The silence in Saganbo's sanctum should have been absolute. The five broken bodies scattered across the obsidian floor—Merus, Kagaya, Miryoku, Shirou, Netsudo—lay still as corpses, their shallow breathing the only evidence they hadn't yet crossed into death. The air was thick with the psychic residue of despair, with the ozone of spent power, with the coppery tang of blood in a dozen different colors: cerulean, emerald, luminous white, crimson, amber.
And hovering near the shattered ceiling, less than a ghost, was Shinji Kazuhiko.
A single blue eye, wide and bloodshot with impossible will, stared down from a ragged patch of scalp trailing yellow-green hair. Beneath it pulsed his Trascender Core—cracked like ancient porcelain, fissures spreading through its crystalline structure, dark lightning arcing between the fractures. Golden-green light bled from every wound in wisps that dissipated immediately, wasted energy hemorrhaging into nothing.
But it pulsed. It existed. It persisted.
Saganbo stood with his back to the carnage, one hand raised toward his nearly-complete throne repair, the other extended toward Shinji with index finger pointing. At that fingertip, a pinprick of infinite darkness pulsed—not purple-black like his aura, but deeper. A point of absolute nothing that devoured even the faint light struggling through the ruined ceiling.
His violet eyes tracked the fragment with cold calculation. "I'LL HOLD YOU... UNTIL MY LAST BREATH!" The psychic declaration still echoed in the sanctum's psychic atmosphere, raw and desperate and utterly futile.
Saganbo's thin smile widened slightly. "Admirable sentiment," he murmured, his voice carrying the finality of a closing tomb. "But last breaths, Fourth Trascender, are precisely what I specialize in ending."
The darkness at his fingertip pulsed, growing. The surrounding reality began to decay at its edges—obsidian flaking to dust, dust to molecules, molecules to conceptual absence. The pressure radiating from it made the cracked Trascender Core vibrate violently, threatening complete shattering.
Within the core, Shinji's consciousness was a scream without sound. Not fear of death—he'd died hundreds of times. This was terror of unbeing. Of Kiyomi's memory being erased. Of his aunt's sacrifice meaning nothing. Of Tamago, Yamato, the billions extinguished in Saganbo's graveyard domains—all of it going unavenged because he would cease to have ever mattered.
He poured every spark of remaining spirit into defiance. Golden-green energy—thin, desperate, pathetic—flared erratically around the core and eye. A final, futile shield against inevitability.
*It's not enough,* his consciousness screamed. *It was never enough. I'm going to disappear. I'm going to—*
"Pathetic," Saganbo stated, not with anger but profound disappointment. He began channeling more power into the fingertip. The pinprick expanded, becoming a sphere of pure negation hovering above his palm. It pulsed with the promise of final silence, of Shinji Kazuhiko being reduced to a footnote that would itself be footnoted into non-existence. "To think this is what forced me to use Intermediate Stage. This... fragment. This barely-coherent ghost clinging to—"
Space didn't tear.
It unfolded.
Like dark velvet curtains parting without sound, a point in reality near Shinji's hovering fragment began to shimmer. Not a portal—those were crude. Not a spatial fold—those left residue. This was something else entirely: reality opening from within, peeling back layers of dimensional membrane to reveal something that existed behind the universe itself.
The air pressure in the sanctum inverted violently—crushing inward, then exploding outward—before stabilizing with a soundless thump that every conscious being felt in their bones.
Through the opening stepped a figure.
He was clad in a cloak of non-reflective grey that seemed to absorb light itself, making him appear as a void-shaped silhouette against the ruined sanctum. But the cloak was tattered now, hanging in strips from his shoulders, revealing glimpses of something beneath: skin that gleamed like polished silver, catching the faint neutron-star light in strange ways.
Deep gashes crisscrossed that revealed skin, bleeding luminous argent fluid that dripped slowly—too slowly, as if gravity had less authority over it—before evaporating into motes of light before touching the floor.
One arm hung at an unnatural angle, the elbow bent slightly wrong.
His breathing was audible now—ragged, wet, echoing strangely in the acoustics of the sanctum.
But his presence. His presence crashed into the room like a tsunami of primordial authority that made even Saganbo's entropy-field ripple and distort, like oil meeting water, two fundamental forces that couldn't quite coexist in the same space.
Saganbo's finger lowered. Just fractionally. His violet eyes narrowed, scanning the newcomer with sudden, absolute focus. The casual amusement evaporated entirely, replaced by something colder, sharper, more dangerous.
"You, The One who killed Amado," he stated flatly, recognition immediate. Then, as his ancient senses processed more information, surprise bled into his tone: "No. Not just that."
The psychic voice from Shinji's core—confused, desperate, grasping for any hope—tore through the sanctum: "Who... WHO ARE YOU?!"
The figure reached up with his functioning hand. The gesture was simple—fingers curling into the edge of the tattered hood—but the effect was anything but.
The cloak didn't fall away. It dissolved. The grey fabric unraveled into motes of shimmering, primordial potential—each mote containing the ghost-memory of something that could have been but never was—that winked out of existence like dying stars, each one carrying away a fragment of carefully maintained disguise.
What was revealed made Saganbo's expression cycle through emotions too quickly to catalog: surprise, recognition, old resentment, wary respect, barely-controlled fury.
Short, impeccably styled blonde hair—golden as dawn's first light—framed a face of serene, almost androgynous beauty. It would have been ageless except for the lines: fine cracks of cosmic weariness etched around eyes that held the weight of universes birthed and extinguished. The face was marred now by exhaustion, by pain, by silver blood dried at the corner of his mouth.
He wore simple white robes beneath the dissolved cloak, pristine despite his injuries, the fabric seeming woven from solidified starlight itself. They shifted and flowed like liquid light with each labored breath.
But it was his presence that fundamentally changed the sanctum's atmosphere. The oppressive, crushing weight of Saganbo's entropy didn't vanish—it couldn't, not in his own domain—but it was challenged. A second pressure, older, deeper, thrumming with a frequency that resonated in the foundations of reality itself.
It was the hum of Beginning. Of the first spark. Of the moment potential becomes actual. Of the instant the impossible decides to become inevitable.
"Hyachima," Saganbo breathed, and the name dropped like a stone into still water.
The silence that followed was profound. Heavy. Dangerous.
Then the blonde man—Hyachima—smiled. It wasn't warm. It was the smile of a star acknowledging a black hole's existence while refusing to be consumed by it.
"Hello, SanSan," he said pleasantly, his voice a resonant baritone that seemed to vibrate in the bones of the listeners, even the unconscious ones. Each syllable carried weight, as if the words themselves had mass. "It's been... what? Eight hundred billion years since we last spoke face-to-face?" He glanced around at the ruined sanctum, at the shattered walls and broken pillars and the reconstruction-in-progress. "You've redecorated. I preferred the nebula motif you had in your third sanctum. This obsidian aesthetic is rather... brooding, don't you think? Very 'tortured god' energy."
A vein pulsed visibly in Saganbo's temple. His fists clenched at his sides. Purple-black energy crackled violently around him, unstable, barely restrained. When he spoke, each word was forced through clenched teeth with visible effort:
"Do. Not. Call me. SanSan."
"Of course not," Hyachima agreed pleasantly, his smile not wavering. "How terribly informal of me. Lord Saganbo, God of Destruction, Sovereign of 3,926 Universes, Sterilizer of Countless Worlds, He Who—"
"Enough," Saganbo snarled, cutting him off. His aura flared, consuming more of the faint light, plunging the sanctum deeper into shadow. "You have thirty seconds to explain your trespass into my multiverse before I conclude our long-standing non-aggression understanding was merely a polite suggestion."
Hyachima's pleasant expression didn't change, but something glacial entered his ancient eyes—a coldness that predated stars, that had witnessed the birth and death of entire cosmic epochs.
"Trespass?" he repeated, as if tasting the word and finding it distasteful. "How melodramatic. I'm simply... collecting." He gestured casually toward Shinji's hovering fragment. "That eye, that core, those rather lovely yellow-green hair strands? They're coming with me. Along with—" his hand swept to indicate the broken forms on the floor, "—those pieces of mortality scattered so carelessly across your floor like discarded toys. Really, SanSan, your housekeeping standards have declined precipitously over the eons."
The single blue eye tracked this exchange with desperate, confused hope. The psychic voice was weaker now, barely a whisper: "Please... whoever you are... help them..."
Neither god acknowledged it.
Saganbo took a single step forward. The motion contained no wasted movement, no excess flourish, but its weight caused the obsidian floor to crater beneath his foot. Spiderweb cracks raced outward, destabilizing the already-damaged foundation. Somewhere in the sanctum's depths, something structural groaned and gave way.
"You think," Saganbo said softly, dangerously, each word a knife of controlled fury, "I will simply allow you to abscond with my prize? The Fourth Trascender? After everything I've invested in breaking him? After the resources spent, the Monarchs deployed, the entertainment he provided?" His violet eyes blazed. "He is mine. By right of conquest. By the fundamental law of predator and prey."
