Arc City. The World Serpent's underground secret base.
Half an hour earlier.
Before the massive holographic projection platform, Jackal's signature Anubis mask looked faintly sinister under the cold blue light.
She swept her fingers through the air, and cascades of dense fold-jump readings poured down the screen like a waterfall.
Not far away, Raven leaned against a support pillar, idly flipping a coin in her hand.
The coin spun between her fingers without making a sound.
The man standing directly before the holographic platform wasn't wearing his signature black trench coat.
He wore only a simple undershirt, his short silver-white hair almost too bright under the dim lighting.
Because of his mere presence, the temperature throughout the entire base stayed low enough that anyone else would need cold-weather gear just to move normally.
Kevin Kaslana.
"My Lord."
"My Lord."
Jackal's voice came through her armor's voice modulator, carrying an unmistakable metallic edge.
"These spatial fold-jump curves — I've never seen anything like them. If the intelligence Raven brought back is accurate, then whatever's behind that so-called rift... might really connect to a parallel world."
Kevin studied the spectrum chart.
He didn't answer right away.
In the analysis room, lit so brightly by white light that it cast no shadows, he simply watched the flickering data, his eyes betraying little.
The Sea of Quanta.
World bubbles.
Parallel worlds.
For everyone else in the room, these were probably novel, hard-to-grasp concepts.
But not for Kevin Kaslana.
He had drifted through the Sea of Quanta for far, far too long.
Long enough to watch with his own eyes as countless world bubbles were born in the void, swelled, contracted, and burst.
Some of those bubbles held people who looked exactly like him. In others, humanity didn't even exist.
He'd even set foot in several of them himself, walking through spaces so warped they obeyed entirely different laws of physics.
Every world bubble had its own rules.
Those rules formed invisible walls that sealed the different worlds off from one another.
As far as Kevin knew, in this era, the powers capable of piercing through those walls could be counted on one hand.
His gaze shifted from the spectrum chart to the last page of the report.
Raven's written notes.
"...on the other side of the barrier, I observed a young, black-haired male. He used an ability resembling gravity manipulation, closely matching the signature of the Star of Eden. Alongside him was a white-haired woman suspected to be of Herrscher of the Void caliber..."
Kevin's finger tapped lightly against his knee.
Herrscher of the Void.
K-423, who had vanished from Arc City so long ago, had suddenly resurfaced.
And judging from Raven's description, she was no longer running out of control the way she used to — instead, she was fighting side by side with that black-haired man.
Control.
That was the key word.
Kevin closed his eyes.
Somewhere deep in memories so long they suffocated him, there was a man who had once tried, in a way utterly unlike his own, to help humanity overcome Honkai.
That man's name was Su.
Bearer of the Mark of Heavenly Wisdom.
A psychic-perception type Fusion Warrior.
One of the finest minds the previous civilization had ever produced.
Though in the end, the two of them had a falling-out.
On the British Isles.
To stop Project STIGMA, Su had set a killing formation.
In the end, Kevin himself had been imprisoned within the Sea of Quanta, and Project STIGMA was delayed for an extremely long time.
Part of it, admittedly, had been his own moment of weakness — but as the man Mei herself had personally appointed to oversee the project's execution—
perhaps Mei had counted on that very weakness all along, making him the last fail-safe.
Too many coincidences were stacking up, and inside Kevin's mind — tempered by fifty thousand years of time — they quickly assembled into a coherent shape.
Everything fit together too neatly.
The vanished Herrscher of the Void had reappeared, seemingly having gained full mastery over her own power.
Kevin closed his eyes again. Memory surged through him — the voice and smile of that girl, light as scattering petals, at their final banquet together. He had never forgotten them.
He had made up his mind, resolved never to shed a tear.
But shards of ice, condensed from his own subzero body heat, had still scattered across the stage of that person's final moment.
Elysia.
