Krypto's golden eyes stared into the coming death.
The attack tore through the layers of space like a blade slicing silk — a roaring sphere of chaos and destruction, painted in red, black, and void. Reality twisted and screamed around it. The chamber shuddered. The seals cracked.
He knew he had no time.
His hand moved in a final, desperate act.
With a surge of remaining energy, he hurled the glowing soul cocoon into the space above — folding it into a ripple of dimension far beyond the crumbling sanctuary. A seal of transit. A sliver of chance.
Jake's soul vanished in a blink.
And then… Krypto stopped.
The chamber around him was collapsing. The lights dimmed. The energy in the air trembled, frayed, then scattered. The explosion was only seconds away.
He exhaled slowly. Eyes closed.
"...So this is it."
He did not run.
He had done what he was ordered to do.
He had fulfilled his duty.
And now… he would embrace what came.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Six seconds.
Ten.
But nothing happened.
No impact. No obliteration. No pain.
No death.
Confused, Krypto's eyes slowly opened.
He was still there — standing in the middle of the chamber. Whole. Intact. The destruction… never came.
The space that was moments from collapse had stabilized — not restored, not reversed, but halted.
"…What?"
He turned slowly.
A presence pulsed behind him — one that made even his immortal essence shiver.
Krypto had felt it once before. Long ago.
His voice was soft, uncertain.
"You…"
He turned fully, and his breath caught in his throat.
There, standing in the center of the room where the impact should have landed, was a figure cloaked in shifting silver — radiant and terrifying, like the silhouette of a god wrapped in starlight and stillness.
The being stood with arms behind his back, composed and quiet, as if the destruction of the chamber — the rupture of worlds — had never occurred.
His face was half-hidden beneath a high collar of ancient design, and yet… his gaze was undeniable.
Calm. Endless. Watching.
He said nothing.
Did nothing.
But he was there.
Krypto stood silently for a long moment, gazing at him. Then his voice escaped, low… almost a whisper.
"I thought I would die today… because of your order… to save that mortal."
Krypto's white eyes narrowed.
The silver-cloaked figure hadn't moved an inch, his hands still tucked calmly behind his back. Yet… something had shifted. The chamber's air thickened, alive with power too ancient to be named. A pressure fell upon the space — silent, overwhelming — like the presence of time itself bending to will.
Then it began.
Without changing posture, the figure's fingers twitched subtly behind his back — once, twice — and the space around his hands began to shimmer. Patterns emerged from the air itself, like ink spreading across invisible parchment.
One sigil pulsed with deep onyx light — black, cold, endless.
The other glowed with a serene white hue — not blinding, but infinite, like the glow of stars that had watched over creation since the first dawn.
Krypto stepped back instinctively. Even he, a being who walked between worlds, had never witnessed such symbols before.
The figure, still silent, extended one hand forward.
In his palm danced the white seal — alive with layered runes and impossible geometry. Time seemed to hesitate as the figure gave a small flick of his wrist.
The seal hurtled through space.
It cut across dimensions without resistance, crossed veils of reality like light through glass — and found its target.
The enemy.
The shadowy figure who had launched the death spell… the one who had tried to erase Jake's soul.
The white seal struck him before he could react.
There was no scream. No flash. No last threat.
The enemy vanished — utterly erased, as if he had never existed.
Just… gone.
Krypto stood frozen, wide-eyed.
He hadn't even sensed the seal coming close to the enemy. It was faster than thought, more decisive than death.
But the silver-cloaked figure wasn't done.
With the same composed calm, he extended his other hand.
This one carried the black seal.
It twisted unnaturally in his palm — darker than void, edged with moving shadows. A seal of disruption, perhaps… or something older.
Then — without a word — he hurled it.
Krypto watched, breath held.
The black seal flew straight toward the spot where Jake's soul cocoon had vanished.
But it didn't strike it.
It passed right by.
Instead, the black seal arced just ahead of the soul cocoon, and as it moved, space itself began to crack — the smooth fabric of reality splitting like porcelain. The air screamed. A rift, darker than anything Krypto had ever seen, began to open in front of the soul fragment's path.
A broken gate. A twisted channel into… somewhere else.
"No!" Krypto stepped forward, reaching out, but it was too late.
The soul cocoon entered the rift and vanished from this world.
Everything fell silent once again.
Krypto stood stunned, unmoving. His mind reeled.
What had just happened?
Why strike the enemy and then… send the soul fragment into an unknown space?
Why open a path into a place even he, a guardian of many realms, could not recognize?
His lips trembled. The question left him without thought.
"…Why?"
He turned his head, slowly, back toward the silver-cloaked being.
The figure hadn't moved.
Still standing in quiet majesty — untouched by chaos, unburdened by explanation.
But then, for the first time, he tilted his head slightly… as if acknowledging Krypto's confusion.
His voice came, low and calm — like the first word ever spoken into the void.
"It is his destiny."
Then silence again.
The chamber dimmed.
And Krypto, for the first time in his immortal life, felt truly small in the presence of a will far greater than his own.
Suddenly, Krypto's white eyes widened.
Far below — where the shadowy figure's wrath had scarred the world — something miraculous unfolded. The wounds in the sky, the shattered glass towers, the broken flow of time… all of it began to reverse.
The white seal, the same one that had erased the dark enemy from existence, now shimmered across the surface of the earth like a silent wave of light. Cracks healed. Flames vanished. Broken streets stitched themselves whole. And the stillness — that unnatural, dreadful pause in time — shivered once, then broke.
The world exhaled.
Time resumed its flow.
And as wind stirred once more through the city's leaves, Krypto stood motionless, silent… unable to take his eyes off the power he had just witnessed.