The battlefield hung suspended in the corpse-gray silence of deep space. What remained of the volcanic planetoid was little more than a skeletal fist of obsidian rock clawing at the void, shrouded in perpetual twilight. Ash fell in a ghostly rain, blanketing the scars of cataclysm; valleys carved by spiritual detonations, mountains sheared clean by void-energy. The air thrummed with residual violence, tasting of ozone, charred stone, and the copper tang of spilled power. Across this graveyard of celestial ambition, Shinji Kazuhiko stood trembling, his breath sawing through clenched teeth. Sweat plastered strands of his vibrant yellow-green hair to his forehead, mixing with grime and the luminous blood weeping from shallow cuts. His golden-green aura, usually a corona of defiant energy, flickered erratically like a guttering candle in a tomb.
Twenty paces away, Nirvana, the Heartdeath Monarch, was a broken doll propped against a jagged spire of volcanic glass. Her once-radiant pink hair was a tangled, matted curtain. The magnificent Rod that had been the focus of her terrifying dominion lay in fragments around her, dark veins of power within the shards fading to dull obsidian. Her ample chest heaved with ragged, wet gasps, each exhale a puff of vapor in the chilling void-air. Luminous blood, thick as syrup, seeped from a dozen wounds, staining her torn battle-garb and pooling on the ash beneath her. Defeat clung to her like a shroud.
Kokuto's eyes, cold and depthless as event horizons, swept the devastation. They lingered for a heartbeat on Torento's grotesquely contorted form, then settled on Nirvana with a dispassion that was colder than cruelty.
"What a spectacle," his voice cut the silence, sharp and clear as shattering ice. It carried no echo, absorbed by the vast emptiness. "Drained to the dregs. Powerless. And your Rod..." His gaze flicked to the shattered obsidian fragments. "...the very symbol of your ascension, the key to your monarchy... reduced to rubble. You haven't just failed, Nirvana. You've made yourself an epitaph."
A choked, wet sob escaped the fallen Monarch. Tears, thick and luminous like liquid starlight, welled in her wide, desperate eyes, carving tracks through the grime on her cheeks. "I... I was reckless!" she gasped, the words bubbling with despair. "Arrogant! Stupid! Please... Kokuto... just... one more chance! Let me redeem myself!"
A sigh escaped him, soft yet carrying the finality of a tomb sealing. "Chance is Lord Saganbo's indulgence, not mine. Your orders were explicit: retrieve the Trascender. Not indulge in a tantrum that shattered your weapon and spilled a Monarch's essence across this forgotten rock." His gaze, sharp and unyielding as the blade at his hip, shifted towards Shinji. The young Trascender met it with eyes that burned with a hatred as deep and cold as the interstellar void, a hatred forged in the blood of his murdered family. Kokuto's knuckles whitened almost imperceptibly where they gripped the worn leather of his sword's hilt. "Return to Universe 3523. Grovel at the foot of the Obsidian Throne. Hope his amusement outweighs his wrath." His voice hardened, becoming the rasp of steel being drawn. "As for this... distraction... I will conclude it. The Trascender falls. Now."
Relief, fragile and desperate, warred with shame on Nirvana's battered face. "Thank you! Kokuto, I... I owe you a debt!" She scrambled back, her movements clumsy with exhaustion and pain. Weak pink energy sputtered around her hands as she tore at the fabric of space with pure speed. With a final, fearful glance back, she tumbled into its swirling, nauseating depths.
The void seemed to contract, the silence deepening into something oppressive. Shinji's golden-green aura flared violently, then subsided, pulsing erratically like a dying heart. Blood trickled from a split lip, tasting of iron and dust. The fire in his eyes, however, was undimmed, fed by the visceral memory of crimson-soaked floors, the stillness of his aunt and sister, the cold steel that had first ended his life.
"Perfect timing, Swordwrath," Shinji spat, the words thick with venom that burned his throat. "Did Saganbo send his favorite attack dog to clean up the mess? Doesn't matter. I'll carve you into bloody ribbons and string your guts between the stars for the void fucking worms to feast on, you soulless monster!"
Kokuto adjusted his unnaturally still scarf with a minute flick of his wrist. "My trajectory was set for Universe 3, bound by the Lord's command. Your... theatrics... proved an unavoidable gravitational anomaly." A ghost of something; perhaps the barest acknowledgment of Shinji's fury; touched his impassive features. "Your hostility, however misplaced towards inevitability, is... noted."
