Shad Ruhvaël slowly turned her head.
And she attacked.
It wasn't a movement.
It was a priorness that was crashing down.
— Use the breath of your essences!! screamed Erasa.
— Since we are absences, we can project around us a coherent absence! That will allow us to move… to dodge!
All obeyed instinctively.
They released what they were: not an energy, but a stabilized non-presence.
And it was deconceptualized.
Not destroyed.
Not annulled.
Simply rendered impossible.
They understood then.
Their nature allowed them only one thing: not to disappear immediately. Nothing more.
Resist, yes.
Act? No.
Erasa clenched her teeth and stared at Shad Ruhvaël.
Black wings burst from her back, not majestic, but incomplete, broken in their very meaning.
As an apostle of Mü Thanatos…
and of Shad Ruhvaël…
She carried within her imperfect translations of their powers.
She couldn't win.
She couldn't even fight.
But she could delay.
— Stay behind me… she murmured.
A lance materialized in her hand.
Not a weapon.
An imitated negation.
Attacking Deconceptualization… with a partial Deconceptualization.
Erasa's mask cracked.
Her features faded.
In place of her eyes: two black abysses, gaping, bottomless.
She was no longer entirely herself.
She was becoming an incomplete Deconceptualization.
***
A sound that had no right to exist occurred when Erasa's lance collided with that of Shad Ruhvaël.
It was neither a clash nor a vibration.
It was a mutual refusal.
Erasa managed to deflect the divine lance.
But it was impossible.
Shad Ruhvaël's lance continued to sink in, slowly, inexorably, as if the deflection itself was an error being corrected.
Bakuzan tried to move.
His body barely responded.
— We'd need… he growled, teeth clenched…
— We'd need a miracle to get us out of this!!
— A miracle, repeated Neru.
He smiled.
— Indeed.
Bakuzan abruptly turned his head toward him.
Neru calmly removed his jacket.
Skeletal wings burst from his back, pale, immense, like those of an angel dead before even being named.
Bakuzan's eyes widened.
— How… how can he still move?!
He turned toward Ravena.
And understood.
She was moving too.
— Of course… he murmured.
— The flow of Lucifer…
He slowly raised his head.
— Lucifer is of the same order as her.
Shad Ruhvaël didn't negate them totally.
Not yet.
Bakuzan turned his gaze back to Erasa, who was still facing the goddess.
And something was off.
Erasa… was smiling.
A faint smile.
Lucid.
Bitter.
— This isn't the real one… she murmured.
She finally understood.
— The Shad Ruhvaël we're facing… is only a limited projection.
It was the only explanation.
The reason they still existed in the dome.
The reason even the Deconceptualization hadn't been total.
— If the true Shad Ruhvaël had descended…
She paused.
— Resisting would already be impossible. Existing would be too.
But this revelation brought no relief.
For a projection, stemming from the true one…
was already infinitely superior to them.
And if this projection was there…
then it meant one thing.
The true Shad Ruhvaël was corrupted.
Or in the process of being.
— Fortunately… breathed Erasa, the lance trembling.
— She hasn't fully descended yet.
The dome vibrated.
Shad Ruhvaël slowly straightened her lance.
Shad Ruhvaël slightly tilted her lance.
The gesture was simple.
The consequence, absolute.
The tip headed toward Bakuzan—immobile, frozen in the dome's crushing weight.
Bakuzan then felt something abnormal.
A movement.
A faint shift.
He didn't understand its origin or reason, but his body responded.
He moved.
Erasa froze.
It wasn't possible.
He had neither the flow of Lucifer.
He wasn't the apostle of any primordial god.
He carried no known divine translation.
He was… simply an Ineffable.
And yet, he had just torn himself away, if only for an instant, from Shad Ruhvaël's authority.
The attacks resumed immediately.
Impossible strikes, torsions of existence, pure negations.
They all now struggled solely to continue being.
Neru, breathless, murmured:
— …Is it just me, or is she becoming more massive? Denser… every second?
Erasa's mask cracked slightly as she replied, her voice muffled, almost dissolved:
— What we're facing is only a limited projection.
But time is against us.
The more it passes… the more the true Shad Ruhvaël infiltrates through it.
She paused.
— If this projection becomes complete… then there will be no more "fight."
