Fairy Tail: Shinigami - CH257 (Patreon)
Content
[Adam. C. POV.]
As the sword plunged my heart, the void started to expand throughout my body, swallowing every last vestige of warmth that had ever touched my skin. I could feel the tether to my soul fraying, each thread snapping with the precision of a practiced executioner's blade. Yet amidst this encroaching darkness, there was an ethereal tranquility... a sense of release that bordered on euphoria.
My entire body had become a shadow, no... an extension of the void, leaving no discerning features
or outline that would distinguish me from the abyss that now claimed me. I was no longer a Shinigami, a warrior, or anything similar; I now was a part of the infinite, an indistinguishable speck in an ocean of nothingness.
The Perfect Vessel of Emptiness.
I couldn't speak.
I couldn't see.
I couldn't feel.
Yet, I didn't need any of those things, because as the void, I could see everything that was not.
Locking my senses on Yhwach, I moved forward in a manner that defied the very concept of motion. Where there was no light to cast shadows, and no ground to measure distance, I was both everywhere and nowhere at once, because as long as I existed in this stage everything was a extension of the void.
Everything was being consumed by the void.
One second...
Yhwach brought his blade down on me, meeting my blade, or what used to be my blade, as it too had undergone the same transformation as my form. His weapon disintegrated
on contact, his blade merging with the unending darkness that had become my essence.
His eyes, wide with the shock of understanding, finally perceived the truth of what he faced as he moved back, making some distance between us. In this form, I was beyond the limits of life and death, beyond the grasp of fate or destiny.
I was the embodiment of absence, the antithesis of all that is, will be, could be, or should be.
Two seconds...
"Sankt Altar!" He roared, unleashing a divine light that sought to sanctify and vanish the space my void had touched.
But that light, as blinding and pure as it was, flickered and writhed as they approached me, like a flame desperate to ignite in a vacuum.
Three seconds...
I moved... no displaced myself in front of him, touching his arm with my hand. His arm, exposed to the essence of nothingness, started to unravel at its edges, threads of existence peeling away into the abyss, spreading like a disease consuming him away.
Seeing this, Yhwach cut his own arm off with a swift motion, the severed limb disintegrating before it even had the chance to hit the ground. He stumbled back, his face a mask of shock and anger, seeming as if... he was finally confronting an enemy against whom his powers seemed futile.
Four seconds...
I swung my blade down in his direction, erasing everything in front of me instantly, no sound, no explosion, just non-existence.
Five seconds...
The space where Yhwach had stood a moment before was now an expanding sphere of void, with me at its center. He managed to evade, but barely, a look of furious calculation replacing the shock on his visage.
I could see his lips move, but no sound came to me. There were some side effects to this state... but fighting like this, was hard... being everywhere and nowhere at the same time was disorienting, even for a being like me.
Six seconds...
I just need to kill him in one shot.
I just need to consume everything in a five mile radius, instantly and without trace.
Seven seconds...
I gathered the darkness within me, compressing it, refining it, until it was a singularity of pure void. Yhwach, sensing the impending eradication, tried to move away, but the instant he turned around, the void expanded... consuming it all.
They might have been some collateral casualties, I wasn't sure, all I knew was...
Eight seconds...
And the battle had already ended.
Yet the feeling of unease, was simply growing stronger.
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[Yhwach POV.]
I had underestimated my brother. His power... was well beyond anything I had ever seen, forcing me to rewrite my future existence into a different location just to avoid his attack, that had it hit, would've killed me without a doubt.
Any attack of him at that stage... could've killed me.
His power was such, my death had become an absolute point in time... forcing me to use all my power to rewrite that future, despite being unable to see him in it.
Not that it matters, we both lost our chance to accomplish our goals.
My dream is no longer possible.
His dream is no longer possible.
Father is coming.
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[The Soul King. POV.]
As I awaken from my timeless slumber, the chains of my ethereal prison clank and shatter, echoing through the hallowed halls of my so called Palace. For eons, I have been bound, a silent watcher, a prisoner in my own realm out of my own volition. But now, as the cosmic scales tip towards irreversible chaos, and once again, I must retake my duty, one last time.
My children, they squabble and fight for power they can barely comprehend, not knowing their strife is but a spark before the storm. They believe themselves gods, yet they are mere pawns in a game that stretches far beyond the canvas of their creation.
I feel Yhwach's heartbeat flicker with terror, his soul trembling in the face of the absolute oblivion he had narrowly escaped. His brother, the harbinger of the void, has challenged the very essence of what I had once wrought. The darkness that had almost consumed him was not merely a weapon, it was a statement, a declaration that the order I had sought to establish was crumbling.
"I'm afraid I can't let you leave," Ichibe Hyosube said, walking into the room where my cage had been. The Monk Who Calls the Real Name.
"Yo Ichi, I didn't sign up for this kind of fight," Oetsu Nimaiya chimed in, appearing behind him with his hands leisurely tucked into the pockets of his black shihakusho. "Our chances are on the negative numbers, hell yes!"
"Even then... we must fight," Kirio Hikifune added, stepping forward with a solemn expression on her face.
"Just so you know, I didn't like any of you," Tenjiro sighed, taking a stance.
"Our duty was bound to have a gruesome end," Senjumaru Tsunayashiro spoke, her void calm and collected.
It didn't matter, at the end of the day... everything would perish, they interference meant nothing.