The boy dropped to his knees, clutching his chest as the air thickened around him— no longer something he could breathe, but something he had to choke down like smoke from a world set ablaze.
Every breath came with a struggle, each inhale scraping down his throat like glass.
His eyes, wide and unblinking, remained locked on the dissolving remains of the angel— what was left of it.
Not feathers. Not light. Something stranger. Something unusual.
Splinters of reality fell around them, shimmering like stardust, like broken glass, like fragments of a dying sun— but none of it ever touched the ground.
It simply vanished mid-fall, as if the earth itself rejected the remnants of what once dared call itself divine.
His hand trembled as it found the windowsill, fingers turning white against the stone.
He didn't realize he'd spoken until the words echoed inside his skull, fractured and hushed.
He broke it.
The thought stumbled, as if too massive for his mind to carry.
He broke the sky. He shattered the heavens.
The boy blinked again and again, waiting for the world to recoil, to undo itself, to reverse the impossible.
But the damage remained. The fracture didn't fade. It pulsed.
"What... was that?" he whispered, barely audible. "Who... is he?"
But somewhere beneath the haze of terror, the boy already knew.
Not the name, not the nature— but the truth of it.
What had happened wasn't allowed.
It couldn't be allowed.
That not even the gods could rewrite what they had just witnessed— and yet, there stood Shingen, idly brushing celestial ash off the head of his spear, like he'd merely swatted a fly from his path.
The boy's throat dried to sand.
This wasn't power. This wasn't a strength. This was contamination.
Something that didn't belong to mortal blood or holy decree.
Around him, hardened warriors— the same men who once marched through flames and fury— stood motionless.
Their faces were slack. Not from wounds.
But from fear. True, soul-rotting fear.
Once proud and unshakable, the red-haired swordsman looked like a lost child, stripped of purpose.
One by one, their bodies gave way. Knees buckled.
Weapons fell. Eyes dimmed.
Not by blade. But by dread.
A beast of a warrior still clung to Shingen's leg, trembling, strength draining from his limbs like spilled blood.
His mouth opened, but nothing emerged— not a word, not a plea.
Just breath and terror.
Shingen tilted his head, touching his chin like he was admiring a broken toy, then knelt, smiling warmly at the trembling man.
"That tickles," he whispered. The words were soft. Gentle and almost kind, but that made it worse.
No one spoke. No one moved.
They all understood now— why the name "Dark Star" was only ever murmured in drunken nightmares and forgotten prayers.
Why were no songs sung about him? Only silence is kept.
Then it came. A sound not meant for ears.
Not a boom. Not thunder. B
ut a brittle, delicate shatter, like thin ice breaking miles beneath a frozen lake.
A jagged wound tore through the air, a crack in space itself, faintly glowing— not with light, but with a dying colorless wrongness, a shade that had no name and no place in this world.
The rip wasn't wide.
Barely large enough for a man.
And yet, what emerged made even the silence recoil.
From the tear, a man stepped through— no, not a man. Something— wearing the shape of one.
He moved with calm certainty, parting the edges of reality like wet paper.
His black suit was plain. Immaculate.
Pressed with unnatural precision, paired with a gray tie so ordinary it became sinister.
But it wasn't the clothing that chilled the boy's spine. It was how he moved.
It's too smooth. Too precise to belong to a human.
The air around him bent subtly with every step, like the world struggled to agree he belonged.
The ground did not crunch beneath his feet— it acquiesced.
Dust floated, then hung, motionless.
Flames flickered, then froze. The breeze died. Even the shadows hesitated.
The boy wanted to turn his head.
Wanted to run, scream, do anything.
But he was locked in place. Not by magic.
But by the kind of fear that lives in your marrow and whispers that it's already too late.
The suited figure straightened his cuffs.
Then came more.
One by one, they followed— each sliding through their fractures as if the sky itself were cracking open like old porcelain.
They moved with no urgency, no emotion, their faces blank as forgotten statues.
Men and women in civilian clothes, mismatched uniforms, coats too pristine for this world.
Their presence bled the battlefield of all warmth and color, reducing everything to washed-out grays.
Shingen twitched.
Not in fear.
But something else.
His grin, usually smeared with sarcasm and cruelty, faltered— then bloomed wider.
His teeth gleamed.
His eyes sparkled with an emotion far too eager to be called joy.
This wasn't mockery. It was glee.
He wasn't preparing to fight or flee. He was waiting.
The boy, helpless and watching, felt something clench inside him.
Shingen wasn't scared. He wasn't even surprised. He looked… delighted.
And then came the pressure.
Not a sound. Not a wind. But a presence.
The kind of stillness that crushes the breath out of a room.
