūnosuke and Kaede tried to rise.
"No!" Shiori cried. "You cannot!"
But it was too late. They saw—the darkness was contracting, forming a core. This was their last chance.
Akira was a meter from the pulsating ball of non-being, his hand ready to plunge into it, to sever the connection he could by his anomalous nature alone. Ryūnosuke, gathering the remnants of his strength, raised his sword to cut the invisible threads of the ritual. Kaede, blood on her lips, tried to rewrite reality, creating a barrier between the forming body and the source of its power.
And in that moment, everything stopped.
Sound. Motion. Light itself. Everything froze, as if the universe held its breath.
Then came the Exhalation.
Not a sound wave. A wave of Being itself.
It struck them, hurling them aside like driftwood. Akira, whose body could not be thrown by energy, was flung away by the altered reality itself—space around him curved and pushed him away. He slammed into a tree, feeling the wood crack behind his back. Ryūnosuke and Kaede were tossed aside like rag dolls, collapsing unconscious.
When their vision cleared, they saw Him.
The one standing at the center was Absolute.
His hair was an abyssal charcoal-black, fiercely swept up toward the sky, creating a sharp, crown-like silhouette that defied the heavens themselves. Short, elegant yet sinister black marks appeared on his forehead and beneath his eyes, like cracks in reality through which infinite darkness peered. The lower part of his face was hidden by a voluminous black scarf, falling in soft folds, concealing any emotion except his all-seeing gaze.
He wore a long kimono of ash-gray, the color of burnt worlds' ashes. Wide sleeves fell almost to the ground. A deep V-neck exposed black clothing beneath, creating an eerie, magnetic contrast. At his waist—a wide black obi, and upon it, glowing at the center, was a pattern of white diamonds, like stars in the night of oblivion.
He did not move. He simply was. And His presence made the world tremble. The grass under His feet blackened and turned to dust. The air around Him rang with impossible tension.
This was Akatsuki Magoro. "Tenmaou." The Heavenly Demon Emperor. Incarnated.
Shiroyama Raidou stood kneeling, his head bowed respectfully, but his face held not just devotion, but triumph.
"Master... Welcome to the world you rightfully inherit."
Magoro slowly turned his head. His gaze, heavy as lead and piercing as a diamond, slid over the bodies of the defeated masters, over Shiori, frozen in horror, and for a second stopped on Akira, who was getting to his feet.
The Emperor-Demon's gaze lingered on him for a moment, and a spark flickered in his eyes... not of surprise, but of recognition. As if looking at a long-lost object.
At that moment, Ryūnosuke, regaining consciousness, growled and tried to rise, his fingers gripping his sword hilt. It was madness, but rage had clouded his mind.
Raidou, without changing his posture, lazily raised a finger.
"White Silence: Century Slumber."
There was no flash of ice. No visible beam. Simply, the space between Raidou and Ryūnosuke froze. The air itself turned into an invisible, absolutely solid, and transparent crystalline lattice. Ryūnosuke froze mid-lunge, his body bound not by cold, but by halted kinetic energy. He was buried alive in an invisible sarcophagus, his face contorted in a grimace of rage and shock. He could breathe, he could see, but he could not move. This was not an attack, but a demonstration of absolute superiority.
"Do not waste my master's power on ants," Raidou said calmly.
Akatsuki Magoro slowly nodded, as if agreeing with the obvious. He swept his gaze over everything one last time, the gaze of a master surveying his new domain. His eyes met Akira's once more. And this time, Akira felt it—not energy, not threat, but a bottomless, all-consuming void that was millions of times older and deeper than his own.
Then Magoro turned. His ash-gray kimono swayed, and He took a step. But not forward. He stepped through reality. The space before Him tore like silk, revealing a yawning chasm into a different, dark landscape.
Raidou rose and, without looking back, followed his master.
The rift closed, leaving behind tomb-like silence, a destroyed grove, defeated masters, and Akira, who for the first time in his life felt something akin to soul-chilling terror.
He was a void. But what had just departed was a Void that had devoured worlds.