"Universe 3?" Shinji's breath hitched, the name striking him like a physical blow. Earth. Tokyo. The university. The grave markers beneath the cherry blossom tree. A cold dread coiled in his gut, colder than the void. "What business does Saganbo have there? What have you done?!"
"Your concern is touching, but irrelevant," Kokuto stated, his voice devoid of inflection. "Your universe expires in three seconds. Make them count."
Shinji exploded into motion. Gone was the calculating warrior Yamato had forged in the Wilderness, replaced by the raw, untamed fury of grief and vengeance. Spiritual energy detonated around him in a concussive wave, kicking up a storm of ash as he launched himself forward. Ten searing lances of Act 3 energy; incandescent beams of pure annihilation; screamed from his outstretched hands, tearing across the ravaged plain towards the impassive Monarch, painting the ashen landscape in stark, deadly light.
Shink! Shink! Shink!
Kokuto's blade was a mere suggestion of movement, a silver flicker in the gloom. A single, contemptuous arc cut through the onrushing torrent of destruction. The devastating beams parted like smoke before a razor's edge, dissipating into harmless motes of light before they crossed half the distance. Not a single ember touched him.
"You've evolved," Kokuto observed, a trace of something almost like clinical interest in his chilling tone. "From the mewling child clutching at Merus's robes... to a persistent irritant demanding the edge of my steel." He vanished.
Shinji's Danger Sense screamed a nanosecond warning; a searing brand against his mind.
Schlick!
The sound was horrifically clean. Cold, impossibly sharp steel parted flesh, muscle, and bone with the ease of parting water. Shinji's upper torso slid cleanly away from his lower half. He gasped, not from the shock of pain; the regeneration surged instantaneously, flesh knitting with blinding speed; but from the sheer, disorienting violation of it. *Faster. Even after the wilderness, after Khoseph, after this woman... Nirvana,was it? he's still impossibly faster.* The realization was a spike of ice in his gut.
Shinji roared, the sound raw and tearing, channeling his terror and rage into pure destructive force. Ten beams, sharper and more focused than before, blazing with desperate intensity, lanced from his fingertips, converging with lethal precision on the space Kokuto occupied.
The Swordwrath moved with preternatural grace, a phantom weaving between the spears of light. He flowed around them, bending space with subtle shifts that defied perception. Yet one beam, grazing the side of his neck, left a thin, searing line. A single droplet of crimson welled, stark against his pale skin, tracing a path down his collar.
He raised his hand, touched the blood, examined the bright red smear on his fingertip. A slow, dark smile spread across his face, devoid of any warmth or humor, a predator acknowledging a scratch. "Amusing. Complacency is a luxury even for the instruments of oblivion." His sword lifted. Not with a warrior's flourish, but with the deliberate, terrifying intent of a sculptor preparing a final stroke. The blade ignited. Not with fire, but with an absolute, void-black energy that seemed to drink the feeble starlight, radiating an aura of pure, unmaking negation. He raised it high, a shard of the abyss given form, and brought it down in a single, deceptively simple motion.
Kkkrrrzzzaaaak-THOOOOOM!
The universe didn't just scream; it convulsed. Space didn't tear; it unraveled at a fundamental level. A fissure of pure, ravenous negation ripped across the cosmos, wider than star clusters, deeper than imagination. It wasn't darkness; it was the absence of everything; light, matter, energy, the very concept of existence. Stars within its path didn't explode; they simply ceased to be, winking out of the cosmic record without fanfare. Nebulae dissolved into swirling quantum mist, erased from the tapestry of reality. The light of distant suns bent and screamed as it was dragged towards the yawning chasm of non-existence. Shinji threw himself sideways with every ounce of Voidheart speed, every shred of instinct howling at him to flee. The searing edge of the void-shear sang past him, the sheer proximity blasting heat from his skin and searing the fabric of his jacket. A glancing touch on his forearm sent agony lancing through him; not heat, but an impossible, soul-deep cold that instantly blistered the flesh.
He landed hard, rolling through the ash, scrambling back on trembling limbs. He clutched his seared arm, the pain a white-hot brand, his eyes wide with primal, mind-numbing terror as he stared at the slowly sealing scar in reality. "You..." he gasped, voice cracking. "You didn't cut space! You cut the... the void beneath it! You severed the fabric of nothingness!"