"Yours?" Hyachima's tone remained pleasant, conversational, but the pressure in the room doubled. Tripled. The remaining intact walls cracked audibly. The weeping neutron stars embedded in the structure flickered, their light wavering. "I'm afraid I don't recognize your claim. You see, the Fourth Trascender—fragmented though he currently is—managed something remarkable: he survived your 'conquest.' That rather voids the whole predator-prey dynamic, doesn't it? Can't claim ownership of prey that refused to be eaten."
He took a step forward. Saganbo, despite himself, didn't advance to meet him. The God of Destruction held his ground but didn't close the distance.
Hyachima's ancient eyes bored into Saganbo's. "And before you escalate this into something neither of us can walk away from, understand: I didn't come here on a whim. I didn't travel across multiversal boundaries because I was bored. I came because the alternative—allowing you to claim and weaponize a Trascender—represents an unacceptable shift in cosmic balance."
"Balance," Saganbo scoffed, but there was wariness in his tone now. "You speak of balance as if you care about such abstractions. You're no Creation God, Hyachima. You're not Thekia, weaving pretty tapestries of life and hope. You're Beginning. Neutral. Indifferent. The spark that doesn't care if it ignites creation or annihilation."
"True," Hyachima acknowledged. "I don't care about morality. Good and evil are infantile concepts to beings of our age." His expression hardened. "But I care about function. About systems remaining operational. And you, SanSan—" the nickname landed like a slap, "—are becoming a malfunction. 236 universes sterilized into graveyards. The First Universe erased entirely by your pet Monarch. Countless civilizations ended not for cosmic necessity but for your entertainment."
"They were mine to destroy," Saganbo countered, energy crackling more violently around him.
"Were they?" Hyachima asked softly. "Or have you forgotten that even Gods of Destruction operate within parameters? You've been given your domain to maintain entropy, to prevent stagnation, to prune the cosmic garden. Not to salt the earth so thoroughly nothing will ever grow again."
For three seconds, neither moved. The sanctum held its breath. Reality itself seemed to pause, caught between two fundamental forces locked in a standoff.
Then Saganbo moved.
Not stepping. Not teleporting. Displacing. His form blurred, became a streak of purple-black annihilation that crossed the distance to Hyachima faster than thought, faster than light, faster than causality itself. His hand—wreathed in the same erasure-darkness he'd used to unmake Shinji's limbs—shot forward, aimed directly at Hyachima's chest.
The blow that could erase concepts from reality shot forward like a spear of absolute ending.
Hyachima's wounded arm—the one hanging wrong—moved.
Despite the unnatural angle. Despite the visible damage. It snapped up, palm outward, faster than Saganbo's displacement.
Golden-white light—the color of creation's first dawn, of the moment before the Big Bang, of potential given form—erupted in a perfect sphere around him.
The erasure-wreathed fist struck the sphere and—
—stopped.
Not blocked. Not deflected. Not countered. Simply... stopped. As if the concept of "moving forward" had been politely but firmly declined at the fundamental level of causality itself. As if the attack had reached the end of its existence-permission and could go no further.
Saganbo's eyes widened. Actually widened. Genuine shock.
"Interesting attempt," Hyachima said conversationally, as if discussing weather while his shield held back cosmic annihilation without visible strain. "But you see, that attack never properly began. I simply... rescinded its inception. Returned it to the state of potentiality. One of the benefits of my particular domain—I can decide whether things have permission to start existing."
He pushed forward slightly with his palm. The golden sphere expanded. Saganbo was shoved backwards—not physically overpowered, but spatially displaced—his feet carving deep trenches in the obsidian as he was forced to retreat five, ten, twenty meters before managing to plant himself and halt the movement.
Purple-black energy exploded around Saganbo like a star going supernova. His aura—already oppressive, already crushing—deepened. Intensified. The light-devouring field expanded rapidly, consuming the faint illumination from the neutron stars, swallowing the golden glow from Hyachima's sphere, plunging the sanctum into near-total darkness except for the warring lights of gold-white and purple-black where the two gods faced each other.
"Cute trick," Saganbo growled, and his voice had changed. Deeper. More resonant. Carrying the weight of endings. His form began to shift—not physically, but metaphysically. The casual, restrained presence he'd worn like a mask evaporated entirely. His aura became a condition, a fundamental declaration written into the fabric of local reality: ALL THINGS END.
"But I wonder—" he raised both hands, and between them, darkness coalesced. Not the pinprick erasure-beam. Something larger. A sphere of pure, concentrated ending, pulsing with entropy collected from dying stars, from civilizations ground to dust, from hope extinguished across a billion billion worlds, from the heat-death of entire galactic clusters. It grew to the size of a small moon, hanging between his palms, its surface roiling with impossible physics. "—how your little inception tricks fare against this."
He thrust it forward. The sphere of ending shot across the sanctum like a meteor of oblivion, trailing reality-distortion in its wake. The very space it passed through aged rapidly—millennia compressed into microseconds—leaving corroded emptiness.
Hyachima didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't raise a second shield.
He simply raised his other hand—the damaged one, the arm hanging wrong—and snapped his fingers.
The sound echoed wrong. Backwards. Like time reversing. Like a recording played in rewind. Like causality questioning its own linear nature.
The sphere of ending... hesitated.
Decelerated.
Stopped.
And then—impossibly, horrifyingly—it began moving backwards. Shrinking as it flew, returning along its trajectory toward Saganbo, flowing back like water up a waterfall, regressing through its own timeline.
It returned to the space between Saganbo's still-extended hands.
And evaporated.
Not destroyed. Not dispersed. Simply... unmade. As if it had never been created in the first place.
Saganbo stared at the empty space between his hands where a universe-ending attack had been one second ago. His expression was that of annoyance.
"I unbirthed it," Hyachima explained calmly, though sweat now beaded on his brow, though his breathing had become more labored, though silver blood was dripping more freely from his wounds. "Reached back along its timeline to the moment of its conception and... politely declined its existence. It's exhausting, I'll admit—more so with these injuries from Dentetsu—but wonderfully effective."
He lowered his hands slowly, wincing as his damaged arm protested the movement. "Shall we continue this dance? I have approximately seventeen more reversals in me before I collapse from exertion. You, I suspect, have far more attacks of that caliber. We could spend the next few hours destroying and un-destroying reality in escalating displays of cosmic petulance." His ancient eyes hardened. "Or we could acknowledge the truth of this situation."
Saganbo was silent for a long moment, violet eyes scanning Hyachima with predatory calculation. When he spoke, his voice was cold, analytical:
"You're wounded. Significantly." His gaze tracked the silver blood, the labored breathing, the wrong angle of Hyachima's arm, the trembling in his legs that suggested standing was costing effort. "Dentetsu nearly killed you, didn't he? That magnificent, unstable fool actually pushed you to your limit." A cold smile. "Which means you're operating at... what? Sixty percent capacity? Perhaps less?"
"Lesser than Forty percent, actually," Hyachima corrected pleasantly. "Dentetsu is a phenomenal combatant. Would have killed me if he hadn't exhausted himself first. You've an anomaly in your ranks."
"And yet you come here," Saganbo continued, taking a slow step forward, testing, "into my sanctum, in my multiverse, wounded and diminished, and make demands? That's not tactical brilliance, Hyachima. That's suicidal arrogance."
"Is it?" Hyachima's pleasant expression finally cracked, replaced by something ancient and terrible. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of cosmic law, of principles so fundamental they predated physics:
"Let me educate you on why even at Forty percent, in your domain, surrounded by your power, I'm not the one in danger here. Not when you're not willing to take the risk and unleash your Final Stage."
He took a step forward. Saganbo, for all his posturing, didn't advance to meet him.
"I am Hyachima. The God of Absolute Beginning. The architect of reality's first spark. My domain isn't creation—that's Thekia's specialty, that's what the little trainee Merus fumbles with. My domain is inception. The transition point. The moment something shifts from impossible to inevitable."
Golden-white energy began crackling around his functioning hand, building, intensifying.
"Every universe in your multiverse—all 3,926 of them—I can reach back to its Beginning. To the microsecond it started. To the moment it transitioned from potential to actual. And I can—" the energy flared brighter, casting sharp shadows across his face, "—simply decide it never did."
The temperature in the sanctum dropped instantly to absolute zero. Frost began forming on every surface—the obsidian, the broken pillars, the unconscious bodies of Shinji's allies, even on Saganbo's own aura where the two opposing forces met.
The God of Destruction's expression shifted. The predatory confidence flickered. "You're bluffing," he said, but uncertainty had entered his voice. "The energy cost of unmaking even a single universe at its inception point would—"
"—cripple me for some time," Hyachima agreed readily. "I'd be vulnerable. Weakened beyond recovery for centuries. Every predator in the cosmic hierarchy would sense it and come hunting. I'd spend some years hiding, recovering, barely surviving." His smile was the most terrifying expression Saganbo had witnessed in eons. "But your multiverse—all 3,926 universes—would simply... not have happened. You'd retain your divinity, your power, your existence as a God of Destruction. But your domain? Your authority? Your entire power base?" He snapped his fingers again. "Gone. Never was. You'd be a homeless deity, wandering the cosmic void like a parasite seeking a new host multiverse, assuming you could find one before something bigger ate you, Mr.Proud God Of Destruction."
