The crater breathed.
Stone groaned under pressure that wasn't weight, wasn't heat—decision. The air itself felt watched, as if reality had been narrowed to a single permissible outcome.
Wraith rolled his neck once, shadows writhing around his shoulders like impatient hounds.
Then he laughed.
A sharp, ugly sound.
"Well I'll be damned," he said, eyes dragging lazily over the man standing across from him.
"Looks like they've managed to escape you dog of the moon"
He tilted his head, grin widening.
"Tell me, Twilight—do you howl before you die, or after?"
The crater went silent.
Not tense.
Empty.
The man did not move. Did not react. Did not even blink.
But the ground beneath Wraith's feet sank a fraction of an inch, as if the world itself had just reconsidered supporting him.
"Say it again," the man said quietly.
Wraith snorted. "What? Twilight?" He spread his arms. "Relax. I've butchered saints with prettier titles—"
The air thinned.
"I am the bearer of a holy implement," the man said, voice low but absolute.
"One of the Seventy-Two."
The crater's rim creaked. Distant stone began to powder.
"I am of the seventh rank of the Watchers," he continued.
"A Seraphim."
Something deep beneath the battlefield shifted, as if routes, outcomes, and escape clauses were being quietly erased.
"Of all the Seventy-Two," he said, eyes lifting fully now, lunar and unwavering,
"I am ranked first."
Wraith's grin faltered—just a fraction.
"Like you," the man went on, "I stand at Rank One among them."
"But unlike your corny and irregular name I'm known as the Moonlight Saint Twighlight"
Moonlight traced the edge of the blade at his side.
"I serve the Shepherd of Light. Akira Seisai."
The name landed heavy. Clean. Final.
"Not your shortsighted, despicable master," he added.
"Not the cursed blacksmith who mistakes ruin for creation."
The shadows around Wraith recoiled, hissing.
"I bear the zodiac name Makara," the man said.
"Discipline through time. Consequence without haste."
A single step forward.
"But you already knew that."
Silence.
Then—
Another step. The crater tightened around them.
"And don't speak my name on a first name basis like we're friends."
His gaze locked onto Wraith's.
"Address me properly," he finished, voice calm, merciless,
"you disrespectful bastard."
The world convulsed.
The crater detonated outward—not in sound, but in motion. Stone froze mid-flight, shards of earth suspended as if skewered on invisible threads. Lightning tore open the sky and stopped halfway through its own strike, jagged veins of light hanging uselessly in the air.
Time didn't stop.
It was left behind.
Wraith moved first.
The space he occupied collapsed, folding inward as if reality itself had decided he was no longer required there. What remained was an afterimage—then another—then a dozen, each slightly out of order, each bleeding into the next.
The ground beneath him liquefied into gray soul-ash, bubbling as unseen pressure shredded matter, Astra, and meaning all at once.
The Twilight Saint's hand closed around his sword.
Steel whispered free.
Moonlight snapped across the battlefield like a drawn breath.
Wraith was already there.
An open hand came down, palm-first, the air screaming as everything it neared began to fail. Space peeled like wet parchment. The light warped. Astra collapsed into dead residue in widening rings.
The Twilight Saint twisted.
His blade rose just enough.
The strike met the unraveling force—
—and denied it.
There was no explosion. No clash of energy.
Just a violent refusal.
The annihilating pressure split cleanly in half and dissolved into nothing, as if it had never been allowed to exist. Sparks erupted at the point of contact—not fire, but shattered outcomes, brief flashes of futures that would no longer occur.
Wraith recoiled midair, boots skimming nothing.
He laughed.
A black motion snapped free from his arm.
Chains lashed outward, unfolding as they flew, multiplying into a dozen spectral strands. Each strand ended in a serpent's jaw, teeth forged from compressed, screaming souls.
They struck together.
The Twilight Saint vanished.
The chains tore through empty space and slammed into the far wall of the crater. There was no impact—no debris. A section of reality simply ceased, leaving a smooth-edged void where stone, air, and distance had been erased.
Wraith twisted—
—and the Twilight Saint was already above him.
The sword came down in a vertical arc so precise the air folded inward to make room for it.
WRAITH crossed his arms.
The blow landed.
The impact didn't explode.
It collapsed.
A shockwave tore outward, flattening everything within a kilometer. The sky split into concentric rings as pressure rebounded back into the ground, the crater's rim disintegrating into powder.
Wraith skidded backward, boots carving trenches through dying stone. A strip of his armor—and the existence beneath it—sheared away, dissolving into nothing.
For half a heartbeat, there was a hole where his chest had been.
Then something burned.
Dark light flared deep within him. Flesh, armor, and presence reknitted themselves out of ambient death, pulling matter and soul back into place by force alone.
Wraith surged forward again.
Faster.
His left eye blazed.
The battlefield screamed.
Souls embedded in the land ripped free—thousands of them—spiraling around him in a violent halo. They compressed, layers folding inward, screams flattening into a single, crushing density.
Wraith hurled it.
The attack didn't travel.
The Twilight Saint stood at its center.
He exhaled.
Shifted his stance by an inch.
The annihilation slammed into something unseen and flattened, spreading uselessly across an invisible boundary before shattering into harmless soul-dust that rained to the ground like ash.
He stepped forward.
With every step, reality repaired itself behind him—and refused to exist ahead.
Wraith snarled and vanished.
He reappeared behind the Saint in the same instant, chains wrapping around the Saint's arm, constricting, biting, harvesting. The serpents screamed as they drank.
The Twilight Saint twisted his wrist.
The chains froze.
Not bound.
Invalidated.
He pulled once.
Wraith was yanked forward and met a knee to the chest that detonated the air, launching him across the crater in a sonic burst that shattered what remained of the sky.
Wraith hit the wall and rebounded instantly, laughter tearing free as the land around him began to rot and crumble faster.
"Resistance," he spat, bloodless mouth splitting wide,
"accelerates outcome!"
He slammed both hands into the ground.
The earth ruptured.
A tidal wave of screaming essence erupted upward, a spiraling storm of torn souls and annihilation pressure that devoured everything it touched—stone dissolving, air screaming, light bending away.
The Twilight Saint raised his blade.
Something shifted around him—not power, not force.
Judgment.
The storm halted.
Every particle froze mid-motion, trapped in a perfect sphere of suspended ruin.
The Twilight Saint cut once.
The storm split.
And vanished.
Wraith staggered.
Just a fraction.
The sky cracked.
Pressure slammed down—not weight, but containment. Space around WRAITH folded inward, futures collapsing, paths sealing off one by one. Every movement he considered lost viability before it could begin.
Wraith straightened slowly, shadows coiling violently around him.
The Twilight Saint leveled his blade.
"That," he said calmly,
"is sufficient."
The crater began to seal itself.
Reality stitched closed around them, locking the battlefield into a self-contained execution loop.
Far away—beyond broken simulations and dying land—six lives fled into uncertainty.
And the world survived.
Barely.