"A crown may fool the eyes, a voice may fool the ears, and a face may fool the heart. But the soul, when absent, leaves a silence no lie can fill."
— Ancient Heavenly Proverb
Yami's corrupted star reached completion.
Above his shadow-black palm, the sphere pulsed once, and the entire Plains of Eternity bent beneath its pressure. It was not merely darkness. It was Sky energy twisted through primordial shadow, white-violet light trapped around a black core that devoured its own radiance.
The sacred runes beneath the battlefield cracked one by one.
Knowledge stood before it.
Alone.
His robe was torn across the shoulder. Blood marked one side of his face. His breath came slower now, not from fear, but from the effort of standing against something older than Heaven's language. His clockwork staff trembled in his hand, fractured from head to base, its bronze gears rotating unevenly with a grinding, wounded sound.
Behind him, Kaito and Daniel remained trapped behind the clockwork barrier he had raised.
Kaito slammed his fist against it.
"Master!"
Daniel's revolvers glowed in his hands, lunar rounds ready, but the barrier swallowed every attempt he made to break through.
Knowledge did not look back.
His gaze remained on Yami.
Or rather—
On Kanetaro's body.
The body of his student.
The body of Heaven's King.
The body now worn by the thing he had feared since the First Age.
Yami smiled with Kanetaro's face.
"Still standing, old wisdom?"
Knowledge raised his cracked staff.
"Regrettably for thee," he said, his voice steady despite the blood at his lip, "I have long possessed a stubborn constitution."
Yami's smile widened faintly.
"Then let us break it."
His fingers curled.
The corrupted star fired.
The blast did not move like ordinary energy. It did not travel forward in a line. It unfolded, swallowing distance as though the space between Yami and Knowledge had become meaningless. Black-white light tore across the battlefield, erasing sound as it came.
Knowledge planted his staff into the sacred stone.
"Chronos Sutra—"
The staff cracked louder.
His eyes narrowed.
"—Final Measure."
Bronze gears erupted before him, massive and radiant, forming layer upon layer of rotating shields. Ancient scriptures ignited across their surfaces. Time itself slowed around the blast, struggling to delay the inevitable.
The first gear shattered.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Knowledge gritted his teeth.
The blast kept coming.
His staff bent.
Another crack tore through it.
Kaito's eyes widened behind the barrier.
"No."
Then he moved.
Golden light exploded around him.
The clockwork barrier had been made to restrain him, not because Knowledge doubted his courage, but because he knew courage could become self-destruction. Yet Kaito was the Sun God. The son of radiance. The brother of the stolen King.
And at that moment, no barrier could hold the Sun.
His spear pierced through the clockwork wall from within.
The barrier cracked.
Daniel turned sharply.
"Kaito!"
Kaito did not answer.
He burst through the fractured barrier in a streak of gold, crossing the distance faster than thought. His armor screamed under the pressure of Yami's blast, its golden edges burning black as he entered the attack's outer field.
Knowledge saw him from the corner of his eye.
"Child, do not—"
Kaito reached Yami.
Not the blast.
Yami himself.
With both hands, Kaito seized Yami's shadow-black wrist from below and forced it upward.
For one terrible second, the corrupted star resisted.
Kaito's boots cracked the sacred stone beneath him. His arms shook. The muscles across his shoulders strained beneath his damaged armor. Blood ran from the reopened wounds Fire and Water had left on him days before.
Still, he pushed.
"Not him," Kaito growled through clenched teeth.
Yami's eyes shifted toward him.
Kaito's golden aura flared.
"You will not take him too."
With a final roar, Kaito threw Yami's hand upward.
The corrupted blast tore into the heavens.
The sky above the Plains of Eternity split open.
Clouds vanished. Light bent. A pillar of black-white destruction shot upward beyond the floating continents, ripping through layer after layer of atmosphere until it disappeared into the highest reaches of Heaven.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
The battlefield glowed beneath the aftershock.
Knowledge lowered his staff slightly, breathing hard.
Kaito stood before Yami, chest rising and falling, hands still smoking from touching the demonic arm.