He stepped closer. Saganbo held his ground but didn't advance. The distance between them became charged, dangerous, like the air before lightning strikes.
"So ask yourself, SanSan:" The nickname was deliberate provocation now. "Is the Fourth Trascender—broken, fragmented, barely clinging to existence—worth gambling your entire multiversal empire? Is your pride worth risking everything you've built over trillions of years?"
The silence that followed was absolute. Profound. Dangerous beyond measure.
Seconds stretched into minutes. Neither god moved. Neither blinked. The sanctum itself seemed to hold its breath, reality caught in superposition between two fundamental forces—Beginning and Destruction—locked in a standoff that could cascade into mutual annihilation.
On the floor, Merus stirred. Just slightly. His consciousness flickered at the edge of awareness, drawn back by the psychic pressure of two primordial beings in confrontation. His eyes cracked open, unfocused, struggling to process what he was seeing:
Two titans. Not fighting. Waiting. Each calculating. Each measuring. Each trying to determine if the other was bluffing.
Saganbo's fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Purple-black energy crackled violently, erratically, around him—unstable manifestations of barely-controlled fury. His jaw worked, grinding teeth that had existed since before mortal time had meaning. Every instinct, every fiber of his being, screamed to attack. To reclaim his prize. To assert dominance. To prove that nothing—nothing—challenged him in his own domain.
But the calculation was clear. Cold. Undeniable.
Fighting Hyachima here, now, even wounded, risked everything. His multiverse. His foundation. His authority. His empire built across eternities.
All for a broken fragment of a Trascender he could theoretically hunt down again later.
The math didn't favor pride.
Slowly—agonizingly, humiliatingly slowly—Saganbo lowered his hands. The dark energy dissipated, though his aura remained heavy, oppressive, a declaration that this was tactical retreat not defeat.
"You've made your point," he ground out, each word costing him visible effort. His voice was tight with barely suppressed rage. "Take them. Take the Trascender fragment. Take the worthless mortals bleeding on my floor like discarded garbage." His violet eyes narrowed to slits, burning with cold promise. "But understand this, Hyachima—this isn't mercy. This isn't defeat. This is me calculating that killing you, even diminished, would cost me resources I'm unwilling to spend for a prize I can reclaim at my leisure later."
"Of course," Hyachima agreed, nodding as if accepting a perfectly reasonable business transaction. "Very pragmatic. I expected nothing less from you, SanSan."
The SanSan landed like a physical blow. Saganbo's eye twitched.
But Hyachima wasn't done. His ancient eyes held Saganbo's, and when he spoke, his voice dropped to something colder than the void between galaxies:
"However, before I depart with my... collection... there's one more matter we should address. The Fifth Trascender."
The single blue eye hovering near the ceiling pulsed weakly. Shinji's consciousness, barely coherent, latched onto those words with desperate, confused focus: *Fifth? What... what does that mean?*
Saganbo's cruel smile returned, widening slowly. "Ah yes. The sister. Kiyomi Kazuhiko. The unexpected bonus of this entire affair." He glanced toward Shinji's fragment with deliberate malice. "Still somewhere around. Still within my reach. Mindless, powerful, adrift. A force of nature waiting to be... directed."
"You know where she is?" Hyachima asked carefully.
"Not yet," Saganbo admitted. "But I will find her. It's only a matter of time. A being of that much uncontrolled power leaves traces. Scorched star systems. Destabilized dimensional boundaries. She's a forest fire wandering through somewhere close to my domain—impossible to miss once I dedicate resources to the search."
His expression turned calculating. "And when I find her... well, a blank slate is so much easier to write upon than a rebellious consciousness. No tiresome ideals about justice or revenge. No inconvenient attachments to dead family members. Just pure, moldable potential." He looked directly at Shinji's eye. "I should thank you, Fourth Trascender. You've provided me with the perfect tool to forge. Your failure—your complete inability to protect her—will become my greatest asset."
The cracked core pulsed violently, golden-green energy flaring erratically. The psychic voice that emerged was broken, confused, desperate:
"What... what are you talking about? Kiyomi is... she's dead. I buried her. I—"
"Oh, did Merus not tell you?" Saganbo's tone was mockingly solicitous, genuinely enjoying this. "How terribly remiss of him. Allow me to fill in the gaps in your education, Fourth Trascender. Consider it a parting gift. A truth to gnaw on during your exile."
He settled into a comfortable stance, clearly relishing every word:
"Kiyomi Kazuhiko. Your beloved little sister. The fierce, protective girl who trained with you in your family dojo. The one you found dead in a pool of blood, cut down by Kokuto's blade. You wept over her corpse, didn't you?" His voice was almost gentle, which made it more horrifying. "Felt the crushing weight of failure as you stood over her cooling body? The guilt that you couldn't save her?"
The blue eye was leaking now. Tears—impossible tears from an eye that shouldn't be able to produce them—welled up and floated away in luminous spheres.
"Don't..." The psychic whisper was breaking. "Don't you dare—"
"She didn't die."
Three words. Delivered with casual, devastating precision.
The core's pulsing stuttered. Nearly stopped.
"...What?"
"She Transcended," Saganbo continued, savoring every syllable. "The trauma of Kokuto's blade piercing her body. The proximity to your own awakening core—you were going through your transformation right beside her. The combination ignited her spark. Right there. Right then. In that apartment. In that pool of blood you knelt in, thinking she was dead."
He let that sink in for three seconds. Then continued:
"But here's the beautiful, tragic irony: her mortal mind—that fragile, human consciousness, only sixteen years of existence, barely formed—couldn't contain the even higher Trascender power. Not like you did. You had time. You grew into it gradually through your deaths and rebirths. But her?" He shook his head with mock sympathy. "Her awakening wasn't gradual. It was explosive. She went from dying human to transcendent force in a microsecond. And the power... it didn't just overwhelm her mind. It incinerated it."
The blue eye was streaming tears now, each luminous droplet floating away, refracting the faint light.
"No... no, you're lying. You're—"
"Emotions?" Saganbo continued mercilessly. "Burned away. Memories? Scorched to ash. The ability to recognize faces, to speak coherently, to process language, to think in any meaningful way—all of it consumed by the Trascender fire raging unchecked within her mortal vessel." His violet eyes gleamed. "She's not dead, Trascender. She's worse than dead. She's empty."
"That's enough," Hyachima interjected, his voice carrying warning.
But Saganbo was enjoying himself too much to stop:
"Kokuto observed her awakening before fleeing. Filed a very... detailed report. Want to know what he saw?" Saganbo's smile widened. "A girl standing in an ocean of blood. Her own blood. Your aunt's blood. Yours. But she wasn't crying. Wasn't screaming. Wasn't reacting at all. Just standing there, radiating power that was literally disintegrating the walls around her atom by atom. Kokuto called out to her. She didn't respond. Didn't even turn her head. She looked at him—or through him, more accurately—with eyes that held nothing. No recognition. No fear. No anger. Just... void."
The core was vibrating now, fractures spreading, the golden-green light bleeding faster.
"Then she moved," Saganbo went on, clearly building to the climax of his cruelty. "Not walking. Not running. Just... existing in different locations. And everywhere she existed, reality couldn't contain her. Buildings disintegrated. Streets vaporized. The air itself burned. She leveled Tokyo, Shinji. Your city. Your home. Not out of malice—she's incapable of malice. She did it because her mere presence was too much for mundane reality to handle. A mindless storm in the shape of a girl."
"Stop..." The psychic voice was fragmenting, becoming incoherent. "Please... stop..."
"And the best part?" Saganbo leaned forward conspiratorially. "She's still out there. Wandering this world. Leaving scorched universes in her wake. No destination. No purpose. Just... drifting. Existing. Destroying everything she touches not because she wants to, but because she is." His expression turned thoughtful. "I wonder if any part of her consciousness remains. If somewhere in that empty vessel, the real Kiyomi is trapped, screaming silently, unable to control the monster her transcendence made her. Does she suffer, do you think? Or is even that mercy denied?"
He straightened, delivering the final blow:
"Your sister—the girl who looked up to you, who trusted you to protect her—is gone. What remains is a beautiful, terrible weapon just waiting for the right hand to wield it. And that hand, Fourth Trascender, will be mine. I'm going to find her. I'm going to claim her. And I'm going to forge her into the most magnificent instrument of destruction this multiverse has ever seen. Your failure—your complete, utter inability to save her—will become my masterpiece."
The scream that tore from Shinji's core wasn't sound. It wasn't even psychic projection in any conventional sense.
