The sky bled light.
It wasn't red, or gold, or anything mortal eyes could name — it was the unmaking of color itself. Worlds were collapsing, one after another, their laws grinding into dust. In the distance, a dying sun folded in on itself, dragging a dozen realms into its heart like a god devouring its own children.
On a shattered field that once might have been Tokyo , Seoul , or Gotham , four figures stood against the storm.
Sunny watched the horizon fracture like glass, his shadow crawling restlessly behind him. He had seen nightmares. He had lived in them. But this— This was something worse. This was Reality itself having a nightmare.
"The Chain of Worlds has snapped," he muttered. His voice was low, brittle. "Dreams… dying together."
From the void, a presence stirred. Sung Jinwoo , Monarch of Shadows, stepped through the rippling dark — his army of shadows flickering, unstable, their forms shattering like reflections on water.
"The System's gone mad," Jinwoo said. "I can't summon anything beyond this point. Even death refuses to answer."
Beside him, a man in a black coat adjusted his monocle and murmured almost to himself,
"When concepts decay, even gods lose meaning."
Klein Moretti — once the Fool, once a god beyond the veils — gazed up at the collapsing constellations. He could feel the rules of his own universe eroding, strings of fate snapping one by one.
Fang Yuan stood slightly apart, his hands clasped behind his back, expression cold and calculating as ever.
"A pity," he said softly, "I was just about to ascend beyond the Dao itself. But I suppose… even that no longer exists."
He turned to the others, eyes glaring like a predator studying a dying world.
"You all cling to meaning. I've seen enough to know there's none left."
Sunny's shadow hissed. Jinwoo's aura darkened. Klein's tarot glimmered faintly, flickering between reality and memory .
And above them — through the rupture in the firmament — something vast moved. A world-eater , composed of collapsed universes, absorbing laws, time, and life. From its core, voices screamed in a thousand tongues — Ben 10's Omnitrix spinning wildly, Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamotto burning out, Superman's cape disintegrating like ash, Arceus dissolving into data, Ainz Ooal Gown frozen mid-incantation.
Everything was becoming one thing.
Everything was dying.
Jinwoo clenched his fists.
"If the System is gone… then I'll build my own."
Sunny looked at him — truly looked. For a moment, his cold grin returned.
"Build a system in a place without rules? You're mad."
"So were you," Jinwoo shot back. "And yet you survived."
Klein's voice cut through like the whisper of a god in confession.
"Maybe that's what's left of us — madness pretending to be purpose."
The world cracked again — a tidal wave of collapsing realities swept toward them. And in that moment, as the void devoured the horizon, Sunny smiled — not in triumph, but recognition.
"Then let's see," he said, as the shadows surged, "whose madness burns brighter."