The throne chamber dimmed, not from darkness—but from light collapsing into focus.
Dem Oche raised his palm.
No words, no flourish—just absolute control.
A thread of searing brilliance spun from his fingertips, folding itself into form with deadly precision. A rapier of pure light emerged, thinner than air, burning hotter than justice. Its edges shimmered with refracted photons, like it had been sharpened by divinity itself.
The same weapon that once tore through continents.
He simply stood there, holding it.
Then came the quake.
A distant tremor, rhythmic—like footsteps colliding with stone inhumanly fast.
Juno erupted through the ruined slash in the Dark Tower—one Chalice himself had carved open earlier. A blur of shadows and laughter and instinct, flipping once mid-air before landing on a fractured spire of debris like it was flat ground.
His cloak fluttered around him, torn and dark. His smile?
Wild.
He saw them—Dem Oche and Chalice—and his katana reacted.
The blade trembled, shadow spiraling violently along its edge, its enchantment testing the strength of the two in front of him. Against Dem Oche, it screamed with energy. But when it pointed toward Chalice—it dimmed.
Juno tilted his head.
"…What the hell?"
He looked at his sword, then at Chalice again—and grinned even wider, teeth flashing like a boy seeing a god for the first time.
"Oh, you're strong. You're beyond the rules," he muttered. "You're not even measurable."
He planted the katana against his shoulder.
"I like that."
Chalice didn't speak. He just stared, eyes narrowing—but not in anger. In recognition. This energy… he'd felt it somewhere. Recently.
Then—
"Let's dance," Juno whispered, and launched.
He struck first.
The triangular clash ignited instantly.
Chalice vanished and reappeared above him, blade drawn in a perfect downward arc. Juno met him mid-air, katana intercepting with a shriek of black steel. Dem Oche blurred in from the side, rapier like a line of light, stabbing toward Chalice's flank. But Chalice pivoted mid-air, bending impossibly, blade meeting blade in a clash that shattered sound.
No words. No cries.
Just violence, beauty, and purpose.
Juno cut through a crescent slash from Dem Oche, shadows trailing like silk behind him. Chalice weaved between them both, impossibly precise, always a half-inch from ruin—yet never touched.
The throne chamber detonated with motion.
Then, mid-clash, Chalice halted—not from injury, but intuition.
His head turned toward Juno mid-spin, his blade inches from Dem Oche's ribs.
There it was.
That energy.
Niko.
Lingering faintly—woven into Juno's shadow like an afterimage of will.
Chalice blinked.
Then: "What are you?"
Juno landed hard, dragging his katana along the stone with a long, screeching trail.
He looked up, feral eyes locked on Chalice, breathing ragged but alive.
"I just wanna fight strong people," he said. "That's it. That's everything."
Chalice studied him.
A simple ideal.
But it shone.
"…Interesting," he muttered.
Before more could be said—
Dem Oche started to laugh.
Not calculated. Not composed.
Unhinged.
His body trembled. His eyes were wide.
"It's over," he said, voice distorted, giddy.
The three of them looked up.
The sun blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then faster.
The world flickered like a candle about to die.
"…So I wasn't going insane," Juno whispered, staring at the sky, eyes flicking left and right as if trying to catch the sun in between blinks.
The clouds above the tower twisted.
A fracture opened in the atmosphere—not a hole, but a contradiction. As if light had forgotten how to behave.
And then—
It arrived.
The Devil of Light.
He didn't descend.
He manifested.
A skeletal silhouette of shifting brilliance, arms too long, spine too straight, face always half-wrong. Wings made of broken reflections unfurled across the sky like the shards of a shattered god. His body was equal parts void and sunflare—not light, but the idea of light, weaponized.
The temperature dropped. Not from cold—but from awe.
Time seemed to bend around him.
No words.
No grand arrival.
Just his presence, and the knowledge that everything beneath him was now less.
Even Juno's smile faded—just a bit.
Chalice's hand tightened around his blade.
Dem Oche whispered, reverent and shaken:
"…He's here."
..
…
….
The stillness after Lancer's fall was fragile—too fragile.
Niko sat collapsed against a pile of rubble, eyes closed, the scent of dust and burnt stone clinging to every breath. His body screamed in silence, but his mind finally—mercifully—quieted. Mena's healing had stabilized the worst of it, and his pulse was starting to even out.
But then it shifted.
Not the air. Not the ground.
The world.
His breath hitched.
A cold sweat beaded instantly across his forehead.
The light around him flickered—not like a passing shadow, but like the sun itself had glitched. He opened his eyes slowly, and they immediately dilated.
He felt it before he even looked up.
A pressure. A sickness. A stare without eyes.
And then—
He vomited.
Violently, his whole body convulsed as he doubled over, retching into the blackened dirt. Blue-tinged spit and bile clung to his lips. It felt like his insides were being turned inside out by something that wasn't even touching him.
"Niko!"
Mena's voice slammed into his head, frantic and unfiltered. "What's happening? What did you feel!?"
Niko gasped between shallow breaths, shivering.
"I don't… know."
He looked up.
He couldn't see it. He wasn't even near it. But he could feel it—like something had split the sky from a thousand kilometers away and let something wrong bleed through.
"I—I can't breathe…"
"It's not here," Mena said quickly. "It's not here. It's far. But I feel it too. I felt it the moment the sun started blinking—whatever's above the Dark Tower right now…"
She trailed off.
And Niko whispered what she wouldn't say:
"Something's come through."
He didn't know who. He didn't know what.
But it was enough to make his soul seize.
His heartbeat wasn't racing—it was skipping. Like even his body didn't want to be alive under that thing's gaze.
Mena's voice lowered, quiet and terrified.
"It's not human. It's not a prophet. It's not the House. I don't even think it's alive in the way we understand it."
Niko looked up, still gagging on dry air.
The sun was blinking again.
Three pulses. Then four. Then faster.
Like a heartbeat in the sky. Like a warning.
"Is that what's fighting Chalice?" Niko whispered, barely audible.
Mena paused.
"I don't know who's fighting it. But if Chalice is up there… he's not alone anymore."
And somewhere above—
Above the broken ring, above the continent-wide ruins—
In the space where three monsters clashed—
The Devil of Light had begun to descend.