It was pain given form. Grief made manifest. The soul-destroying agony of absolute loss crystallized into a single expression that rippled through dimensional boundaries, that cracked the remaining intact sections of wall, that made even Hyachima wince and Saganbo's satisfied smile falter for just a microsecond.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
It wasn't rage. It wasn't denial. It was grief. Pure, distilled, absolute grief that transcended language, that existed beyond words, that carried the weight of every loss, every failure, every moment of helpless horror compressed into a single psychic howl that echoed across universes.
The blue eye wept freely, uncontrollably. The tears weren't just floating away now—they were exploding from the eye in pulsing waves, each droplet carrying fragments of memory: Kiyomi's laugh during sparring, her determined expression when she landed a hit, the way she'd looked up at him with absolute trust, the crimson of her hair catching sunlight in their garden.
"KIYOMI!" The name was a broken sob, a prayer to gods that didn't answer, a desperate denial of reality itself. "NO! NOT HER! SHE CAN'T BE—SHE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE! I WAS SUPPOSED TO PROTECT HER!"
The core pulsed wildly, erratically, the cracks spreading like lightning across glass. Golden-green energy leaked faster now, no longer controlled drips but hemorrhaging streams. The fragments of Act 6 that had sustained his consciousness were unraveling, destabilizing under the weight of grief too profound for any mortal mind—even one anchored to a Trascender Core—to contain.
"IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! I SHOULD HAVE—I COULD HAVE—IF I'D JUST BEEN FASTER, STRONGER, IF I'D NEVER LEFT HER ALONE—"
The scream was building, becoming less coherent, more primal, more dangerous. Reality around the fragment began to warp, to distort. The Act 6 residue in his consciousness was leaking uncontrolled, attempting to rewrite local causality in impossible ways: trying to undo Saganbo's words, to make them never spoken, to declare the truth invalid.
But he lacked the power. Lacked the control. The reality-warping sputtered, misfired, caused dimensional static that made the air shimmer and crack.
"I'LL FIND HER!" The psychic voice cracked, shifted registers, became something manic and desperate. "I'LL SAVE HER! I'LL BRING HER BACK! I DON'T CARE IF HER MIND IS GONE, I'LL—I'LL FIX IT! I'LL FIND A WAY! I'LL—"
The core pulsed so violently it looked ready to shatter completely. The blue eye rolled back slightly, consciousness wavering between awareness and total dissolution. The grief was physically, spiritually, ontologically destroying what little remained of Shinji Kazuhiko.
Hyachima moved with speed that belied his injuries.
He crossed the distance to the fragment in a blur of white robes and golden light, his functioning hand snapping out to gently—but firmly—touch the base of the scalp fragment where ragged flesh met exposed bone and neural tissue.
"Forgive me," he murmured, genuine regret in his ancient eyes.
Golden-white energy pulsed through the contact. Not painful. Not violent. Simply... conclusive. The essence of Sleep, of darkness that comes not to destroy but to shelter.
The psychic scream cut off mid-howl like a recording suddenly stopped. The blue eye's pupil dilated, then contracted, then went unfocused. The violent pulsing of the core smoothed, steadied, dimmed to a barely-perceptible rhythm—the spiritual equivalent of deep, dreamless sleep.
The fragment went still, suspended in the air by Hyachima's control, unconscious, spared—for now—from the unbearable weight of truth.
Hyachima cradled it carefully in his hands, holding the eye, hair, and core as one might hold something infinitely precious and infinitely fragile. He looked down at the unconscious fragment with an expression of profound sadness.
"Unnecessary cruelty, SanSan," he stated, his voice devoid of its earlier lightness. It was cold now, cold as the void between galaxies, carrying genuine distaste. "You really had to deliver it like that? Couldn't just inform him—you had to gut him with every detail?"
Saganbo had already turned away, resuming his throne repair with deliberate casualness, as if the psychic screaming and reality distortion hadn't happened. "Truth is a weapon like any other," he replied, not bothering to look back. His tone was light, almost amused. "And I find it particularly effective against idealists. Consider it motivation for his eventual return. The broken ones always come back, after all. They're so predictable in their desperate need for closure."
He paused in his reconstruction to add, with deliberate provocation: "And I've told you repeatedly: don't call me SanSan, you insufferably pretty bastard."
Hyachima's jaw clenched. His free hand—the damaged one—twitched, fingers curling as if wanting to form a fist, to retaliate, to show Saganbo exactly how much power even a wounded God of Absolute Beginning could bring to bear.
But he held.
This wasn't the time. Not with Shinji's allies unconscious and vulnerable. Not with his own injuries limiting his combat effectiveness. Not when the cost of escalation could mean everyone's death.
Instead, he raised his functioning hand toward the ceiling and commanded reality to respond.
Space didn't tear. It unfolded again—but this time in a grand, spectacular display that made his earlier entry look restrained. Reality peeled back in dozens of locations simultaneously, revealing not the darkness of void but radiant, golden-white light that seemed to contain every color that had ever existed or ever would.
Massive, shimmering gateways of pure Beginning energy opened above each of Shinji's fallen allies:
Above Merus, still slumped against the wall in a pool of cerulean blood.
Above Kagaya, face-down and motionless except for shallow breathing.
Above Miryoku, curled against the pillar, luminous tears dried on her cheeks.
Above Shirou, unconscious with his crushed rifle still clutched to his chest.
Above Netsudo, trembling even in unconsciousness.
From each portal descended tendrils of golden-white energy—gentle as a mother's touch, inexorable as time itself. They wrapped around each body with infinite care, lifting them from the cold obsidian, cradling broken bones and sealing bleeding wounds not with healing but with preservation. The energy wasn't fixing them—not yet—but it was ensuring they wouldn't worsen, that the journey ahead wouldn't kill them.
Shirou's crimson eye flickered open for just a moment. Through pain-blurred vision, he saw the impossible golden light, saw Hyachima holding something small and broken, saw the portals drawing them all upward toward salvation. His lips moved, forming words too quiet to hear:
"About... time... someone... stronger..."
Then his eye closed again, and the tender wrapped him completely, pulling him gently into the light.
"Indeed, I'll be departing now," Hyachima stated, his voice resonating with absolute finality. The conversational pleasantness was gone entirely, replaced by the tone of a primordial force making a declaration that would not be challenged. He began floating upward, the fragment of Shinji cradled protectively against his chest, the five unconscious allies rising in synchronization around him toward their respective portals.
"And if you value the integrity of your domain, SanSan—" the nickname was weaponized now, "—you will not interfere with my departure."
The threat hung in the air, crystalline and undeniable: Hyachima could still unmake this multiverse at its inception. Wounded, exhausted, at lesser than forty percent capacity, it would cost him millennia of vulnerability—but he could do it. The ultimate deterrent. Mutually assured destruction distilled to its purest form.
Saganbo stood frozen, watching them rise. His fists clenched so hard his knuckles cracked. Purple-black energy crackled violently around him, wild and uncontrolled, arcing between his fingers, scorching the floor beneath his feet. Every instinct screamed to attack. To reclaim his prize. To prove that nothing—nothing—defied him in his own sanctum and lived to speak of it.
But the calculation held. Cold. Merciless. Undeniable.
Fighting Hyachima now meant risking everything. His multiverse. His empire. His foundation. All for the satisfaction of pride.
The math still didn't favor it.
"GO," he snarled, the word torn from his throat like flesh from bone. The barely-controlled fury in his voice made the remaining walls tremble. "Get OUT of my domain before I recalculate the cost-benefit analysis and decide mutual annihilation is worth it."
Hyachima rose into the largest central portal, his white robes streaming behind him like wings of solidified light, the fragment secure in his arms, the five bodies floating into their own gateways. He paused at the threshold of his portal, floating there, backlit by the golden radiance.
He looked back one final time, ancient eyes meeting Saganbo's across the ruined sanctum.
"Oh," he said, and the casual pleasantness was back, the tone completely at odds with the cosmic tension, "I fixed your throne while you were monologuing about the sister. The symmetry was bothering me. The left armrest was 0.3 degrees off-axis. I corrected it. No need to thank me."
He smiled. A genuine, warm, infuriating smile.
Then, with the deliberate precision of someone twisting a knife: "Do try to have fun processing this humiliation, Lil Bro."
The Lil Bro landed like a nuclear strike.
Saganbo's control shattered.
"DAMN YOU!" The roar was primordial, a sound of rage so profound it transcended language. It shook the sanctum to its foundations, caused massive sections of wall to collapse, made the neutron stars embedded in the structure flicker and dim, their light temporarily consumed entirely by the explosion of uncontrolled entropy.
A blast of pure, unrestrained purple-black energy erupted from him like a supernova. Not aimed. Not controlled. Just released. It vaporized a massive section of the far wall, carved through three supporting pillars, scorched the ceiling, and left a trench ten meters deep in the obsidian floor.
But Hyachima was already gone.
He stepped backward through his portal with the unhurried grace of someone who knew they'd won, the fragment safe in his arms. The five allies disappeared simultaneously into their own gateways. The golden light intensified—blinding, all-consuming, so bright it briefly turned the sanctum into a sun—then vanished with a soft thump of displaced air and equalized pressure.
