The battlefield fell silent.
Mor'gan, the greater demon, knelt. His massive frame trembled. His greatsword lay discarded in the ash, and his breath came in ragged, desperate gasps.
Before him stood Sora, not as prey, but judgment incarnate. Her transcendent presence alone crushed his will.
Mor'gan's panicked.
"I—I surrender!" he croaked.
"Spare me! I was only hired! I don't care about the village, the ritual, any of it!"
He crawled frantically, claws scraping dirt. "I'll disappear! You'll never see me again! Please… I don't want to die…"
Sora watched him without an ounce of expression.
"Answer my questions, and I may consider sparing you."
Hope flared across Mor'gan's face. "Yes! Yes—ask! I'll tell you everything!"
Her gaze sharpened. "Why does your client require the sacrifice of an entire human settlement?"
"I—I don't know! I was only told to gather them alive!" His panic-stricken response came far too quickly
"You accepted a contract of mass slaughter without knowing its purpose?"
"I am paid for outcome, not intent."
She narrowed her eyes, light fizzling with tension. "What motivates a demon like you? Surely you thought twice before attempting an incursion inside Divine Sanctum's territory."
"Just doing my job!" he pleaded. "I didn't think it would go this far! I thought it would be easy!"
Her brows furrowed. "Who is your client?"
"Anonymous. I've never seen them! We deal through contracts! Intermediaries!"
Her aura tightened. "You expect me to believe a greater demon entered divine territory for an unknown employer."
He shifted. "The intermediary handled the identity shielding. Payment was made in advance through abyssal channels."
"What name did the intermediary use?"
"I do not know."
"What sigil?"
"I do not know."
"What domain?"
"I do not know."
Each answer is thinner than the last. Evasive. Cowardly. Empty.
Sora's Vita Aeterna Dominus brushed lightly against his form, sensing the jagged fluctuations in his pulse, the desperate tremors of fear, and the subtle distortions of deceit. A hollow shell of compliance meant to conceal vital truths.
"I see." The remaining warmth left her voice..
Mor'gan felt the shift. Her presence transformed, settling into an absolute inevitability that sent shivers down his spine
Sora's resolve crystallized. "You have inflicted irremediable harm upon innocent lives. You deserve judgment."
She stepped forward.
Mor'gan flinched violently. "W-Wait! I can find out more! I can bring you names! Give me time!"
"You were given time. And you squandered it."
Mor'gan's terror peaked. He felt the cold touch of an unavoidable death. In that instant, his pathetic mercenary mask shattered. His trembling ceased and his groveling expression twisted into a vicious snarl.
As Sora condensed her radiance to sever his lifeline, Mor'gan slammed his palm against the ground and barked a guttural activation command. His discarded greatsword hummed omniously, the runes etched along its obsidian blade ignited with a violent crimson glare.
It was an unstable artifact he had unearthed in an ancient demonic ruin—a weapon of catastrophic, volatile power.
The runes engraved on the greatsword were bound with self-destructive contingencies. He had always kept it as a final, destructive escape option.
The blade launched into the air, spinning toward Sora. It was not meant to strike her physically, but to detonate upon immediate proximity.
Her instincts screamed in warning. The air visibly warped, and the surrounding vegetation recoiled as the weapon's destructive curse imploded.
Yet sora did not panic. With Celeritas Divina, being caught off guard was almost impossible. She could effortlessly dodge or dissolve into pure radiance, and let the explosion consume empty air.
Time stretched as thin as silk. She prepared to become incorporeal.
"SORA!"
Null's voice tore across the distance.
Sora turned around immediately.
He was running toward her desperately. An arrow left his bow mid-stride—not aimed at Mor'gan, but tracking the incoming greatsword in a desperate attempt to deflect its trajectory and protect her.
'Right… Null-san doesn't know the extent of my current prowess. He must believe I'm in mortal danger.' A small, fleeting warmth bloomed in her chest. He was terrified for her.
'How sweet of him.'
Now, Sora has no choice but reconsider becoming incorporeal: if she simply dodged the blast, the expanding detonation would directly engulf the area from which he was oncoming. She could not allow that.
Sora gathered her intent. Light devoured her silhouette as her physical form dissolved into incorporeal brilliance.
The artifact detonated. A sphere of catastrophic force erupted outward, inverting the ground and shredding stone as maisma exploded like a collapsing star.
Foooom!
But at its dead center stood an Unaffected brilliance.
⟡ Vita Aeterna Dominus
Sora weaponized nature itself. The surrounding forest rose to answer her. Massive roots surged upward to weave a multi-layered barrier, while vines spiraled into stabilizing lattices to absorb the blast. She seized the environmental life force, transmuting it into a counter-rotating offensive force to compress the destructive surge inward.
The explosion roared against her. Every second piled immense strain upon her physical body. Still, resolutely, she contained it, forcing the implosion to cave in on itself.
Her body screamed beneath the friction, her veins burning and her vision blurring as she approached her strength limits. Yet she stood firm, unwavering, until she compressed the detonation into a smaller area. Sparing null from being caught.
