Dusk and Dawn

[Jao Shi]

Outside The Estate

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The battlefield was a maelstrom of destruction. The colossal Voidkyn, a creature of nightmares with limbs like animated mountains, tore through the landscape. Its every movement was an earthquake, crushing entire platoons of soldiers and carving chasms into the earth. Yet, amidst this chaos, the SLAYERS, masters of their art, danced on the edge of oblivion. Their rigorous training, honed through countless trials, allowed them to evade swift, deadly strikes by a hair's breadth. They moved with a grace that defied the sheer terror of the moment, all while weaving the intricate patterns of their ava.

Their focus was absolute, their combined powers on the cusp of completion, when the sky itself began to betray them. A suffocating darkness, like a bruise spreading across the moonlit canvas, started to devour the light. The very clouds seemed to writhe with a malevolent energy, crackling with the promise of electrical devastation. Uriko's advanced sensors and Alona's innate elemental intuition screamed in unison, a cacophony of alarm that pierced through the din of battle. The sheer, unadulterated shock of this encroaching threat forced Urkio, who had been using a rocky outcrop for cover, to reactivate her optical channels. Her gaze snapped towards the source of the disturbance, zooming in with a desperate intensity.

"Obscene atmospheric pressure inbound..." she gasped, her voice strained, "It's Him! Kaito Owaki!"

"Fuck bastard," a grim voice spat back, "Finally making his move."

"Initiate Emergency Protocol now!" The order was sharp, urgent, Eridin's voice. "Alpha Omega clearance granted!"

"COPY!"

A collective, guttural scream tore from the SLAYERS. In that instant, the seals on their suit limiters were shattered, released with a surge of power that plunged their combat suits into a blinding luminescence, saturated with a surplus of naten. Synthesis Protocol Alpha Omega. A top-secret, high-risk emergency override designed to push the SLAYERS, and the very suits they wore, to their absolute maximum potential. It was the ultimate trump card, a final desperate gamble, to be deployed only when all other options had dissolved into dust.

The SLAYER suits were awe-inspiring feats of engineering, but they were also inherently dangerous. The immense power of the AIONS nanites and the ANNI program, the very lifeblood of their enhanced capabilities, was a force that could easily overwhelm the host. The limiters were a safeguard, a necessary evil to prevent the user's mind and body from succumbing to the unbearable strain. They modulated the flow of Nestu and kinetic energy, ensuring that a user didn't burn out or, worse, lose control of the power they channeled. They were the firewalls, the guardian angels protecting the warrior from the very arsenal they wielded.

But Alpha Omega bypassed these critical safeguards. The ANNI program was unleashed, its leash severed, allowing it to amplify the warrior's EGO and abilities without any restriction. The AIONS nanites, pushed far beyond their safety parameters, became conduits for exponentially greater amounts of energy, able to process, store, and release it with terrifying efficiency.

The outcome was a devastating escalation of power. A standard combat maneuver, even a signature move, could now become a cataclysmic event, a force of nature unleashed. The term "appropriate" felt woefully inadequate for what was about to unfold.

As bolts of incandescent azure lightning arced and rampaged around Alona, she watched, her eyes wide with a dawning horror and a grim resolve. A nearby AION droid atomized beside her, a fleeting puff of displaced air. She clenched her fist, a wave of absolute certainty washing over her, absolving any lingering doubt. In this grim battle of attrition, their current state was a slow march towards defeat. The relentless lightning crashing from above, the thrashing, black behemoth of the Voidkyn on the ground – victory seemed a distant, impossible dream. It was then that Alona's eyes blazed with a light that could only be described as divine.

"Veryn, Uriko," her voice, though strained, rang with an unshakeable purpose, "We're going after Kaito... we're using... that."

A heavy silence fell among them, a shared understanding that rippled through their minds. They knew precisely what Alona's desperate gambit entailed, and though their hearts grew heavy with the knowledge, they also recognized its grim necessity. In their current predicament, it was the only path to victory. For even though ALon was the youngest of them, she was, in fact.

Shinobi

"We're here for you, Alona," Veryn’s voice was a quiet promise.

"Merza Zanji, we are leaving that thing to you guys," Uriko acknowledged, her gaze flicking towards the other SLAYERS.

"Get out of here already… hag…" Merza grunted, a familiar barb laced with concern.

"Don't die on me… pissy body," Uriko retorted, the insult a testament to their bond.

"Finally, I get to CUT LOOSE!!" a third voice boomed, eager for the coming storm. It was Zanji's ready for the crescendo of this battle to be reached.

With a shared nod, the trio ascended, launching themselves towards the heart of the crackling storm, towards Kaito Owaki.

"Synthesis Strike...,"

Alona declared, her suit morphing, coalescing into a new form, an alloy humming with latent electrical energy. The strike began with Alona positioning herself as a living conduit, a vessel for the storm's most devastating electrical attacks. A feat made possible by the metamorphic capabilities of her suit. Becoming a living lightning rod.

Her already formidable Nestu mastery, for once, was not focused on offense, but on pure, unadulterated absorption. The objective: to draw in every ounce of raw, electrical energy, to supercharge her ANNI system to the brink of catastrophic overload. As Alona began to absorb the torrent, the strain on her body and spirit became almost unbearable.

It was at this critical juncture that Veryn's Healer EGO became paramount. He channeled a hyper-concentrated stream of his restorative thermal light directly into Alona, a lifeline of energy that mended her ravaged body and shored up her defenses against the relentless onslaught.

Veryn wasn't merely healing her; he was acting as a living failsafe, allowing her to absorb power that her body should have never been able to contain without disintegration, even as she plunged deeper into the eye of the storm.

Uriko's ANNI program, with its unparalleled analytical and predictive capabilities, became the conductor of this deadly symphony. She meticulously calculated the precise moment Alona’s body reached its absolute limit, the perfect threshold of absorbed energy before complete collapse. Alona soared through the storm, each bolt of lightning drawn to her like a moth to a vengufl flame. Then, with a single, silent command, a perfectly timed signal sent through their shared consciousness, Uriko initiated the final stage.

