"Demon King,Your days of slacking on the throne are officially over. Hand over your retirement certificate."
Thunderous music blared from the radio perched on his shoulder as a lone figure strode across the barren wasteland—an unexpected visitor arriving uninvited.
"If you want it... come and take it."
The King's voice was calm yet commanding, echoing from the towering throne where he sat in quiet dominance. But beneath the weight of authority, there was a flicker of amusement.
"You know the rules."
"I knew you'd say that."
Click.
The radio shut off with a flick of a hand. A cold-eyed youth walked past the Ark without so much as a glance, his expression unreadable.
"Do you two seriously have to play this skit every time we get back?"
Gates shot an unimpressed look toward Sougo Tokiwa, who remained seated on the throne in his full Ohma Zi-O form.
"It's entertaining, isn't it, Gates? I've been stuck here for quite a while. A little theater now and then helps lift the mood."
The king's imperious tone melted into something lighter. The crushing pressure of his presence receded slightly, allowing Tsukuyomi—who had been silently trailing Gates—to finally breathe again.
"Enough banter, Your Majesty. The final world has been fully repaired. The only thing left is a bit of cosmic cleanup that you should be more than capable of handling on your own. So then—are you finally going to let me retire?"
The Ark casually tossed the vintage radio into a dimensional pouch. His gaze landed on Sougo with the tired, burning desire of a man longing for the warm embrace of a streetlight. If he could still beat this manipulative bastard in a fight, he'd have strung him up under a red flag for some good old-fashioned ideological reeducation.
"Hm. You're right. The Wizard world has now been properly disentangled from Fairy Tail. All that remains is erasing mutual memories and resolving the residual overlap between the two."
Sougo stroked his chin, though his eyes kept drifting toward the Ark.
"Don't look at me. This is your mess, not mine. I've completed everything you asked for. All the Rider worlds are safe now. That was the deal: I finish the job, and you let me pick a nice quiet world to go live out my days in peace. You're a king—your word is supposed to be law. No backsies."
Watching the Ark's stubborn protest, Tsukuyomi couldn't help but stifle a laugh—only to quickly collect herself once she realized she'd slipped.
"Well, you're not wrong," Sougo said with a nod. "Very well. I'll take care of the rest. It's been a while since I stretched my legs anyway."
The towering figure rose slowly from the throne, and in that moment, the weight of his majesty returned—crushing and absolute.
He lifted both hands.
A golden surge of power exploded outward, filling the world in an instant. It radiated beyond the boundaries of space and time, cascading into the multiverse like a tidal wave of divine order.
In the farthest reaches of hyperspace, where reality blurred and frayed, universe-bubbles that should never have touched were effortlessly gripped and split apart by the king's will. Shattered dimensional barriers, broken in violent collisions, were knit back together. And those caught in the chaos were preserved—sheltered beneath his overwhelming presence.
Across the void, the name "Ohma Zi-O" echoed like a divine resonance. Such strength. Such scale. The Ark stared at the king, admiration—and perhaps something deeper—flashing in his eyes. He drifted into memory.
How long had it been?
Since the day the hyperspace disturbance ripped apart the astral zones, unraveling timelines and warping space? Since entirely unrelated universes were smashed together in apocalyptic collisions?
Seventeen years? Maybe more.
The chaos had been catastrophic. And the Rider multiverse—already vast and interwoven—took the first and worst hit. The previously separated Heisei, Showa, and Reiwa Rider worlds were mashed into other foreign universes in a disastrous cascade. If Ohma Zi-O hadn't acted fast—if he hadn't used every ounce of his power as a buffer—the Riders and their collided neighbors might have been annihilated on the spot.
But even Ohma Zi-O had limits. Holding forty-plus universes together at the brink of collapse was madness, even for him. He wasn't some omnipotent trickster god from the other production team, nor a cosmic tyrant born of light and plot armor. For all his might as the King of Time, there were higher peaks he could never quite reach.
To save those dozens of broken universes, there was... that day. The day everything began.
"Your life is over. Time to transmigrate, kid."
Even now, the Ark couldn't forgive it. A truck? A literal truck-bot smashing through the eighth-floor ICU just to punch him into another world? Really?