Yami looked at his redirected hand.
Then at Kaito.
His expression held no rage.
Only irritation.
"Brave," Yami said.
Kaito raised his spear again.
Yami's smile faded.
"Unwise."
His free hand moved.
Kaito barely saw it.
A shadow strike slammed into his torso.
The impact folded the air around him. His armor cracked across the chest, gold splintering like broken sunlight. The force lifted him from the ground and hurled him across the Plains of Eternity.
He struck the stone once.
Twice.
Then crashed through the remains of a broken crystal ridge near the far side of the battlefield.
The sound echoed like thunder buried underground.
Daniel's eyes widened.
"Kaito!"
Yami turned toward Knowledge again as if Kaito had been nothing more than an insect brushed aside.
Knowledge's face darkened.
"Thou hast ever been fond of cruelty."
Yami tilted his head.
"No. Cruelty requires emotion."
He raised his hand again.
"I am correction."
Four silver shots cut through the air.
Daniel had moved.
He stood to Yami's right side, far beyond the path of direct retaliation, revolvers raised, coat torn by the previous shockwave. His stance was low, balanced, controlled. His eyes were sharp beneath the brim of his hat.
The bullets were not ordinary rounds.
Each lunar bullet carried a different rhythm.
One curved left.
One curved right.
One dipped low toward Yami's knee.
The last aimed straight for the center of his chest.
Daniel fired like a man who had learned long ago that distance was not cowardice.
It was survival.
Yami did not dodge.
Black energy curled from his fingers.
The four bullets stopped mid-flight.
Their silver glow flickered.
Daniel's eyes narrowed.
The lunar symbols carved into the rounds dimmed as corrupted energy wrapped around them like black veins.
Yami slowly turned his hand.
The bullets turned with it.
Then they shot back toward Daniel.
Faster than before.
Daniel's coat snapped in the sudden pressure.
But he was no longer there.
The four corrupted rounds struck empty stone and exploded in black-silver bursts where he had been standing.
Yami's gaze sharpened.
Above.
Daniel descended from the sky.
He had used the shots as bait.
His Void Claw glowed around his arm, black and silver energy spiraling across the gauntlet. The claw was raised high, its talons humming with lunar poison and void-matter, aimed directly at Yami's head.
Daniel's face was calm.
But his eyes burned.
"Looking the wrong way."
Yami looked up.
For the first time since the battle began, something like interest moved across his stolen face.
Then he smiled.
He lifted his own shadow-black hand and shaped his fingers exactly like Daniel's claw.
Corrupted energy gathered around them, forming a dark imitation of the Void Claw. Not metal. Not gauntlet. Pure shadow-energy given the memory of Daniel's attack.
Daniel's eyes widened slightly.
Yami thrust upward.
Daniel struck downward.
The two attacks collided between sky and earth.
Silver-black void met primordial shadow.
For one heartbeat, the world became silent.
Then Heaven exploded.
The shockwave tore across the Plains of Eternity, ripping ancient stone from the ground and sending massive fragments spiraling into the air. The remaining clockwork barrier behind Knowledge shattered instantly. Kaito's broken crystal ridge collapsed under the force. A ring of silver and black light expanded outward, bending the distant horizon.
Daniel was thrown back first.
His body spun through the air, coat torn open at the shoulder, hat ripped from his head by the blast. His Void Claw flickered violently, cracks spreading across its surface like broken glass.
He hit the ground hard, rolled, and dug his claw into the stone to stop himself.
The weapon sparked.
One final pulse of dark energy flashed through it.
Then the glow collapsed.
Daniel stared at his hand.
The Void Claw was cracked.
Its power faded rapidly, lunar poison dripping from its edges like dying starlight before vanishing.
He tried to flex his fingers.
The claw answered weakly.
"Not good," he muttered.
Yami landed without effort.
The corrupted imitation around his hand dissolved.
He looked almost amused.
"You hide well, Moon."
Daniel forced himself to one knee.
"And you talk too much for a corpse wearing my friend's face."
Yami's smile disappeared.
The pressure changed instantly.
Daniel felt it crush against his chest.
