Kiss Of The Vampire Volume 3
"The Girl With The Sharp Sword Part 2"
Mission 17.2 : God of Nothing!
The battle between the King and the God turned the Bureau headquarters into a localized apocalypse. As Ben swung the massive Celestial Jian, the force of his strikes didn't just break the walls; they sheared through the concepts of "here" and "now." Every time the Jian collided with the Crimson Scepter, a shockwave of distorted reality rippled out, turning the floor into liquid glass and the ceiling into a swirling vortex of violet clouds.
"Go!" Ben roared over the sound of a world tearing apart. He parried a thrust from the Scepter that would have deleted a city block. "The building is slipping into the Void! If you're still here when my domain collapses, you'll be forgotten before you hit the street!"
Denver gripped the Yamato, his knuckles white. The resonance from the sword was screaming in his mind, showing him flashes of the "Old World"—laughter in a campfire's glow, a shared drink after a hunt, and the moment his best friend, Deyviel, turned into light to save them all.
I didn't save him then, Denver thought, his chest burning with a desperate, singular purpose. I let him erase himself. Not again. This is my time to save my best friend.
He took a step toward the hooded figure, but a hand clamped onto his arm with bruising strength.
"Denver, no!" Elisia shouted. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the chaos of the battle. "Look at him! That isn't Deyviel. It's a lure! He wants you to reach out so he can use your 'Witness' energy to fully anchor his true body from the Sunken Temple!"
"She's right!" Reyes added, grabbing Denver's other shoulder and pulling him toward the emergency stairwell. "The sensors are spiking into the red. He's feeding on your desire to save him! We have to move!"
The God, noticing Denver's hesitation, flicked the Crimson Scepter. A wave of violet mist surged forward, faster than Ben could intercept.
"Stay in the light!" Ben yelled, but it was too late.
The mist hit Denver and Elisia simultaneously. The collapsing Bureau building vanished. Suddenly, they were standing in a field of golden wheat under the violet sky of the "Old World." It was peaceful. Quiet. And standing ten feet away was Deyviel, without the hood, without the God's cold aura. He looked exactly as they remembered.
"Hey," the boy said, flashing that reckless, golden-coin-flipping grin. "Took you guys long enough to find me. It's cold out there, isn't it? Come on. Let's go home."
Denver's heart shattered. He started to reach out, his feet moving on their own. "Deyviel..."
"Denver, stop!" Elisia's voice cracked. She was seeing the same vision, but her hand was on the hilt of her silver blade. "It's the God! He's trying to break our will so we stop anchoring the current reality!"
Back in the real world, the Bureau building was literally dissolving. Ben Rayleigh was a blur of golden light, his King's Authority fighting a losing battle against the Outer God's infinite hunger.
"I said... LEAVE!" Ben's voice tore through the vision, a shockwave of "King's Command" that shattered the golden wheat field like a mirror.
The illusion broke. Denver and Elisia stumbled back into the crumbling hallway, gasping for air. Reyes was already dragging them toward the exit.
"He's using our love for him as a door!" Elisia realized, her face streaked with tears. "We have to go, Denver! If we stay, we're just giving him the keys to the world!"
Denver looked back one last time. Through the dust and the violet fire, he saw Ben Rayleigh stand tall, his massive Jian glowing like a dying star as he faced the God alone.
"I'm coming back for you, kid," Denver whispered, directed at the boy the God was mocking. "And I'm bringing a hammer to break that temple."
They dove into the stairwell just as the top three floors of the building were swallowed by a silent, black hole.
The street outside the Bureau was a landscape of madness. The towering headquarters didn't just fall; it was being sucked upward and inward, spiraling into a pinprick of violet light that devoured stone, glass, and sound.
Reyes threw Denver and Elisia into the back of a reinforced tactical SUV just as the shockwave hit. The vehicle rocked on its suspension, windows spider-webbing from the pressure of the "Subtraction Field."
"Drive! Get us out of the resonance zone!" Reyes screamed at the automated pilot.
