A sharp hiss ruptured the frozen air like a crack in glass.
The serpent, dormant in the shield gripped by the warlord Michael, now moved with sentient fury. No longer just a painted sigil, its body surged forward, unraveling in mid-air like a banner caught in a storm. Glass-white scales shimmered, reflecting the red lightning still echoing in the storm clouds above.
The root-burdened warlord, Ark Angel Michael, remained bound yet his will acted without motion.
The snake answered him.
It launched.
Straight at Lord Arcade.
"—Tch," Arcade muttered, turning just as the serpent's fangs descended.
Impact.
The blow slammed him skyward, a streak of white and silver trailing behind as the serpent coiled mid-flight around its prey. Its open jaws locked with Lord Arcade's hands, fangs pushing down toward his head.
He gritted his teeth, straining both arms upward to brace against the serpent's bite. Divine power crackled between his palms as he held the maw at bay.
The sky split with roaring wind.
Below
On the jagged rock beneath the storm
Sakamoto shouted, eyes wide. "Draven! Now's your time go for it!"
Draven said nothing.
His eyes were already locked upward.
Behind him, the Sitra Achra: Dual Manifestation towers loomed. The black executioner, its skeletal bow already drawn, had four void-crafted arrows resting on the string. Each arrow pulsed faintly blank slates waiting for purpose.
Draven gripped Mjölnir in his right hand.
He raised it to the sky.
CRACK
A blazing bolt of red lightning tore down from the heavens like a spear of wrath, connecting with the hammer's head. It struck with such force that even the executioners shuddered slightly in place.
Draven held steady, eyes narrowed.
The hammer hummed violently in his hand, lightning spiraling around his arm. Without speaking, he pressed the hammer against the four arrows. Sparks shot outward.
Each arrow lit up now charged with Shinkai energy, that divine class of power that severed regeneration and corrupted god systems.
Draven drew the bowstring tighter.
Above, Lord Arcade still struggled his attention fixed entirely on the serpent.
"Let's see you deflect this," Draven whispered.
He released.
The four arrows screamed upward like comets on a collision course, each leaving trails of burning crimson behind. They closed the distance in seconds.
But Lord Arcade's instincts flared his face turned to see the incoming attack,
His left palm opened
An eye bloomed.
From it, a strange shape spilled outward first a speck, then a curve, then a tail.
A tiny whale, barely the size of a man's hand, emerged only to expand instantly, bursting into a colossal beast midair, jaws yawning wide.
The serpent was in its path.
CHOMP
The whale swallowed the snake mid-coil, the bite echoing across the sky like thunder muffled by water.
But
Too slow.
The arrows had already closed in.
One. Two. Three. Four.
They embedded into Lord Arcade's chest in perfect symmetry two through his upper torso, two lower.
BOOOOOOOM
A violent eruption tore through the clouds above Greenland, a red dome of energy swallowing the upper sky. Debris rained in flaming arcs. Thunder cracked in reverse. Everything shook above.
On the surface, Draven flinched, shielding his eyes from the brightness.
Beside him, Sakamoto crouched, cloak flaring outward from the pressure wave.
Wind roared past. The executioners stood motionless as the red glow lit their pale skin.
A silence followed. Then a low vibration rippled through the ground, echoing the moment's weight.
The explosion in the sky still echoed, its remnants glowing like a second sun above Greenland. Cracks of red lightning still danced through the clouds, echoing the four-fold impact of Draven's strike.
Down below, Sakamoto dropped next to Ark Angel Michael. The massive warlord still stood bound, six roots holding his body in place, his single eye burning with dormant heat.
"You did good," Sakamoto said, breathing heavy. "I didn't know you could read my thoughts like that…"
The massive warlord didn't reply.
"I needed an opening for Draven," Sakamoto said, "and you made one. You sent that serpent at the exact right time. So thank you."
The ground beneath them began to tremble.
The roots wrapped around Michael's limbs twitched, then slowly began to unravel, sliding back into the earth like snakes returning to their burrows.
Sakamoto's eyes widened slightly. "It worked…"
Above, Draven stood tall on the elevated rock. Mjölnir pulsed in his hand, still faintly humming from the lightning that had infused it.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the sky.
"I knew it," he said. "He's not healing."
His grip on the hammer tightened.
"The energy from Mjölnir… Shinkai-class. That's what hurts him. That's what burns through his regeneration."
He looked up as the explosion began to clear.
"And that hit? That was for what he did to my brother."
The sky finally settled.
Smoke rolled back, revealing a figure still floating at the center barely visible through the clouds.
Lord Arcade.