The very first Herrscher, who had given everything of herself to call "humanity" back for the Herrschers who came after.
And her wish was something Kevin had never forgotten, even now.
That was why, upon seeing Welt Yang and Bronya Zaychik within the Sea of Quanta, he'd spoken those words.
Because in them—
Kevin had seen Elysia's wish come true.
Su remembered Elysia's wish too.
The dream of that Origin Herrscher who had given everything to humanity.
Helping Kiana Kaslana truly master that power which belonged to humanity — that was exactly the kind of thing Su would do.
At the thought, the coldness on Kevin's face seemed to thaw, just a little.
And then there was the gravity-altering power Raven had mentioned in her report.
Star of Eden.
As for a means capable of forging a passage across parallel worlds — there was nothing else it could be but Thousand Realms, One Vehicle.
The Herrscher of the Void.
The passage of Thousand Realms, One Vehicle. The gravity of the Star of Eden.
These three unmistakable, signature powers, appearing one after another, settled an unshakable conclusion in Kevin's mind.
Whoever was stirring up trouble in Arc City had to be intimately connected to Su.
Perhaps that person was even the very "vessel" Su sought to possess when crossing between world bubbles.
After all, Su himself was a psychic-perception type Fusion Warrior.
Controlling another's body, projecting his own consciousness into a different vessel — these were things he was capable of.
Every sign pointed to the same thing: the man calling himself "Su Yu" was very likely Su's "container" — or else someone bound to Su by a relationship far from ordinary.
At the thought, Kevin's throat bobbed once.
He had never once dismissed Su as beneath him despite the man's combat strength falling short of his own — that bearer of the Mark of Heavenly Wisdom.
Kevin's finger stopped tapping.
He stood up.
He hadn't come to Arc City merely to reunite with an old friend.
It was because of Project STIGMA.
Kevin knew every detail of that project. He knew it was the worst possible plan — and, at the same time, the one most likely to defeat Honkai.
But it wasn't what he wished for.
If there was another path.
If there was someone who could offer a second answer in the face of this inevitable apocalypse—
it would have to be Su.
More than anyone, Kevin wanted to find some other way to defeat Honkai besides Project STIGMA.
That was his hope.
And it was the reason he looked forward to seeing Su again.
If there was anyone left in this world who could stir even a trace of concern — however obsessive — in the World Serpent's Lord during this frozen era...
it could only be those phantoms out of the previous civilization.
"My Lord."
Jackal's voice cut through Kevin's thoughts.
The fold-jump readings on the screen suddenly began spiking violently, and a piercing alarm echoed through the base.
"That strange spatial reading has appeared again — District 7, the overpass ruins, the last place the Herrscher of the Void was seen. Should we..."
"No need."
Kevin turned around.
"I'll go there myself."
He paused mid-stride, his back to Jackal and Raven.
The temperature in the air dropped again.
"I don't want anyone interfering in this."
With that, his figure vanished down the far end of the corridor.
Raven watched the heavy alloy door seal shut again and let out a long breath of white mist.
She'd stayed leaning against the pillar the whole time, not so much as twitching a finger.
"Our Lord's presence really is something else," Raven said, pocketing her coin and glancing over at Jackal. "Wouldn't you agree, Jackal?"
Jackal looked up from the holographic platform.
"If you've got time to run your mouth, put it toward something useful instead. Where's the Third Herrscher's vessel I asked for? Still no leads, even now?"
Raven pulled a chair over and sat down, propping her long legs up on the console.
"Maybe get some more effort out of your junk machines, then," she said, spreading her hands. "What's the matter, Miss Self-Proclaimed Genius Scientist Jackal? Can't even punch through the Third Herrscher's electromagnetic interference?"
Jackal let out a cold snort and buried herself back in the data stream in front of her.
The edge of Arc City.
Beneath the wreckage of the overpass.
Kevin stood atop a stretch of cleared rubble.