Yami raised his hand again, gathering another sphere of shadow-energy. Smaller than the corrupted star he had fired at Knowledge, but more concentrated. More precise.
A killing stroke.
Daniel lifted his revolver with his uninjured hand.
His arm trembled.
The barrel did not.
Before Yami could release the attack, golden light flashed across the battlefield.
Kaito appeared behind Daniel.
His armor was cracked from chest to shoulder, one side of his cloak burned black. Blood touched the corner of his mouth, and his breathing was ragged, but his eyes remained focused.
He grabbed Daniel under the arm and pulled him backward just as Yami's energy snapped forward.
The blast struck the ground where Daniel had knelt a heartbeat earlier, carving a black trench through the sacred stone.
Kaito carried Daniel toward Knowledge's position, landing hard beside the old god. His knees nearly buckled, but he forced himself upright.
Daniel winced and grabbed his damaged claw.
"You look terrible," he said.
Kaito wiped blood from his lip.
"You are welcome."
Daniel gave a breathless laugh.
"Yeah. Thanks."
Knowledge looked at them both.
His expression was unreadable, but his eyes held something heavy.
Relief.
Pain.
Pride.
Fear.
Yami lowered his hand.
For a moment, he simply watched them.
The battlefield around him smoked with corrupted energy. The blast into the heavens still left a wound in the sky above, clouds circling the tear but refusing to close it.
Yami's gaze shifted toward Knowledge.
"So, Knowledge," he said, voice filled with quiet amusement, "it seems the ages have not been kind to thee."
He took one slow step forward.
"Thou hast grown weaker."
Knowledge remained silent.
His cracked staff rested against the ground. The gears at its head sputtered faintly, some turning, others locked in place. Thin lines of bronze light held the broken shaft together, but barely.
Yami looked toward Kaito and Daniel.
Then his smile returned.
"And these are the souls thou hast chosen?"
Kaito straightened despite the pain in his ribs.
Daniel raised one revolver, though the other hand hung weakly at his side.
Yami's eyes moved across them with cold contempt.
"They wear the rank of gods," he continued, "yet they can barely stand before me."
His smile faded.
"Tell me, Knowledge. Do these fragile souls truly deserve such a lofty place in the heavens?"
The question settled across the battlefield like ash.
Kaito's jaw tightened.
Daniel's grip around his revolver hardened.
Knowledge finally raised his staff.
The movement was slow.
Painful.
But deliberate.
"Thou speakest," Knowledge said calmly, "as though strength alone granteth worth."
Yami's eyes narrowed.
Knowledge stepped forward.
His staff cracked again beneath his fingers.
He ignored it.
"Strength may shatter stone. It may bend armies. It may command silence from the fearful."
His gaze did not leave Yami.
"But worth is not measured by what one can destroy."
Yami's expression cooled.
Knowledge continued.
"Strength may be tested."
He glanced briefly toward Kaito.
"Resolve may be tested."
His eyes shifted toward Daniel.
"And those who stand again after falling…"
A faint smile touched his bloodied mouth.
"…may yet surprise thee."
For a moment, the Plains of Eternity fell completely silent.
Kaito lowered his spear slightly.
Daniel exhaled through his nose, tired but steady.
Yami stared at Knowledge.
Then he laughed softly.
Not loudly.
Not wildly.
A quiet sound.
Ancient and empty.
"Then let them surprise me."
The pressure in the arena intensified.
Yami began walking.
Each step darkened the sacred stone beneath his feet. His shadow stretched behind him like wings that had forgotten how to belong to light. The black markings across Kanetaro's body pulsed, spreading further along the neck, across the jaw, near the left eye.
Kaito raised his spear.
Its golden light flickered, then steadied.
Daniel spun one revolver and locked it into his remaining good grip.
Knowledge held the cracked staff before them both.
Three injured figures stood against the body of Heaven's King.
No army.
No throne.
No certainty.
Only resolve.
Yami stopped several paces away.
His gaze moved from Daniel to Kaito, then finally to Knowledge.
"Come then," he said.
His shadow-black hand opened.
"Surprise me."