Only an end.
Neru attacked.
Or rather… tried.
His assault was denied before even taking shape.
— Tch… how is that possible?! he cried.
Bakuzan clenched his teeth.
— You really think a simple flow is enough?
It's only a projection, yes…
But only another projection of Lucifer could oppose something equivalent to it.
Without that, everything else is useless.
Ravena felt despair course through her.
— Then… why continue?
We're only delaying the inevitable.
The more time passes, the more powerful she becomes.
Neru raised his head.
His gaze changed.
— Nothing is impossible.
If no path exists… then I will forge one.
His body duplicated.
The duplicate lunged at the goddess.
It was immediately overwhelmed.
Shad Ruhvaël extended her hand.
A black sphere appeared—dense, mute, forbidden.
With a simple gesture, she struck.
The duplicate was sucked in, captured.
Neru paled.
He knew it.
If this duplicate died…
He would lose a colossal part of his power.
The sphere slowly rose to Shad Ruhvaël's veiled face.
Inside, the duplicate, now minuscule, was frozen—crucified in the void.
Hundreds of Deconceptualization blades fell upon it.
Neru screamed.
The pain pierced all his strata of existence.
He fell into the non-place.
Ravena caught him just in time.
— Neru!!
In the sphere, the duplicate was stripped.
Not destroyed.
Not killed.
Retrospectively deprived of the right to have ever existed.
The true Neru spat blood.
A part of his body deconceptualized, as if erased by a hand prior to reality.
Bakuzan averted his gaze slightly.
— Making that kind of mistake…
— …in front of Shad Ruhvaël, he murmured,
is signing one's own negation.
Ravena was now advancing with difficulty.
Neru's body weighed heavy in her arms—too heavy.
His existence itself seemed to unravel, as if every second brought him closer to definitive disappearance.
Erasa, for her part, was overwhelmed.
The goddess was gaining density, corruption, as the projection approached completion.
And the more Shad Ruhvaël became total… the more Erasa lost her grip.
She was her ego.
But only a fragment.
An incomplete translation.
The powers she borrowed from the goddess were becoming foreign to her.
Unusable.
Hostile.
Her own body began to crack—not from injury, but from existential incomprehension.
She no longer knew what she was supposed to be.
Bakuzan remained frozen.
Despair was written on his face.
No solution.
No anomaly to exploit.
Then Erasa fell.
She toppled into the non-place, sucked out of all coherence.
Shad Ruhvaël raised her lance.
This time, there would be neither deflection nor miracle.
The lance came down—
BOOM.
A hand blocked the attack.
Bakuzan's eyes widened.
— Sa… Sakolomeh?!
He was there.
Standing.
Immobile.
Holding Shad Ruhvaël's lance bare-handed.
The goddess tried to withdraw.
But Sakolomeh's aura deployed instantly.
The dome collapsed.
The denied Nothing recomposed itself, becoming a simple void again—silent, passive.
Shad Ruhvaël's silhouette shrank.
Her wings fell.
Mü Thanatos appeared, collapsing to her knees in the incompressible.
— What… what happened to me…?
Sakolomeh bowed slightly before her.
— It seems you… lost control a bit.
A voice then rose, cold, dominant.
— I wouldn't say that.
Above the void, a presence stood.
The Exentity.
His voice cleaved space itself.
All eyes turned toward him.
— She didn't lose control, he resumed.
— She was corrupted.
— Controlled by the Absolute Resonance.
Bakuzan frowned.
— The Resonance… what?
The Exentity slowly turned his head toward him.
His eyes were black—not dark, but empty of all reflectivity.
— I am an Exentity.
— A limited echo of the Meta world.
He paused.
— The Resonance, it, is its total Resonance.
— The Meta world itself, vibrating in all aspects of existence.
He observed them one by one.
— You saw it.
— Just before the goddess's appearance.
Erasa's eyes widened.
— So that was… that thing?
She removed her mask, still trembling.
— But then…
— what is the Meta world?
The Exentity replied without hesitation:
— The Meta world is the true All.
— That which contains everything.
— That which surpasses everything.
His voice grew heavier.
— Nothing can transcend it.
— Nothing can escape it.
— Even the gods are only events within it.
And silence fell again.