Moments before.
The sky over the Inner Sanctuary was no longer a dark cloudy sky.
As Lightning Qilin stepped forth first, its body forged from crackling arcs of white and violet light, every movement sending thunder crashing across the sky.
Lavinia looked upward and felt a shake in her soul.
It was a living storm of divine wrath. Beside the Lightning Qilin, a Storm Dragon coiled, its serpentine body stretching farther than the eye could follow, scales made of roiling clouds threaded with crackling lightning. The moon itself was swallowed by their enormity, she felt like she was an ant.
Even the wind seemed to bow in submission as the immense creatures loomed, silent yet deafening, their presence a verdict on all that dared exist below.
Members of the Five Principal Clans, the very people who had lived their lives in service to these myths and gods of Shintoism reacted with a chilling spectrum of despair. Some dropped to their knees, their weapons clattering onto the frozen earth as they wept in terror.
Others, however, wore expressions of terrifying beatitude, almost a fanatical acceptance of their own annihilation.
"O, to be returned to the heavens by the Forefather's own hand," one elder whispered, his eyes glazed with a suicidal joy.
"That is some truly crazy shit," Lavinia muttered, her knuckles white as she gripped her staff.
Beside her, Tobio's body was racked with tremors. Natsume, Samejima, and Sae had been forced to their knees by the sheer atmospheric pressure. The gravity within the sanctuary had spiked so high that the simple act of drawing breath felt like inhaling a water.
Lavinia's gaze flicked to Azazel. The Governor General was drenched in sweat, his twelve wings stretched wide over the teenagers as he frantically channeling mana into a massive, shimmering teleportation circle. Yet even he looked grim. The divine strike descended faster than the circle could form.
Realizing Azazel wouldn't complete the teleportation in time, Lavinia's frosted mana erupted around her, shimmering like shards of ice in a storm. Desperation sharpened her resolve as she would unleash her final resort.
Her eyes narrowed, hard as tempered steel. "Assoluto Arg-"
Before the incantation for her own Balance Breaker could leave her lips, a silence fell. It was not the absence of sound, but a sudden heavy vacuum that swallowed the roar of the storm.
A whisper, cold as the void yet strangely warm like an old memory rippled through the clearing.
"Balance Breaker..."
From beneath Jay's feet, a flicker of black flame erupted. It wasn't the violent, flickering purple of the Anthem.
It was a deep, absolute darkness that seemed to drink the very light of the lightning above.
"True Cross."
The Black Flared.
SHIIING
The colossal lightning beasts struck. The Qilin's horn and the Dragon's maw descended like twin pillars of celestial judgment, aimed to erase everything within a mile radius. But the moment the blue-white thunder touched the rising black embers, a deafening crack echoed across the realms.
The earth shook with such violence that trees miles away were uprooted. A flash of blinding blue light struggled against a rising tide of blazing darkness. For a microsecond, the two forces reached a stalemate and then as if defying every law of magical thermodynamics, the black flame began to consume the lightning.
The divine beasts didn't just explode, they were burned into nothingness.
A blinding light illuminated the world.
The massive spiritual constructs were reduced to cinders of light that drifted harmlessly to the ground like glowing snow.
As the lightning strike was annihilated, silence fell over the Inner Sanctuary. Everyone struggled to process what had just happened. As somehow their destruction had not truly happened.
Tobio stared, his jaw slack. "What... what is that?"
Suzaku, who had fallen to her knees in resignation, reached out a hand. A stray black ember drifted past her before settling in her palm before vanishing without a trace. She didn't feel the bite of heat, but rather a lingering, ancient warmth. "That flame... what is that flame."
Lavinia let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her cold expression melted into a soft, relieved smile as she looked at Jay's back. His left arm was a mess, it grazed, bleeding, and torn from elbow to wrist.
But he stood there unfazed, holding a black sword in his right hand.
'You saved us again... Illya-kun,' she thought.
The silence that followed was so profound it felt loud. Azazel, standing amidst his half-finished teleportation circle, suddenly broke into a low, incredulous laugh. He stared at the aura radiating from Jay.