Denver sat in the back, his chest heaving. He clutched the Yamato so tightly his knuckles bled. The sword was hot—unnaturally hot—pulsing like a living heart. The vision of Deyviel in the wheat field was still burned into his retinas, a cruel, perfect hook buried in his soul.
"He's still in there," Denver rasped, his eyes fixed on the collapsing tower. "Ben is fighting that... that thing... and it's wearing his face, Elisia. It was him."
"It wasn't him, Denver!" Elisia snapped, though her voice trembled and her eyes were wet. She gripped her silver blade until her hands shook. "That was a shell. A costume made of our grief. If you had reached out, you wouldn't have saved Deyviel. You would have been the final bolt that unlocked that God's cage."
She looked out the rear window. The sky over Manila was no longer tropical blue; it was a bruised, swirling vortex. The "Reset" wasn't just a past event anymore—it was a wound that the Outer God was actively ripping back open.
Inside the epicenter, the world was silent.
Ben Rayleigh stood in the center of what used to be the Main Lobby. There were no walls now, only a swirling abyss of gray ash and violet lightning. He stood alone against the hooded figure, his Celestial Jian cracked but still glowing with a defiant, golden heat.
The God, wearing the Echo of Deyviel's form, stood casually atop a floating piece of marble. He tapped the Crimson Scepter against the air, creating ripples that shattered the laws of gravity.
"Your friends have fled, King of Time," the God spoke, the chorus of voices sounding amused. "They have abandoned you to the hunger. Why do you still hold the line? You know you cannot kill a God of the Outer Spheres with a piece of sharpened star-metal."
Ben wiped a streak of blood from his jaw and spat. He didn't look like a Bureau Captain anymore. He looked like the Strongest Hunter of a forgotten age—a man who had stood at the end of the world and refused to blink.
"I'm not holding the line to kill you," Ben said, his voice echoing with the weight of the Regalia Confrontation. "I'm holding it because I'm a hassle. And right now, I'm the biggest hassle you've ever faced."
Ben's eyes flared with a blinding, clockwork gold. He began to walk forward, each step cracking the invisible floor of the Void.
"You want an avatar? You want revenge on your kin?" Ben raised his Jian. "Then you're going to have to get past the man who already died once to protect that 'Stupid Kid.' You're wearing his face, but you don't have his heart. And that's why you're going to lose."
Back in the SUV, as they sped toward the coast, the Yamato suddenly emitted a sharp, high-pitched ring.
Denver gasped as a surge of information flooded his brain. It wasn't a vision this time; it was a set of coordinates, etched in ancient light. The sword was acting as a compass, pointing away from the city, past the shore, and deep into the dark waters of the Philippine Trench.
"The Sunken Temple," Denver whispered, his eyes wide. "The sword is showing me the way. That's where his true body is. That's where the seal is breaking."
"We can't go there alone," Reyes said, checking the tactical map. "That's one of the deepest points on the planet. And the Bureau is in shambles. We have no subs, no support—"
"We don't need the Bureau," Elisia said, her gaze hardening as she looked at the glowing sword. "We have the only two things that remember the truth. If we don't reach that temple before the God fully manifests, Manila—and the rest of this world—will become nothing more than a forgotten memory."
The SUV skidded onto the docks of Manila Bay, where the water was churning with unnatural, bioluminescent shadows. Something was rising from the depths, called by the presence of the God.
As Denver, Elisia, and Reyes stand on the pier, the violet sky over Manila suddenly goes pitch black. Across the city, every clock—digital and analog—stops at the exact same microsecond.
A voice, massive and cold, booms from the clouds, echoing the God's triumph:
"The Witness is identified. The Temple is calling. The Second Reset begins... now."
In the distance, a massive pillar of water erupts from the center of the ocean, revealing the jagged, black spires of a temple that hasn't been seen in eleven thousand years.
And in the ruins of the Bureau, Ben Rayleigh's golden light suddenly... goes out.
To be continued