The portals sealed with the sound of reality exhaling in relief.
Silence.
Complete. Absolute. Suffocating silence.
Saganbo stood alone in his ruined sanctum, surrounded by fresh destruction, breathing hard, purple-black energy still crackling uncontrollably around him. The throne before him sat perfectly repaired—seamless, symmetrical, the left armrest now exactly aligned, a monument to his failure to prevent the rescue.
He stared at it.
For ten seconds, he was perfectly, dangerously still.
Then he moved.
His fist—wreathed in pure, unrestrained entropy—struck the obsidian throne. Not to adjust. Not to repair. To obliterate.
"INSUFFERABLE!" The throne exploded under the impact, god-stone fragments flying outward like shrapnel. Another blow, vaporizing the dais itself. "PRETTY!" A third strike, turning the neutron stars embedded in the structure to dust. "BASTARD!"
The assault continued for thirty seconds, each blow punctuated by snarled words, until nothing remained of the throne but a smoking crater and the faint after-image of where it had been.
When he finally stopped, chest heaving, surrounded by glowing debris and the acrid smell of vaporized god-stone, the sanctum was in worse condition than before Hyachima's "repairs."
He stood in the center of his domain—victorious in battle, defeated in war—and the taste was ash.
The Fourth Trascender was gone.
The God of Absolute Beginning had invaded his domain, mocked him to his face, and escaped unscathed.
And worst of all: Hyachima had been right. The cost of stopping him would have been everything.
Saganbo looked around at the ruins, at the smoking crater where his throne had been, at the collapsed walls and shattered pillars and the lingering traces of golden-white energy that seemed to mock him with their very existence.
For the first time in eight hundred billion years, he felt something unfamiliar:
Uncertainty.
The game had just evolved beyond his control. And he wasn't sure he could win it anymore.
The Hyachima Multiverse - Universe 3, Galaxy 4, Planet 1089
The transition was violent.
Not painful—Hyachima's portals wouldn't allow pain—but disorienting in a way that transcended physical sensation. Reality folded in on itself like origami, compressed to a single impossible point, then exploded outward into new coherence. The sensation was like being unmade and remade simultaneously, every atom questioned and reassembled, existence itself becoming negotiable for a fraction of a microsecond before snapping back into certainty.
Merus awoke first.
His consciousness surfaced gradually, dragged up from the deep, black well of forced unconsciousness by the sensation of wrongness. Not pain—his injuries had been stabilized during transit—but fundamental spatial disorientation. Gravity felt different. Air pressure was off. The background radiation of the universe hummed at an unfamiliar frequency.
His eyes opened to impossible beauty.
Golden light filtered through something enormous above him—leaves the size of starships, translucent and crystalline, forming a canopy that stretched beyond visual range in every direction. Each leaf pulsed with internal bioluminescence, veins of light branching through them like neural pathways, casting dancing patterns of amber and rose and soft gold across everything below.
The ground beneath him was... singing.
Smooth stones covered the earth in an intricate mosaic: azure, crimson, jade, silver, obsidian shot through with veins of actual gold. Each stone was the size of his palm, polished to impossible smoothness, and pulsing with faint internal light. When the breeze touched them—and there was a breeze, gentle and warm and carrying scents he had no names for—they chimed. Not wind-whistle. Not random noise. Music. Harmonious, complex, beautiful beyond description, as if the planet itself was singing a lullaby to its inhabitants.
Floating through the air were small, jellyfish-like organisms, translucent and bioluminescent, drifting on currents of gentle wind. They trailed faint luminous motes behind them like fairy dust, casting soft, warm light that made everything feel touched by perpetual golden-hour sunset.
The air itself tasted alive. Each breath was crisp, clean, carrying something indefinable: hope, perhaps, or possibility, or the memory of a beautiful dream half-remembered upon waking.
It was serene in a way that made Saganbo's sanctum—with all its cold perfection and calculated aesthetics—seem like a tomb by comparison.
Merus pushed himself up slowly, wincing as his injuries protested the movement. He was lying on a bed of moss that glowed faintly amber, impossibly soft, cradling his damaged body like a mother's embrace. Someone had stabilized him—his deep gashes had stopped bleeding, his dislocated shoulder was back in socket (though still painful), his fractured ribs were bound with something that looked like solidified light.
He looked around, struggling to process the radical shift from cosmic horror to... this. Paradise? Sanctuary? A fever dream conjured by his dying consciousness?
"You're awake."
The voice was calm, resonant, carrying the weight of ages but somehow still gentle. Merus turned his head—slowly, carefully, mindful of his wounds—to see Hyachima sitting on a nearby boulder. The smooth stone beneath him hummed a deeper note in response to his weight, harmonizing with the surrounding stones' melody.
The God of Absolute Beginning looked... exhausted. His white robes were stained with dried silver blood. His damaged arm was bound in something that looked like woven starlight, glowing faintly with healing energy but still positioned at that wrong angle. His face—that serene, ageless face—was drawn, lined with weariness that spoke of battles fought at the edge of capability.
But his ancient eyes tracked Merus with quiet attention, alert despite the obvious fatigue.
"Where..." Merus's voice came out as a croak, rough and damaged. He coughed, tasted copper and something else—the lingering essence of Saganbo's entropy, still trying to decay him from within. He tried again: "Where are we?"
"Safe," Hyachima replied simply, as if that single word answered everything. Then, seeing Merus's expression, he elaborated: "The Hyachima Multiverse. Specifically, Universe 3, Galaxy 4, Planet 1089." He gestured around at the singing stones, the crystalline canopy, the floating jellyfish. "The locals call it Aetherium's Garden. Though 'locals' is generous—only about forty thousand sapient beings live here, and they're scattered across the continents. It's a planet of healing and contemplation. No predators. No conflict. No natural disasters. Just..." he paused, seeming to search for the word, "...peace."
Merus tried to process that. His divine senses, even diminished and injured, reached out automatically to assess his environment. What he felt made his breath catch:
The ambient spiritual energy was clean. Pure. Not sterile like Saganbo's domain, where entropy had scrubbed away all life-essence. Not chaotic like the young 6th Universe they'd hidden in. Just... balanced. Harmonious. The spiritual equivalent of a perfect spring morning.
"Another... multiverse," Merus whispered, the full weight of that hitting him. "We've crossed... we're not in Saganbo's domain anymore."
"Correct," Hyachima confirmed. "You've crossed a fundamental boundary—not just spatial or dimensional, but multiversal. This is my jurisdiction. Saganbo has no authority here, no reach, no power. His entropy doesn't touch this place. You're beyond his grasp entirely."
The relief that should have flooded through Merus didn't come. Instead, different emotions warred within him: confusion, loss, desperate need to know. "The others?" he asked urgently, trying to sit up fully and immediately regretting it as his ribs screamed protest. "Shinji? The crew? Are they—"
"Alive," Hyachima assured him, raising a calming hand. "All of them. Look."
He nodded toward a cluster of glowing moss beds nearby, arranged in a rough circle around a central raised platform. Merus's divine vision—blurry and weak but functional—focused on the figures:
Kagaya, lying on his back, his massive frame still and peaceful. His chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths. The brutal wounds he'd sustained were bandaged with the same solidified-light material that bound Hyachima's arm. His face, usually so animated and loud, was serene in unconsciousness.
Miryoku, curled on her side in a protective position, her white hair fanned out across amber moss like spilled moonlight. Her rose-gold jacket was torn and stained, but someone had cleaned the worst of the blood from her face. Her hands were clasped together at her chest, and faint harmonious light pulsed between them even in sleep—her unconscious mind still trying to heal, to maintain balance.
Netsudo, trembling even in unconsciousness, his orange hair matted with sweat and soot. His hands clutched at the moss as if seeking anchor, and his lips moved soundlessly, muttering words in whatever dream or nightmare he was trapped in.
Shirou, lying with his eyes closed, his posture somehow maintaining a sniper's stillness even in sleep. His broken rifle was clutched to his chest like a talisman or a child's security blanket. Someone had cleaned and bandaged his wounds, but his face still bore the bruises and cuts of brutal combat.
And in the center, on a raised platform of moss that glowed brighter than the others—
Merus's breath caught.
Shinji Kazuhiko.
Whole. Complete. Dressed in simple white robes similar to Hyachima's. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing. His face—intact, unmarred by the horror of fragmentation—looked almost peaceful in unconsciousness.
But he wasn't whole.
His left arm ended just below the shoulder—a smooth, healed stump that spoke of permanent loss. No ragged edges. No bleeding. Just... absence. As if the limb had been erased with surgical precision and the wound sealed by something beyond conventional healing.
His left leg ended at the knee—another stump, equally smooth, equally final.
Merus stared at those absences, understanding crystallizing with cold horror. "You couldn't restore everything," he stated flatly.