It was a presence so familiar it made his skin crawl.
'Are you fucking kidding me?' Azazel laughed as he thought, a sound of pure, defeated amusement. 'He hasn't even used his Balance Breaker until now? All that spatial tearing, that purple incineration... that was him holding back?'
From sheer destructive force alone, Jay's Incinerate Anthem and mastery of Spatial Magic placed him firmly in the Ultimate-Class. Yet it wasn't just raw power. Combined with his wits and unorthodox fighting style, he could easily take down a mid-tier or even a borderline high-tier Ultimate-Class opponent. And now… Azazel had no idea anymore.
Barakiel stepped up beside Azazel, his own lightning flickering weakly in the presence of Jay's darkness. "That is the Holy Spirit... no, that's not it. It's similar, but this is something that predates the Word. It's the righteousness of holiness mixed with a malicious primordial evil. Something in between."
Susanoo stood frozen in the sky, his one remaining hand trembling. His ultimate attack, a technique that could have easily destroyed a whole region, had been reduced to ash by some inexplicable power. A black flame so absurd that it defy logic, a flame capable of consuming his Divine Lightning.
'What the hell is that?' he thought.
Hovering above them all, Susanoo's gaze then swept the crowd before ending at Jay's figure, and then, unexpectedly, he opened his mouth.
"You were still hiding a trump card? KUHAHAHA!"
Susanoo's laughter was jagged, lacking its previous mirth. As his light-blue eyes met Jay's deep dark hazel gaze, the god felt a shiver of genuine dread. For a moment, he didn't see a human boy. He saw a ghost of a time before the Shinto gods had even walked the islands.
Jay exhaled, a plume of grey mist escaping his lips. He felt the weight of Ame-no-Habakiri in his hand. With his mana reserves tripled by the sword's divine grace, the strain of the True Cross no longer threatened to drain his life force completely.
Realizing the battle that is going down, Azazel conjured a shimmering protective barrier once more as the air crackling and a giant magic circle materialized the vast defensive barrier around him.
As Jay turned to face him, Azazel simply smirked in defeat, and Jay raised his left hand and raised his thumbs up with deliberate calm.
'Fucking monster,' the Fallen Angel murmured, a bittersweet smile tugging at his lips. 'So this… is why you cherished them, Father. Now I understand… the meaning of your "human potential."'
Meanwhile, Jay turned his gaze back to the sky. Susanoo's left arm began knitting itself together in a crackle of lightning, and from the severed limb, a thunderous hand materialized brimming with raw divine power.
Susanoo did not hesitate. With a roar that shook the clouds, he summoned a thousand lightning spears like a torrential storm of gold and blue descending toward Jay. Yet Jay did not flinch. The black flames of the Passive Judgment Field erupted around him like a tornado of blazing flame, reducing every spear to grey soot before they could reach his shadow.
In the next instant, Susanoo appeared mere feet from Jay. The God of Storms in his True Divinity Mode moved with blinding speed as his hands aimed for Jay's head.
Jay's Phantasmagoria flickered, allowing Susanoo to pass through him as if he were nothing but air. But Jay did not merely defend. As Susanoo's physical body slid past him, Jay snapped back into tangibility and swung the Heaven-Severing Sword with precise lethal intent.
But time seemed to hesitate. Susanoo with his reflexes honed over eons, twisted mid-air and spinning 180 degrees. His silver blade, Ame-no-Murakumo, clashed against the black steel of Jay's sword with a metallic roar.
CLANG.
The shockwave rippled outward, cracking the ground and sending sparks dancing through the storm-laden air. Neither of them wavered, yet in that instant, the sheer force of their collision left the battlefield trembling.
The sound bypassed the ears and vibrated in the marrow of everyone present.
No matter how much Jay's body had been enhanced by the divine properties of Ame-no-Habakiri, his mortal form could never hope to match Susanoo in true divinity.
At the height of his power, Susanoo moved with a speed approaching that of light, a blur of godly energy that made even the fastest mortal reaction seem painfully slow.