Nestu Nebula

Alona coalesced the immense, volatile energy within the palm of her hand, forming a miniature star, a nascent sun born of raw power. A process she repeats, rapidly expelling and condensing the accumulated power until she is surrounded by a litany of miniature stars orbiting around her.

Absorb

Condesed

Expell

Each new star adds to the collective thermal charge, increasing the potential for what was about to be a catastrophic event. As the constellation of stars grew, the area around her became unbearably hot, the air crackling with immense power. With Veryn's efforts and her limiters removed, she was able to create twenty small stars by the time she locked eyes with Kaito.

"I don't even wish to think how it is you...insects came to possess Nestu....but this...is how you weild the birthright of the Denkoushi!!"

At Uriko's cue, an eerie maniacal smile appeared upon her face. She ceased all resistance, allowing the first star she had created to collapse. The chain reaction was nigh instantaneous.

"Sythesis Strike; Nestu Nebula!"

The collapsing energy from the first star's implosion ignited the next, and the next, in a devastating domino effect. The result was a series of cascading novas, each one feeding the next, creating a rippling wave of destructive force that could vaporize a large city or turn a mountain into a pillar of molten rock. The Nebula was not just an attack; it was a final gambit for not even its user could survive such an advent. Its sheer power scarred the very atmosphere for miles, a testament to the ultimate sacrifice. And the determination of a people who would give anything to bring about change to the derelict Edoan system.

Simultaneously, on the ground, Zanji and Merza, alongside the remaining fifty AION Sentinels, faced the hulking Voidkyn colossus.

"Activating EGO transfer: Zanji, this could kill you," Eridin warned, his voice grave.

"I don't give a damn," Zanji roared, his resolve unwavering, "What kind of man would I be if a little girl proved to have more balls than me!"

In that moment, Zanji became the willing host to not one, but two EGOs, merging them into a single, potent vessel. His suit augmented, adapted, and wielded both the Warrior and Knight abilities. His dual blades seamlessly combined, forming a single, massive greatsword.

"FOR CAIN!! FOR ALONA! FOR EVERY SHI WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR OUR CAUSE!"

With each colossal blow the Colossus landed, Zanji absorbed its awe-inspiring kinetic energy, transforming the agony of his wounds into further fuel for his Warrior EGO. Each strike, though accompanied by inescapable anguish, only allowed him to persevere. Blood filled his mouth, his nanites working overtime, a frantic symphony of repair.

The AIONS with him, each adopting Merza's Outlaw EGO, clashed with the beast's colossal feet, allowing their bodies to meld with its very substance before unleashing an array of Nestu explosions. Not of flame, but of ice, rapidly freezing and solidifying portions of the tar-like hide. Zanji became a scarlet berserker, a blazing comet of black and crimson against the night. Reaching the threshold of energy his augmented body could contain, he gathered all his might and launched himself high into the air. His greatsword, now brimming with molten power, pulsed with an infernal glow.

"Synthesis Strike!"

With a roar that echoed through the ravaged landscape, he ignited the cumulative kinetic force within him, producing a blazing conflagrated blade in his hand. He wielded a blaze equal to that of a living star.

"Ever End..."

He descended, the sword a celestial hammer of judgment, cutting through the scarred atmosphere like a cosmic gavel. It erupted in a searing torrent of flames and pressure, leveling a mountain range in its wake. It was an act of catastrophic might, carving a gaping, molten wound into the very flesh of Vescrutia, a desperate attempt to devour every speck of blackness that seeped from the beast. One that could leave Zanji in a fatal condition.

Inside The Estate

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The words of Zeroken were a venom for the soul, a croddered nether that seeped through the cracks in Jao’s armor and dripped onto his ego. They were whispers of failure, taunts of inadequacy, each syllable crafted to unravel the very fabric of his resolve. But even as Zeroken spoke, even with the Djynn of chaos whispering its own madness into his thoughts, Jao’s purpose held firm. The fire of retribution that burned in his core was a conflagration too vast, too primal, for even the Nether Serpent to swallow whole. Zeroken, a silhouette against the jagged hole he’d torn in the ceiling, offered one last sneering laugh before being barreled through he ceiling.

Jao prepared to follow, to leap through the newly made skylight and finish it, but the darkness in the room began to move. It wasn't a simple gathering of shadows; it was a congealing. From the corners, where light had long since died, a series of twisting forms manifested. Voidkyn. They rose like liquid night, their dilapidated shapes a horrifying parody of his own silhouette. His own image, twisted and skewed into these horrid facades, stared back at him with empty sockets that drank the very light from the air. The sight was a personal violation, an intimate mockery that made his blood boil beyond reason.

"Pathetic!" Jao snarled.

Just as the first Voidkyn lunged, a liquid whip of a limb extending towards his face, a blur of silver and chrome intercepted it. Yang. The nanites had finished their work, propagating a new arm of gleaming, articulated metal where a stump had been moments before. He was at Jao’s side in a heartbeat, his own blade a whisper of steel. A high-pitched shing echoed four times as he deflected a flurry of swift, shadowy strikes. The movements were impossibly fluid, a dance of defense that bought the crucial second Jao needed.

Jao’s eyes narrowed. He let the rage flow, not as a blind fury, but as fuel. The very air around them grew heavy, compressing until it felt as thick as diamonds. A low hiss emanated from his being as Kuro Kiri, the giant coiling around him, awakened. Its metallic flesh-like scales, once the color of a starless midnight, erupted into a scathing, blackened blaze. Now reflecting not a mere snake but the Black Dragon of Edo itself. This was the Void Pyre, a fire that burned not with heat, but with hungry, absolute annulment.

The serpent moved, uncoiling from Jao to encircle them both. It became a whirling cone of protective fire, a vortex of spiritual annihilation. The Voidkyn, caught in the tempest, shrieked a soundless scream that vibrated in the soul. The black tar that was their substance, that fluid, shifting night, began to harden. The Void Pyre petrified them, forcing their mutable forms into brittle, obsidian-like stone, freezing them in their grotesque lunges.

