As Haruki stepped out from the shattered crater, boots grinding against the scorched earth, a strange stillness swept the battlefield. The air felt heavier—off. He paused, an unease crawling up his spine like a whisper of something ancient and defiant awakening behind him.
Then came a flare of light.
It wasn't just a burst of power—it was like staring into the first sunrise after a storm. A divine brilliance surged forth, radiant and pure. Haruki's eyes narrowed as he slowly turned around.
Xavier stood there like a revenant, blood dripping from his nose and lips in steady streams, his body swaying yet somehow upright. Excalibur rested in his grasp, the holy sword humming with quiet fury, as if it too had been pulled from the brink of oblivion. Though the two had been torn apart by Haruki's earlier onslaught, the blade had found its way back to its master—or perhaps, Xavier had found his way back to it.
His once sky-blue aura had been cleansed, slowly overtaken by an ethereal white glow. It radiated with the sanctity of Excalibur, a sacred light that seemed to fight back the darkening skies overhead. A final push. A last defiance. A moment gifted by the blade not to die lying down, but to stand. To fight.
The woman from his subconscious—the light in the dark void—had given him more than words. She had rekindled something within him.
The spark.
Heroe's Residual.
Haruki's eyes widened slightly. His breath hitched.
"Are you for real?" he muttered, dumbfounded.
Xavier wavered, barely able to remain standing. Yet his voice, though shaky, carried a small grin. "For real, real."
Haruki frowned. "You should be dead right now... not standing there with that stupid grin of yours."
"But I'm not," Xavier replied, his voice hoarse but steady.
Haruki clicked his tongue. "Doesn't matter. I'll just beat you down again—this time for good."
Xavier took a single step forward, the ground cracking beneath his boot. He lifted Excalibur in both hands, taking his stance. "I'm waiting..."
His body trembled, but his resolve didn't waver. This surge of power granted by Excalibur wouldn't last. He knew that. But it didn't need to.
He just needed enough.
Across from him, Haruki exhaled slowly, his eyes darkening. A cruel sneer spread across his face as he drew his blade once more, his aura now roaring like wildfire. The atmosphere cracked under the weight of his killing intent.
If he couldn't break Xavier's will, he'd simply erase him. No mercy. He even imagined the despair on Anastasia's face when he offers her the severed head of her master.
The two locked eyes.
One gaze burned with hatred. The other... shone with defiance.
And then—
Flash.
In an instant, they vanished. The land shuddered as blades collided mid-air, their auras clashing like colliding universes. A sonic boom rippled through the ruined battlefield.
Haruki scowled.
Xavier was stronger. Not enough to win—not yet—but enough to shock him. Their swords clashed again and again, faster than the eye could follow. And for every strike Haruki delivered, Xavier countered with grit and instinct. He wasn't just surviving. He was adapting.
Then—a thrust.
Haruki drove his blade straight toward Xavier's left eye. But Xavier didn't flinch.
He reached out with his gift—vectors.
In an instant, he manipulated the directional force of air molecules behind him, generating a sudden blast of kinetic pressure. A roaring gust exploded outward, forming a semi-invisible current field around him. Not quite his vector shield—less durable, less flexible—but enough.
The blade curved at the last second, narrowly missing his eye.
Haruki recoiled in disbelief. "The hell...?"
Xavier followed up with a vertical slash. It tore through Haruki's clothing but left no wound.
Haruki laughed in his face. "That it?"
He spun and slammed a kick into Xavier's ribs. The boy blocked just in time with Excalibur, skidding back, coughing blood.
But even wounded, Xavier wasn't done.
From the distance now between them, Xavier swung Excalibur, unleashing a barrage of razor-sharp wind slashes. Each one curved and howled, propelled by complex vector control.
But Haruki didn't dodge.
He walked through them.
Every slash tore his already damaged clothes slightly—but he didn't care. He dashed forward like a demon, slashing for Xavier's neck.
Xavier suddenly slashed downward. Sand burst into the air, obscuring the field.
Haruki snarled and swatted the dust aside.
Too late.
Behind him.
Xavier appeared in a flash.
His voice rang out like thunder: "Vector Nova!"
The air around Excalibur screamed, the blade coated in swirling vortexes of compressed wind. This was more than a sword swing—it was a high-velocity cyclone weaponized into a slash. By carefully curving the air vectors around his blade and accelerating them at near-supersonic speeds, Xavier had created a micro implosion in motion.
But Haruki didn't even flinch.
He simply extended his hand.
