The command echoed-
"GUARDS! Take them!"
At once, steel boots clashed against stone, and the chosen protectors of the Celestial Dragons surged forth, rifles and spears raised.
The heat intensified, the air itself boiling with unseen strain—so much that the peasants collapsed lower, bodies drenched in sweat, water nearby hissing into vapour.
Radahn, Gojo, Kaguya, and Rin—stood untouched, their forms haloed in calm untouched by the artificially created heat.
Rin's lip curled in disgust and her face, once so gentle, now sharpened as her Byakugan and Isobu's chakra flared faintly.
"They disgust me," she whispered under her breath.
Gojo sighed, brushing imaginary dirt off his sleeve.
"Tch. Now my mood's ruined."
Kaguya didn't reply as she only hovered lightly above the ground, her robes weightless, her pale gaze filled with disdain as if this scene wasn't worth even a thought.
"Come with us either willingly or—" one guard barked.
But his voice cut short.
He didn't blink, didn't stumble.
He simply ceased to exist.
His body disintegrated into a thin mist of crimson before his mind could catch up.
splash… drip…
Blood spattered across the stones, but no body remained—only his weapon clattering to the ground.
A moment of stunned paralysis followed.
The second soldier turned in horror, only to vanish the same way—converted into a puddle of formless blood.
Screams raised but never finished, each echo ending in liquid splatter as soldier after soldier melted into mist.
ting… ting…
Their steel fell one by one across the ground like rain.
At the centre loomed Radahn, his colossal arm lazily raised, eyes burning golden.
Every guard that stood against him dissolved in red silence.
One soldier, trembling, almost got his words out: "S-Save m—"
Splurrr.
Gone.
His last plea dissolved before air met his throat.
Terror swept wide, but still, none dared flee.
They trembled, but their fear of "gods" kept their knees planted.
Radahn's gaze rose slowly.
It landed squarely upon the obese Celestial Dragon, Clapp, his name.
In that single glance, the man's fat-choked confidence collapsed.
His pupils shrank into specks. Snot and spit dripped from his mouth as terror robbed his posture. He fell back on his rear, scrambling, yanking his pistol.
"Stay back, peasant!" he roared with a shrill, cracking voice.
"I—I am a GOD!"
Before he could raise it—figures flashed into place.
Half a dozen tall warriors cut the air like phantoms—the uniforms of CP0.
Their masks gleamed pale, each body a hulking mass of trained terror, eight feet tall on average, each radiating killing intent so sharp it suffocated the crowd.
Their Haki suppressed the air, forcing civilians to choke on their breaths.
"Lord Celestial Dragon," one mask-voice whispered reverently, "stay behind us. We will erase them."
Clapp's fear twisted into arrogant laughter in an instant, shielded by his enforcers.
"Ah, CP0! Hehehe… yes! Capture them! Bring me that little girl first and you will be rewarded with a Devil Fruit! Yes, YES!"
The crowd shuddered. Whispers hissed even between bowed heads.
"A Devil Fruit… for her...?"
"Unfortunate girl. Their lives are already decided."
The CP0 turned, silent, toward Radahn's group, greedy hunger hidden behind their disciplined masks.
But before they could make the first move—
Radahn's voice rumbled like collapsing stone.
"…I've had enough of this."
Crack....
As if the air , the very reality had shattered around them like mirror.....
Everything changed.
The plaza warped.
The stone beneath their knees trembled, cracking—and with a thunderous roar, the world itself folded inward.
The heat turned to fire.
The sun bent and then vanished, replaced by a blackened eclipse that stained the heavens crimson.
The bright market street melted into a barren red desert of bone and blood.
Skulls littered the ground like seashells; rivers of red ran between broken earth.
The crowd was gone.
Only Radahn, the CP0, and the celestial entourage remained—in a realm forged of sorrow and judgment.
The CP0 tensed instantly.
Their presence faltered.
"…A Devil Fruit ability?" one muttered grimly.
"So troublesome…"
With a flash of Soru, their bodies blurred, vanishing and reappearing around Radahn.
They encircled him in perfect unison, blades primed, Haki hardened.
"You'll fall here, Big Guy," one sneered darkly.
"Turn off this illusionary trick—whatever you've cast over us!"
"And we'll let you die peacefully before you see the torment of the women around you."
But Radahn only tilted his gigantic helm toward them, voice like thunder and judgment combined.
"You are right about one thing…"
He extended to his full, monstrous height—armor now swelling, form eclipsing them at nearly seventeen feet of dread.
"…I am a big guy."
"But wrong about the other. This… is not illusion."
The air crackled like shattered lightning as CP0's strongest stepped forward.
His white mask reflected nothing, but the aura rolling off him made even the other assassins tense.
His name was Xero—rumored to be among the top five forces of the World Government, a man who had never once failed a mission.
"You stand before the shield of the Celestials." His voice rasped like iron, low and certain.
Black-purple lightning arcs danced sharply across his fists—Conqueror's Haki entwining his Armament, wrapping him in a mantle of sovereign might.
In a whisper of sound, he was gone.
Soru!
The ground shattered where he once stood, echoes carrying as he appeared in Radahn's space, his fist already slamming forward like a compressed warhead.
The air screamed.
Bones and Soil erupted outward as half the plaza cratered on impact.
For a heartbeat, silence claimed the world.
Then—
BOOOOOOOM!
A sound like a star collapsing thundered across the isle, flattening dunes, whipping dust into a hurricane.
When the smoke cleared, Xero staggered backward, body lowering instinctively.
He landed heavily, sliding across the ruined stone, leaving deep gouges where his heels tore through the plaza.