His leather shoes pressed into the gravel, the long black trench coat on his shoulders stirring faintly in the night wind.
Might of An-Utu rested against his side, one hand on the hilt, its tip driven into the asphalt like a burnt-out torch.
The air still reeked of intense Honkai energy radiation, but the rift that could devour matter had already sealed itself after swallowing some of the surrounding debris.
All that remained was an empty stretch of ground, warped by a powerful magnetic field.
Kevin stood at the center of the clearing, looking up at the dull orange night sky.
"So it can't be entered outside a specific window."
He raised his left wrist and opened a comm channel to the base.
"Report the current passage readings."
"My Lord." Jackal's voice came through quickly, accompanied by the rapid clatter of a keyboard. "Although the rift in the physical dimension has closed, the underlying energy passage still exists. Its barrier structure is highly unusual — conventional point-blast demolition won't have any effect on it."
Jackal paused.
"That said, the structure of the passage itself is still intact — the entrance has just been temporarily sealed by some outside force. If we could hit that seal with enough external force, in theory it might be possible to force it—"
"Enough."
Kevin's fingers loosened from Might of An-Utu's hilt.
"Prepare countermeasures."
He pulled the massive two-handed sword out of the ground.
Gravel and shards of asphalt rained off the blade.
"I'm about to release the power of Heaven's Fire."
The earpiece went silent for two seconds.
"My Lord?"
There was an unmistakable waver in Jackal's voice.
She, more than anyone, understood exactly what it meant to unleash Judgment of Shamash at full power within Arc City.
"I'll adjust the angle properly."
Kevin gave her no time to object.
He gripped Might of An-Utu's hilt with both hands.
The patterns etched into the blade began to glow.
It wasn't the ordinary color of flame, but a near-white, pure, devastating radiance of scorching heat.
In an instant, the surrounding air was heated to thousands of degrees.
Standing water on the ground boiled away entirely, and the gravel began to melt, taking on the dull red sheen of molten rock.
Kevin raised the blade.
Its tip pointed straight at a spot in the sky, invisible to the naked eye but registering to his energy senses like a vast black hole — the location of the passage.
He didn't chant any lengthy incantation.
He simply, in the plainest way possible, converted the world-freezing cold within him into fuel to drive this key of destruction.
"Cleaver of Shamash — unsheathed."
The entire sky was torn in two by the pillar of white light bursting from the blade's tip.
The pillar of light, more than ten meters across, climbed upward at a speed that defied all reason, then detonated hundreds of meters up, blooming into a massive, roiling vortex of flame.
The instant the vortex formed, the already-sealed Spatial Rift, as if struck by some resonating force, tore open once more directly beneath the pillar of white light.
The rift soaked up the vast majority of Judgment of Shamash like a sponge.
Kevin felt it.
After passing through the rift, that energy struck something.
The shock of the recoil traveled up the blade, into his arm, and into his shoulder.
Heaven's Fire's power scattered and broke apart against that barrier, like waves crashing against a reef, shattering into countless sprays of foam.
But the rift had been pried open.
Kevin sheathed the sword.
Without hesitation, he stepped straight into the violet-black breach still ravenously devouring the air around it.
The sensation of spatial distortion lasted only an instant.
When he opened his eyes, an entirely different scene lay beneath his feet.
An abandoned metal recycling plant.
Floating rubble and derelict machinery.
Thick purple mist hung in the air.
And raging flames.
The aftershock of Heaven's Fire hadn't fully dissipated yet.
The fires raged unchecked through the enclosed space, making the surrounding scrap metal crackle and pop.
Kevin stood right at the center of the sea of flame.
His gaze cut through the roiling heat haze and landed on a few figures.
The closest was a young girl in blue-and-white combat gear.
She knelt half-upright on the ground, a katana gripped in her hand.
The aftershock of Heaven's Fire had clearly hit her hard — a thin trail of blood clung to the corner of her mouth.