"No," Hyachima admitted quietly, genuine regret in his voice. "The erasure Saganbo inflicted... there are limits even to my authority over Beginning. What was unmade—truly unmade at the conceptual level, not just destroyed—leaves a void I cannot easily fill." He looked at the unconscious Shinji with something approaching sorrow. "Time passed between erasure and my reconstruction. The wounds became... fixed. Scarred into causality itself, written into the ledger of 'what is' with such finality that undoing them would require..."
He trailed off, but Merus understood. "Overriding Saganbo's erasure at the fundamental level. The energy cost would kill you."
"Yes," Hyachima confirmed simply. "And I have... other purposes that demand I survive. Purposes that, unfortunately, take precedence over restoring limbs to one Trascender, however sympathetic his circumstances."
Anger stirred beneath Merus's exhaustion. Divine anger, the kind that makes stars flicker. "So he's permanently maimed? After everything he endured—after facing a God of Destruction in his own sanctum, after achieving those heights, after dying and returning and fighting beyond every limit—his reward is to be crippled for eternity?"
"His reward," Hyachima corrected, his voice firm but not unkind, "is to be alive. Do you understand the magnitude of that miracle, Merus?" His ancient eyes bored into the younger god's. "A mortal—any mortal, regardless of their potential—facing a God of Destruction at full power in his own domain should result in immediate, absolute, irreversible annihilation. Not death. Unmaking. Erasure from the memory of reality itself."
He gestured to Shinji's sleeping form. "Instead, he lies there. Breathing. Healing. His consciousness intact, his core stable, his potential still infinite despite the physical limitations." He paused, letting that sink in. "Those scars—those absences—are not marks of weakness. They are proof of survival. Evidence that he challenged a primordial force and lived to bear witness. They will remind him of his limits... and his triumphs in equal measure."
Hyachima stood slowly, wincing as his own injuries protested the movement. "Scars are not weakness, 'God of Creation'. They are the price of still being able to be. And in Shinji Kazuhiko's case, they are badges of the most impossible kind of victory: surviving an encounter that should have ended in his absolute erasure from all timelines."
Before Merus could respond, movement from one of the other moss beds drew their attention.
Miryoku's eyes fluttered open. Violet irises, still clouded with pain and confusion, focused gradually on her surroundings. She blinked slowly, processing the impossible beauty of the garden, then—
Her gaze locked onto the central platform. On Shinji's unconscious form.
"Shinji..." she whispered, and the word carried such relief, such desperate hope, that it was almost painful to hear. She tried to sit up, gasped as her injuries protested, but pushed through anyway, forcing herself upright through sheer will. "He's... he's whole? He's—"
Then she saw the stumps. Her eyes widened. Her hand flew to her mouth.
"No," she breathed, luminous tears already welling. "No, what... what happened to his—"
"He survived," Hyachima stated before she could spiral into panic. His voice was gentle but carried absolute authority. "Saganbo unmade those limbs at a conceptual level. They exist in a state of 'never was.' I could reconstruct his body from his core—flesh, bone, organs, neural pathways. But those specific limbs?" He shook his head. "The cost of restoring them would require me to directly oppose and override Saganbo's erasure. It would consume my entire existence. I would die, and in all likelihood, fail anyway."
Miryoku stared at him, tears streaming freely now, then looked back at Shinji. "But he's... he'll never be able to..."
"He'll adapt," Merus interjected, his voice rough but certain. He'd finally managed to push himself into a sitting position, ignoring the screaming protest of his injuries. "Shinji Kazuhiko has survived being bisected, atomized, erased from local reality, and reduced to a fractured core. If there's anyone in this multiverse or any other who can overcome the loss of limbs and still become stronger..." He met Miryoku's tear-filled eyes. "It's him."
A groan from another moss bed interrupted them.
Kagaya stirred, his massive form shifting, one hand rising to clutch his head. His eyes opened slowly—first one, then the other—and he stared up at the crystalline canopy with an expression of pure, confused wonder.
"...Did I die?" His voice was hoarse, confused, carrying a note of genuine uncertainty. "Is this... SOME KIND OF AFTERLIFE? BECAUSE IT'S WAY PRETTIER THAN I EXPECTED. I FIGURED WARRIOR'S DEATH WOULD LEAD TO, LIKE... A HALL OF ENDLESS FIGHTING OR SOMETHING. NOT..." he gestured vaguely at the singing stones, "...WHATEVER THIS PARADISE SITUATION IS."
"You're not dead," Merus assured him, though a ghost of a smile touched his lips despite everything. "We're safe. We're... elsewhere."
"ELSEWHERE?" Kagaya pushed himself up—slowly, carefully, testing each muscle group as if expecting them to fail. When he was finally sitting upright, he looked around properly, taking in the impossible garden, the floating jellyfish, the harmonious music of the stones. "OKAY, YEAH, THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT SAGANBO'S CREEPY DEATH PLACE. THIS IS..." He struggled for words. "This is actually nice? I'M CONFUSED. LAST THING I REMEMBER WAS THAT PURPLE-HAIRED BASTARD SWATTING US LIKE WE WERE ANNOYING INSECTS AND THEN—"
His eyes found Shinji's form on the central platform. All trace of his usual boisterous energy vanished, replaced by something quieter, more serious. "THE SUNSHINE BOY," he murmured, using the nickname he'd mentally assigned during their desperate fight. "HE'S... HE'S MADE IT?"
"He made it," Hyachima confirmed.
Kagaya's massive shoulders sagged with visible relief. Then he registered the stumps, and his expression darkened. "BUT... HIS ARM. HIS LEG. THEY'RE—"
"Gone," Hyachima stated simply. "Permanently, unless circumstances change dramatically. But he's alive, which given what he faced, is a miracle that borders on impossible."
A third voice, weaker than the others, joined the conversation:
"W-where... what..." Netsudo had awakened, was sitting up, looking around with wide, terrified eyes that darted constantly from one wonder to the next, unable to settle on anything. His hands clutched at the glowing moss as if it might disappear. "This isn't... we're not... he's not going to..." He couldn't seem to finish any sentence, fear
fragmenting his thoughts.
"We're safe," Merus said firmly, using his divine authority to project calm and certainty. "Saganbo cannot reach us here. This is another multiverse entirely. You're safe, Netsudo. You can breathe."
"S-safe?" Netsudo's voice cracked. "Safe?! We were just— he was just— that monster was going to—" His breathing was accelerating, panic attack building, when—
A hand settled on his shoulder. Gentle but firm. Grounding.
Shirou had awakened silently and moved to sit beside the panicking Netsudo without anyone noticing. His crimson eye, was open and alert, while the other remained swollen and barely functional. His face was a mask of bruises and cuts, but his expression was calm, centered.
"Hey," he said quietly, his voice carrying the practiced calm of someone used to steadying his aim under impossible pressure. "Focus on me. Eyes here. Good. Now breathe. In for four counts. Hold for four. Out for four. With me."
He guided Netsudo through the breathing exercise with patient firmness, and gradually—slowly—the panic subsided. The orange-haired boy's hyperventilation smoothed into something more controlled.
"There," Shirou said, giving his shoulder a light squeeze before releasing it. "You're okay. We're all okay. Battered, broken, traumatized probably, but okay."
"S-sorry," Netsudo mumbled, looking down at his hands. "I just... I keep seeing his face. Saganbo's face. The way he looked at us like we were... nothing. Like we didn't even matter enough to remember killing."
"Yeah," Shirou agreed quietly, his own gaze distant. "I know that feeling."
An uncomfortable silence settled over the group. They were alive. They were safe. They were in a place of impossible beauty.
But the weight of what they'd endured—what they'd witnessed, what they'd failed to do—hung heavy in the air.
Finally, Merus broke the silence: "Where's Kuro?"
The question landed like a stone in still water. Everyone looked around, as if expecting the analytical young man with his tech-gauntlet and sharp observations to materialize from behind a boulder or emerge from investigating some fascinating aspect of the garden's ecosystem.
But there was no sign of him.
Hyachima's expression remained neutral, but something flickered in his ancient eyes. "The one with the mechanical enhancements and the Rod fragment? He was not among those I retrieved."
"What?" Merus's divine energy flared weakly, instinctively, before he forced it down. "But he was with Kokuto. He was with us. He helped defeat Daganu. He should have been—"
"I retrieved those in the throne room," Hyachima clarified. "The five of you, broken and bleeding on Saganbo's floor. The fragment of Shinji hovering near the ceiling." His tone remained factual, clinical. "If this... Kuro... was not present in that location when I opened the portals, then he was not transported."
Horror dawned on Merus's face. "Then he's still there. Still in Saganbo's domain. Possibly captured. Possibly—"
"Dead?" Shirou finished bluntly, his sniper's pragmatism cutting through the rising panic. "Or worse than dead. You said Saganbo doesn't waste competent mortals. Maybe he's being... recruited. Or tortured for information. Or—"
"He's alive," Merus interrupted, his voice carrying absolute certainty. His hand went to his chest, where cerulean light pulsed faintly beneath his torn robes. "Before the final assault on the throne room, I placed a fragment of my divine essence within him. A tracker. Insurance. I can still feel it. Faint—incredibly faint, stretched across multiversal distance—but present. He lives."
