The suffocating air clung to their lungs like a living thing—thick with ash, smoke, and the bitter tang of sulfur. Jagged obsidian spires clawed at a sky swirling with blood-red clouds, the horizon bleeding into an endless abyss where light dared not linger.
Aevion and Yui stood side by side on the cracked stone ground, the oppressive weight of this forsaken place pressing in around them. Nyxara, the tiny paradox dragon, nestled comfortably around Aevion's neck, her delicate limbs twitching in uneasy awareness.
From the shadows, Zariel emerged like a tempest made flesh. Her midnight-black hair whipped around her fierce, hazel eyes, wild and burning with a fervor born of obsession. Four massive horns curled from her brow, flanked by eleven smaller spirals that glittered ominously. Her demon tail flicked with restless energy, a predator poised to strike.
"You dare walk in my domain and challenge me?" Zariel's voice was a venomous hiss, filled with fury and promise of carnage. "You will regret this insolence."
Yui's hand instinctively tightened on the hilt of her dagger, eyes narrowing with fierce determination.
But Aevion's gaze remained steady, unshaken by the storm before him. There was no anger, no hesitation—only an unyielding calm that seemed to still the very air.
"Your dominion ends here," he said softly, voice cutting through the crackling silence.
Before Zariel could react, Aevion's sword Vexiaris gleamed with an otherworldly light. With a motion both fluid and absolute, he unleashed a single, devastating slash from over a thousand feet away. The blade sang as it sliced through the tainted air, a streak of pure light cleaving the darkness itself.
Time seemed to slow.
Zariel's scream shattered the silence—raw, desperate, filled with rage—but it was brief. The sword's edge met her with merciless precision, and her form shattered, dissipating into smoke and ash carried away on the infernal winds.
The abyss fell silent.
Yui exhaled softly, eyes wide but steady, her dagger still poised.
Aevion took a measured step forward as the realm around them trembled violently. The very ground cracked, spires of black obsidian fracturing and crumbling into dust. The crimson sky roiled, torn apart by unseen forces, unraveling like a dying star's last breath.
With a quiet gesture, Aevion stretched his hand outward, commanding the devastation with an effortless will.
Flames twisted and shadows tore as the realm of Hell began to unravel—its nightmare architecture collapsing piece by piece, undone not by fury but by the serene force of his presence.
Through it all, Yui remained at his side, unwavering.
When the final pillar fell and the crimson sky fractured into nothingness, silence reigned—not of defeat, but of profound conclusion.
Nyxara stirred lightly, her pink eyes reflecting the vast emptiness that replaced the infernal domain.
Aevion's voice was a soft murmur, filled with quiet certainty.
"This place is no more."
The abyss, once eternal and unforgiving, had been undone by the will of one who would not be broken.
Side by side, they stood amidst the ruins—heralds of a new beginning beyond the shadows of destruction.
The ash beneath their feet no longer shifted.
There was no echo now. Not even wind.
What remained of Hell was not ruin—
It was absence.
A place that had been unwritten.
Yui lowered her blade at last, her breath easing from sharp tension into still alertness. The only sound between them was the faint hum of Vexiaris as Aevion returned it to his side, the sword's glow receding like a tide.
But then—
A whisper.
Not heard, but known.
Like a name remembered just before waking.
Yui stiffened. Nyxara hissed, curling tighter around Aevion's neck.
Twelve figures emerged—not from shadow, nor flame, but from the absence itself. Each cloaked in a silence that refused to be pierced. They had no faces, no feet to tread the world. Yet the space they stepped into bent. Not from weight, but from authority.
The Order of Null Origin.
Not legends. Not myths. They had never been spoken of. Because to name them was to permit their fall. And they had never fallen.
Until now.
They surrounded Aevion and Yui in a perfect ring—each figure equidistant, equitonal, an imitation of divine symmetry. A stillness settled around them, as if motion itself awaited permission.
The tallest of them stepped forward, a ripple moving through nothing.
"You ended a place that was not meant to end," it said, voice neither deep nor high—only final. "The balance is undone. You must be unmade."
Yui reached for Aevion's arm, her eyes searching his profile. But his gaze was calm.
"What you preserve was already broken," Aevion replied quietly. "It simply hadn't admitted it yet."
Another figure stepped forward.
"The origin of order cannot bend. It cannot yield. And you have—"
But it stopped.
Aevion looked at him.
That was all.
The figure faltered, something within its silhouette shivering—not in fear, but in collapse. Not visible, but felt. Like the silent crack of a dying clock.
And then it fell inward—its robe folding into a seam in the air, vanishing without sound, without resistance, without a mark.
The others tensed.
"We are not bound by emotion. Nor meaning. We are the uncarved shape, the hollow template," another said. "We are what the world forgets last."
Aevion said nothing. He stepped forward once.
Yui stepped with him.
The ring shattered—not with fire, nor light, but in silence. An unmaking that pulled memory and definition from the figures until they warped, flickered, and fell apart like reflections losing the mirror.
Two of them tried to resist. They raised their arms.
But it was not power they lacked.
It was context.
They did not fit anymore.
In a world where Hell could fall by a single hand, their authority had no referent. Their reason to exist had been outpaced.
One by one, they folded away. Not defeated. Not even slain. Just… made irrelevant.
Until only one remained.
It stepped forward slowly, robe fluttering as though the air around it still honored laws that no longer mattered.
"You are the answer to a question that should never have been asked," it said.
Aevion's voice was nearly a whisper. "That doesn't make it any less true."
The last of the Order stopped.
No weapon was raised. No spell cast. No duel declared.
It looked at Yui.
Then at Nyxara.
Then, finally, back to Aevion.
And it bowed its head.
Then disappeared.
Not into shadow.
Not into light.
But into silence so profound, even the idea of it was erased.
Yui remained still, unsure if the moment had ended.
It had.
The air grew lighter. Not because it changed, but because something weightless had been lifted.
Nyxara uncoiled, hopping lightly to Aevion's shoulder. She blinked twice, gave a quiet chirp, and curled back into a coil, content.
Yui exhaled slowly. "They… weren't alive, were they?"
"No," Aevion replied. "But they were real. Once."
He looked at the broken space where Hell had been. There was no satisfac
tion in his gaze, no triumph.
Just peace.
"Let's go," he said.
And they walked—not out, but forward. Into whatever waited beyond the edge of endings.