The sky did not merely darken.
It recoiled.
Clouds spiraled outward in violent rings as Dan Heng rose through them, emerald light carving vast corridors through vapor and storm. Below, the shoreline trembled beneath a swelling tide of crimson aura as Blade remained rooted in place, unmoving, the epicenter of a pressure that made even the air feel brittle.
Sunny had seen Saints transform before.
He had become something other than human himself.
But this…
This was revelation.
Every Saint possessed a Transcendent Ability. A transformation. A declaration of what they had fused with — what aspect of the world they had bound to their existence so completely that the boundary between man and concept had dissolved.
Blade and Dan Heng were not subtle men.
They did not become something greater.
They unveiled it.
Blade's aura imploded inward.
For a heartbeat, he was a singularity of red and black — light bending, sand lifting, the shoreline cracking toward him in spiderweb fractures.
Then it erupted.
The human figure vanished.
In its place stood a demon large enough to dwarf the coastline.
Taller than a skyscraper. Broad as a mountain shrine.
Three faces crowned its head — each twisted into a different expression. One serene and cold. One contorted in wrath. One laughing.
Its lower body was covered in coarse, dark fur like some ancient beast dragged from myth. The upper torso, vast and corded with inhuman musculature, was etched with tattoos of countless weapons — blades, spears, hooks, chains — inked into crimson flesh like scars that refused to fade.
Two of its dozen arms held a blacksmith's hammer the size of a building and a colossal chain attached to an anvil that scraped across the earth, carving trenches as it dragged.
The remaining ten arms stretched outward.
The tattoos vanished.
And reappeared as weapons.
Sunny's breath hitched as he recognized one among them.
The fractured kintsugi blade.
Blade had not merely transformed.
He had become the forge.
Above, the clouds tore completely apart.
Something immense coiled between them.
Three dragons.
Not separate, not singular — a writhing convergence of three colossal serpentine bodies, scales shimmering in gradients of emerald and storm-grey. Their forms bore both the dominance of western dragons — broad wings, powerful forelimbs — and the elongated elegance of eastern ones, their bodies flowing like living rivers.
Each head bore the same emerald horns that had crowned Dan Heng's human form.
Three throats opened in unison.
The ocean rose to greet them.
One of the dragons lifted a clawed arm.
Lightning gathered there.
Not the pale blue of common storms.
Orange, blinding and infernal.
The heat rolled across the battlefield like a furnace door thrown open. Sunny felt his skin prickle even at this distance.
He stared, mind racing.
That wasn't just lightning.
It carried the incinerating anthem of flames
'Was he… fusing elements?'
Was that what his Transcendent state allowed — the blending of foundations that should have shattered reality?
The dragon hurled the lance.
The sky split as it descended.
The demon below raised an ornate, circular shield in one of its massive hands. The shield's surface was etched with layered sigils that glowed as the lance struck.
The ground folded.
Not cracked — folded.
Sunny and Yanqing were thrown off their feet as the shockwave rippled outward, bending the shoreline into warped ridges. The sand liquefied under pressure before snapping back into jagged spines.
The demon buckled.
One knee bent.
The anvil chain screeched across the earth.
But it did not fall.
Sunny pushed himself upright, his heart pounding.
The smart move would have been to retreat. Retreat was tactical. Retreat was logical.
Sunny had never claimed to be logical in matters like this.
…Probably.
Yanqing was already looking back at him, wind tearing at his hair, eyes reflecting dragonfire and demonlight alike.
A grin tugged at the young swordsman's lips.
Sunny's answer was immediate.
They moved.
The pressure had multiplied tenfold.
Yanqing's halo of weapons expanded, now numbering in the dozens — perhaps more. The air around him hummed with blade intent so sharp it felt like being skinned alive by proximity alone.
Sunny launched forward, adjusting his weight to cut through the crushing atmosphere.
Soul Serpent elongated into a curved saber mid-dash.
Yanqing mirrored him instantly.
