Chapter Title: Ashes of The Nine tailed fox
The blast of Satan 2 had razed the world outside SuHa, leaving only scorched rock and silence. Amid the debris, Shiva's divine form lingered in slow disintegration when a new shadow touched down from the sky.
⸻
"After the Apocalypse"
Dust and ash spun across the wasteland like ghosts with no place to go.
Where once stood forests, cliffs, and frost-laced tundra, now there was only cracked stone and soot. The air shimmered faintly still pulsing with the afterburn of a divine weapon.
At the center of the destruction, the SuHa dome stood tall.
Its smooth obsidian surface glowed with lingering energy, undamaged amid annihilation. The only defiance against the end of the world.
And beside it
A body smoldered.
Shiva's nine-tailed fox form, once towering and divine, had shrunk to a hunched silhouette of charred spirit-flesh. His tails had gone limp. His fur peeled in flakes. His once-glowing eyes fluttered, barely open.
Then a ripple in the air.
A figure emerged high in the sky, descending slowly, arms folded behind his back.
Lord Arcade.
His boots barely disturbed the dust as he landed beside Shiva, his pale coat trailing behind him like a shadow from another era. He glanced around, frowning at the vast nothingness.
"Tch," he clicked his tongue. "I was late, huh?"
He looked up again, brows furrowed slightly. "Is it really that advanced… that it could slow me down? Or maybe it alters the very space around it so anything incoming is delayed? What an invention this world government has cooked up."
He turned his gaze downward.
Shiva's body twitched faintly. A last breath struggled in his chest. His eyes rolled slightly toward Arcade.
Mouth open but no sound.
The air refused his voice.
Arcade knelt beside him.
"Shiva," he said softly, "you've done enough for us."
He reached out slowly, fingers hovering over the dying fox-form. "From the first day I met you, you lived up to every standard. A soldier… no a liberator."
His hand lowered.
"I'll take it from here."
An eye opened on his palm horizontal, alien, unblinking.
Immediately, Shiva's body hissed.
Flesh turned to mist. Bones glowed and dissolved two energy balls appeared . A sound like reversed fire whispered through the air as Shiva's power his divine core one of it was pulled upward into the hungry eye.
From behind Arcade, something stirred.
A great shape emerged a muscular, torpedo-shaped creature gliding through the air as if it swam through reality itself. It resembled a monstrous sea-beast fangs, fins, a cruel jaw that opened in anticipation.
It surged forward.
In a single motion, the beast engulfed what remained of Shiva, snapping shut with a thunderous crunch of spiritual devouring.
Arcade didn't flinch.
Instead, he stood up, watching the last embers of Shiva's essence burn out across his palm.
I call this technique…" Arcade began, "…The Tiger of the Sea."
"It devours powers," Arcade continued, "and lets me will them into my being.
After shiva remains where completely gone and absorbed into him he felt a surge from absorbing shiva and he said,
"This power…" he murmured. "The Anumari bloodline… ancient, feral, bound to the fox gods."
He flexed his fingers.
"Interesting."
He turned slowly, facing the dome that wrapped itself around SUHA.
The obsidian surface shimmered faintly in the lightless sun, impossibly smooth, impossibly still.
Arcade walked forward.
"So," he said aloud, "they created a god-level weapon… and also a shield strong enough to withstand it?"
He stopped a few feet away.
"Very unlike the fools I remember."
He extended one hand again, palm glowing faintly.
"But… everything can break."
Arcade raised his right hand slowly, his fingers splaying open as light pulsed from beneath his skin.
"Creation Order…" he intoned, "White Rods."
The air above him split.
Two white, sleek rods materialized instantly shining with ethereal luster, their surfaces engraved with runes that pulsed like living veins. They floated in perfect stillness for a moment, humming.
Then motion.
They shot forward.
The rods moved with blinding precision, slamming into the SuHa dome like twin thunderbolts. A massive tremor rippled outward from the point of impact, and for the first time since its activation, the dome cracked.
Inside the SuHa war room, alarms screamed.