His right arm was gone, completely obliterated at the shoulder. The side of his face was scorched, lip torn, one eye bruised shut. His robes were tattered, silver linings burned off by divine lightning.
And yet he hovered. Unbroken.
A smile twisted onto his bloodied lips.
"…I must eradicate this world," he said calmly, his voice echoing across the battlefield like wind through a hollow church.
His left arm rose.
Another eye opened on his palm.
"I don't have time. I can't make it back to that place again to finish it … But here, I can still complete it."
A hush overtook the wind.
"I shall cleanse this world."
His voice was both hymn and sentence.
"One With Yggdrasil: Borobudur."
From beneath the snow-covered ground, the earth itself began to rise.
Rocks shifted. Dust cracked. Energy pulsed.
A temple emerged.
Nine stone layers, carved with ancient geometry, spiraled upward. Massive stone Buddha statues encircled its base, silent and watchful.
The sky darkened.
Lord Arcade floated higher, above the spire's summit. He raised both arms to the clouds, the world watching.
Then he whispered
"Let. There. Be. Light."
The clouds cracked open.
A column of light descended from beyond the sky, blinding and holy. It engulfed the temple, then spread expanding outward like an airborne tidal wave.
Then it hit the ground.
Everywhere the light touched humans without Shen began to burn.
In Greenland, screams rang out.
Men, women, and children collapsed, skin blistering, eyes boiling in their sockets.
A newborn cried from a wooden hut. Her mother screamed and held her close. but the light touched them both as they both began to burn their skins fading their bones fading like it never existed
Their screams were cut short.
In New York City, traffic stopped. Drivers stumbled from their vehicles as light poured down the streets, eating away at flesh.
Inside the SUHA facility, soldiers and agents scattered like ants. Some cried. Others collapsed in flames.
"PLEASE—HELP—!"
"MY FAMILY—I HAVE A SON—!"
Others wept, reaching for water, for shade, for a miracle.
None came.
Flesh turned to smoke.
Fingers to dust.
The cry of humanity rang out in every direction.
Down below, Sakamoto fell to his knees.
He could hear it all.
Every scream. Every cry.
He clenched his fists.
"STOP IT!" he shouted. "You're killing innocent people!"
Above, Arcade's voice echoed.
"No. I am releasing them… from suffering."
Draven's executioner drew back another arrow.
He fired.
The arrow burned away the moment it neared the light.
Arcade gazed down, calm as ever.
"I will create a new world… one not built on sin."
The light did not stop.
It expanded.
A shining dome of holy brilliance spread across continents an ethereal curtain of annihilation. Where it passed, humans born without Shen trembled, screamed, and burned alive.
In the countryside of Norway, a group of farmers froze midstep as the light crept over the horizon. One of them fell first writhing as his skin peeled like old paper. His wife screamed. His children followed and they all burnt together.
In Beijing, a woman knelt at her child's grave. She never stood again.
In the ruins of Cairo, two scavengers bolted for cover under a broken bridge. Their backs ignited before they reached the shadow.
The divine light did not discriminate.
The only common thread Anyone who didn't carry it was scorched.
Even infants.
Even the unborn.
In a home outside Lagos, a baby girl cried, just sixty seconds into her life.
Her mother, still bleeding from childbirth, pulled her close, whispering prayers.
The light touched them both.
The cries stopped they burned alive
⸻
Inside the SUHA Facility, what was once the world's most fortified compound had turned into a death chamber.
Security systems shorted from energy overload.
Soldiers screamed into radios. Some collapsed, wailing. Some begged. Some recited prayers they hadn't spoken since childhood.
Others—disintegrated mid-sentence.
"Lieutenant, please—!"
"Tell my daughter I—!"
"GOD, HELP US—!"
Ash drifted through the corridors like black snow.
In the main control room, five agents tried to reroute the power grid.
One looked down at his own hands as his skin peeled back, exposing charred bone.
"…I have a family…"
He didn't finish the thought before he crumbled.
⸻
Above it all, the Borobudur Temple hovered like a divine monument.
Its Buddhas remained silent, their hands folded in eternal peace.
Lord Arcade stood motionless, bathed in the light he had summoned.
There was no malice in his expression.
Only purpose.
Only peace.
⸻
Down below, on the shattered ground of Greenland, Sakamoto dropped to both knees.
The screams weren't fading.
They were growing.
He didn't hear wind anymore. Or snow. Or Draven's voice beside him.
He heard crying children.
He heard the dying gasps of strangers.
He heard humanity being erased.
His eyes trembled.
His fists clenched.
He shouted again, but this time it was barely a whisper.
"Stop it…"
He looked up.
"Please… stop."
