The Box: Fate
Chapter 68 — The Twilight of the Gods
The monochrome blackness radiating from Malakor did not just block out the light; it suffocated the very concept of life.
Kataki' vision blurred. The intense, crushing density of the Void field slammed into the bruised and bleeding Vanguards like a physical wall of lead. One by one, their bodies reached their absolute physical limits. Axel Hatanaki collapsed first, his golden armor clattering against the stone. Sharky Bee, Murasaki, and Kuro fell shortly after, their consciousnesses slipping away as their lungs starved for true oxygen.
Zanaki fell to his knees, his teeth gritted so hard they cracked. "Not... yet..." he gasped, but the sheer strain of holding the primordial storm inside a seventeen-year-old, un-systemized human body proved too much. His eyes rolled back, and he slumped forward into the ash, completely unconscious.
The moment Zanaki's forehead hit the stone, the air went dead silent.
*BOOM!*
A blinding, pillar of pristine sapphire lightning violently tore through the monochrome darkness, ripping the ceiling completely open. From the center of Zanaki's unconscious form, the space itself fractured. Azureus did not manifest as a partial projection this time; his entire, unrestricted seven-foot primordial form stepped out into the material world. The blue draconic scales covering his arms hummed with an ancient, terrifying frequency that forced Malakor's dark shadows back by ten paces.
Gideon the Ash-Bringer didn't stumble. He wiped a streak of sweat and ash from his forehead, looking at the majestic Dragon King beside him with a wild, savage grin.
"I was wondering when you'd stop hiding inside a kid's chest, lizard," Gideon growled, his jagged greatsword erupting into a blinding, white-hot solar blaze that turned the surrounding dust into floating embers. "The stage is set. Let's see if the legends about the three-thousand-year-old monarch are real."
"Mortal," Azureus spoke, his voice vibrating the bedrock of the entire capital. "Do not slow me down."
Malakor's violet eyes flashed with an unholy light. "Two relics of a dying age. Perish together."
The clash that followed was the cataclysm the audience had been waiting for.
Malakor moved like a walking eclipse, his shadow tendrils expanding into massive, multi-headed hydras of dark energy that tore through the stone architecture. But Gideon met him head-on with pure, terrifying native martial dominance. The Ash-Bringer leapt into the air, his greatsword spinning in a devastating, blinding wheel of fire. **"CINDER SHATTER: SUN RISE!"** Every single swing of Gideon's blade sliced through the shadow hydras, leaving trails of burning white magma that illuminated the pitch-black room.
As Gideon drew Malakor's frontal aggression, Azureus stepped into the sky. The Dragon King raised both hands, his slitted silver eyes glowing with a terrifying, forbidden power. He was no longer using system skills; he was drawing upon the ancient, hard-coded taboo of his primordial heritage.
**"PRIMORDIAL CODEX: TRISAGION OF THE STORM REAPER!"**
The sky above Aethelgard turned completely black, and three colossal, rotating halos of sapphire lightning materialized behind Azureus. This skill carried the exact same ominous, absolute-fatality pressure as Kataki's legendary Angel of Death state. The halos spun with a high-pitched, deafening screech, compressing the entire atmosphere of the capital into a single, localized execution zone directly above Malakor's head.
"Fall," Azureus commanded.
The three halos descended like cosmic guillotines.
*CRASH—!!!!!*
The explosion tore the entire royal palace of Aethelgard completely in half. The shockwave leveled the surrounding inner districts, turning the stone buildings into fine white powder. Malakor roared in fury as the sapphire execution lightning shredded his dark robes, cracking his void-shield and forcing the powerful general to use both hands to hold back the cosmic pressure.
"Now, Gideon!" Azureus roared.
Gideon descended from the smoke like a meteor, his greatsword burning with the maximum heat his body could channel. He drove the blade straight through Malakor's shoulder, pinning the general to the cracking foundation of the throne room.
"Insolent pests!" Malakor screamed, his voice distorted into a demonic screech. The blood-red Zenith card embedded in his chest suddenly flared violently, unleashing a desperate, chaotic pulse of **((Crash))**'s raw blood-mana to blow both Gideon and Azureus backward.
Gideon skidded across the debris, his crimson armor cracked and bleeding. Azureus landed beside him, his humanoid form flickering violently as his energy reserves depleted. Malakor stood at the center of the crater, his chest leaking black fog, his aura still terrifyingly active.
"You cannot defeat the reality of this world," Malakor hissed, stepping forward.
"He doesn't have to," an ice-cold voice whispered from the far edge of the ruins.
Malakor froze. Gideon and Azureus snapped their heads back.
Kataki was standing.
He hadn't fully recovered consciousness; he was moving on pure, instinctual willpower. His left wrist was completely broken, hanging uselessly at his side. In his right hand, he held a single blade: **The Twin Fangs of the Eclipse**. His regular eyes were gone—replaced by two hollow, burning voids of pure silver light that pierced through Malakor's soul.
Kataki raised his single dagger toward the bleeding sky. He didn't look at a prompt. He didn't call upon a level. He offered his own life force as a sacrifice to the deepest, most forbidden script of the Outworlders.
**"THE ANGEL OF DEATH: THE FINAL HARVEST."**
*SHIIIIII—*
The world lost all sound. The purple sky turned into the color of dried blood. From the absolute void behind Kataki, the space violently ripped open from ceiling to floor.
A towering, skeletal entity made of pure, translucent black mist and silver bones slowly materialized. It wore a tattered cowl of absolute darkness, and in its massive, skeletal hands, it held a colossal, ethereal scythe that radiated the chilling, unalterable scent of permanent deletion.
The physical Angel of Death had broken through the barrier of reality.
The Angel raised its scythe, its empty eye sockets locking onto Malakor. The Void General's violet eyes widened in genuine, primordial terror. He realized that this wasn't a skill he could block or absorb—this was a literal manifestation of absolute termination.
"Azureus! Take the boy and the others! Get out now!" Gideon roared, recognizing the world-ending aura of Kataki's final form.
Azureus didn't hesitate. With a sweep of his arms, his sapphire mana formed a protective bubble around the unconscious forms of Zanaki, Axel, Sharky Bee, and the rest of the squad. He grabbed Gideon by the shoulder, and using the absolute peak of his speed, the Dragon King blasted away from the palace grounds, carrying the broken Vanguards out of the epicenter.
As they cleared the perimeter, they looked back through the smoke.
The Angel of Death brought its scythe down in a silent, world-splitting arc. The entire royal palace, along with Malakor's screaming form, was swallowed by a blinding, vertical pillar of silver and black void light that erased the very bedrock from existence