The mana over the Clover Kingdom was dying.
It wasn't a sudden event, but a creeping sickness. A colorless fog bled from the eastern border, and wherever its gray tendrils touched, the world seemed to forget its own rules. Spells cast by the most powerful Magic Knights unraveled mid-chant, their brilliant light fading into listless dust. Grimoires fluttered weakly, their pages growing dim.
Near the capital, the front line was a scene of chaos and confusion.
"Sea Dragon's Roar!" Noelle Silva thrust her wand forward, a colossal serpent of water rising to meet the gray tide. But as it struck the fog, the dragon lost its form, dissolving into little more than a lukewarm drizzle before it could even connect.
"What is this? It's eating our magic!" she cried out, her silver braids whipping in a wind that held no power.
Nearby, Yuno stood cloaked in the golden light of his squad. The wind spirit, Bell, zipped frantically around his head, her form flickering. He unleashed a torrent of blades made from pure wind, a storm of emerald fury. They, too, were erased upon contact with the mist.
He grit his teeth, a rare bead of sweat tracing his temple. It wasn't that his magic was being countered. It felt more fundamental, as if the very language of mana was being redacted.
Then, a blur of motion and a yell that cut through the despair.
"NOT DONE YET!"
Asta, a whirlwind of black cloth and honed muscle, sprinted past them all. He held the Demon-Slayer Sword, its rustic black iron seeming to absorb the colorless haze around it. He was the only thing in this unnatural landscape that felt solid, real.
He plunged into the heart of the fog, swinging his massive blade. With every arc, the gray mist was dispelled, not with light or magic, but with its absolute absence.
The Black Bulls followed close behind, providing what support they could, their expressions a mixture of grim determination and shock.
Deep within the colorless zone, Asta found the source. It stood in a clearing where the grass was bone-white and the trees had faded to charcoal sketches. It was a tall figure cloaked in gray robes, its face a featureless void. In one hand, it held a long, obsidian quill that dripped a thick, ink-like substance that sizzled as it hit the ground, erasing the very concept of the earth beneath it.
It was another Redactor, but unlike the one in Z-City, this one was a scribe, an editor of magic.
As Yuno and Noelle caught up, the Redactor turned its blank face towards them. It made no sound, but again, colorless text hung in the air, a declaration visible to all.
[Mana signature detected. Classification: High-Tier Spirit Magic.]
[Action: Correcting flow.]
The scribe lifted its quill and simply drew a line through the air.
Yuno cried out as Bell shrieked, her light dimming dangerously. The wind around him died. The deep well of mana he had always drawn from felt suddenly capped, unreachable. The Redactor had severed his connection to it.
"Yuno!" Asta yelled, turning to face the creature.
The scribe's attention snapped to him. Its faceless head tilted, as if examining a particularly nasty grammatical error.
[Anomaly detected. Classification: Anti-Magic Host.]
[A fundamental contradiction within this world's syntax. The presence of 'zero' in a system built on 'one'.]
[Action: Erase.]
The gray ink didn't blot out Asta; it flowed toward his grimoire. The five-leaf clover floating by his hip was engulfed in the stuff. Asta fell to his knees with a scream, feeling not pain, but a deep, hollowing emptiness. The black markings that crisscrossed his body began to fade, his devil union form faltering.
His power—his entire identity—was being unwritten.
Inside his mind, the devil Liebe roared with pure, unadulterated rage. That power wasn't given. It was earned. It was fought for. It was theirs.
A surge of anti-magic, blacker and more absolute than anything the Redactor had produced, erupted from the grimoire, fighting the gray ink to a standstill.
A new presence descended upon the field—heavy, oppressive, and smelling faintly of cheap cigarettes.
"Man, you kids really know how to make a mess."
Captain Yami Sukehiro stood on a slight rise, his katana resting on his shoulder. He took a long drag, exhaling a plume of smoke. His gaze wasn't on the robed scribe, but on the colorless air around it, the frayed edges of their reality.
"This thing's not just erasing your spells," he grunted, his eyes sharp with an understanding that transcended magical theory. "It's tearing out the whole page."
The darkness around him deepened, coalescing into a tangible aura.
The Redactor registered the threat.
[Identify: Arcane Anomaly. Classification: Dark Magic. Unorthodox variable.]
"Variable, huh?" Yami grinned, a predator's smile. "Wrong. I'm the one constant you can count on."
He moved, his dark coat billowing. "Time to push past your limits, kids. Right here, right now."
He drew his katana. It wasn't just a piece of metal; it was an extension of a magic that bordered on the conceptual.
"Asta! Get ready to hit it with that nullification bullshit of yours!"
He didn't aim for the Redactor. He aimed for the space beside it.
"Dark Magic: Dimension Slash."
A line of perfect blackness split the world. It didn't tear or burn; it simply cut. It severed the fabric of the scene itself, slicing through rules and permissions. The Redactor was physically untouched, but Yami had cut the invisible thread that connected it to the Null Editor—the string that gave it authority.
The scribe flickered, its power sputtering out. The colorless text in the air dissolved. It was just a creature now, no longer an editor, vulnerable for the first time.
"NOW!" Yami roared.
Asta surged forward, anti-magic roaring back to life. He swung the Demon-Slayer Sword not to cut, but to cleanse. The flat of the blade slapped against the Redactor's chest.
There was no clang of metal on flesh. The sword's absolute negation flowed into the creature, and the scribe shrieked a sound like a thousand pages tearing at once. It imploded, dissolving into a massive, uncontrolled wave of pure mana that rushed back into the world.
The gray vanished. The trees regained their green, the sky its blue. The thin, dying air grew thick and vibrant with magic once more.
But Yami's cut remained. The black, vertical line wavered in the air, a wound in space that refused to close.
And through it, they saw something.
It wasn't another landscape. It was a void, a dark gutter between the panels of reality. And a figure stood there, observing them. He had stark white hair, a black blindfold covering his eyes, and the relaxed, confident posture of someone for whom the laws of physics were a polite suggestion.
Gojo Satoru was trapped between worlds, and he looked thoroughly amused by the spectacle. He brought two fingers to his temple in a lazy, mocking salute.
A wide, unsettlingly handsome smirk spread across his face. "Well, that's a new one."
The dimensional tear snapped shut, leaving the Black Bulls and their rivals standing in the sudden, deafening silence of a world put right.