And the cyclone began to die.
Xavier's eyes widened.
The temperature dropped.
Haruki wasn't attacking directly—he was freezing the air.
By drastically reducing the thermal energy of the air molecules in a concentrated radius, Haruki slowed them to a crawl. The result? The wind vortex collapsed. The swirling blades of air around Excalibur thickened and congealed, losing speed, mass, and directional control.
The very medium that carried Xavier's attack was now his cage.
Excalibur slowed, then stopped entirely mid-strike.
Haruki leaned forward, grinning. "Not so funny when your own trick gets flipped, huh?"
It wasn't just clever. It was brilliant. Haruki had created a pseudo-aerostatic lockdown: a field where air, no longer energized, became a suffocating buffer. Just as Xavier had used vector-controlled wind to redirect attacks, Haruki had used stillness to neutralize motion itself.
A direct counter.
And Xavier—
Was stuck.
For now.
Haruki pointed two fingers at Xavier, the freezing air around his fingertips beginning to violently heat up once more. His aura crept around the concentrated zone like a serpent, swallowing the cold and building pressure. Heat rippled visibly in the space around his hand, as if reality itself were bending.
Xavier's eyes widened.
He knew that stance. That sensation.
It was the same attack Haruki had used to terraform the battlefield earlier—an explosion of sheer force and heat that had left Xavier on the brink of death, his body shattered and his will barely intact. He had survived only through sheer luck and Excalibur's divine intervention.
Now Haruki was doing it again.
Panic surged. Pain screamed. Instinct took over.
Xavier activated the one ability he was warned never to use without absolute control:
Vector Teleportation.
Space distorted.
But Xavier was too predictable.
Haruki, having long since become attuned to Xavier's ethereal signature, sensed the destination before the teleport even completed. In a blur of motion, he intercepted him.
A palm strike drove into Xavier's chest.
WHUMP.
The wind was blasted from his lungs. He hung in mid-air, limbs flailing, before Haruki followed up, completing the attack he had been charging.
A scorching wave of condensed air pressure erupted from his fingertips.
Scorching-Phantom Heatwave.
It tore through the battlefield with terrifying speed. Everything in its path combusted. The land cracked. Trees and rocks incinerated into ash.
Xavier was sent flying like a broken doll, trailing smoke, until he crashed through the roof of a small, quiet shack on the outskirts of a distant village far from London.
The explosion set the old wooden house ablaze.
Cracks formed in the walls. Beams groaned and snapped. Fire licked up toward the sky as the structure slowly collapsed. Amid the rubble, half-buried beneath smoldering planks, Xavier lay unmoving.
Only his arm—the one still clutching Excalibur—remained clearly visible, trembling.
The divine white aura that had bathed him until now began to dim. Heroe's Residual was fading.
Not because the power was depleted.
But because Excalibur chose to stop.
It knew Xavier's body could take no more. One more push—one more second of overload—and the boy would be reduced to ash by its holiness. Even power imbued with love could still destroy if wielded for too long.
But the blade was content. Fate had shifted. Xavier had survived the fatal blow. That alone made the sacrifice worth it.
Yet now...
Excalibur hesitated.
Could Xavier survive what came next?
Through blurred vision and suffocating smoke, Xavier heard slow, deliberate footsteps.
Haruki appeared through the settling ash, hands in his pockets, eyes cold and unaffected.
"You look pitiful," he said.
Xavier coughed up a lungful of ash. His voice was faint. "Please... stop..."
Haruki frowned. "What?"
"Haven't you done enough already?" Xavier rasped. "I... I know I can never understand your pain... but this path—it's not right."
Haruki's expression soured.
Xavier went on. "I know what it feels like... to be hurt by someone and have everything you love taken away from you. I know that pain."
"Shut up," Haruki snapped.
"Would your parents be proud of you right now?" Xavier asked softly.
Haruki froze.
His composure cracked.
"Don't you dare bring my parents into this!" he roared, stepping forward, rage boiling to the surface.
"I'm sorry," Xavier whispered, coughing again. "But... please... just look around."
Embers danced around them.
The house was falling apart, photographs curling in the flames. In one corner, a charred frame showed a family—a mother, father, and small child, all smiling.
Then Haruki noticed something: tiny feet trembling beneath a half-collapsed table.
A boy. Hiding.
Then a voice—frantic, desperate, muffled by the chaos outside.
"Mathew! Mathew!"
A mother.
Calling.
Xavier stirred. "Go," he said gently.
