The man stirred again, eyes wide now, like the weight of the cosmos had just dropped onto his chest. He seized Ryu's wrist, grip trembling but desperate.
"You have to run," he rasped.
Ryu raised a brow. "Kinda hard to take that seriously with you clinging like a bad ex."
"I'm serious," the man growled, breath ragged. "You don't understand. They're coming."
He looked skyward—horrified.
"The gods… they know."
Then the sky answered.
⸻
It didn't roar like thunder. It split—as if the very fabric of atmosphere had been slashed open by a blade older than time.
A jagged tear cut across the fractured heavens above the sky-dome ruins. And from that rift descended a figure of cold, radiant terror. A being encased in armor that shimmered like shattered stars, trimmed with jagged light, its frame taller than any mortal—its limbs too perfect, its face hidden beneath a smooth helm pulsing with divine energy.
A Divine Executioner.
Born not of flesh or soul, but of pure directive. The gods created them to do what no angel or lesser deity could—carry out absolute sentences with no remorse, no hesitation, no deviation. Machines of judgment wrapped in divine essence. They were not alive.
They were orders incarnate.
Its voice echoed in their minds—a chorus, unified and unfeeling.
"NAME: ARKANN.
CRIME: COSMIC SEDITION.
SENTENCE: OBLITERATION. TO BE CARRIED OUT BEFORE THE HIGH COUNCIL OF THE GODS."
The wounded man flinched as if pierced by the words alone.
Arkann. That was his name.
Ryu turned, a flicker of awe and sarcasm in his grin. "I'd ask if we could talk this out, but I'm guessing that thing doesn't do peace treaties… or tea."
But Luto wasn't laughing.
His eyes were wide, already calculating. The energy signatures coming off the Executioner weren't measurable. Not by any scale mortals had. This wasn't divine presence—it was divine enforcement.
Onyx's shoulders tensed beside him.
They didn't have a plan. They didn't need one.
They needed to run.
But the Executioner didn't strike.
It looked at them.
It paused.
A delay. A rare, impossible glitch in the mindless protocol of a Divine Executioner.
It scanned them not as collateral—but as targets.
"SECONDARY OBJECTIVES DETECTED.
POTENTIAL ANOMALIES.
INITIATING COLLECTION."
Luto's voice was flat. "It's not just here for Arkann anymore."
"They saw something in us," Onyx said darkly.
"They're gonna regret that," Ryu muttered, though his eyes betrayed the flicker of fear.
Then—
FWOOOOOM
A pillar of starlight shot down, obliterating half the sky-dome. Concrete and cosmic debris scattered like dust. The Executioner dropped through the tear in space—descending straight toward them.
⸻
Arkann reacted first.
His battered hand slammed a crystalline orb into the ground.
Space around them warped, forming a rippling dome of distorted gravity. The Executioner's sensors flickered. Target lock disrupted—momentarily.
"Move!" Arkann barked, already stumbling forward.
The trio didn't hesitate.
Onyx scooped Ryu with one arm, yanked Luto with the other, and sprinted through the collapsing dome's opening as the Executioner gave chase—its movements smooth, inhuman, and tireless.
A divine spear tore through the air, grazing the stone beside them. The impact shook the terrain, throwing rubble in every direction.
⸻
They ran.
And as they ran, they revealed why they had survived this long—why, even as boys, they had a reputation.
Onyx, strong beyond his age, moved like a living warhead—charging through collapsing terrain, shielding the others without flinching, his muscles burning with every explosive step.
Luto, mind racing, dropped makeshift tricks from his scavpack—reality-disrupting snacks and tech fragments:
• One burst into a three-second time bubble.
• Another triggered a blackout zone that scrambled magic detection.
• A third summoned a brief kinetic mirror that bounced a spear off a cliff face.
Ryu moved on instinct. Untrained. Undisciplined. But when a divine lance nearly skewered them mid-flight, it was Ryu who twisted midair, redirected its path, and flipped into a roll that saved them all.
"Did you just redirect a god's attack with a spin?" Luto shouted between breaths.
"I panicked artistically!"
But it wasn't enough.
They were cornered now.
Backed against a canyon wall.
⸻
The Executioner hovered above, a spear of condensed divine law forming in its hand—its edges blinding with purifying energy.
"SENTENCE CONFIRMED.
TERMINATION PROTOCOL ENGAGED."
Arkann braced his weight against a cracked pillar, panting. "This… this is why I ran. Why I collapsed in your world."
"You dragged this to Terrosia?" Luto snapped.
"I didn't know—until it was too late. The gods, they—" Arkann coughed blood. "They don't forget anomalies. Especially not ones like you."
Ryu's face twisted. "You're telling me we're being hunted… because of something we don't even know about?!"
Onyx growled low. "Because we survived their wrath all those years ago."
"And now they want to finish the job?" Ryu's fists shook. "We were kids! They're the ones who destroyed Terrosia! And now we're supposed to just die quietly?"
Luto's voice was quiet—dangerously so. "I always thought… maybe there was a reason we survived. That it wasn't just luck. But this? They're afraid of us. And they're trying to erase the proof."
Arkann looked up, eyes flickering. "Then make them afraid for real."
⸻
The Executioner raised its arm.
The canyon began to collapse.
Time slowed.
And something deep within the brothers—something ancient and not of this world—awakened.
⸻
The air trembled.
Not from the Executioner's power… but from theirs.
All three boys stood in the epicenter of a rippling field of cosmic resonance. Their bodies lit with flickering strands of divine patterning—barely visible, but unmistakably alive.
• Ryu ignited. Fire born from instinct, his dreadlocks lifting as his bandana became burning sigils.
• Luto's eyes pulsed with fractal geometry—his mind running calculations beyond mortal comprehension. Equations floated midair like living glyphs.
• Onyx's feet cracked the ground, his presence alone altering gravity. The world held its breath.
The Executioner—pure logic—hesitated.
And in that blink of time, the three brothers moved.
Not as mortals.
Not as gods.
As something else.
Their steps blurred. Their strikes landed. Space bent around them.
Even Arkann, once a warrior of legend, could only watch in awe.
But it lasted only five seconds.
The power faded. Their bodies couldn't handle it. Not yet.
⸻
CRACK
Onyx took the hit.
A divine spear impaled him, pinning him to the canyon wall. His roar of pain shook the rocks loose, but he didn't fall.
SLASH
Arkann stepped in. Defiant.
He was cut down. Chest to hip. A final stand… met with divine finality.
"ONYX!!" Ryu screamed.
Luto staggered forward. "No—no—no—!"
But Arkann didn't fall.
He jammed his blade into the ground, voice cracking with ancient force. He spoke a name—a word of power older than time itself.
A rift tore open behind Ryu and Luto.
A multiversal tear.
A last chance.
"GO!" Arkann roared.
"We're not leaving him!" Ryu snarled.
"GO!!"
Luto grabbed him—this time, with tears already welling—and the rift pulled them both through.
⸻
And the last thing Ryu saw…
Was Onyx, bleeding but still standing.
Arkann, rising again, broken but not bowed.
And the Executioner raising its blade one last time.
⸻
Then—
Darkness.
Silence.
The rift sealed.
The Executioner paused.
Judgment complete.
And far away—on the distant planet Raezhar, beneath an unfamiliar sky—another tear opened in the dirt.
Ryu and Luto tumbled out.
Coughing. Bruised.
Alive.
But alone.
The stars above were foreign. The air was wrong. The wind was silent.
And something in Ryu shattered.
He screamed into the sky—raw and broken—as the ground trembled beneath his knees.
Luto didn't speak.
He stood still. Eyes wide.
His snack pouch was empty.
So were they