The world cracked around him — diamond memories, shards of Isissis, and a scream promising the devouring of all who he loved. Then a muffled shock, and Bakuzan snored, swallowed by the sweat of a brutal wake-up.
He opened his eyes onto a cold cave, the smell of crushed hay pricking his nostrils. His body lay on a rough litter; sleeping was a word too noble for what he had just endured. Around him, the shadow rippled, as if the stone itself held its breath.
"Have you finally woken up?"
The voice snapped — sure, sharp. Bakuzan turned his head. Raiku stood there, arms crossed, a dark silhouette carved at the cave entrance. Her expression was both annoyed and concerned.
"I hope you're in good shape," she added. "Mercenaries are looking for you."
Bakuzan narrowed his eyes. "Mercenaries?"
Raiku shrugged impatiently. "I was clear, wasn't I? A heterogeneous group — deviants, pseudo-deviants, great mortals. They want your skin."
He wanted to ask a thousand questions, but fatigue found a pretext to scatter him. He closed his eyes for a second — and something broader awakened within him. The world seemed to recalibrate: the outlines of identities sharpened, names stretched into invisible threads, and each thing suddenly bore its deep signature. A cold, precise vision: he felt what it was to be the ego of a law.
Bakuzan breathed, looking at his hands as if they had changed owners. The absorption marks, still warm beneath his skin, reminded him of the exchange that had occurred. A short, bright thought pierced him:
— So that's how Isissis sees the world.
He stood up, sore muscles, but with a renewed resolve. "Very well. I will go speak to these famous mercenaries."
Raiku regarded him warily. "Do you know where they are?"
A rustle, and Satan's silhouette slid into the cave like a white mist. Her smile was cold, amused. "Of course he knows, Raiku. You seem to forget that Bakuzan has fused with Isissis's essence."
Raiku stifled a curse, brows knit. The silence weighed. Bakuzan felt the implications of the sentence as a new weight — not only was he carrying his own design, but now the imprint of a mirror-god. The distant voices of Madhurya's echoes whispered, seductive and dangerous.
Satan approached, tilting her head to study him as one would gauge a successful experiment. "I'm curious to see how you'll handle this," she said. "They're not weak: deviants, pseudo-deviants, great mortals — an explosive mix. But you… you have something else now."
Bakuzan felt anger and excitement rise in him in the same current. He clenched the hilt of his shadow sword, tested for a moment the deep presence beating within him. The world waited outside, hungry and dangerous. He cast a glance at Raiku, then Satan, touched his face, and, without further hesitation, left the cave.
An army of over three hundred individuals moved through the mountains, their steps ringing like a war beat.
They all shared a simple, burning desire: to eliminate Bakuzan.
On the earth, mortals advanced, weapons clenched, riding wheezing horses. The armor clanged, banners whipped in the wind.
But in the skies, other silhouettes accompanied the march: Great Mortals and Deviants, exceptional beings, hovered above the troupe, radiating a supernatural glow as if guiding men like gods.
And, above all these presences, drifted a masked young woman.
Her beauty had something unreal: a pale suit with silver reflections hugged her slender body; a gold mask, adorned with two curved horns, concealed her gaze. Long silver hair waved behind her, like a cascade frozen in the wind. Golden and black motifs ran across her costume, intertwined with delicate metal pieces that hummed with subtle energy. She exuded a rare presence — calm, assured, and terribly dominant.
It was Sylthéra.
Commander of this heterogeneous army.
Her expression remained impassive, but her presence alone was enough to command silence. Everything about her breathed mastery, clairvoyance, and determination.
Yet suddenly, a shiver ran through her.
An invisible, nearly imperceptible change had just torn the air around her. Space itself seemed to twist.
Something approached.
Something incomprehensible.
"Stop!" she commanded in a clear voice.
Instantly, the ranks froze.
"What is it, chief?" asked one of her lieutenants.
Sylthéra did not answer. Her eyes, hidden behind the mask, seemed to scan the horizon. She perceived an abnormal wave, a breath that did not belong to this world.
Then, abruptly, she turned:
"Shield!"
A blinding light sprang from her hands. In a blink of an eye, hundreds of luminous spheres enveloped her soldiers like protective shells.
A rumble tore the sky.
Space cracked, and from that tear emerged the Dragon of the Void — Nihlorgue, Bakuzan's guardian.
Its colossal silhouette wove itself from moving shadows. Its eyes, two inverted stars, fixed the marching horde below. Then its maw opened, vomiting an orb of pure darkness.
The impact was catastrophic.
The mountain moaned.
The ground collapsed.
An apocalyptic breath swept the plain, consuming all in its path.
But the shields held.
The men, terrified, sought to understand.
"What's happening?!"
"What is this monster?!"
The din faded gradually, replaced by oppressive silence.
Above them, the creature undulated, immense, almost graceful, in the fractured night.
Then a grave voice, resonating through the dimensions, rose:
"Well played, Sylthéra… You perceived my presence faster than I hoped. And luckily for you."
The Dragon of the Void slowly folded back into itself, its shadow swallowing the light of the sky.
Sylthéra raised her eyes to the colossal dragon, her silver cloak billowing under the air's pressure.
"I remember you… she murmured in a calm, almost solemn voice. You are Nihlorgue, the Dragon of the Black Grief. Where is your master?"
Nihlorgue remained still, his immense body twisting in the air like a mirage of shadow and gravity.
