The realm the Outer Gods chose was not a battlefield.
It was an execution ground floating in the void between realities — a basin of fractured stars, dead universes reduced to dust, and silence so deep it felt like gravity for the soul.
Thirteen thrones carved from the bones of creation stood in a crescent.
Upon them sat the Thirteen Outer Gods:
The All-Denying Father, masked in white emptiness. The Eulogy Queen, draped in the songs of dying worlds. Voruun the Withering Pulse, who devours time. Ithoros the Blind Titan, whose eyelids hold an entire cosmos shut. Zoroth-Kain, the Black Pyre. Shalar the Endless Skin, shifting across dimensions. The Oracle of Unmaking, veiled in entropy. The Red Decay The Devourer-Seraph Mother of Shrieking Void The Fractured Maw The Last Shade The Whisper of Rot
Each one older than the known universe.
Each one a tyrant of countless realms.
Each one furious.
And in the center of their armies—
600,000 Outer God soldiers, each a walking cataclysm, each capable of reducing continents to vapor, some capable of splitting a planet in half.
They did not hide their hatred.
But Ashura Bellet—
The Eternal One,
Sovereign of Black Light,
Lord of Death and Rebirth,
Bearer of Kuroha,
Tier Zero Ascendant—
simply floated forward with the elegance of a king who already owned the place.
His aura brushed against the realm, and the void cracked.
Ashura smiled faintly.
"Ah…" he exhaled.
"I appreciate the welcome."
A ripple of discomfort flickered across the faces of the Outer Gods.
He wasn't afraid—
He wasn't impressed—
He wasn't underestimating them.
He simply…
did not care.
Ashura rolled his shoulders, eyes half-lidded.
"Now, gentlemen…"
he raised his chin ever so slightly,
"shall we proceed with your deaths?"
A heartbeat.
Silence.
Then—
The realm exploded into motion.
THE 600,000 MARCH
The armies roared.
Not with voices—
with cosmic pressure, a thousand different laws of physics clashing at once, converging into a wave of annihilation rushing toward Ashura.
Entire universes collapsed just from the force of their charge.
A single Outer God soldier could destroy continents.
A unit of them could fracture a world.
But six hundred thousand?
That was extinction.
That was apocalypse incarnate.
Ashura slowly lifted his hand.
Kuroha materialized—
a black katana of impossible sharpness, its edge humming with the authority of Death itself.
He spoke one word:
"Fall."
Then he slashed—
once.
A vertical cut.
Effortless.
Beautiful.
Clean.
The realm split open—
—and 100,000 Outer God soldiers were erased.
Not cut.
Not wounded.
Not vaporized.
Erased.
Like their existence was a pencil mark and Kuroha was the hand holding the eraser.
The All-Denying Father lurched to his feet.
"Impossible—!"
Ashura didn't even glance at him.
He stepped forward and vanished.
Ashura moved like a sovereign repositioning chairs in his hall.
He appeared above a battalion—
swung once—
and 30,000 died like falling leaves.
He spun through a regiment—
a black flash—
and 40,000 soldiers collapsed, their bodies fading before they hit the ground.
He raised his hand—
and gravity inverted.
60,000 soldiers were crushed into singularities, each no larger than a grain of sand.
Another 50,000 fled—
—but Ashura's shadow expanded and swallowed them whole.
His voice echoed calmly:
"You shouldn't run."
"You die either way."
Four commanders—ahead of the ranks — tried to coordinate an attack, weaving laws of heat, void, and disintegration.
Ashura blinked—
—and they died in silence, their heads falling before their bodies understood they were dead.
In less than a minute…
600,000 Outer God soldiers were annihilated.
Not a corpse remained.
Only dust, drifting through the broken realm like a defeated storm.
Ashura exhaled quietly.
"Now," he murmured,
"for the main course."
The Outer Gods stood.
Thirteen titans.
Thirteen monstrosities whose existence warped the fabric of the void.
Thirteen beings who believed themselves untouchable.
They moved together—
—and the realm shook.
Stars imploded.
Laws shattered.
Time reversed and then froze.
Space cracked like glass.
The All-Denying Father stepped forward first.
"You dare wage war against the Thrones of Eternity?"
Ashura tilted his head.
"I dare do worse."
The Devourer-Seraph spread its thousand wings and screamed.
Waves of cosmic blades plunged toward Ashura.
He didn't even draw Kuroha.
He lifted a hand—
—and the blades disintegrated into harmless sparks.
The Eulogy Queen sang, weaving a melody that suffocated universes—
but Ashura's aura swatted her hymn away like dust.
Zoroth-Kain launched a sea of black fire hotter than star cores—
Ashura walked through it.
The Red Decay unleashed plague-winds that erased divinity—
Ashura inhaled them, and they died within his lungs.
The Last Shade tried to erase his shadow—
but Ashura was the shadow.
He raised his hand—
—and behind him, the Throne Hall of Black Light manifested like a colossal silhouette, doors closed, power leaking like starlight.
The Outer Gods faltered.
The All-Denying Father snarled:
"That is forbidden beyond our reality—"
Ashura stepped forward.
"You forbid nothing."
He vanished.
The Oracle of Unmaking screamed as Kuroha's edge touched her veil—
and half her face dissolved.
Ashura appeared above the Fractured Maw—
and kicked him downward, shattering twelve dimensions in the process.
Ithoros the Blind Titan swung an arm containing a galaxy beneath his skin—
Ashura caught it with one hand.
One hand.
The Titan froze.
Ashura whispered:
"You're slow."
He ripped the arm off and used it to strike the Titan across the face, breaking three of his closed eyelids and causing the cosmos sealed within to erupt into the void.
The scream of the Titan shook every Outer God.
But Ashura wasn't done.
At last—
The All-Denying Father descended from his throne, cape of emptiness unraveling behind him like night peeling away from itself.
He appeared before Ashura, hand glowing with anti-creation.
"ETERNAL ONE—
YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A MUTATION OF ORDER AND DEATH!"
Ashura's smile was faint—
borderline bored.
"Come find out."
The Father's attack struck.
A beam of denial—
pure Nothingness—
able to erase concepts, rewrite reality, and destroy beings above gods.
It hit Ashura squarely.
The realm quaked.
Everything went white.
The other Outer Gods exhaled in relief—
Until the light faded.
Ashura was still standing.
Unaffected.
Calm.
He dusted off his shoulder.
"That was cute."
The Father stepped back.
He felt it.
All of them felt it.
Ashura was beyond them.
Not above them.
Beyond them.
A being outside their hierarchy.
A being outside their rules.
A being whose power only grew with every death, every life, every reincarnation occurring anywhere in creation.
A being who governed the balance of existence itself.
The Eternal One smiled.
"Round two?"
And then—
he attacked.
The realm screamed.
The Outer Gods screamed.
Reality twisted as Ashura's blade tore through their combined defenses like fragile webbing.
And the Thirteen finally understood—
They were not fighting a god.
They were fighting the end of their era.
And he wasn't even trying yet.