The boy didn't move.
"Your mother's calling," Xavier added with a weak smile. "She's worried. Don't worry about us. Just go. Everything will be fine."
The child hesitated. Then bolted.
He burst from the rubble and fled toward the sound of his mother's voice. A moment later, Haruki turned and saw them embrace in the smoke—the mother collapsing to her knees, holding her son like she might lose him again.
Haruki stared.
"A mother's love..."
He didn't even realize he had spoken aloud.
"You think you can just talk me out of this?" he muttered, still watching them.
"Yes... Yes, I do," Xavier said.
Haruki turned back, his expression blank.
"That's funny. If that's your plan, I'd advise you to stop. It's futile. Save what's left of your strength."
Xavier shook his head, coughing blood.
"This is my way of winning... I may not know you well, but from your words... your eyes... You're not evil. Just broken. Like me."
Haruki didn't respond.
Xavier continued, voice weakening. "I don't know why you serve someone like Percival. But you're not like him. You can't be."
His fingers trembled.
"I won't tell you how to feel about Miss Anastasia. That wouldn't be fair."
"Because I'd be a hypocrite... if I did."
Silence.
And then—
A flicker of doubt in Haruki's eyes.
Just enough.
To matter.
Haruki stood still, unmoving like a weathered statue as Xavier's words began to cut into the deepest parts of him. There was no arrogance in his voice, only a strange, unshakable curiosity.
"Tell me, Xavier... if you were in my place. Exactly where I am now. What would you do?"
Xavier took a moment, letting the crackle of fire and falling ash settle around them like dust in a forgotten memory. Then, with the sincerity only a child could wield so effortlessly, he answered:
"I don't know."
The reply struck Haruki like a slap in the face. Not because it was insulting, but because it was so utterly unexpected. No lofty words. No false righteousness. No naive heroism. Just honesty.
"I don't know what I'd really do," Xavier repeated, eyes cast slightly downward. "But I know one thing: I'd try. I'd try with everything I have left, no matter how small, not to fall into a path I can't return from. Even if the world burned around me. Even if I had no reason to stand. I'd still try. Because that's something I never want to lose."
Haruki blinked, feeling something stir in his chest.
"And if you can't stop yourself?" he asked—not in judgment, but in genuine curiosity. A part of him wanted to know if redemption was still possible.
Xavier's answer came slowly. "Then... then I hope someone I love—my friends, my family—will reach into the darkness and pull me back out. Back to the path I chose. Even if I can't see it anymore."
There was a pause. Xavier let out a soft, bitter laugh, almost more a sigh than anything else. "Though honestly... I'm still too ashamed to really face them. I ran. I abandoned them. I left my home. Selfishly."
The humor in his voice was hollow, a veil stretched too thin over the guilt that still clung to him like smoke.
Haruki finally looked Xavier in the eyes. For the first time, fully. The fires around them roared and danced, devouring everything they touched, casting both boys in a chaotic, orange glow.
But in Xavier's gaze, Haruki saw something that froze him.
A reflection.
In those cosmic eyes—glistening with faint star-like particles—Haruki saw himself. But not as he wished to be. As he truly was.
A monster. The killer. The one who walked willingly into the flames.
And beneath him, caught in the ash and buried beneath smoking wood beams, was the ghost of a boy not unlike Xavier. His past self. Helpless. Screaming. Trapped beneath a collapsed roof while the bodies of his parents lay still nearby. The very moment his face was scarred—seared by the fire he couldn't escape.
Haruki's breath caught.
And in that moment of stunned silence, something fell. A massive beam of burning wood split from the roof with a crackling shriek, plummeting toward Xavier's face. But before it could strike—
Haruki moved.
His body acted on instinct, his arms reaching up and catching the flaming beam with his bare hands. The wood hissed and burned against his palms, but he didn't flinch. Didn't let go. Didn't hesitate.
He held it.
Held it like he was catching his own past.
Xavier blinked, stunned, the light of the fire reflected in his wide eyes.
Haruki slowly, deliberately, tossed the beam aside and began removing the other debris pressing down on Xavier's injured frame. The younger boy wheezed, too tired to fight, too beaten to speak. Haruki leaned down, slipping one arm beneath Xavier's shoulders and hoisting him up.
Xavier stumbled, then stood—half because of Haruki's strength, half because of his own will to rise.
Haruki didn't look at him, but said quietly, barely above a whisper:
"I wish someone had done that for me."
