The Arctic battlefield had vanished, replaced by the familiar halls of the Astral Legion Academy. Laughter and exhaustion blended as students returned to their quarters, their minds replaying the explosive match between Kazimir, Riah, and Gendai.
But one figure wasn't finished yet.
Gendai tugged at Kazimir's sleeve just before he could vanish again into solitude.
Gendai: "Come with me. I want to talk—now."
Without waiting for his reply, she pulled him through the corridor toward her room.
Moments later, she emerged from the changing screen wearing a loose tank top and shorts. Her usually sharp eyes carried unease beneath their violet shimmer.
Gendai: "So… tell me about the Nullity."
Kazimir leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
Kazimir: "You really want to know?"
Gendai: "I do."
Kazimir: "Then don't ask. Use your powers. See it for yourself."
Her breath hitched.
Gendai: "You're okay with that…?"
Kazimir: "I wouldn't offer if I wasn't."
She stepped forward, placing her fingers gently at his temple. Her powers swirled, and her vision blurred—then darkness.
She opened her eyes inside his mind.
And instantly regretted it.
The sky overhead was a poisoned blue, pulsing like a dying heartbeat. Around her, the ground was littered with bodies—dozens, no, hundreds—frozen in twisted agony. Blood drenched the soil, yet no sound came from the fallen.
Only silence.
Then, from the horizon, screams. An inhuman chorus of suffering and madness echoed in waves as a black tide of parasites swarmed like a plague, slithering between the corpses.
Gendai began to walk, chest tightening.
The screams grew louder.
Suddenly, the sky warped—and a black hole ripped open above her, spiraling outward like a cosmic wound. It expanded, faster, hungrier, until the very air seemed to crack.
She turned to run, but the shockwave hit like a tidal force.
CRACK—!
She was thrown into the air like a doll, crashing down with a scream. Blood trickled down her lips. Her ankle was twisted grotesquely.
Gendai: "W-What… is this…"
She dragged herself forward—toward the place where the black hole had been.
Then she saw him.
Floating in the sky, pale white skin glowing with eerie blue lines, hair turned a stormy shade of midnight, eyes empty of warmth or reason—
Kazimir.
But not her Kazimir.
This was something possessed, something wrong.
He stared at her with a void gaze.
And in an instant, he was gone from the sky—
Only to appear before her.
Her knees gave out.
The air around him bent, his very presence crushing her lungs.
Gendai: "P-Please—Kazimir—!"
He didn't answer.
He grabbed her by the neck, lifting her like she weighed nothing. Her limbs thrashed. With a cold flick of his arm, he slammed her into the ground.
Over and over.
The Nullity did not speak.
It only broke her.
As she tried to crawl away, black tendrils slithered from the ground, wrapping around her leg and slamming her into the ice again. Her powers vanished. Her strength failed.
Negated.
Erased.
She sobbed in terror as a new black hole formed above her, its pull draining her life. Her body spasmed, her vision blurring into nothingness.
Gendai: "Stop…! Please stop… I—I can't breathe—!"
The Nullity only watched.
It stepped forward, grabbed her face—and threw her into the vortex.
There was no pain. No sound.
No air.
Only… nothing.
She floated in the Primal Catastrophe—a void absent of life, of thought, of even time.
And then—he was there again.
From the nothingness, the Nullity emerged, grinning. It reached out—
And ripped her arm off.
She screamed, a silent, agonizing wail that echoed in her own soul. One by one, her limbs were torn away—until she was just a broken mass of thoughts.
Her mind shattered.
And then it ended.