"Perceptive," Kokuto acknowledged, the void-black energy still wreathing his blade like living, hungry shadow, casting his features in stark, monstrous relief. "Most comprehend only as the silence claims them. Reaching the void with the blade is a feat very few Swordsmen in the wide cosmos are capable of. Evade the next one, Trascender. Your immortality means nothing if your essence is unmade."
Elsewhere, The Silent Edge of Universe 8 :
The Whispering Wind, Shirou's battered but reliable starship, drifted like a lost leaf through the corpse-light of a supernova's fading echo. Inside the cramped, instrument-cluttered cockpit, Shirou wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow with the back of his grimy sleeve. The metallic tang of ozone and overheated circuitry hung heavy in the recycled air. He'd spent hours pushing himself, fine-tuning the gravitic stabilizers on his prized rifle, Emerald, forcing his own neural pathways to adapt, shaving microseconds off his reaction time. A low grunt of satisfaction escaped him.
"Definitely quicker," he muttered, the words swallowed by the vast indifference of the stars beyond the viewport. He tapped a flickering sensor display, its green lines spiking erratically. "But those damn energy signatures..." He whistled, long and low, a sound of genuine awe mixed with trepidation. "Seven suns going supernova at once. Burning hotter than a demon's forge. Shinji and the blue guy... sure, expected. But five others? Five walking apocalypses?" He ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair. "Hell's bells and little fishes, what kinda cosmic bar brawl did I just miss the invite to?"
A streak of brilliant pink light, trailing luminous droplets like tears of liquid starlight, flashed past his viewport; a comet of desperation weaving through the nebula's corpse. Nirvana. Shirou didn't hesitate. He slammed the thruster controls, the Whispering Wind groaning in protest as it lurched violently into pursuit. He slapped the manual airlock override, the inner door hissing open. Leaning out into the biting cold of the interstellar medium, protected only by his suit's field, he cupped his hands around his mouth, his grin sharp and reckless beneath his polarized goggles.
"Hey there, speedy! Shirou! Professional Money Hunter and part-time rescuer of damsels in distress! You look like you wrestled a singularity and lost! Need a lift to somewhere with less... existential unraveling?"
Nirvana jerked in her flight path, startled. She twisted, her eyes, wide and bloodshot with exhaustion and lingering fear, locking onto his. A faint, unexpected blush crept across her pale cheeks despite her obvious pain and terror. "Y-You! Who are—? I can't— I have to—"
*Internal Panic Flared: Shit! Trascender's crew! Handsome damn crew too, under the grime... Focus, idiot! No Rod, reserves critical... Play nice. Escape! Must escape!*
"Sorry, handsome!" she called back, forcing a weak, flustered smile that didn't reach her haunted eyes. "Raincheck on that rescue, okay? Really!" She poured the last dregs of her faltering energy into conjuring a spatial rupture. It tore open, unstable and flickering, beside her. With a final, almost apologetic glance, she tumbled through the chaotic tear. It snapped shut behind her with a sound like a dying breath.
Shirou sighed dramatically, the sound lost in the vacuum. He pulled himself back into the ship, the hatch hissing shut, sealing out the cold. He slumped into the worn pilot's seat. "Story of my damn existence," he lamented to the blinking consoles and empty co-pilot's chair. "Gorgeous women fleeing world-ending events... and me, left holding the tab and talking to myself." He stared at the spot where the rift had vanished, a flicker of genuine loneliness beneath the bravado. Shaking it off, he punched new coordinates into the nav-com with exaggerated force. "Fine. Onwards, Wind. Payday's gotta be lurking somewhere in this godsforsaken mess. Preferably somewhere with a bar."
Back in the Crucible: Universe 6
The ash fell thicker now, a silent, gray shroud descending upon the broken world, muffling sound, swallowing light. Shinji stood hunched, a tremor running through his frame. Each breath was a ragged, painful gasp, scraping his raw throat. The infinite power of the Trascender Core still pulsed within him, a distant, brilliant sun, but the conduit; his human body, his weary spirit; felt like frayed, overstretched wire. Each regeneration, each desperate blast of Act 3, had stolen more than energy; it had stolen vitality, will, the sharp edge of focus.
Kokuto ceased being a man and became a principle of annihilation. Not a blur, but a series of impossible, staccato instants; a flicker of black silk, a gleam of silver steel, the whistle of parted air arriving a heartbeat after the blow.
Shink! A forearm severed at the elbow, hitting the ash with a dull thud before the phantom pain even registered in Shinji's brain.