The monitors glitched momentarily. Every officer turned toward the wall-sized screen, which now showed the rods embedded halfway through the dome's upper shell glowing, vibrating, and beginning to twist.
A sound unlike anything mechanical rang through the dome's interior. It wasn't metal bending it was dimensional pressure shifting.
General Soren's chair clattered as he stood. "I thought this dome was impenetrable?"
Minister Alfred remained still at first. His face was frozen not in fear, but in calculation.
Then he moved.
His hand lifted, the sleeve of his long coat falling back slightly to reveal his forearm marked.
A symbol was there.
A sigil.
General Soren's eyes snapped to it. "Hey. That mark—?"
"Yes," Alfred said, voice sharp. "I have it. We all do. Every president. Every minister. Every governor across the globe."
He turned toward the command panel. "We're not just bureaucrats. We're high-functioning vessels for the upper echelons ."
Soren blinked.
"But… that means you?"
"It means stop asking irrelevant questions and get to the emergency wing," Alfred barked. "Wake up Sir Varion. Now if possible "
Soren didn't hesitate this time.
He saluted sharply and ran from the war room.
Another officer turned. "Sir, should we prepare the inner sanctum?"
Alfred's voice was cold. "We prepare nothing. We respond. Bring up the external camera feed."
Fingers flew across the console.
The screens flickered static, then clarity.
And there he was.
Lord Arcade.
Standing outside the dome, his eyes cold, watching as the rods burrowed deeper into their shield. The rods hadn't cracked all the way through yet, but the hum they gave off was intensifying.
Alfred stared at the screen.
"I didn't expect him to come in person," he muttered.
Another officer said, breathless, "Isn't he… supposed to be dead?"
"Yes" Alfred replied. "But...." His voice stammered
The image of Lord Arcade blinked as the camera's focus glitched from his shen pressure.
And Alfred narrowed his eyes.
"He's claimed Shiva's power, with that disgusting collective ability he's got"
Outside of Greenland.
The wind was wrong.
It came not from the north, nor from any storm but from the force of annihilation. The pressure wave from Satan 2's strike had traveled pretty far, folding air into violent ripples. Forests bent unnaturally. Birds dropped from the sky. The sun itself dimmed momentarily, as if the atmosphere flinched.
Three cloaked figures walked against it.
Their coats billowed violently in the wind, yet none stumbled. The pressure that would have flattened buildings only bent the grass around their feet.
Then came the delayed echo.
An explosion boomed behind them distant, yet massive. The ground trembled, dirt rising in clouds. Trees split apart. One shockwave peeled toward them like a living wall.
Draven didn't even flinch.
From his palm, a layer of shimmering armor burst outward black, faceted, edged like a blade. His Sitra Achra form flared for a second, stabilizing the earth beneath their feet.
Kenzy turned his head, cloak snapping like a flag. "The hell was that?"
Gansu raised his hand to shield his eyes. "It's coming from the central font . Judging by the shock… something just hit Greenland."
Kenzy muttered, "No ordinary strike makes the sky bleed."
Draven remained silent, his eyes locked on the horizon where smoke now rolled over the curve of the earth.
Kenzy tilted his head, looking at him. "That where we're going?"
Draven nodded once.
Kenzy's smirk faded. "If he hadn't dropped at that exact location, we'd have reached Greenland before the blast and get caught in it."
Gansu glanced between them. "Are we thanking fate now?"
Kenzy ignored him. His tone grew pointed. "Or is it just funny how you, Draven, couldn't get him off that chain?"
Draven said nothing.
Kenzy continued, stepping closer. "All that power. All that rank. You stared down those thirty-two pillars and still left Shiki hanging like meat. Why's that?"
Draven's jaw clenched.
Gansu raised a hand slightly between them. "Enough."
But Draven had already turned he leapt forward, boots igniting briefly as he launched into the air, speeding toward the desolate horizon. The others followed quickly, no longer speaking.
Greenland called.
The world had burned.
And what rose from its ashes… was still unknown.