With a sharp cry, Yang slammed the flat of his blade against the pommel of his sword. A shockwave of pure kinetic force pulsed outwards. The clang was the final note in their symphony of destruction. The petrified Voidkyn shattered, exploding into little more than glittering black dust caught up in the serpent’s spin.

At that same instant, a bolt of pure black lightning—Zeroken’s answer—lanced across the room from the skylight above. It met the spinning vortex, but instead of exploding, the energy seemed to die. The lightning became dead weight, its crackling power smothered and absorbed by the Void Pyre, a flame that consumed all things, corporeal or otherwise. It was the fire of Kuroi Ryu's soul, and that soul now blazed as part of Jao’s very being.

Jao’s voice echoed from within the vortex, no longer his own. It was a deeper, raspier tone, like stones grinding in the abyss.

"The Sky belongs not to the Hawk... Owaki flea."

The oscillating serpent slowed, its pyre-wreathed scales receding. When it ceased its movement, it revealed Jao, transformed. The helmet that hid his face was now immolated, wreathed in the black, near-greyish blaze of the Void Pyre, obscuring his features in a shifting mask of dark flame. Yang, however, had vanished from view, as if consumed by the same power that now empowered his friend, drawn into the impossible space within the serpent's protection.

There was no sound of movement, no blur of speed. One moment, Jao was in the center of the dust-filled room. Next, he simply was before Zeroken, standing on the precipice of the ruined roof, the wind whipping at them both.

The coiling Serpent that had been his shield was gone, repurposed. In Jao’s hand, he now held a single, impossibly long katana, its blade forged from the serpent's essence—a sliver of midnight that subtly seemed to move ever so softly, mirroring the serpent that it was born from. The tip, emboldened by a concentrated point of Void Pyre, hummed with silent power a mere inch from Zeroken's throat. The heat radiating from it was a cold one, a heat that promised not just death, but utter pause..

Jao’s scathing, otherworldly glare, visible through the flickering flames of his helm, was more than human, more than Djynn. It was draconic.

"The Sky," the abyssal voice whispered, the sound carried on the gale, " is the domain of Gods and Dragons."

Callously, with a chilling lack of hesitation, Jao-Phosis began to drive the blade forward, fully intending to end Zeroken's fetid prattling once and for all. The serpent’s hunger was his own, and it demanded to be fed.

[Fate I]

The Voidkyn titan roared with a sound so deep it rattled bone and soul alike. Every motion of its colossal limbs shook the mountainside, avalanches crashing in its wake.

Above the chaos, Kaito Owaki hovered cloaked in storm clouds, his silhouette etched in lightning. His laughter echoed across the battlefield, cruel and unrestrained.

"..bow and die before true might!

The sky darkened as he thrust his hands forward. And at his command, Azure bolts of lightning fell like spears from a wrathful god, ripping into the snow-buried SLAYERS below.

“Die.”

BOOM.

“Die!”

BOOOOM.

“DIE!!”

BOOOOOOM.

Kaito was relentless.. His azure bolts tore craters into the snow-buried ranks of the SLAYERS, hunting them down with merciless precision.

But as his enemies slipped away, ever graceful—he Kaito decided to strike their hearts instead. Cain’s lifeless body became his target—a symbol, a weapon of despair.

Another crack of lightning split the air, and Cain’s husk scattered across the ice, charred beyond recognition. His grin twisted into something feral, something unhinged as he anticipated their screams.. the melodies of their woe upon seeing their ally's body desecrated.

But then—he saw Alona emerge through the maelstrom from the corner of his eye, her suit glowing with the incandescent power of absorbed Nestu. And his eyes widened reflexively. He could feel the shift in the air, an almost alien rhythm beneath the storm’s roar.

"There you are..” He began, performing a sequence of Ava in preparation to strike down another rabid dog.

But then, his voicr faltered. “Wha—what the hell?”

His face was illuminated by the twenty miniature stars igniting around Alona, and orbiting her like some constellation of doom. The heat alone split the clouds that bowed to his command and boiled the falling snow into mist.

In a blistering flash, Kaito was left vulnerable. Defenseless.

“..but.”

His final plea was drowned by the detonation of the first star. It collapsed inward, imploding upon itself and triggering the others in a rapid chain reaction.

The sky erupted in cascading novas, each explosion feeding the next until the sky itself was ripped apart. A wave of incandescent fury consumed Kaito. His scream was a raw, animal sound as the supernova flayed him alive, seared his flesh to ash, devoured his bones, and scattered his essence as violet sparks in the arctic wind.

For a moment, the sky was clear. Silent.

Then, the mountain trembled again beneath the earth rendering roar of the Voydkin colossus.

The AION Sentinels, at Merza’s command, dove into the titan’s limbs, freezing its joints with suicidal Nestu detonations. The beast staggered in reponse, giving Zanji the opening he needed. He absorbed the last surge of kinetic energy from its thrashing blows, his muscles tearing, bones splintering, until his greatsword pulsed like a living star.

Zanji launched himself skyward, higher than any mortal should reach, drawing every ounce of his wrath into the molten saber in his grip. And the impact was cataclysmic.

A pillar of fire and molten stone erupted as Zanji’s blade cleaved through the monster’s core. The abhorrent Goliath shrieked in agony while its tar-black form unraveled into tendrils of ash and shadow before disintegrating entirely.

—

Elsewhere, atop the shattered Owaki palace...

Zeroken’s sneer faltered for the first time.

This thing standing before him was no longer merely a Shi dog—it was something far older, more dangerous. This was a being of legend. Prophecy. The serpent’s essence radiated like a rotting sun, suffocating the air, erasing even the memory of light.

The tip of that obsidian blade hovered inches from his throat, and for the briefest heartbeat, Zeroken felt the primal whisper of mortality creep into his veins. The ancient, instinctive dread of prey standing before its predator.

But he did not retreat.