Xavier tried to smile, but it was a soft, broken thing. He wanted to speak, to say something that matched the gravity of the moment. But all he could manage, through lungs full of ash and pain, was:
"Thank you..."
His voice was a whisper on the wind.
Haruki didn't answer. He just kept walking, one step at a time, carrying Xavier on his shoulder as they passed the skeletal remains of burning homes. The flames danced like devils, the sky above blood-red and smoke-choked, painting the world in a nightmare's hue.
And through it all, one boy carried another. A sinner carrying the innocent.
Because for the first time in a long time, Haruki didn't want to be the one left in the fire.
As the two continued to walk through the smoke-scorched ruins, Haruki's body suddenly stiffened. His instincts screamed.
Without a word, he shoved Xavier to the ground.
The boy hit hard.
Before Xavier could even cry out—
Slice.
A blink of light. A rupture in the air. Like reality itself had been cleaved.
An invisible force surged through the street like a silent hurricane of blades, cutting through everything horizontally: trees, houses, and the earth itself. It wasn't just an attack—it was a message. A warning from something beyond comprehension.
Then came the aftershock. A thunderous quake that ripped the land apart.
Xavier raised his arms to shield his face as a brutal gust tore past him. When the dust cleared, he coughed through the smoke and ash, blinking through stinging tears.
"Haruki?" he called out, squinting into the haze.
Haruki stood unmoving.
Xavier dragged himself forward on bruised arms. "Hey... what's going on? Are you okay?"
Haruki didn't answer. His gaze hung heavy with something Xavier couldn't place—regret? Guilt? Peace?
"He's... nothing like me," Haruki thought, numb. "Even after all he said he had lost, he's still kind. Still human. Still pure..."
"I wish I had a heart like his. I wonder... if you'd both be proud to see me now... Mother. Father."
He slowly turned his head toward Xavier, locking eyes with him one last time. In that single glance, memories flashed: of a boy once desperate to be seen, loved, forgiven.
"This boy... he's light. I'm jealous. I wish I had met him sooner. Maybe... in another life, I could have been better."
"I'm sorry..."
Then Xavier reached out.
And the moment his fingers touched Haruki's arm—
His upper torso slid cleanly off his waist, cleaved in two.
Xavier froze. His brain refused to process what his eyes were seeing.
Then the blood came.
His breath caught. A scream built in his throat but never escaped. He stumbled backward, collapsed to his knees, and vomited.
"No... no no no—Haruki!" he cried.
The man lay there in pieces before him.
Gone.
Xavier trembled violently, his small hands shaking as he reached again, as if he could put him back together—
But it was too late.
Haruki was dead.
The ashes settled around them like snow.
Then—
Excalibur, lying nearby, began to shake.
It pulsed, glowing in rhythmic pulses, bright and unstable. It howled—not with sound, but with vibration, as if the blade itself was screaming in terror.
Xavier's eyes widened. "Excalibur...?"
He reached out, but the moment his fingers brushed its hilt—
The sky changed.
The clouds turned black.
And then it began to rain.
But it wasn't water.
Black, thick liquid rained from the heavens—blood.
Trees wilted and curled inward. Flowers died. The air went stale. Life fled in every direction.
Everything knew.
Something was coming.
Something that should not exist.
A malevolent force surged through the atmosphere, raw and violent, as if space itself wanted to recoil from it.
Xavier's body went rigid.
His cosmic eyes flared without warning, glowing alongside Excalibur in synchronized pulses. The boy gripped his head, overwhelmed.
Terror, dread, despair—every emotion surged at once.
Then—
"XAVIER!"
Alcmena's voice rang like lightning in his mind.
He flew through the sky with a speed that cracked the clouds.
"STAY PUT! I'M COMING TO YOUR LOCATION!"
"Master?!" Xavier cried out mentally, eyes wide with panic and tears. "What's happening?! What's going on?!"
Alcmena's mental voice trembled.
"Xavier—listen to me. You need to leave that place. Now."
"Why?! I don't under—"
"NOW'S NOT THE TIME TO QUESTION ME!" Alcmena snapped, voice frantic. "HE'S COMING!"
Xavier froze. "Who... who's coming?!"
"I remember that demonic presence. I remember it as if it were yesterday..."
Xavier's heart pounded in his chest like a drum.
"WHO, MASTER?!" he screamed, barely able to speak through his sobs.
A pause.
Then Alcmena spoke two words that shook the sky:
"Grand Emperor... Julius."
"The End of All."
"The Lord of Apocalypse."
"He's coming for you."