But that was how it started. Sougo had chosen the Ark to be his fixer—his laborer—his interdimensional janitor. The man who would dive into the chaos of fused worlds and stitch reality back together.
What strange worlds they were.
Universes haphazardly stitched together by some mad god's whim:
An Azure Star OOO tearing across the Monster Hunter realms, dragging flagship monsters through the dirt.
A Devil Fruit-wielding Gaim leading the Navy against Hades' spreading underworld.
A metaphysical Ghost who had absorbed both Beasts and Ultimate Ones, blasting alien gods with eye-soul attacks.
Marvelous nonsense. Beautiful chaos. The Ark had witnessed wonders that no rational mind could ever dream of.
But wonder came with a price.
Because while those adventures thrilled him... he had to fight. Often against heroes he once admired. To repair those broken worlds, sometimes, he had to become their enemy.
Kamen Riders were stubborn, rebellious creatures. Getting them to cooperate was harder than trusting the Holy Lord to keep a promise. And after enough battles, enough broken timelines, enough heartache...
All the Ark could feel anymore was exhaustion—body and soul.
"It's done."
Seventeen years later, Sougo finally released his transformation.
He looked down at his hand—the hand of a human, not a king—for the first time in ages. Then he sat back on the throne, closing his eyes as he sensed the now-stabilized Rider multiverse through the Web of Time. He nodded in satisfaction.
"Ark... you did well. Exceptionally well. I promised you—every time you saved a world, I would grant you a wish. So now, tell me—what's your final wish?"
The Ark scratched his head awkwardly.
"Honestly? You ask me that now and I've got nothing. I used up all my earlier wishes powering myself up for the later missions. I never thought I'd actually make it to the end…"
Sougo blinked. He remembered now—every time Ark returned from saving a world, barely breathing, he'd been thrown straight into the next disaster.
There hadn't been time for rest. Not when Sougo had to remain here holding the worlds apart. Not when Tsukuyomi and Woz had to tend to the temporal threads. Only Gates had occasionally stepped in to help the Ark.
Time didn't wait.
"Well, then think it over," Sougo said. "There's no rush anymore. We have all the time in the world."
He paused—then reached into thin air, fingers brushing the void. A black-and-red crystalline key materialized in his hand.
"Oi, Sougo. What's that?"
Gates stiffened. The moment the object appeared, something inside him recoiled—like his very soul had flared in protest.
Evil. Unmistakably evil. A malice vast enough to destroy the world.
And yet... Gates couldn't hate it. Somehow, it felt natural. As if its existence made sense. As if even if it sought to unmake everything, he—as a Savior—had no grounds to object.
"This?" Sougo tossed it through the air. The Ark caught it with ease.
"It's something Ark asked me to make after resolving the collision between the Ghost and Type-Moon worlds. It was meant for a particularly troublesome world he was heading to next."
"…Except you didn't finish it in time."
"Ahaha… yeah. I was still juggling like, fifteen other world repairs. Not much energy left over."
Even the ever-composed King of Time looked a little sheepish. Making a custom Rider key and not finishing it before the guy left? Not the most regal move.
"So what is it?" Tsukuyomi asked, watching as Ark examined the key.
She recognized the device. It was a transformation tool—used by Ark to access Rider forms.
She remembered they'd once tried to get him to use a proper Time Driver, but Ark had turned his nose up at it, saying time-drivers were "mainstream trash." Instead, he'd stolen a Zero-One Driver Sougo had borrowed from the Reiwa timeline—though by now, he'd upgraded to an Ark Driver.
Even though its specs were inferior in almost every category, he refused to switch.
Tsukuyomi never understood why.
Ark, of course, never explained. But even if he had, would he have said it out loud?
Because the Zero-One Riders look cooler than the Zi-O Riders.
Please.
"Strength depends on the patch notes. Coolness is forever."
Not everyone gets that.
A childish reason? Maybe.
But with this new key in hand, Ark now felt unstoppable. The Zero-One Riders had just gotten their version update—and with it, he could solo nearly any Rider's final form.
As long as it wasn't some metaphysical reality-bender like Kamuro 21, Ohma Zi-O, or Infinite Soul, he'd crush them all.
Because within this key…
Was the power known as Chaotic Evil.