"…Wh… What…?" His voice cracked into disbelief.
He looked down.
His right arm—everything from the shoulder down—was shredded into dozens of thin, dangling threads, unraveled like a tapestry torn to nothing.
Pain slammed into his nerves like fire, his veins burning with reality.
"GRRRAARGHHH!" Xero roared, his body shaking violently.
Without hesitation, he bit down on his own scream and severed his ruined limb clean, blood spraying into the air before clotting under Haki hardening across the wound's edge.
His mask tilted upward, fury and fear veiling his voice, but dread was louder still.
"…That… that wasn't Haki… wasn't a devil fruit?… what—what ARE you?"
Radahn didn't move.
The CP0 faltered.
And then—shrieks.
From beneath their polished boots, hands erupted from the ground—withered, grey, clawing with skeletal rage.
Ghouls. Dozens, hundreds, each grip latching onto their legs with hopeless strength.
"H-Hnng—what is this!?" one CP0 roared, struggling.
"My… Haki—it's gone?! Why can't I—move?!?"
The grasping souls pulled them deeper, their masks beginning to crack, the dread in their voices rawer than steel.
Radahn's voice shook the sky. "Now face… your sins."
As the assassins thrashed, another shockwave rose—a sea of ghouls materialized around the Celestial Dragons, over four hundred twisted souls, men, women, children, all scarred by agony. Missing eyes, missing limbs, torsos split, their forms grotesque but unyielding.
The celestial siblings—the false gods of this land—froze in terror.
Clapp tried to shout but only coughed spit, collapsing backward as the grotesque horde closed in. His sister's porcelain smile shattered into trembling screams as she kicked against the encroaching dead.
"W-WHAT… WHAT ARE THESE THINGS!?"
Arrogance faded into trembling whimpers as they found themselves utterly alone, surrounded on every side by ghouls.
Hundreds.
Children without eyes. Women with missing arms. Men cut in half, yet crawling still.
Fishmen, minks, and humans—all dripping blood, limbs twisted, faces unwhole.
All of them wearing curses not of their own making.
All of them victims of captivity, slavery, and cruelty.
Their stares locked upon the so‑called gods.
"Wh…what is this?" Clapp, the obese Dragon, stuttered, snot dripping down his lips as he pressed his bulk closer to the ground.
"I am a god! I—I command you to kneel!"
His sister shrieked, pistol shaking in her jeweled grip.
"Stay away! Stay back, you filth!"
But the dead did not listen.
Their shuffling steps echoed like drums.
Their claws scraped stone.
Their eyeless sockets burned with the hunger that was not vengeance, not rage—simply the final demand of justice denied too long.
And then—hell opened.
The ghouls descended.
Hands tore cloth and suit apart in crooked, twitching rage.
Steel teeth bit into pale skin.
Screams erupted as the siblings were swallowed in the flood.
"NOOOO! STAY BACK! I AM DIVINE!!" Clapp's voice devolved into a piglike squeal as fingers found his throat.
His sister writhed, glass helm shattered, her white dress shredded, her limbs dragged apart by cold, many hands and She shrieked again and again until a ghoul ripped her jaw sideways, turning her screams into broken gargles.
And yet—they healed.
Time stretched into hours.
Their flesh was consumed, sliced, broken—but never allowed to end.
The ghouls tore them inch by inch, ripped their bones from sockets, pulled out ribcages like cages cracked open and each time—they healed, restored by the world Radahn bound them in.
A punishment not of death, but of endless repetition.
Clapp laughed madly through the agony at first.
"Hahaha—I heal!! See? This is proof of Godhood! You cannot harm me!"
But when he turned—when he saw his sister's body devoured, mangled again and again, intestines pulled like yarn and fed back into her opened mouth—he froze.
He saw a ghoul pierce her private with a long rusty sword , She was healing but the sword was still there.
She was ripped , then Healed and the cycle continued.
His jaw fell.
His laughter curdled into silent terror.
The hours turned to half a day.
The ghouls showed no exhaustion.
They came endlessly, each more savage, each carrying a portion of pain they themselves had suffered at the hands of Celestial tyranny.
Eyeless children stuffed rubble down the Dragon's throat until he choked, then rebuilt his body so he could feel it again.
Broken women carved crude symbols of slavery into his skin with nails and teeth.
Fishermen whipped his obese flesh with chains forged from their own phantom bonds.
He screamed, bled, healed, and screamed again.
His sister broke sooner—the shrieks dissolving into raw, animal moans, eyes rolled back, body twitching until her consciousness barely clung on.
Still the healing dragged her back.
Still the cycle never ended.
Fifteen hours passed in endless torment.
At last—regeneration faltered.
Whatever curse Radahn had forced upon their bodies gave way.
Their ruined forms collapsed into silence, smoking heaps of half-eaten flesh and trembling bone.
No elegance, no grandeur, no divine crowns—only hollow husks.
Their "godhood" wiped away forever.
The ghouls stopped.
Their twisted shells crumbled, cracked, and then dissolved.
As flesh sloughed away, what was left were shining souls—gentle lights slipping free from torment.
Men and women, young and old, even tiny children.
Some infant.
The souls bowed low as one toward the distant watcher—the armoured titan of gold who had made them deliver the justice themselves.
Radahn did not smile.
His gaze, glowing and heavy, carried sorrow infinite.
On the other side,
CP0 fared no better.
Their bodies ripped, bent, and finally consumed—bones scattered into dust across the barren field.
At the end—
Radahn's colossal form stood solemn.
"This world, too," he said, voice heavy,
"is cursed."
The barren realm cracked.
Shattered.
And the real world bled back in.