Instead, his lips curled back into a snarl, hiding the tremor in his breath. His voice was low, guttural, venomous. “The Black Sun.” The name dripped from his tongue like poison. He knew the tales, the hushed whispers of Edo's Black Sun reincarnated in the guise of a Shi. And in his heart, even Zeroken cowered at the validity of those legends. But now, as the serpent stood before him.. it took little effort to recognize fable from truth.

And still, Zeroken refused to bow.

With a sharp, defiant motion, his gauntleted fist clenched. The sigil of the Ring of Destruction ignited violently across his armor, searing the air with a sickly crimson glow. The rooftops, the storming heavens, even the snow seemed to recoil as reality itself bent around his arm. The air warped and screamed, vibrating with a guttural hum that reverberated through the bones of all who heard it.

Jao’s blade twitched forward, and Zeroken met it in kind with wrath.

“BE GONE!” Zeroken roared, his voice cracking like a war drum through chaos. His call triggered a translucent crimson wave that exploded outward in a perfect sphere.

The rooftop beneath their feet was torn asunder—atomized into dustless nothingness in the blink of an eye. The destruction surged outward, devouring matter indiscriminately—wood, stone, iron, and even the swirling snowflakes suspended midair—dissolved like ash cast into a cosmic fire.

Where the wave passed, there would be no ruin to rebuild, no battlefield to mourn—only emptiness.

Zeroken floated at the heart of it all, the winds carrying his massive body effortlessly upon the arctic sky. His silhouette was framed by the vile glow from his gauntlet.

And still, through that endless tide of destruction, Zeroken knew his foe wouldn't be so easily felled. While the wave dismantled more than fifty percent of the Owaki palace, he didn't expect it to do more than create some distance between him and Jao. “God or worm, it matters not!” He called out into the hollowing winds, scouring carefully through the destruction. “You will be brought to heel.. bloodied and battered betwixt my grip.”

[Jao Shi]

The air in the Owaki Lord’s sanctum was thick with the scent of ozone and impending death. It crackled around the edge of the nanite blade, a sliver of Kuroi Ryu's soul forged into a cutting edge, which hovered mere centimeters from Zeroken Owaki’s throat. The metal, a liquid black that drank the light, did not gleam; it offered only the promise of absolute void. Within Jao's chest, a conflagration of righteous fury raged, a fire fanned by generations of Shi suffering and the personal agony of a stolen mother. It was his inferno, but the one who guided the flames was far older, far more vast.

Aphosis, the Nether Serpent, coiled within the vessel of the young shinobi, tasted the moment with an ancient palate. The boy’s desire for retribution was a potent, exquisite spice. While Jao fought for his clan and his blood, Aphosis fought for something far grander: the correction of a cosmic insult. The Owaki, these strutting peacocks of Edo, were an affront to the very nature of power. Of the primal Edict that the Unlit Dawn once sired across ancient Edo. They were parasites who had feasted on the scraps of gods and now, bloated and arrogant, declared themselves divine. To hear his own moniker, "The Black Sun," fall from Zeroken’s trembling lips was a symphony of gratifying blasphemy. It was the squeak of the mouse naming the hawk that circled overhead.

"You know my name,". The voice that emerged was a fusion of Jao's tenor and Aphosis’s abyssal echo, a chord of mortal vengeance and primordial wrath. "Your heart’s cadence quickens at the revelation of it and yet…"

The blade sizzled, its proximity causing the fine hairs on Zeroken’s neck to char into ash. Desperation, the last refuge of a cornered tyrant, flared in the Owaki lord's eyes. His hand, adorned with a gauntlet of polished steel and bone, shot upwards. A furious crimson light erupted from the ring on his finger—Ruin, the Ring of Destruction, a bauble of legendary might.

A tidal wave of pure, unmaking force blasted outwards. The very fabric of the room groaned, stone transmuting to dust, tapestries unraveling into constituent threads. The force struck Jao like a physical blow, hurling him backward across the polished floor to land in a crouch near his father, Yang, whose own stance was a knot of tension and horrified awe. A low, guttural laugh seethed from Jao’s mouth, a sound that was pure Aphosis.

"You think to face me with a force woven from my blackness, derived from my void?"

As the words were spoken, the AIONs within Jao’s body answered the call. The ruinous chaos that followed, a storm of cursed naten energy designed to annihilate, did not fold him. It washed over him, parting like a river around a stone of ages. A torrent of liquid black metal and incandescent dark energy erupted from his back, coalescing with impossible speed. It was not just a shield, but a declaration, a pious parody. A single, magnificent wing, forged from blazing void pyre and metamorphic steel, unfurled to meet the roaring tide of annihilation. A wing much like the one that symbolizes Iwa's title as "The Black Wind" of the Owaki. The crimson wave of Ruin crashed against it, hissing and recoiling from a power not just its equal, but its very source.

Jao stood firm, one wing of shadow and starlight holding back a tempest. Yang could scarcely contain his awe, to bear witness to the force of the Rings of legend and their creator clash was nothing short of historic. The Nether Serpent’s contempt was a palpable pressure in the air. "The Owaki," the dual voice boomed, drowning out the roar of the ring's power, "unduly prideful peons! Eld Bloods whose fragile lineage has only insisted upon itself by pilfering, foraging for the genetic scraps of their betters, yet you deem the Shi inferior?"

The accusation hung in the air, sharp as any blade. Every word was an indictment, a truth Zeroken and his ancestors had buried under mountains of gold and corpses. Inside Jao, the AION nanites swirled, channeling the darkness, pouring the abyss itself into the sword he held. The black metal began to glow with an anti-light, a tangible black that seemed to leech the color from reality itself.

"You can only attribute your sustenance, the power brimming from you, to their bowered bodies!" The voice rose, a crescendo of divine fury. The darkness in the blade intensified, humming with a destructive harmony.

"Your essence, borrowed."

The wing of void pyre beat once, contemptuously scattering a portion of the ring’s energy, which struck a far wall and petrified it instantly into a brittle, black crystal.