Susanoo unleashed hundreds of slashes in the span of a second, creating a thundering roar of friction. But Jay's physicality reinforced by the Divine Sword and Balance Breaker allowed him to sense the ripples of mana from the attack before they manifested.
Black flames erupted with every clash, the Judgment Field eating away at Susanoo's divine lightning. Jay realized that teleportation was becoming redundant, Susanoo moved faster than neurons could fire.
Susanoo blinked behind Jay once more, his immense form materializing in an instant. Lightning coiled around his arm and concentrated into a single lethal point at his fingertip.
The air itself seemed to scream under its intensity.
"Perish!" the God of Storms thundered.
Jay did not flinch. He shifted his weight subtly and deliberately, letting Susanoo's strike pass through his intangible chest once more.
And before Susanoo could pull back and strike again, Jay manipulated the space around him with surgical precision.
Rupture bloomed in the exact spot Susanoo now occupied, warping reality and threatening to tear the god from existence. Susanoo's eyes widened just in time, and with a blink of flash he narrowly escaped, moving only inches from where the void would have severed his body.
But Jay already turned his body as he swung the black sword.
"Too slow," Jay muttered to himself.
But with the Heaven-Severing Sword in his hand, the very concept of distance was an illusion.
Susanoo saw it and seized the opening. 'He's going to swing', he realized. In that single split second when Jay would have to become tangible, Susanoo answered with instinct and cruelty. Lightning answered his call, a thunder strike tearing down from the heavens above.
Black fire flared along Jay's blade as he whispered,
"Cleave."
BOOM
The thunder crashed into him as the swing completed. Jay triggered Phantasmagoria a heartbeat too late. The strike still caught his back, scorching through cloth and flesh alike. Pain ripped through him, forcing a sharp grimace, but the motion of the blade never faltered.
SHIING
Susanoo widened his eyes. He leaned to the side as his body blurring with divine speed just before Jay finished his swing, but he wasn't fast enough. The slash of Ame-no-Habakiri just as he familiar with, doesn't care about distance. It slash instantly appeared in his side.
SPLURT
A black slash cut through the space beside him, severing the god's newly regenerated fingers. Before the fingers could even hit the ground, they were caught in the black flames and vanished.
Susanoo retreated fifty feet away in the air in a blink of flash, his chest heaving.
He looked down at his hand and tried to channel his energy to regenerate it, but to his shock, it would not heal. The black flame had left charred, inky marks burned into the wound.
"It… it won't heal," Susanoo whispered, his voice barely audible over the crackle of storm and lightning. For the first time in millennia, the God of Storms felt the cold, biting grip of fear. Every instinct honed over eons screamed at him that something was wrong.
He had assumed he could win through attrition, that the human's energy would falter overtime if he can just dragged this fight long enough. But now, he feel like those black flames
"What is that flame... WHO GAVE YOU THAT POWER!?" Susanoo screamed, his voice cracking with desperation.
Jay, his breathing heavy as pain screamed through his back, paused. He looked down at his hands, then at the black sword resting within his grip. After a moment, he gave a small, genuine shrug.
"I don't know."
"What... Are you fuc-?"
Before Susanoo could finished his words.
Jay's energy suddenly erupted. A dark aura surged outward, sending shivers to everyone, even to the elders of the clans who were still conscious.
In Susanoo's eyes, the scenery began to distort. The ruined forest of the Inner Sanctuary vanished, replaced by a desolate, infinite land of darkness. The sky turned a bruised black, torn apart by a single bleeding red streak. And behind Jay, a towering ancient wooden cross rose, wreathed in black flames so immense it pierced the heavens.
"What is this illusion..." Susanoo gasped.
Meanwhile, to everyone else, nothing seemed to have changed. It was only that Jay now radiated an aura that was both ominous and sacred, a dark glow that pressed against the edges of perception. Around him, the battlefield had fallen silent. The fight between the Grigori and the Five Principal Clans had ended, the latter unable to continue.