Blood stopped flowing. Wounds no longer bled.
Magic flames froze in mid-curl.
Even Shingen's own shadow twitched, lengthening unnaturally, stretching toward something beneath him.
A sound began.
Wet and sluggish like something heavy being dragged through flesh.
But there was no mud here.
Only stone. Only ruin.
And yet, the bodies began to move.
Not rise. Not resurrect. But twitch.
Fingers curled. Jaws clicked.
Corpses spasmed with unnatural ticks, as if their very nerves remembered something their minds did not.
Then the suited man spoke.
He stepped through a tear that hadn't existed a heartbeat ago, adjusting his tie as if entering a boardroom.
"I apologize for the intrusion, Shingen," he said, voice low and polite.
His footsteps made no noise, save for a faint, wet thud. "But I must ask you to understand—"
He paused. Head tilting.
Shingen no longer smiled.
He grinned.
Not with charm. But with the coiled delight of something hungry.
"—Your continued existence," the suited man resumed, his voice now sharp and cold, "is officially classified as a threat."
The boy couldn't breathe. Couldn't scream. His throat locked.
Shingen laughed.
It started low. Then grew. Crooked and strange.
A sound that didn't fit in any sane world. Even his shadow shrank away from the noise.
"Go on," he said, voice dripping with venomous joy, "try it. If you think you can."
And the battlefield sank deeper into silence, as if the world itself was bracing for what came next.
And then, responding not to fate, but to some monstrous authority deeper than gods, the sky didn't simply crack.
It tore. Split apart like sinew under a blade, revealing not heaven, but a celestial wound, gaping and raw.
A gash so wide it seemed to bleed light, not warmth or comfort, but something searing and wrong, too pure to be natural.
No thunder rolled. No divine roar followed.
Just silence— until the beams came.
Thin, immaculate shafts slicing down like surgical knives, sterilizing everything they touched.
Every corpse, every dying breath, every trembling survivor, drenched beneath an unbearable purity that stripped away dignity and filth alike.
That light didn't cleanse. It accused.
They hadn't come for Shingen alone. They had come for all of them.
The boy tried to look, but the brilliance stung like needles beneath his eyelids.
His lungs shrank, his throat closed, and every cell in his body screamed to look away.
But he felt them. Not numbers.
Nine.
And nine was enough to break the world.
They didn't descend— they entered, slipping between dimensions like blades through silk.
Gravity bowed before them.
The very air warped in protest.
Their presence caused the ground to lurch and shudder, even though their feet never touched it.
It wasn't light they brought, but something that perverted it, twisting its sanctity into mockery.
Their cloaks shimmered like oil over water, imperious and ancient, yet untouched by time.
Faces?
They had none.
They were impressions, dreams remembered wrong, memories corrupted by fear.
Each carried artifacts— not weapons, not tools— but judgments.
Objects heavy with aeons of suffering, etched with glyphs that had flayed civilizations.
The boy clutched his chest, uncertain if it was awe or pure animal panic.
He could taste the copper of it in his mouth.
These were not saviors. They were not wrath.
They were corrected, made by flesh.
And still, below them, the broken warriors stirred.
Not because they could fight.
Not because they believed they might win.
But because something older than pride told them to stand.
Their bones refused, but they rose by sheer inertia of terror and defiance.
And then, Shingen moved.
No reverence touched his face.
No fury in his eyes and dimmed with half-lidded, he traced the nine like a butcher surveying meat.
He didn't smile. Not quite.
His lips twitched upward— not with joy, but with fascination.
The delight of a child tearing wings from insects. Slowly, he tilted his head.
"One... two... three..." His voice came gently, almost teasing— yet the world itself bent to hear him.
"Two of you bear the mark. Blessed, but not whole. Uncontracted."
He lifted a finger, idle and dismissive, pointing lazily toward two indistinct forms.
"How far you've rotted."
One of the celestial beings— their supposed leader— flinched.
Barely, but it was enough.
"You won't leave here," the voice replied.
It echoed with forced composure, but behind it, cold panic.
"You won't survive this."
Shingen blinked once.
A slow, reptilian motion.
His feet shifted.
Not forward, not back— inward, like something folding into itself, preparing to bloom.
The air grew heavier.
The light bent and thickened, retreating from him.
The boy felt it in his stomach, like a pressure drop before a storm.
Shadows surged behind Shingen, not cast, not natural.
They grew, pulled from beneath his skin, unraveling like a second self waking from slumber.
No smoke. No fog.
Just raw shape— claws, ridges, tendrils— all slithering into place.
He didn't announce it. He didn't declare it.
He became it.