When the light finally faded, the land was deeply scarred, but intact. Sora stood at the epicenter, her glow flickering erratically, her breathing uneven.
Mor'gan stared, horror overtaking him.
'Impossible.' His final escape trick failed.
With trembling anticipation, Sora summoned her life force anew. She recklessly poured essence from her veins, transmuting an overwhelming quantity of vitality into pure, unadulterated mana. Her body screamed under the side affect, but her focus did not falter.
High above them, the heavens ignited with a blinding, divine brilliance.
⟡ Heavenly Ordinance
The invocation resonated through sky and soil alike. A colossal lance of divine judgment condensed.
Mor'gan staggered. "N-No… that artifact—it should have—"
The lance of judgement descended.
There was no explosion. Only pure, annihilative purification. Mor'gan's infernal form disintegrated layer by layer—flesh, flame, and core—until nothing remained but dissipating motes of inert ash drifting into the wind.
Sora swayed, a burgeoning strain mercilessly weakened her body. Her legs completely gave way—but before she could strike the ground, a pair of arms caught her securely
Null. He was breathing hard, his hands visibly trembling as he pulled her against him. "Sora…!"
Sora could feel him. His warmth, his comforting presence, his lingering fear, and his overwhelming relief. And for now, that was more than enough.
---
※
---
Death should have been the end. Mor'gan felt every second. He remembered the all-consuming pain until death ended him.
Yet he found himself… aware.
There was no sky, no ground, no air. Only unending darkness.
Looking down, Mor'gan saw his form flickering irregularly. He possessed no flesh.
Just a thinning outline of spectral purple-black essence, unraveling thread by thread.
"What… I should be—" The phantom inhalation caught in his throat.
"I should be—"
"I should be dead!!!" He felt the end—then.
He clutched his head as confusion swirled through his consciousness. "Then why am I still aware? Where is this place? What is happening to me?"
"Indeed." A voice answered. Calm. Close. Everywhere.
"You are dead." The words carried absolute certainty.
Mor'gan spun around wildly. "Who—?!"
A ripple passed through the absence. A silhouette materialized, solidifying into a humanoid form that was terrifyingly familiar.
Mor'gan's spectral pupils constricted. "... You?"
His soul trembled. "Impossible"
The silhouette stepped forward, wearing the face of the seemingly harmless youth who had been partly responsible for his downfall.
"It's you…"
He stopped. The features were completely wrong. The silhouette's hair was Void-black. His eyes possessed no iris and no sclera; they were absent, Void-black depths.
Something in that gaze made Mor'gan's soul instinctively recoil.
He stumbled backward. "What happened to you? What is this place?!"
The void-black haired silhouette regarded him quietly, a slow, dark smile curved his lips. "We are between—"
"Between what?"
"—Life and death." The words were weightless, yet they crushed the demon nonetheless.
"This isn't real," Mor'gan rasped, "You must not be real. Yes, that's right. You must be a devilish hallucination born of my dying mind—
"You are indeed dying. See? Your soul is already dissipating." The silhouette pointed.
Mor'gan looked down. His outline was fraying as thin threads of essence peeled away, dissolving into nothingness.
"No—this is wrong!" He pointed a shaking hand at the silhouette. "You are wrong!!! Your eyes, your hair... that-that isn't human—"
"I am what remains when restraint is removed," The void-black silhouette said.
He stepped forward. He did not traverse the void, yet he was suddenly closer. "Do not mistake her mercy for mine."
Mor'gan's dread deepened, overcame with an existential terror that paralyzed his last bits of consciousness.
The silhouette's void-black gaze darkened. "Do you remember the vulgar words you spouted?"
Mor'gan quivered. Fragments surfaced. His crude mockery, his leering insinuations.
"You said you would break her."
Mor'gan's soul form convulsed. "I-I was just taunting! Just words! Demons talk like that! It meant nothing!"
"I see—" The silhouette gave a smile of understanding.
But in the next second, that same smile became devoid.
"However. That's only one of the offences. The most Untolerable offence is daring to make her 'cry'."
"You should have played your part as a minor villain. And died like one."
"Dying" The silhouette uttered, "is too much mercy for you."
Mor'gan's dread reached a breaking point. "I'm already dead! Isn't that enough?!"
"No."
The void of absence wrapped around Mor'gan's spectral soul.
"With every repeated offence you committed against what is mine. You sealed your fate. You deserve to die permanently!!" The possessiveness in his tone was suffocating.
"NO—! NO—! WAIT—!"
"There will be no next life. No reincarnation. No infernal echo. No parallel instance." The Void-black silhouette's smile widened again, gentle and dreadful.
"NOOOOOOO—!"
Mor'gan's form dissolved—not into samsara. But into oblivion.
His scream fractured into nothingness. Layer by layer, concept by concept, he was removed from the ledger of existence like a miswritten line deleted from a manuscript.
Only one thing was preserved: the memory of his existing in the world. That was the sole mercy granted to him. Nothing else.
Silence reclaimed the void.
The silhouette stood alone. His Void-black hair locks partially veiled his face as his head tilted slightly. "That was generous of me."
"Especially, since it involves 'Her'."
The void folded inward, and the scene dissolved.