They clashed again — but this time the shockwaves from the Saints' battle disrupted every exchange. The ground pitched violently as the demon swung its hammer upward, colliding with a descending dragon claw.
The impact shattered part of the sky.
Literal fissures spidered across the firmament, leaking torrents of glowing rain.
Three swords shot toward Sunny's spine.
He twisted, parried two, let the third glance off his mantle as he increased his weight to anchor himself against a rolling tremor.
More blades came.
Five.
Ten.
Fifteen.
Yanqing's control had sharpened under the pressure. The weapons attacked in layered patterns — some direct, some delayed, some curving around to strike from impossible angles.
Sunny's teeth clenched behind the mask.
He parried, dodged, shifted weight, and leapt.
Soul Serpent shifted into a chain-blade, lashing outward to knock aside a cluster of projectiles.
Another quake.
The demon's anvil launched skyward, dragged by its chain like a meteor swung by a god. The dragons dove between the loops of chain, twisting around it before tearing through with crackling claws of lightning.
The shockwave flattened an entire section of beach.
Sunny stumbled.
Yanqing capitalized instantly.
A spear thrust toward Sunny's throat, while three swords curved toward his knees.
Sunny barely caught the spear, weight spiking downward to brace.
A blade nicked his calf.
Another pierced his shoulder.
He grinned.
This was becoming untenable.
He could feel it.
Yanqing's arsenal was expanding faster than Sunny could counter purely through technique. The constant environmental chaos demanded defensive resources he was refusing to use.
He could step through shadows.
He could manifest shields.
He could have increased his own strength, quickly overwhelming Yanqing.
He could do this, he could do that. He could do anything, really.
He didn't want to.
This wasn't a true battle to the death. Sunny could always Shadow Step away, and he believed that Yanqing was more likely to capture him if he lost.
He wanted his blade to reach the realm of the gods — with or without the shadows to back him up.
…Even as gods tore reality apart behind them.
Another volley of swords descended.
Sunny knocked aside six, then seven.
The eighth grazed his ribs.
The ninth he stopped with Soul Serpent — only to feel the tenth slam into his back and drive him forward.
He rolled, increasing weight to prevent being flung into the air by a rising shockwave from the Saints' clash.
Yanqing stood amid the chaos like a conductor before an orchestra of steel.
Sunny exhaled slowly.
Fine.
If he couldn't win as he was…
Then he'd need to make a slight exception.
Behind Yanqing, he saw it — the demon and dragon locked in brutal aerial combat. One dragon twisted through loops of chain while another clamped its jaws onto the demon's shoulder, lightning detonating point-blank.
The third dragon raised another infernal lance.
The demon roared, three voices layered into one.
The chain whipped skyward.
The anvil hurtled like a falling star.
Sunny's mind sparked.
Inspiration from chaos, a familiar shape entering his mind.
From what he had once been.
His hand dropped to his waist, tendrils of shadows swirling within it as he called upon a Divine Memory.
A small lantern about the size of his palm, and made out of black, resembling stone more than anything. The frame of the lantern was intricately engraved, making it seem and feel like the scales of a serpent, and its walls were made out of glossy black morion. There was a small door on one of its walls. On its top was a ring of dark metal, with a short chain attached to it which Sunny held it from. As soon as the lantern appeared, the shadows that surrounded Sunny instantly became deeper and colder, oppressive, and impenetrable.
The [Gates of Shadow] opened.
The battlefield dimmed unnaturally around him, as though the sun itself had been swallowed. Shadows stretched long and thick, pooling across fractured stone and rising tide.
Yanqing's eyes narrowed.
Sunny did not attack.
Instead… he sank.
His body dissolved into shadow, flattening against the ground as though depth had been erased.
For a heartbeat, he felt only cold.
Weightless.
Formless.
Then, there was shape.
The silhouette of himself cast upon the broken earth.
Within his mind, however, he held another image.
An elongated spine. Four horns curving out its skull. Four long, skeletal arms that ended at blade-like claws. Inverted knees. A tail that seemed to have a mind of its own.
The Shadowspawn.