"Your nobility, borrowed."

The tip of the sword traced a slow, deliberate arc, leaving a trail of hanging shadow in the air.

"The power flowing through you, what you deem defines you as a pinnacle, is BORROWED."

Zeroken’s face might've been a mask of disbelief. The ultimate power in his possession, what the Owaki had used to keep their position in power, was nothing more than a child’s toy, a pale imitation, against its progenitor.

"But true Godhood is a birthright! Deification cannot be bartered for, phantom!"

The energy within the blade reached its apex. The roaring torrent from the Ring of Destruction was now a mere backdrop to the true spectacle of power. Yang could do little in this scenario; to move even an ounce from Jao's protection was to submit himself to death. Yet, if Yang himself could not deliver the blow against Zeroken, then he would lend what support he could to the once capable.

"Go!!!"

Jao, vessel for the Black Sun, stepped forward into the storm. Yang placed his hands on Jao, using his exo-suit ability to transfer kinetic energy enveloping his son's body. Then, with a movement that was both infinitely swift and dreadfully slow, he unleashed it. He was a piercing comet of serrating shadows. A billowing blade accosting the literal representation of everything he hated about this world.

It was a single stroke, but it was more. It was an utterance of oblivion. One that painted the world for a single instance in a pale white and black, no blue, no crimson. A scathing slice of pure darkness tore through the air, cleaving the remaining wave of Ruin’s energy as if it were mist. The attack did not burn or cut in a conventional sense; it erased. It was a line of absolute nothingness aimed not for Zeroken’s life, but for the source of his borrowed pride: the arm that bore the gauntlet and the ring.

As the blade of pure night traveled, Aphosis delivered his final, damning prophecy.

"I cannot be wished away; there is no force of will strong enough to banish me, for I am chaos and shadow, crafted from the primordial essence of the cosmos itself. I have rampaged crumbled planets and devoured nebulae. In the annals of Edo's history, the archives of the world, the name Owaki will long fade into obscurity and nothingness before the Black Sun ever sets."

The stroke sought connection. There would be no scream, only a silent partitioning of reality.

"That is your destiny," the voice whispered as "That is your only inheritance... eternal black, never-ending night."

[Fate I]

For a moment, Zeroken felt nothing at all.

The line of blackness where Jao’s blade had swept seemed almost imaginary, a phantom stroke too absolute to exist. He blinked, his body trembling with the echo of impact, and for a fraction of a second he believed he had survived. Believed that his will, his divine will, had held true against the pretender’s abyssal might.

Then the sensation hit him.

A sickening absence, spreading from his shoulder like frostbite. A weight that should have been there, gone. His breath caught, ragged and shallow. Slowly, impossibly, he turned his head and saw.

Where his right arm should have been, there was only a stump—cauterized black, steaming in the frigid air. His mind refused the image, tried to rebuild what was missing, but his senses betrayed him. The phantom feeling of fingers clenching the Ring of Destruction flickered and died, leaving only a void.

Zeroken fell.

The icy wind tore at his armor as he plummeted through the skies, his scream lost in the howl of the storm. He struck the snow-packed mountainside with bone-snapping force, rolling in a wild, broken tumble until he came to rest in a shallow hollow of white.

For a moment, the world was only pain. Blinding, suffocating pain. His body spasmed uncontrollably, every nerve screaming at the gaping wound where his arm had once been.

“No..” The word rasped out, disbelieving.. But the horror only deepened, spreading inside him like poison. “No, no, NO!”

His remaining hand dug furiously into the snow, clawing at the wound as though he could drag the missing limb back from oblivion. But the horror only deepened, spreading inside him like poison.

That Gauntlet hadn’t just been a powerful weapon. It had been a symbol, a conduit— proof that he and the Owaki stood above all others and possessed the might to prove it if necessary. They were chosen.. he was chosen. And now, without it, the hailed leader of the Owaki Clan felt naked. Even with their generational ailment lifted, Zeroken felt.. humbled. Mortal.

“You dare—!” His voice cracked, breaking apart under the weight of his rage. He pulled his helmet from his head, and baring his teeth like an animal—spittle flying with each haggard breath he took. “You fucking DARE!”

Images surged through his mind: visions of the Owaki banners unfurled over conquered cities, the bowing Shi rebels crushed beneath his heel, the legendary prestige that had surrounded the surname Owaki for decades. All of it—the Dynasty he had built through terror and legend—shuddered on the brink of annihilation.

And beneath that fury, for the first time, fear truly swallowed his heart.

“..hear this.”

But only for a moment.

His left hand clawed at the snow, defiantly dragging his ruined armored body upright. Blood poured freely from the stump of his severed arm, spilling across the snow like a grotesque offering. His breathing became frantic, fevered—then, with shaking precision, he thrust his bleeding arm toward the ground.

“Even if this body turns to ash, my will—my name—will endure!” He bellowed, his voice hoarse but raw with pride. “These are the words of Zeroken Owaki, and I will NOT yield!!”

With trembling fingers, he scrawled a runic sigil into the snow—a jagged, spiraling symbol older than the Owaki name, older than Edo itself. In seconds, his own blood filled the grooves, steaming against the frozen air, hissing as though alive. Each stroke was deliberate, exact, carried out with the obsessive knowledge of one who had memorized forbidden scriptures whispered only in the deepest catacombs of his house. From the rooms of a man filled with enough desperation to poison his blood.

“..And let it be known, that if my strength alone cannot end you…” His voice dropped to a guttural whisper, and a wicked smirk crept along his mangled face. “...then let Hell itself be my sword.”

The moment the final line was drawn, the mountain howled in pain.

A deafening, otherworldly sound split the air as the sigil blazed with a hellish violet light. The snow and stone beneath Zeroken’s knees sank inward as if reality itself were being pulled apart.

Then it erupted.

A translucent dome of violet energy encased the battlefield in a vast, shimmering barrier.

The arctic storm outside was abruptly silenced, replaced by a deafening stillness—a silence so deep it crept through bone and put pressure on the soul..