There was no answer.
Only more light.
Only more death.
The screams didn't stop.
Sakamoto's heart pounded against his chest like it was trying to escape. The voices echoed from across the world louder than the wind, louder than the thunder, louder than his own breath.
He saw children he'd never met.
Fathers screaming for daughters.
Mothers folding over their babies.
Old men praying for the first time in years.
And they were all burning.
"No… no, no, no…"
His voice cracked. He clenched his fists until the bones popped.
The light glared down like a second sun, washing over everything, consuming innocence like it was dirt.
Draven looked at him, unsure whether to move or speak.
Sakamoto was shaking.
Then
A whisper broke through the roar.
"The Shadow Plain has unlimited possibility…"
The voice came from memory.
From India.
Rajesh.
Sakamoto's eyes widened he remembered the wise words from Rajesh back then .
"If it's unlimited…" he said to himself, voice hoarse, "Then I can save them… right?"
He closed his eyes.
Inside the darkness of his own mind, he stood again in the void
The Shadow Plain.
Empty.
Silent.
Infinite.
He called out: "Jushin."
A shape formed.
A voice followed.
"Yes."
Jushin appeared not as a monster, not as mist, but in Sakamoto's own shape. Calm. Knowing.
Sakamoto stepped forward.
"I need to save them."
Jushin stared, unmoving.
"You don't have enough Shen to do what you're thinking."
Sakamoto's jaw clenched. "Then take it all. Take everything I have."
Even in the silence, the weight of those words echoed.
Jushin's voice was grave.
"You'll lose your strength. Your connection to me. You'll lose me."
"I. Don't. Care."
Sakamoto stepped forward.
"People are dying. I don't care about power. Just let me stop it. Now."
Jushin looked down.
Then looked up again his own face staring back at Sakamoto.
"Then go."
Back in reality
A pulse of darkness erupted beneath Sakamoto.
The ground trembled.
From his feet, his shadow pulsed outwardthen twisted unnaturally.
It expanded.
The grounf cracked.
The stone beneath his boots vibrated.
The sky shimmered.
His shadow grew and kept growing.
It spilled outward, surging across Greenland, then faster
Across oceans.
Across cities.
Across borders.
Across Earth.
Everywhere the holy light had reached
The shadow followed.
In a hospital in Seoul, a nurse screamed only for a wave of blackness to swallow her.
In a field in Kenya, a farmer collapsed then vanished inside the shadow.
In SUHA Facility, the remaining agents gasped watching as the heat vanished, and the pain stopped, and the light above them was replaced with pitch black.
The light shut down.
The sky went dark.
The world dimmed to black.
The screams quieted.
And silence took their place.
The air was still again.
On the battlefield
Draven stood speechless.
He watched as the entire planet shifted in moments from divine fire to abyssal silence.
His voice came low.
"…Sakamoto… you just…"
Above them, Lord Arcade still hovered, his robe in tatters.
His one good eye widened.
"What?"
The sky was no longer holy.
The temple of Borobudur still floated in the upper atmosphere like a ruin without worshippers. The giant Buddhas, once glowing, now stood dim as if their god had been dethroned.
There was no sunlight.
No blue.
Only black.
And silence.
Lord Arcade hovered in midair, one arm missing, his face smeared with blood and soot, robes torn open from chest to thigh. His mouth hung slightly open. One of his floating pupils twitched.
"…What… did you do…"
Below him, the wind stirred once.
Draven stared up, still holding Mjölnir, his eyes wide not with awe, but with calculated disbelief.
But it was Sakamoto who moved.
His legs were shaking. His body trembled with every step. His mouth was slack with exhaustion, sweat pouring down his neck.
And his eyes were empty.
But he raised one hand.
Slow. Steady.
His shadow didn't move anymore.
He had nothing left
Except one thing.
A whisper rose from his lips.
"Shadow Flame."
His palm lit.
But it wasn't fire.
It was blackness on fire.
A flame made of void.
It burned downward instead of up.
It cast no light only absence.
The black fire swirled in his hand for just a moment
Then shot upward like a death sentence.
Lord Arcade reacted too late.
The flame struck his chest.
His body seized.
Then
Screamed.
He burned.
Not like before not from Shen, not from electricity, not from mortal elements.
This was shadowfire.
It ignored divine logic.
It devoured from within.
It didn't sear flesh.
It erased presence.
"—NO—" Lord Arcade screamed, voice cracking, twisting, distorting.
His one remaining eye widened as his skin began to flake not into ash into absence.
Draven's mouth moved silently.
Sakamoto's hand fell to his side.
The fire kept burning.
And Lord Arcade began to disappear.