Schlick! A leg bisected cleanly at the thigh, sending him crashing face-first into the choking gray powder, ash filling his mouth and nose.
Crunch! The flat of the blade impacted his spine with the force of a meteor strike, shattering vertebrae, driving the air from his lungs in a voiceless scream.
He regenerated, always, the horrific wounds sealing with blinding speed, leaving only phantom aches and a deeper, soul-crushing fatigue. But the intervals grew longer. Each rebirth was a gasp, a shuddering return to a body that felt heavier, clumsier, screaming its protest. His vision swam, doubling Kokuto's form, blurring the edges of the ashen hellscape. The world narrowed to the next breath, the next dodge, the next impossible survival. The ash tasted like despair.
Kokuto halted, a statue carved from ice and cosmic shadow, his blade held loosely at his side, point resting lightly on the ash-covered rock. Not a hair out of place. No sweat. No tremor. "Immortality," he stated, the word echoing with hollow finality in the stillness. "Regeneration. Meaningless baubles against the relentless tide of existence. You are still flesh. Still spirit. Still bound by the chains of being. And beings... tire." His voice held no mockery, only the stark, inescapable truth of the void. "Your core is infinite, Shinji Kazuhiko. Your vessel... is not. As simple as that."
Shinji forced himself to one knee, muscles trembling violently, threatening to buckle. He spat ash and blood, lifting his head with monumental effort. Hatred still burned in his eyes, but it was banked now, dimmed by overwhelming exhaustion. "I'll..." he rasped, the words barely audible, stripped of force, a ghost of defiance. "...defeat you..." It sounded like a plea.
A flicker of something deep and ancient; perhaps genuine respect, perhaps merely the acknowledgment of a worthy struggle; passed through Kokuto's eyes. "You fight with the fury of a dying star," he conceded, his voice losing some of its glacial edge. "You bleed, you break, you rise. A warrior's spirit, forged in loss, which is Rare. You deserve all respect." He raised his blade, not with a triumphant flourish, but with the solemn, dreadful finality of an executioner fulfilling a sacred duty. "But this battle... ends now. Your war... pauses here."
The final strike defied perception. It wasn't seen. It wasn't felt as pain or impact. It was a silent command etched onto the canvas of reality itself, a negation of form.
Fwoom-Pulse.
Shinji's body didn't crumble or bleed; it simply disintegrated. Atomized into a swirling cloud of glittering, golden-green motes that hung suspended for a single, breathless moment in the ash-choked air, a constellation of fragmented being through a million slashes per second. Then, with agonizing, unnatural slowness, the motes spiraled inward, coalescing, reforming the young man whole and unmarked. But his eyes... his eyes were vacant windows staring into nothingness. His body swayed, a marionette with cut strings, on the precipice of total collapse. Consciousness was a guttering candle flame in a hurricane, one breath from extinction.
Before his knees could buckle, Kokuto was before him. Not charging, not threatening, but simply there. A single fingertip, colder than the deepest void between galaxies, touched Shinji's forehead with the precision of a neurosurgeon, the gentleness of a falling snowflake.
Tink.
It was the smallest sound imaginable. A microscopic incision, a neural scalpel wielded by a master who understood the architecture of consciousness down to its quantum foundations. Deep within the Trascender's brain, key pathways; not for life, but for awareness; were severed with flawless, irrevocable precision. The faint, desperate light in Shinji's eyes flickered once, wildly, then guttered out completely, leaving only empty, unseeing pupils. He slumped forward, utterly boneless, into the Swordwrath Monarch's waiting arms.
Kokuto caught the dead weight effortlessly, adjusting his grip with the care one might use for a fragile, priceless artifact. He looked down at the unconscious face, youthful even in absolute defeat, the lines of rage smoothed away by enforced oblivion. "Rest, warrior," he murmured, the words barely a whisper, instantly swallowed by the vast, uncaring silence of the void. "You earned this respite." He shifted the limp form securely over his shoulder, the crimson scarf brushing against Shinji's slack hand. His gaze lifted, piercing the veil of stars and ruined space, fixing unerringly on the distant, unseen spiral arm of Universe 3. A single step forward, deliberate and unhurried. Space folded around him like dark silk, bending to his will. In an instant, the shattered planetoid was empty once more, save for the falling ash, the fading echoes of impossible violence, and the chilling certainty that the storm had merely shifted its gaze. Towards Earth.