And without warning, an otherworldly vacuum was born.

Within that barrier, the very air twisted violently, condensing inward. And its weight was crushing, alien. It caused snow to implode into vapor, rock splintered into dust, even light seemed to bend and distort as the pressure mounted. Zeroken staggered backward, blood soaking his armor, but his eyes burned with manic triumph as he extended his remaining hand toward where he last saw Jao.

“BEHOLD, Black Sun!!” he snarled, crimson droplets flecking his lips. “The Breath of the Abyss! A spell beyond you, serpent! Beyond this Realm!”

The vacuum’s pull intensified, like a cosmic fist trying to compress Jao's body into a singularity. The snow around warped and buckled, forming jagged trenches as gravity itself seemed to rebel. Even the shattered remains of the Owaki palace high above began to bend inward, groaning as ancient stone cracked and snapped toward the barrier’s center.

All the while, Zeroken began shaking violently. Blood spilled from his nose and mouth while his vision of his enemy, and everything else for that matter, began to blur. He could feel it, his body betraying him.

This ritual demanded more than what a broken body could give.. Still, he clung to his will, refusing to release the Ava. Refusing to die. Refusing fate.

“..begone..” He whispered, his voice a threadbare hiss of defiance.

[Jao Shi]

The spur of black that was Jao Shi glided past the wounded Zeroken, his gleaming black blade covered in speckled spots of the Owaki Lord’s crimson. A viscera that would soon succumb to the power of the darkness, the spattered blood petrifying into brittle, stone-like beads. With a brisk, almost contemptuous flick of his sword, they scattered, becoming little more than dust upon the passing winds. Jao watched, or rather, the entity wearing his son’s face watched, as Zeroken plummeted to the earth. He fell like a fledgling hawk that had mistaken the sun for prey and had its wings seared from its body, losing its will to fly. For all his grandstanding, for all the professing of the Owaki clan's indomitable might, when faced with true power, he plummeted. Like all who opposed the Serpent’s Heir, he fell before the sheer gravity of his might.

A few dozen yards away, Yang, Jao’s father, stood transfixed. A storm of emotions warred within his soul, leaving him paralyzed on the frozen battlefield.

“Finally,” Yang whispered, the sound a ragged exhalation that carried the solemn release of nearly two decades. Two decades of harbored hatred for the man who had desecrated his love’s body, who had tormented his people, using them as mere resources to forge a derelict throne of power. The sight of Zeroken, broken and falling, was the closure a part of him had craved with a desperate, gnawing hunger.

And yet, his eyes were weighted, drawn back to the silhouetted figure of his son against the arctic twilight. The cost of this milestone, this long-awaited vengeance, was etched upon the soul of his only child. A flame he had spent years both cultivating and shepherding, desperately trying to keep it from growing too great. He had feared this very moment—the moment the flame would become an inferno. He feared that not only would the soul of his only son be scorched within its blackened embers, but that the whole of Edo, if not Vescrutia as a whole, would be caught up in the conflagration of the Nether Serpent's glare. He could scarcely tell where Aphosis began and Jao ended anymore. He prayed to the gods he no longer believed in that this victory did not come from the sacrificing of his child's very soul.

"And so... in the end, the hawk falls to the serpent's kiss after all..." The voice that slithered from Jao’s lips was not his own. It was a layered, ancient sound, a resonance that vibrated in the very air. Aphosis. He levitated, held aloft by the power of the single, jet-black wing etched onto his back like a brand of divine heresy. As Zeroken’s severed arm tumbled through the air, he outstretched his hand. A whip of pure shadow lashed out, capturing the loose limb in its clutches with a sickening crack.

"Sending in evacuation units"

Eridin's voice cleared from the comms. A voice that was drained, stoic yet shaken by the immense losses it took to get here. Alona, Cain, valiant warriors, and friends whose lives paved the way for this triumph. The air was cut with the sound of the evaluation transport unit nearing their location. Several AION units descended, tossing the others, including Cain's lifeless frame, over their shoulders and upon the transport. Unfortunately...there was nothing of Alona to bury...The other SLAYERS, battered, bruised, and near death from the exhaustion of the Alpha Omega protocol, held spirits of victory and grief for their fallen. But such was the life of a shinobi; their only boon was that the death of their family would not be in vain, for on this day, the Shi triumphed!

The helm of blazing black flames that covered Jao's face receded like a dying fire, revealing his features twisted into a mask of cold divinity. His eyes, however, were wholly alien. They boiled with the piercing flare of his Dankestu, shimmering like fractured violet stones. In their slitted corneas, the crimson gleam of the Ring of Destruction was reflected, a promise of ruin.

"Welcome home, Haki..." Aphosis spoke, not to the ring, but to the entity bound within it—a Djynn of destruction sired from his own primordial flesh and spirit. With a wet, tearing sound, he ripped the finger the ring rested on from the captive hand, tossing the rest of the arm aside like a useless bauble. He held the ring, its power pulsing in his palm. Just as the Djynn of Darkness was about to consume its power, the realm of the unseen began to tremble. A pressure, immense and suffocating, descended upon the battlefield. Jao began to descend, landing a mere few feet from Yang, every inch of his being screaming a silent alarm. Something powerful, insanely powerful, was being carved into the fabric of reality.

"You... run away with the others..." Aphosis said through Jao, the words lacking any inflection yet carrying an undeniable command. He was choosing to allow this one courtesy to the one who sired his vessel.

"I will not abandon my child," Yang protested, his feet rooted to the frozen earth, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of his own blade.

"I said. Flee!" Jao's eyes gleamed with a terrifying, violet light as he activated the cursed power of Subjugation. Formerly, the power of a ring that enforced the user’s will, it was now an innate ability of the Serpent’s Heir. Yang’s body locked, his muscles screaming in protest as a power beyond his own seized control. He was overcome by its mythic dogma, his body turning and retreating against every fiber of his being, forced to abandon his son to the encroaching doom.