Raiden Mei.
The Third Herrscher.
One of the targets the World Serpent had been tracking all along.
But Kevin's gaze didn't linger on her for long.
It moved on further.
At the edge of the sea of flame, on the far side of a nearly invisible transparent barrier—
stood a young, black-haired man.
He wore lightweight tactical gear, covered in signs of battle.
He stood on the other side of the barrier, hands slightly open at his sides, as if he had just relaxed out of some guarded stance.
And beside him—
a crimson afterimage was slowly fading away.
Fu Hua.
Kevin's steps stopped. He stood rooted in place.
Flames danced at his feet.
Red-hot fragments of metal fell from the air, striking his shoulder and scattering tiny sparks.
If all his earlier analysis — the Star of Eden, the Herrscher of the Void, the hidden spatial passage — had still amounted to nothing more than speculation...
then now, even Hua had appeared at this man's side.
There couldn't be this many coincidences in one world.
In that moment, Kevin was one hundred percent certain of the young man's identity before him.
Kevin's fingers slowly tightened around Might of An-Utu's hilt.
He lifted the massive two-handed sword.
Its blazing tip cut across the roiling heat and warped space, leveling straight at the black-haired young man on the far side of the barrier.
His face still wore the same cold expression it had worn for ten thousand years, unchanged.
But something was shifting behind his eyes.
The way his gaze settled on the young man's face was unlike the way he looked at anyone else.
It was something that only surfaced from the deepest layer of ice when he faced a companion from the same era.
His expression remained as cold as frost.
But deep in the corner of his eyes, somewhere even he hadn't noticed, a flicker of "joy" — a distinctly human feeling he hadn't felt in a very long time — stirred to life.
Kevin's lips moved.
"Heh."
A short breath of a sound.
"It's been a while, old friend."
He pushed Might of An-Utu's tip forward another few inches.
Flames licked at the barrier, casting a flickering orange-red glow.
"Aren't you going to say hello?"
"Su?"
On the other side of the barrier.
The instant Kevin spoke, Su Yu felt his heart skip a beat.
Silence.
In the plant, only the scattered, still-burning flames on the ruined walls crackled on.
The World Barrier, badly weakened by Heaven's Fire's aftershock, gave an almost imperceptible shudder the instant Kevin's blade pointed at it.
Raiden Mei clutched her chest, coughing hard twice.
The taste of blood spread through her mouth.
She forced her head up, her eyes flicking back and forth between the terrifying man with the greatsword and Su Yu on the other side of the wall.
Old friend? Su?
She had no idea what riddle these people were speaking in.
All she knew was that this white-haired man, simply standing there, radiated an oppressive presence greater than any Honkai Beast she'd ever encountered in her life.
Even more overwhelming, more unfathomable, than the Herrscher of the Void.
The fire he'd brought — its mere aftershock had nearly reduced her to ash.
Raiden Mei couldn't even imagine what would happen to her if she took that attack head-on.
Not even bones would remain.
Or—
not even ash.
On the other side of the wall.
Su Yu's eyes trembled.
Wave after wave of heat surged across the World Barrier, scorching his cheeks with pain.
The palm of his sword hand was slick with sweat, the slipperiness unsettling.
Su Yu's mind raced.
What had Kevin called him? Su?
The previous civilization. A Fusion Warrior. The Mark of Heavenly Wisdom. Kevin's former closest friend. That Awakened One.
In that instant, Su Yu dredged up nearly every last scrap of information he had in his mind about this storyline.
He knew exactly what had become of Su in the end.
But Kevin, only recently freed from the Sea of Quanta, clearly didn't know that yet.
The Star of Eden. The bizarrely appearing Spatial Rift. And Hua at his side—
Only "Su" would have both the motive and the ability to bring all these elements together, at this time, in this place.
The corner of Su Yu's eye twitched, ever so slightly. He understood — there was only one way left to break this deadlock.
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