The wind had stopped.
There was no sound, no murmur from the castle, no breath from the bones below. Just a single heartbeat—Everett's—echoing across the expanse of night.
He stood still, his eyes glowing with a shade of black that seemed to pull light inward. Around him, the cloud-armies stirred—silent shadows billowing like smoke drawn to his will. But something had changed.
The katana that formed in his hand was not like before.
It didn't shimmer or gleam. It absorbed. The weapon was forged from a black so deep it looked like the absence of everything. When Everett gripped it, the very air around it seemed to struggle, twisting with a sick gravity.
Gloria tensed.
Guruji frowned, fingers twitching near his beads.
"This one… is different," the old mystic whispered.
Everett raised the katana slowly—an executioner's ritual—and brought it down.
The blade didn't slice the ground. It passed through it, like light through smoke. And from the point of contact, something monstrous unfurled.
A dome of black erupted from Everett's chest like a pulsing shockwave, spanning tens of kilometers in a blink. The ground vanished. The bones dissolved. The air collapsed.
Every one of Everett's summoned beasts—Wind Elephant, Phantom Gear, even the Glimmer Wolf—were torn apart into nothingness, eaten by the darkness like memories eroding under time.
Gloria screamed, but even her voice was swallowed.
She couldn't see her own hands.
Guruji's aura flared instinctively. His form glowed with the subtle suggestion of divinity. But even that—even his suspect, cosmic nature—was dimmed, then corroded.
The darkness was not just night. It was oblivion.
"Is he… doing this on purpose?" Gloria murmured, trying to orient herself. But there was no direction. No up, no down. Just… drowning in black.
"I can't just die like this," she whispered.
So she moved—blindly, erratically, wildly—swinging at anything. Her sword whirled through the nothing, a flicker of motion in a sea of death.
And then, with trembling breath, Gloria planted her feet.
Her resolve crystallized.
From behind her, a knight formed—tall, radiant, armored in cracked silver that still bled sanctity. Her final attack.
Gloria began to chant, voice cracking yet clear:
> "Through the dark, I shine. Through death, I speak. By my light, may truth cleave shadow—
Holy Flame, Sword Divine, deliver me."
The knight lifted its blade. Gloria mirrored it, body shaking.
And then—she slashed.
The strike came not just from her—but from her will. It wasn't just steel. It was lineage. Fury. Desperation.
A great rift opened in the black mist. Light poured in like a scream.
Below her feet, ghostly soldiers materialized—hundreds of them—kneeling in perfect formation. Their presence carved a line through the gloom, the path of the sword. The black mist hissed, recoiling like a wounded beast.
But it wasn't enough.
The blade met nothing.
And Gloria… collapsed.
Silent.
Falling like a petal in space.
---
Guruji remained.
Breathing was now more concept than function. But even the concept of breath seemed to vanish in this corrupted domain.
He could barely move. Yet he smiled.
"Then… so be it."
He sat cross-legged.
And behind him… the Buddha emerged.
A giant silhouette of peace. Seated in perfect stillness. And behind that figure—the Peepal Tree, radiant with silver leaves and golden roots, the tree of Enlightenment.
The mist trembled.
Guruji began to chant—not loudly, but with terrifying calm:
> "Yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata—
Abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srijamy aham…"
Light flared. The tree behind him bloomed.
A subtle breeze returned to the black dome.
It fought back.
For a moment, it looked like the corruption would peel away—purified by truth.
But then… the backlash came.
The darkness turned sentient.
It didn't attack Guruji. It pursued him. Poured into his lungs. Into his veins. Into the space between thoughts.
Guruji couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think.
Couldn't exist.
Even time halted, as if afraid to proceed.
"This… is not a technique," he realized with horror.
"This… is Everett."
With one final breath, Guruji whispered to the fading Buddha:
"Guide us… if you can."
And collapsed, hands still in prayer.
---
Silence returned.
The dome stood.
All within it was drowned in null.
And Everett?
Somewhere within that vast, crushing oblivion…
He opened his eyes again.
Black. Eternal. Endless.