While Yang was forced away, Aphosis placed the Ring of Destruction upon his finger. The battlefield was suddenly encased in a translucent dome of violet energy, a vast, shimmering barrier that silenced the raging blizzard outside. A deafening stillness fell—a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight.

Then, without warning, an otherworldly vacuum was born.

The very air within the dome twisted violently, condensing inward. Snow imploded into vapor. Rocks splintered into fine dust. Light itself seemed to bend and distort as the pressure mounted.

“Beyond me?” Aphosis said, his voice a low sneer as he turned to face the source of the pressure. He invoked the power of the Ring of Destruction, its ruinous energy projecting a wavering shield that held back the worst of the crushing force, buying precious seconds for the retreating SLAYERS. “Gods, the gall of you… humans.”

Pieces of his nanite armor were torn from his body, disintegrating into nothingness under the impossible strain. “You know what it is like to feast on a star?” His violet eyes twinkled like distant, dying novas. “Can you fathom the chilling absence of space? The iron-clad grip of the Event Horizon?”

The flesh on his face was stripped away by the sheer force, revealing parts of his bone, only to be instantly regenerated by the swarming nanites fighting a losing battle against the pull. “I am an existence that predates the notion of tongue, when naught but mere intention guided the cosmos. Edo was but a destination, not my origin…”

It was then that Aphosis’s body began to be emboldened by a sinister black glow, a darkness that did not emit light but consumed it. “I shall do you but this one kindness, Owaki… in honor of the valor your ancestor Yashamaru once held…”

The glow intensified, the pressure of the Abyss now cracking the very ground beneath him.

“I shall allow you to observe but a glimpse of true divinity… before you die,” he bellowed, the voice now a chorus of cosmic echoes.

“Profane Embodiment: Umbral Artificer!”

The change was instantaneous and horrific. Jao’s flesh did not burn with fire, but with a cold, absolute darkness. It sloughed away, not into ash, but into wisps of nothingness, replaced by a lithe form of living oblivion. His body became a silhouette cut from the void itself, a malevolent figure of cursed darkness. His head dissolved into a wispy black fog, and from within that swirling miasma, two piercing violet serpent eyes blazed forth, the only feature in a nigh formless visage of black.

Zeroken’s technique reached its apex, the vacuum threatening to collapse reality itself. But the Umbral Artificer was unimpressed. As if it’s very existence-defied contemporary physics; the laws of this reality need to be revamped, rewritten. The being that was once Jao made a gesture, with the index and middle fingers of both hands as if parting a veil. Upon doing so, the boudnriy of the relams unseen and seen responded.

“Mystic Art: Vore of the Sun Eater's Squall...”

A subtle, terrifying distortion rippled the air before him, like a heat haze over a black sea. It rapidly expanded, the darkness within it intensifying, deepening, coalescing. It took the form of a colossal serpent’s gaping maw, a hole punched through the world.

This was no mere portal. It was a living manifestation of Aphosis’s truth. Before it lived as fae, before it's tethered rooting to Edo, it existed as a cosmic storm that drifted galaxy to galaxy, devouring worlds and stars. A vicarious creation of consumption known as the Sun Eater's Squall. The edges of the maw rippled and undulated like cosmic scales. Spectral fangs of jagged shadow, each the size of a small mountain, jutted from its inner rim. The space beyond the fangs was not empty but a swirling vortex of cosmic dust, dying nebulae, and the chilling, absolute vacuum of deep space. Within its depths, entire galaxies could be glimpsed, stars and planets drawn inexorably toward a center that was not a place, but an appetite.

The crushing pressure of the Breath of the Abyss met the insatiable hunger of the Vore. It was not a collision, but a consumption. The violet dome of energy didn’t shatter; it was peeled away, flaking into the maw like dead skin. The vacuum, the impossible weight that could crush mountains, was siphoned into the serpent's gullet with a sound that was the antithesis of silence—a cosmic inhalation that swallowed all noise, all light, all of Zeroken's reality.

From his position, his lifeblood draining into the snow, Zeroken Owaki saw his ultimate technique, his final legacy, become nothing more than a morsel for a god. His eyes would become filled with he visage of a cesspit of dead stars and shattered worlds. It was the last, and most terrible, thing he would ever see before the maw closed shut, taking with it the whole of the battlefield and the remaining dregs of the Owaki mansion.

[Fate I]

Zeroken collapsed into the snow, his breath rattling like broken glass inside his chest. The light coming from his eyes, once a brilliant violent glow, began to sputter like a dying star. His body was no longer whole—it was ruined, a husk wracked by spasms as the last vestiges of his strength bled into his final attack. and attack that seemed to do little but annoy his foe..

Above him, the sky was gone, replaced by a yawning void—this Serpent’s Maw. It was so impossibly vast that his mind refused to truly see it. Jagged fangs of cosmic shadow glimmered at its edge, and within, stars flickered like fireflies being swallowed one by one.

Zeroken watched as the creature devoured his ultimate technique without effort—extinguishing the deadly vacuum like a lie exposed before the truth.

“..how..” The word scraped out of his throat. His remaining hand clawed weakly at the snow, leaving streaks of crimson as he tried to lift himself from the ground. His body did not obey. “..this cannot—”

Then came the sound. A rumbling so deep it bypassed the ears and rattled his bones. Zeroken turned his head in time to see the last fragments of the Owaki palace violently spiral upward—dragged screaming into the Serpent’s maw as though it were a spatial anaomly.

“No!” His cry was a raw, ragged wail. His sight swam with tears and blood as he reached out with trembling fingers. “REN!!!”

The despair struck harder than the physical agony. Visions of his youngest child, crushed beneath the weight of his failure. Zeroken's chest constricted until it felt as though his heart was being ground to dust beneath the shame.. Over a thousand years of legacy, burned away in a single moment. The great Owaki clan, whose banners had once shadowed the lands of Edo, now reduced to ash and memory. And it was his fault.

“..this is not possible.” His voice cracked, barely audible beneath the maelstrom’s howl. He forced his eyes open, staring up at the hovering abomination above. It was a power so far beyond his comprehension that even Zeroken, he who had once believed himself invincible, felt as insignificant as a grain of sand before a tidal wave.