No words escaped his maw, but immediately, the light seemed to distort behind him. A shadow was born from the void, dense, tangible… and three silhouettes detached from it.
Bakuzan. Satan. Raiku.
Their appearance made the world shudder. The air grew heavy, as if existence itself hesitated to breathe.
"Master… roared Nihlorgue in a cavernous voice. I can reduce them to nothing, if you wish."
Bakuzan, impassive, shook his head slowly.
His eyes glinted with an unfathomable light.
"No. It's not necessary. I will handle it myself."
He stepped forward a pace — and the mountain seemed to bend beneath the weight of his mere presence.
But barely had he advanced a few meters when a black gleam split the air.
A spear forged in the void sprang forth, tracing a line of death toward him.
Bakuzan dodged with a fluid motion, his gaze instantly capturing the trajectory and source of the attack.
The spear-bearer — a Super Mortal — stood exposed. His energy resonated through the layers of reality like a murmur: the Causality of Silence.
Bakuzan appeared before him without warning, his fingers closing around his throat. The space trembled.
But before he could tighten his grip, a multitude of other Super Mortals burst forth from all sides, screaming their rage.
"Go, guys!"
"It's Black Grief himself!"
"This monster will die today!"
"Don't go near Dame Sylthéra!"
Lightning, flames, and energy orbs lashed out, crossing the sky like a divine storm.
Yet, at the heart of the chaos, Bakuzan remained unnervingly calm.
His body moved with unreal precision, dodging, diverting, even absorbing some attacks as if they meant nothing.
Further away, Satan watched the scene, her red eyes half-slitted.
"Watch him, Raiku…" she said with an amused breath. "Looks like he's using them to test his new essence."
Raiku, arms crossed, replied with no emotion:
"As long as he finishes these insects quickly, I have no objections."
Nihlorgue, for his part, followed the fight without a word, wings folded like a veil of darkness waiting for a signal.
A Super Mortal, desperate, extended a hand.
The air froze.
Time itself seemed to break.
Everything stopped: the flames, the dust, even the world's heartbeat.
But Bakuzan moved again.
Time's stop slid over him like a wave against a mountain.
A nearly curious smile brushed his lips.
"Interesting…" he murmured.
His gaze pierced the plans of reality, watching the causal weave vibrate like a fractured canvas.
He understood immediately.
These Super Mortals had surpassed the structuring causality.
Their relation to time was no longer linear.
They could twist it, carve it, slow it, invert it — reduce it to a simple tool.
But even that mastery had no effect on him.
Bakuzan advanced, breaking the frozen illusion of a simple hand gesture. The world exhaled in a temporal shockwave.
Soldiers toppled, some screaming, others unable to understand what they had just seen.
It was brief.
Too brief for them to understand.
The entire army — over three hundred beings — trembled the mountain by its mere presence.
Yet, faced with Bakuzan, it was nothing.
He sighed.
"All this is interesting… but so weak for the Black Grief."
In the next instant, he stretched out his arm.
And the world collapsed.
His aura shot forth like an inverted star, a flare of luminous mana with iridescent reflections, the pure light of Isissis — a light that did not illuminate, but judged.
The wave crossed the air, the earth, the consciences.
It swept the mountains and touched each mercenary, except Sylthéra, protected by a divine reflex.
The deviants, pseudo-deviants and great mortals screamed in unison — a cry not of physical pain, but of interior annihilation.
Their powers faded like drowned flames.
Their essences contracted.
Their beings were demoted: cosmological anomalies reduced back to simple human dust.
Some fell to their knees, others suffocated, trembling, discovering the fragility they had forgotten.
"What is happening to us?!"
"I feel like I've regressed…"
"My power… it's disappeared…"
Even their memories of glory faded, their muscles forgot the art of battle.
It was as if the universe was taking from them the right to have been exceptional.
Fear, at first diffuse, became palpable.
The boldest began to flee, stumbling over their own cries.
Even Sylthéra stepped back a pace, trembling hands, her golden gaze fixed on Bakuzan.
He smiled, calm, almost amused.
"So that's it… the power of Isissis?" he murmured.
"I understand now why he had an ego as big as his sky."
His arm rose again, slowly.
Around him, the earth vibrated. The weakened bodies trembled, their shadows liquefied.
"Tell me, Sylthéra…"
His voice sank like a blade.
"Would you mind if I transformed your army into mine? A fine army of the living dead…"
Silence collapsed.
"What?!" Sylthéra gasped. "No! I won't let you do that!"
Fear gave way to rage.
She leapt, eyes blazing, shouting an order she could barely hear herself.
Orbs of destructive light shot from her hands, tracing divine arcs around her.
But Bakuzan dodged.
Not with haste — with nonchalance.
His movements were measured, almost careless.
"So you're them," he said in a soft voice, "the mercenaries meant to crush me?"
A second later, he vanished.
And reappeared in front of Sylthéra.
His hand closed around her throat with surgical precision.
The shock forced her to drop her spheres of light that exploded into the void behind him.
Around, the survivors screamed.
"Dame Sylthéra!"
"No!"
"Let her go, Black Grief!"
"What is he going to do to her?!"
Bakuzan, impassive, lifted her slightly off the ground.
The shadow of his dragon slid behind him like a veil of abyss.
His eyes, strangely calm, met Sylthéra's terrified ones.
Time itself seemed to stand still.