"But trapped," Miryoku said quietly, new tears forming. "Trapped in that horrible place, alone, with that monster—"
"Kuro is resourceful," Merus stated firmly, though his expression was grim. "More resourceful than any mortal I've encountered in millennia. If anyone can survive behind enemy lines, find a way to hide or escape or endure..." He trailed off, the confidence in his voice not quite reaching his eyes. "He'll find a way."
"And if he doesn't?" Shirou asked, quiet, serious. "Do we just... leave him there?"
"We don't have a choice," Hyachima interjected, his tone allowing no argument. "A rescue mission back into Saganbo's multiverse—past his defenses, through his Monarchs, into his very sanctum—would be suicide. You barely survived escaping with my help. You wouldn't last thirty seconds attempting to return."
He looked at each of them in turn. "Kuro's fate, for now, rests in his own hands and whatever mercy Saganbo chooses to extend. Which, based on his demonstrated character, is..." he paused delicately, "...not encouraging. But not hopeless either. Saganbo values competence. If Kuro proves useful, he may yet survive in some capacity."
The group absorbed this in heavy silence. One of their own, left behind. Trapped. Fate unknown.
Miryoku wiped her tears, her jaw setting with determination. "Then we get stronger. Strong enough to go back. Strong enough to save him and—"
"Speaking of which," Shirou interjected, his sharp mind cutting to the next pressing question, "who exactly are you?" His crimson eye fixed on Hyachima with the assessing gaze of someone used to analyzing threats from a distance. "You're obviously not human. Not even close. That display in Saganbo's throne room—the way you countered him, the authority you radiated—you're a god. But which one? And why did you save us? 'Mr.X'..."
Hyachima smiled faintly. "Direct. I appreciate that." He inclined his head in a gesture that managed to be both respectful and somewhat condescending. "I am Hyachima. The God of Absolute Beginning. The architect of this multiverse's inception. And as for why I saved you..." His ancient eyes turned to the unconscious Shinji. "Let's simply say I have... interest in how this particular story concludes."
"That's not an answer," Shirou pressed, his tone flat but carrying an edge. "Gods don't risk confrontation with other gods out of curiosity. You threatened to unmake Saganbo's entire multiverse just to extract us. That's not casual interest—that's strategic investment." His crimson eye narrowed. "So what do you want with Shinji? With us?"
Hyachima's smile widened slightly, carrying genuine amusement. "Perceptive. You'd make an interesting adversary if circumstances were different." He gestured around at the garden. "But this conversation can wait. You're all injured, exhausted, and—" his gaze swept over them clinically, "—in Merus's case, significantly more damaged than you realize."
Merus stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"Touch your core," Hyachima instructed. "The divine nexus at your center. Tell me what you feel."
Merus hesitated, then closed his eyes, directing his consciousness inward. His awareness sank through layers of physical being, past flesh and bone, into the spiritual architecture that defined him as a god. He reached for his divine core, that blazing sun of creation energy that had sustained him for—
His eyes snapped open, wide with shock and dawning horror.
It was dim. Not just depleted from the battles—that was expected. But fundamentally diminished. The core that should have been a supernova was barely a candle flame. And around it, where there should have been smooth, pristine spiritual structure, he felt... cracks. Fractures. Damage that went deeper than any physical wound could reach.
"No," he whispered, cerulean blood draining from his face. "No, that's not—it can't be—"
"The Gorogilian plasma integration," Hyachima stated clinically. "You forced a resonance with foreign divine essence not once but multiple times, pushing your body beyond its designed limits. Then you directly absorbed Daganu's speed-essence through blood consumption, layering a third incompatible power structure onto your already-strained core." His expression held something that might have been sympathy. "Your divine architecture is fractured, Merus. Not broken—not yet—but compromised to a degree that will take centuries to heal naturally."
Merus stared at his hands. They were trembling. He tried to manifest creation energy—the most basic exercise, something he'd been able to do since his inception—and managed only a faint, sputtering cerulean spark that died almost immediately.
"How... how much did I lose?" His voice was hollow.
"Approximately ninety percent of your combat capability," Hyachima replied with brutal honesty. "Your divine regeneration is slowed to a crawl. Your creation constructs will be unstable and drain you rapidly. Your physical enhancement is barely above mortal-tier. In your current state, a competent Monarch would kill you in under thirty seconds."
The words landed like physical blows. Miryoku gasped. Kagaya's expression darkened with shared pain. Even Shirou looked disturbed.
"Can it be healed?" Miryoku asked desperately. "There has to be something—"
"Time," Hyachima said simply. "Centuries of rest and careful regeneration. Or—" he paused meaningfully, "—divine intervention from someone with authority over restoration. Which, unfortunately, I do not possess. My domain is Beginning, not repair. I could unmake you and reconstruct you from inception, but you'd essentially be a different being. All your memories, experiences, relationships—lost."
Merus slumped forward, the full weight of his condition crashing down on him. He'd pushed himself past every limit to protect Shinji, to buy time, to hold back the tide. And in doing so, he'd crippled himself for potentially millennia.
"I failed as a god," he muttered, voice thick with despair. "Failed as a mentor. Failed as a protector. And now I can barely manifest a spark of power. What use am I to any of them now?"
"YOU'RE ALIVE," Kagaya interjected forcefully, his deep voice carrying surprising gentleness. "YOU'RE HERE. YOU FOUGHT A GOD AND HIS MONARCHS AND YOU'RE STILL BREATHING. THAT'S NOT FAILURE—THAT'S THE MOST IMPRESSIVE SURVIVAL I'VE EVER SEEN!"
"He's right," Miryoku added, moving closer despite her own pain. Her harmonious light—dim but still present—reached out to touch Merus's shoulder. "You saved us. Multiple times. Your weakness now is the price of our survival, not evidence of failure."
Merus wanted to believe them. But the hollow sensation where his power should be felt like a void that might never be filled.
A weak groan from the central platform drew everyone's attention.
Shinji was stirring.
His head moved slightly. His remaining hand twitched. His breathing pattern changed from deep sleep to the shallow, rapid rhythm of someone surfacing toward consciousness.
"Shinji!" Miryoku started to stand, then gasped as her injuries protested. Kagaya caught her, steadying her.
"EASY," he rumbled. "YOU'RE TOO TIRED TO—"
"I'm fine," she insisted, pushing against his supporting hands. "He's waking up! After everything Saganbo said, after that horrible revelation about his sister that most of us heard, he needs—"
"He needs to not have five people crowding him the instant he opens his eyes," Shirou interjected pragmatically. "Give him space to orient. He's waking up in an unfamiliar place, probably still processing psychological trauma, and—" he gestured to his own battered state, "—we don't exactly look reassuring right now."
Hyachima was already moving toward the central platform, his movements careful despite his injuries. "I'll handle the initial contact. The rest of you—" he glanced back, "—prepare yourselves. Saganbo's revelation about his sister has done catastrophic damage to his psyche. When he wakes, he won't be the same person who fell unconscious."
On the platform, Shinji's eyes flickered open.
For a moment, they were unfocused, staring up at the crystalline canopy without comprehension. Then awareness rushed back like a flood:
Saganbo's sanctum. The fragment. The eye. The core. Hyachima. The rescue. And then—
Kiyomi.
His remaining hand shot up to clutch his head, blue eyes going wide with remembered horror. His breathing accelerated toward hyperventilation. "No, no, no—" The words tumbled out, barely coherent. "Kiyomi—she's not—he said she was—"
"Shinji." Hyachima's voice cut through the rising panic with calm authority. "Look at me. Focus."
Shinji's wild eyes found the blonde god's face. For a moment he just stared, struggling to process, to orient, to understand where he was and why he was intact when the last thing he remembered was being a hovering eye and—
He looked down at himself.
Saw his body. Whole. Dressed in white robes. Felt the moss beneath him, the air on his skin, the beating of his heart.
Then he tried to move his left arm to touch his face and—
Nothing.
He looked down. Saw the stump where his arm should be. Smooth. Healed. Final.
His remaining hand moved to his left leg. Found it ending at the knee. Another absence. Another permanent scar.
"What—" His voice cracked. "What happened to—"
"Saganbo's erasure," Hyachima explained gently but clearly. "The limbs he unmade cannot be easily restored. They exist in a state of 'never was.' I reconstructed your body from your core—every organ, every system, every neural pathway intact. But those specific limbs?" He shook his head. "The cost of restoring them would require me to fundamentally oppose Saganbo's power. It would kill me, and likely fail."
Shinji stared at the stumps. Processed. Then, surprisingly, his expression didn't crumple into despair. Instead, something hard and cold settled into his features.