This was the Black Sun.

The old man coughed violently, blood spilling down his weathered beard, his breaths becoming short, shallow rasps. “We… we were destined.. to be kings,” he whispered, half to himself, half to the dying vestiges of the Owaki legacy. “..to be gods walking among men. Amongst DOGS!!” His gaze fixed on Aphosis, hate and awe mingling in his fading sight. “..but you.. you are no man at all…”

Snowflakes drifted down, settling on his battered face like a shroud. His thoughts blurred, slipping between memories and madness. Ren’s laughter. The stern pride of his ancestors. The first time he donned the mantle as leader of the Owaki, swearing to defend his clan with his life. All of it drowned beneath the image of the serpent’s maw, its hunger endless, its will absolute.

“You will bring ruin.. to all that you touch. All that you see..”

As the last of his strength spilled from his body, Zeroken let his head fall back into the snow. His breath came one last time in a whisper that trembled between grief and rage.

“Forgive me… my sons.”

And, with his final words, the light drained from his eyes as the void above consumed the last remnants of his world.. and what remained of the Owaki Dynasty.

[Jao Shi]

The æther crackled with an unnatural intensity, a symphony of annihilated starlight and devoured celestial bodies. Before the assembled SLAYERS, watching in stunned, horrified reverence from their transit units, the Umbral Artificer was not merely a concept, but a cataclysm made manifest. It was Aphosis, the primordial Djynn of Darkness and Chaos, conjoined with – and yet utterly eclipsing – the truths of Jao, the wayward son of the Shi clan. This singular form, this obscene fusion, represented total domination, a hunger so vast it threatened to unmake existence itself.

Mystic Arts, the league of esoteric disciplines belonging to those who delved into their inner realms, to grasp the truth of their being, had never conceived of such power. Even the Nether Serpent, a force long synonymous with catastrophe, a cosmic ballad of pure chaos, had been reborn. It was no longer merely a harbinger of destruction, but a refined, terrifying deity in the making, now poised to dictate the very course of Edo.

Yang, his senses finally freed from the suffocating grip of Subjugation, felt a primal dread claw at his gut. He had known, in the shadowed corners of his heart, that this day might come. He had prepared himself for the unthinkable, for the agonizing choice between his son and his clan, his son and Edo itself. But as he witnessed the closing maw of the devouring void, the fleeting, desperate glimmers of consumed stars and planets swallowed into oblivion, the grim reality settled upon him: his mission was one of utter futility. Jao, his son, had ascended beyond him, beyond the Shi, into something that threatened to transcend Edo entirely. The child he had once seen as a potential savior, his reckless ambition and naive arrogance had sculpted him into the perfect vessel for Edo's utter annihilation.

"Oh, Suzaku..." Yang breathed, the name a whispered lament, heavy with a grief that threatened to drown him. "I... I do not know how to save our son."

Miles away, in the sterile confines of his lab, Eridin watched the unfolding horror on his screens, his own heart a raw, torn wound. He saw not just Jao's monstrous transformation, but his own culpability. His desperate pursuit of victory, his feverish bargaining for freedom, had led him down a path of no return. He had, inadvertently, forged Jao into a perfect husk for Aphosis, a weapon capable of bending the very continent to its will.

"Jao...please forgive me..."

They had all, in their pursuit of salvation, walked blindly into the Nether Serpent's trap, gifting it the vessel it so desperately needed. Now, armed with this nigh-insurmountable form, Jao, or rather Aphosis within him, was poised to become a tyrant more absolute than Ain had ever dared to dream. If there was any hope left, any chance to reclaim Jao, to save Edo, Eridin knew he would have to find a way to seal Aphosis, to banish the encroaching darkness once more.

The desolate wasteland that had once been the proud home of the Owaki clan was a testament to the brutal efficiency of the Umbral Artificer. Zeroken Owaki, the clan head, echoed his final words as the void consumed him whole: "You will bring ruin to all that you touch. All that you see." The umbral void, the terrifying abyss within Aphosis's being, snapped shut, leaving only Jao, a solitary figure amidst the utter devastation. Mountains had crumbled, the horizon was a scorched, unyielding line. The ambient shadows that formed his ethereal, amplified form began to recede, like motes of darkened moonlight dissipating in the dawn.

Jao sank to his knees, the sheer exertion of wielding such immense power leaving his mortal form wracked with pain. His joints screamed in protest, his muscles ached with a bone-deep exhaustion, and a small, crimson spittle of blood escaped his lips. Even with his enhanced physique, he had pushed his body past its absolute limits. Before him, the Ring of Destruction, once a symbol of immense power, now gleamed a dull crimson in the blighted night.

Then, a change. Jao's eye, previously a vibrant, defiant hue, bloomed into a sinister, predatory violet. It focused on the bland ring and, with an unholy draining sensation, began to siphon its remaining spirit. Haki, the Djynn of Destruction, had its essence summoned, its raw power now flowing into Jao, initiating another terrifying evolution of his Dankestu. He rose from his crouched position, the power of Ruin surging through his veins.

"Sssoo close..." he rasped, a chilling smile playing on his lips. He slipped the now-drained ring from his finger, letting it rest in his palm. "To perfection..." He clenched his fist, crushing the relic. "To Godhood." The Ring of Destruction disintegrated into ash, the fine powder caught by the somber, stale winds that swept across the desolate plains.

"Heh...heh..."

A low, guttural chuckle began to emanate from him, a sound that promised untold horrors.

"Bwuahahahahaha!"

It grew, escalating into a maniacal peal of laughter that echoed through the shattered landscape, a symphony of madness against the backdrop of destruction. Dust swirled around him as nanite-constructed wings unfurled from his back, shimmering with an unholy luminescence. He ascended, leaving behind the smoldering ruins of the Owaki clan, a testament to their failed resistance, a harbinger of the secular will that would soon engulf everything.

The Black Sun had returned.