Tobio stared in disbelief. "This aura… is this Zayyn-san's Balance Breaker?"
"Not quite," Azazel replied calmly. "It is a subspecies Balance Breaker."
"A subspecies Balance Breaker?" Tobio repeated, incredulous.
This time, it was Lavinia who answered. "A Subspecies Balance Breaker manifests differently from the original. It takes on a form that reflects its wielder, gaining new abilities based on their desires. Because of this, Subspecies Balance Breakers are considered even more powerful than the standard version."
"Desires," Tobio echoed, a trace of wonder in his voice.
Lavinia's gaze shifted to Jay's back, her expression layered and conflicted, tinged with empathy. 'To manifest a power like this...' she thought, something must have been lost. A loss so profound that it shaped his desires to brought forth this extraordinary power.
As Susanoo felt as if he were standing before his father, instinct screamed at him to open a portal to Takamagahara.
"You can't kill me!" Susanoo roared. "You will feel the wrath of my sisters! Amaterasu won't spare a single human soul if you do this!"
Jay paused for a moment, sensing the shift. Susanoo had opened a gate, tearing the space before him with a crackle of lightning. But with a sudden black flash, the portal was ripped apart, split in two, and obliterated in an instant.
"Fuck!" Susanoo cursed. Losing Ame-no-Habakiri was the single deadliest mistake he had made in this battle.
A dark, suicidal resolve took hold of him.
"If this is where it ends, then let the heavens bear witness. I shall call the seas to rise and wash this land back into nothingness!"
As Susanoo's thunderous aura flared, he condensed it into a single blinding ball of light. The small sphere radiated such immense energy that Jay could feel the raw potential to annihilate everything around them.
'Trying to drown his own people. God my ass,' Jay thought.
The walls of the Inner Sanctuary groaned long before Susanoo moved, and space itself strained as though it were a flawed container trying to hold a god. The air thickened, wind coiling inward instead of outward, every breath drawn toward the bluish-dark sphere, as if reality itself were being inhaled.
There was no storm to summon, no horizon to rend apart as he had turned the world itself inside out. And it all happened in an instant.
Seeing that, Azazel, having just completed his teleportation circle, grimaced. "He's trying to drown this entire place… no, this entire country in a flood of tsunami."
At his words, everyone's faces turned pale and tense, the weight of the threat settling over them like a shadow.
As pressure mounted, sound vanished, and space began collapsing inward, folding layer by layer as divine wind ground matter, light, and even intent into nothingness. Every particle trembled, as if creation itself was being rewritten.
And as the God of Storms, words echo through the sanctuary. A burst of Thunderous Tsunami erupted from the balls,
"Shinmet-"
But before he could finish, Jay's Ame-no-Habakiri flared simultaneously wreathed in black flames the heaven-severing sword descent.
As a whisper.
"Cleave!"
SHIIING
The world split.
A blazing line of black fire carved straight through the fabric of reality, and the heart of the condensed sphere. The thunderous tsunami collapsed instantly, its divine mass flash-boiled into a roaring explosion of steam that vanished before it could touch the ground. What remained was not water or lightning, but absence.
And then the slash continued.
Space itself parted as the world-cutting slash passed through Susanoo's divine form, cleaving him cleanly through the center.
"My… attack…" Susanoo murmured, eyes wide in disbelief.
His final resort. The culmination of storm, sea, and lightning. How ironic that the ultimate strike of the fastest god Shintoism, the embodiment of lightning itself, reduced to nothing but evaporating mist not because it was overwhelmed.
It was outpaced.
As the line of blazing black fire crossed his body, Susanoo felt something he had not known in millennia. Warmth. Ancient and quiet. A flame that did not rage, but judged. For a fraction of a heartbeat, shorter than thought itself, he understood.
Then the heat came.
A fire far hotter than his sister's heavenly flame. Divinity burned to nothing.
In a soundless flash, his divine body dissolved into pure light, scattering across the sanctuary like dying stars before being swallowed by the black flames.
The storm fell silent.
The God of Storms ceased to be.