"Prosthetics," he stated flatly. "Mechanical replacements. My engineering background—I know the principles. If there's advanced enough technology in this multiverse, I can—"
"There is," Hyachima confirmed, something like approval flickering in his eyes. "Several civilizations in my multiverse have mastered bio-mechanical integration far beyond what your Earth had achieved. Limbs that interface directly with neural pathways, that can channel spiritual energy, that can be upgraded and modified. You won't be whole in the conventional sense, but you can be functional. Perhaps even enhanced beyond what biology alone could provide."
Shinji nodded once, sharply, filing that information away. Then his expression cracked, the hard pragmatism giving way to something raw and desperate.
"Kiyomi," he whispered, and just saying her name seemed to cause him physical pain. "What Saganbo said—tell me he was lying. Tell me it was psychological warfare, that my sister is actually dead and not—" his voice broke, "—not that. Not mindless. Not destroyed. Please."
Hyachima's ancient eyes held profound sympathy. "I'm sorry, Shinji Kazuhiko. But Saganbo spoke truth. Cruel truth, delivered with malicious intent to wound you, but truth nonetheless."
He settled into a sitting position on the edge of the platform, his posture suggesting this would be a longer conversation.
"Your sister transcended. The trauma of near-death, the proximity to your own awakening core, ignited her spark. But her mind—sixteen years old, unprepared, without the gradual awakening you experienced through repeated death and regeneration—couldn't contain Trascender power. It incinerated her consciousness. What remains is..." he struggled for a gentle way to phrase it, "...a being of immense power without the personality, memories, or will to direct it. She exists. She radiates force. But the Kiyomi you knew—the girl who trained with you, who laughed with you, who looked up to you—is most likely gone."
Tears streamed down Shinji's face, but his expression remained eerily controlled. "Can she be saved? Can her mind be... restored? Rebuilt?"
"I don't know," Hyachima admitted. "Trascender consciousness is unique. The normal rules of mental healing don't apply. Her mind wasn't damaged—it was erased. Reconstruction would require..." he trailed off, thinking. "It would require either finding some fragment of her original consciousness that survived—unlikely but not impossible—or somehow imprinting a new personality while maintaining the essential core of who she was. Both options are theoretically possible but practically... I've never heard of it being successfully accomplished."
"But it could be done," Shinji pressed, seizing on any thread of hope. "Theoretically."
"Theoretically," Hyachima acknowledged carefully. "But Shinji, you need to understand—even if you could restore her mind, the being that emerged might not be Kiyomi. She might have her memories as data but lack the emotional context that made those memories meaningful. She might remember you but not love you. Remember training but not feel the joy of it. You could save the vessel and lose the soul."
Shinji was silent for a long moment, processing. Then: "I have to try. I have to find her. Even if the chance is one in a billion, even if it takes me a thousand years—I have to try."
"I understand," Hyachima said gently. "But first, you need to survive. To grow stronger. Because right now, you couldn't fight off a half determined Saganbo, let alone track down a transcendent force wandering the world while he actively hunts her."
The reminder of his weakness—the permanent loss of limbs, the exhaustion still weighing on his spirit—seemed to hit Shinji like a physical blow. His remaining hand clenched into a fist against the moss.
"Then tell me how," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Tell me what I need to do to become strong enough. Strong enough to find her. Strong enough to fight Saganbo. Strong enough to save everyone I've failed."
Hyachima's expression became unreadable. "That," he said slowly, "brings us to why I truly intervened. Why I risked confrontation with Saganbo. Why I brought you all here to my multiverse." He stood, his white robes flowing around him, and his presence seemed to expand, filling the garden with primordial weight.
"I require a service, Shinji Kazuhiko. A task of such magnitude and danger that it makes your battles with Saganbo's Monarchs seem like practice exercises. A mission that will demand you push beyond every limit you've discovered and find limits you didn't know existed."
The gathered allies—Merus, Miryoku, Kagaya, Netsudo, Shirou—all stiffened, sensing the gravity of what was coming.
"In exchange," Hyachima continued, "I will provide you with everything you need. Prosthetics that can rival or exceed your original limbs. Training that will take you beyond what has been taught to you. Access to resources, knowledge, and power that exist nowhere in Saganbo's multiverse. And when you're ready—when you're truly ready—safe passage back to your home multiverse or near it to find your sister and settle your accounts with the God of Destruction."
Shinji pushed himself up into a sitting position, movements awkward with only one arm for support but determined. His blue eyes—still rimmed with tears but burning with desperate resolve—met Hyachima's ancient gaze.
"What's the task?"
Hyachima smiled, but it wasn't a pleasant expression. It was the smile of someone about to reveal a truth that would shatter comfortable illusions.
"The balance of my multiverse is collapsing. An ancient evil—something that predates my inception of this reality—is awakening. If it fully emerges, it will consume not just my multiverse but cascade into others, potentially including Saganbo's domain and beyond. The threat is existential. And stopping it will require..." he paused, letting the weight build, "...a Trascender."
The silence that followed was profound.
"You want me to save your multiverse," Shinji stated flatly, "in exchange for the tools I need to save mine."
"Precisely," Hyachima confirmed. "A transaction. Mutually beneficial if you succeed. Catastrophically final for everyone if you fail."
Merus struggled to his feet despite his injuries, cerulean energy sputtering weakly around him. "Absolutely not. He's been through enough. He's wounded, traumatized, maimed—you can't possibly expect him to—"
"I accept," Shinji interrupted, his voice carrying absolute finality.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
"Shinji, no!" Miryoku protested, her harmonious light flaring with distress. "You don't even know what this ancient evil is! What if it's worse than Saganbo? What if—"
"Then I'll fight it anyway," Shinji said simply, painfully climbing to his feet. He swayed, balance thrown off by the missing leg, but caught himself against a nearby stone pillar. "I need to become stronger. This—" he gestured to the garden, to Hyachima, to the promise of resources, "—is my best chance. Maybe my only chance."
He looked at each of his allies in turn. "I failed Kiyomi. I failed to stop Kokuto. I failed against Saganbo. I'm done failing. If fighting this ancient evil is the price of becoming strong enough to fix everything I've broken, then I'll pay it."
"YOU DIDN'T FAIL!" Kagaya burst out, his voice cracking with emotion. "YOU FOUGHT A GOD AND SURVIVED, YOU—"
"I survived," Shinji interrupted coldly. "Survival isn't victory. My sister is a mindless weapon. My friend is trapped behind enemy lines. Billions died because I wasn't strong enough to stop Saganbo earlier. Those are facts. Those are my failures."
His blue eyes hardened. "And I will correct them. Whatever it takes."
Hyachima studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Very well. Then let me properly explain what you've agreed to. The scale of the threat. The unknown theoretical possibilities of the enemy. And why—" his ancient eyes held genuine warning, "—this task may very well be the death of you, Trascender or not."
He raised his hand, and the air before them shimmered. Golden-white energy coalesced into a three-dimensional projection—a map of sorts, showing abstract representations of cosmic structures: multiverses like bubbles in foam, the Asagaverse as an impossible latticework containing them, and something else.
Something between the multiverses.
A darkness that wasn't absence of light but something older, something that predated the concept of light itself. It pulsed with a rhythm that made even looking at its representation feel wrong, like staring at a wound in reality's flesh.
"This," Hyachima said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of cosmic dread, "is what sleeps beneath my multiverse. What stirs even now. What will, if left unchecked, devour everything we've built."
He looked at Shinji, at the broken but determined young man standing on one leg, tears still drying on his face, fists clenched with desperate resolve.
"This is the enemy that makes Saganbo look like a petulant child playing with toys."
The projection pulsed, and every person in the garden felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
"Welcome, Fourth Trascender, to the true conflict. The one that will determine whether reality itself has a future."
The singing stones fell silent. Even the drifting jellyfish seemed to pause. The garden, for all its beauty, suddenly felt very small and very fragile.
And Shinji Kazuhiko, reduced to stumps and tears and desperate determination, stared at the darkness in the projection and thought only one thing:
*I will become strong enough. Whatever it takes. For Kiyomi. For everyone.*
The Multiversal Conflict had ended not with triumph but with survival purchased at terrible cost. Shinji had escaped annihilation but lost limbs and gained the knowledge of his sister's fate—a wound that would never truly heal. Kuro remained trapped in enemy territory. Merus was crippled at the divine level. The crew was scattered, broken, barely functional.
But they had survived. And survival, however bitter, was the prerequisite for everything else.
A new chapter dawned. Not of recovery—there would be no peaceful healing montage. But of preparation. Of forging broken pieces into something harder, sharper, more dangerous than what had been broken.
Hyachima's multiverse awaited, with its ancient evil, its impossible task, and its promise of power sufficient to challenge gods.
The cost would be steep. The danger absolute. The chance of survival uncertain.
But for Shinji Kazuhiko, kneeling in a garden of impossible beauty while staring at a darkness that predated beauty itself, the choice was already made.
Forward. Always forward. Until Kiyomi was saved or he ceased to exist trying.
The Fourth Gust had weathered the Multiversal Conflict. Now it would face something older, deeper, more fundamental.
And in the balance hung not just one multiverse, but potentially all of them.
[Multiversal Conflict Arc : End]