And in that frozen silence, everyone understood: this wasn't defense. This was execution.
Shingen stood still upon the broken grid, yet he no longer seemed to stand upon anything.
His body arched unnaturally, the backward curve of his spine violent and inhuman, like he was being drawn by invisible strings.
His head snapped back, exposing a taut throat pulsing with veins stretched too far, the skin paper-thin.
Arms hung limp but twitching, fingers curling with disturbing precision, like something beneath his skin was testing the limbs.
His ribcage bloated, too wide
Not with breath, but as though inhaling some unseen pestilence.
The boy couldn't hear it, but the sensation was there— like whispers gnawing at the base of his skull, clawing for a way in.
Then came the sound. Wet and rupturing.
Organic.
Bones burst from his forearms— snarling, jagged protrusions that twisted and tore through flesh like barbed wire rising from a corpse.
Meat split. Tendons snapped. The muscle gave way with a sickening squelch.
The armor formed not like steel, but infection, feeding on him, growing from him.
Blood painted fine, deliberate lines across his fingers and wrists— like ritual markings made by something blind and malicious.
He didn't scream. He didn't flinch.
He just stood there.
Still. Serene. Hungry.
And then, without warning, he moved.
The nearest celestial had no time to react.
Shingen's bone-wrapped arm speared through his abdomen, not stabbing— detonating— as if the body had been filled with pressurized rot.
Organs exploded out in wet splashes, bones fractured outward like shrapnel.
The man didn't scream. He simply ceased.
Shingen tossed the body aside like trash.
The next met a worse fate— his jaw torn clean off with a single grip, teeth scattering like hail.
His skull, now vulnerable, collapsed beneath the next blow— caved inward like soft fruit.
Another tried to escape, but Shingen's armored heel slammed into his leg, shattering it backward.
Bone punched through skin like a spear, and the man dropped, shrieking.
Shingen tilted his head again. Curious. Almost... amused.
The priestess, barely conscious, could only watch through glazed eyes as he approached— his steps slow, dripping.
He dragged behind him trails of blood that looked deliberate.
Like an artist drawing with viscera.
"Is this even the Seven?" he muttered— no fury, no triumph. Only tired contempt.
The survivors didn't move. They couldn't.
Horror froze them in place.
Their mouths opened, but no words came. Even screaming had abandoned them.
And then the sky ripped again.
A vertical slash— pure, incandescent— sliced down like divine judgment.
A longsword struck the grid beneath Shingen's feet, cracking it wide.
Dust and fractured light spiraled around him, casting wild shadows.
One of the remaining warriors had struck. Descending like a god.
Shingen slid backward— fluid, effortless.
His heels left twin gouges in the floor.
He didn't break stance. He barely adjusted.
The dust danced around him, and through it, a grin bloomed.
It was not the grin of defiance. It was the grin of a man waiting for something better to break.
He lowered his arm. The partial block had been meaningless.
And then his body shifted again.
The bone crawling up his arms surged upward, climbing his shoulders, encasing his ribs.
They didn't form armor— they formed hunger. They took.
Spires grew from his back, jagged and misaligned.
Not symmetrical, not beautiful. But wrong.
They moved as though alive, pulsing, throbbing, slithering.
The color changed. No longer red. No longer black.
But void.
Not emptiness.
Something that was supposed to be empty.
A hunger darker than shadow.
It swallowed all the light around him.
Even the holy radiance dimmed, fading like dying stars.
They attacked again.
Divine warriors cloaked in light and scripture.
They moved like hymns. But their blades trembled. Their hearts knew.
Shingen moved, and the air cried.
Each motion shredded reality.
Warriors flew like broken dolls.
Divine armor folded inward. Bones shattered.
Flesh bent the wrong way. He didn't kill.
He humbled. With every strike, he reminded them: they were nothing.
Because Shingen wasn't here to fight. He was here to enjoy.
Screams filled the grid, mingled with metal, with the low thrum of power gone wrong.
The battlefield groaned, veins of light cracking beneath his steps.
And through it all, he laughed.
Not maniacally. Not cruelly.
Honestly.
Even as blood poured from his wounds, as his form twisted into something unholy, the grin never left.
From his arms and back, bone-like wings stretched outward— deformed, spiraled, fractured.
They hadn't grown.
They had always been there, waiting for permission to manifest.
This was not a transformation. This was a revelation.
His body— splintered, torn, oozing— had become a shrine to something that had no name.
A grotesque cathedral of claw, bone, and willpower.
A shape carved by suffering and forged in divine betrayal.
And in his eyes— wide, hungry, certain— there was no madness.
Only expectation. As if this wasn't the beginning.
But the arrival of what was always promised.