The moment Null challenged the Watchers—
the underground capital broke completely.
The ceiling above the ruined station split apart as hundreds of colossal eyes opened across the darkness overhead. Black matter poured through the fractures like oceans leaking from another reality.
The Watchers descended.
Not one.
Not ten.
An entire collective consciousness pressing itself into the world.
Their voices overlapped into something unbearable.
"C O R R E C T I O N R E Q U I R E D."
"B L O O D L I N E A N O M A L Y."
"P R I M E R E S O N A N C E R E T U R N I N G."
The city screamed under their presence.
Buildings far above the underground district began collapsing inward as gravity lost consistency.
Hyung steadied himself beside Null.
"What's the plan?"
Null stared upward calmly.
"Keep the station standing."
D U blinked.
"That's the plan?"
Null nodded once.
"If this place collapses, the gate destabilizes."
Caelum immediately understood.
"And if the gate destabilizes…"
Eris finished quietly:
"The Door feels it."
Nobody liked that sentence.
The Watchers attacked first.
Thousands of black arms descended simultaneously from the ceiling sky, each one large enough to crush entire buildings.
But this time—
Null moved first.
Old Prime authority exploded outward.
The air folded.
The battlefield divided into layers.
Every descending arm slowed the closer it came to him, as though reality itself rejected hostile momentum inside his range.
Hyung stared briefly.
"…He's controlling spatial law."
D U smirked painfully.
"Told you the King was ridiculous."
Null raised the black blade.
One swing.
No dramatic motion.
No wasted energy.
A single horizontal cut.
The underground sky split open.
Dozens of Watcher arms separated instantly, severed so cleanly that the darkness itself lagged behind before realizing it had been cut.
The shockwave carved across the station ceiling and into the distant city layers above.
The Watchers screamed together.
Adrax finally reacted.
His colossal shadow mass descended lower, forming gigantic tendrils around the battlefield.
"The heir evolves too quickly," Adrax said.
Luxion immediately formed radiant constructs around Aizeno.
"We should remove him now."
But Aizeno raised one hand slightly.
"No."
His eyes remained locked on Null.
"Watch."
The Watchers adapted.
The severed arms dissolved into smaller fragments that reshaped into humanoid forms—tall black figures with glowing eyes and featureless faces.
Hundreds of them.
They dropped toward the battlefield like rain.
Hyung launched upward immediately.
Mid-Prime gravity detonated around his strikes as he tore through multiple Watcher forms at once.
Eris phased between dimensions, appearing and disappearing with every slash of her obsidian blade.
Caelum manipulated collapsing causality lines, erasing several Watchers before they could fully materialize.
D U cracked his knuckles.
"Alright," he muttered. "Guess my break's over."
Distorted energy spiraled around him as he entered the battlefield again.
But Null—
Null walked forward slowly.
Every step stabilized the collapsing space around him.
The Watchers noticed.
All of them turned toward him simultaneously.
"P R I M E H E I R."
"R E J E C T E D E X I S T E N C E."
"C O R R E C T I O N M A N D A T E."
Null stopped.
Then finally spoke.
"You keep calling me an anomaly."
The spiral in his eye rotated once.
"But this world existed before your rules."
The black blade resonated violently.
Old Prime pressure surged upward into the sky of eyes.
And for a brief moment—
the Watchers hesitated.
Aizeno noticed immediately.
"…Interesting."
Adrax's shadows shifted uneasily.
Luxion narrowed his eyes.
"The Watchers fear him."
"No," Aizeno corrected softly.
"They fear his father."
Null suddenly vanished.
The battlefield cracked from the force of his movement alone.
A fraction later—
he appeared directly beneath the largest Watcher eye.
The entity reacted instantly, black arms descending toward him from every direction.
Null raised his blade.
The spiral symbol ignited.
"Stage Four," Null said quietly.
Then the rings of energy around him aligned perfectly.
The underground capital shook.
Old Prime fully synchronized.
"Authority Release."
The slash that followed was impossible to track.
The sky itself split open.
A massive line carved across the ceiling darkness, severing the largest Watcher eye completely in half.
Silence hit the battlefield.
The gigantic eye slowly separated—
then exploded into collapsing black particles.
The remaining Watchers screamed together.
For the first time since arriving—
they retreated upward slightly.
D U stared openly now.
"…That kid just scared cosmic regulators."
Hyung exhaled slowly, almost unable to believe what he had witnessed.
But Aizeno only smiled.
Because he noticed something nobody else did.
After the attack—
Null's hand trembled slightly.
The power worked.
But his body was beginning to crack under it.
And high above the battlefield—
beyond even the Watchers—
something inside the Door opened its eyes.