The silence that followed the Devastating Supernova was not an ordinary silence. It was a heavy silence, an absence of sound so profound it seemed to crush the eardrums. The air was clear—terribly, frighteningly clear—because everything that could vibrate and create noise had been pulverized.
Mei landed softly on what had once been the center of a commercial district and was now a desert of molten glass and vitrified earth. Her bare feet touched the warm ground with a faint hiss. The afterglow of the Supernova still danced in her retinas, colored spots overlapping the devastated world. She breathed deeply, not from exhaustion, but from ritual—each inhalation drew in the ionized air, heavy with the sweet, metallic scent of ozone and molten silica. Her body still shimmered, the flaming aura oscillating between the blood-red of her fury and the blinding gold of her supreme power, sparkling like a miniature sun about to stabilize.
She repositioned with the grace of a feline, her feet pivoting on the steaming glass, her eyes—two live embers—scanning the redrawn horizon. She was not looking for a body, but for a presence. The abyssal energy of the prince, that arrogant, cold pulsation that had infested the air like a foul odor.
— I do not feel his energy… — she murmured, more to herself, her voice a hoarse whisper lost in the vast silence. Her eyebrows, thin and precise, furrowed in an expression not of worry, but of meticulous suspicion. — Could it be…?
With a casual gesture of her right hand, a slight wave of her fingers, Mei dismissed the residual dust and smoke. It was not a gust of wind. It was an order given to reality. The suspended particles simply parted, like a veil being drawn back, revealing the full extent of the destruction.
The scene was one of absurd unreality. They were no longer ruins. It was a remaking. Everything that constituted a city—reinforced concrete, asphalt, cables, foundations, architectural memory—had been reduced to its most basic raw material and then melted. The Supernova and the Supreme Sun had not demolished; they had disintegrated and recomposed. The landscape was now a tapestry of overlapping craters, some with smooth, glassy rims, others jagged and black, like the skin of an alien planet. The only recognizable structures were the wave patterns of melted earth that had solidified into frozen waves, testifying to the heatwave that had swept everything away.
A few meters away, at the bottom of a shallow depression, a dark, twisted form contrasted with the dull shine of the vitrified ground.
The prince's body. Or what remained of it.
It lay motionless, not like a fallen body, but like a statue of charcoal and ashes. Carbonized to an absolute degree, its form was a black, brittle silhouette, without details, without features. No pulse of energy emanated from it. None of the characteristic smells of the abyss—sulfur, burnt amber, corruption. Only the clean, final scent of complete combustion.
Mei approached with steps that were both cautious and disdainful. The hot wind blowing through the desert she had created whipped her long red hair, which danced like flames separate from her body. What remained of her uniform—little more than scraps of resilient fabric clinging to her legs and torso—barely covered her, but the aura of power enveloping her was more than enough clothing. Her skin, where visible, gleamed with a luminous sweat, energy scars already closing.
She stopped at the edge of the depression, looking down.
— Did he die? — the thought was quick, analytical. Her spiritual perception, sharpened like a blade, swept over the carbonized body. Nothing. An emptiness. An empty shell. — I feel no energy coming from him. No echo, no trace. Complete annihilation?
She leaned forward, a fluid movement that exposed no weakness. She clapped her hands lightly, twice, the dry, ridiculous sound echoing in the dead landscape. An ironic smile, full of white, sharp teeth, appeared on her lips.
— Hey there, little prince! Wake up! — her voice was melodic, almost sung, laden with a sarcasm that could cut steel.
Nothing. Only the distant crackling of the cooling ground.
Mei sighed, a theatrical exhalation, and scratched the back of her neck with one hand, her gaze losing itself on the horizon. The expression was more of boredom than triumph.
— Okay, one down… — she said to the air. — But honestly, I expected more. A lot of noise for nothing.
Her gaze, however, was not careless. It traced every line of the devastated horizon, every shadow, every ripple in the glass. Mei's mind worked on multiple layers, as always.
— Now, where is that bastard? — she murmured, the term coming out with an almost affectionate tone, if not for the absolute hatred behind it. — He did not die with the Sun, I am sure. If this wretched prince survived the first one, that smiling executioner must have found a crack too. That cheater… is the worst of them all.
She was referring to Dante. The anger at the thought of him was a different kind of ember, deeper, more personal. He had deceived her, used her trust, her strategy, against her. And that was an offense Mei Nuhay did not forgive.
As she walked on the still-warm ground, her thoughts flew to the others. Tekio, Dan, Stella… and Fenra. The girl who had been captured by Vernasha. A stab of guilt—rare and quickly suppressed—shot through her. She had failed to protect her. Twice. Vernasha had tricked her, and the memory burned her pride.
And the intelligence team, Elise and the researchers… Mei knew she had left them under the protection of Stella and Dan. She trusted them. But trust did not alleviate the weight of responsibility. She knew, with the coldness of a strategist born in battle, that the situation was dangerous beyond any previous measure. They were playing chess with pieces that changed the rules with every move.
The heavy silence was broken not by a sound, but by a sensation.
A hiss. Low, guttural, almost inaudible. Like the sigh of something very ancient and very wrong.
Mei turned in the same instant, her body spinning in a movement so fluid it seemed to draw a circle of fire in the air. Instinct and strategy, passion and calculation, fused into a single perfect reaction.
Around the carbonized body of the prince, a black smoke began to rise. It was not combustion smoke. It was denser, more alive. It undulated like liquid fabric, spiraling upward in slow, hypnotic coils. And from it, sounds escaped. Not words, but distorted laments, whispers in forgotten tongues, a chorus of muffled voices that seemed to come from the depths of the ruined body.
— So he did not die, huh? — Mei's thought was quick, sharp. — But… there is something different there. Very different.
The energy beginning to emanate from the epicenter of the smoke was no longer the familiar, repulsive pulse of the abyss. It was something… brilliant. A white light, cold, intense, cutting through the darkness of the smoke like blades. And it was not a pure or holy light. It was a hungry light. Full of rancor.
Then, a voice emerged. Feminine. Firm. Laden with a bitterness that seemed to have fermented for ages.
— I will have my vengeance.
The black smoke exploded outward like a curtain being torn.
And what emerged was not the prince.
It was the princess.
The male body, carbonized and brittle, had reconfigured itself. The dark matter melted, flowing like living clay, elongating, softening, assuming new curves. In seconds, where the merciless, angular figure of the prince had been, now stood a woman. Tall, slender, with a presence that was a perverse mirror of Mei herself. The posture was the same—absolute confidence, contained power. Her hair, previously nonexistent in the carbonized mass, was now a cascade of silver and black falling to her waist, moving without wind. Her face was of a sharp, cold beauty, eyes that were no longer pools of darkness, but of a glacial blue, penetrating like the core of an iceberg. And on her pale, almost translucent skin, fine, luminous cracks shimmered, releasing small tendrils of that black smoke—as if her body still carried, and exuded, the physical memory of her former abyssal power.
Mei and the princess faced each other. Two points of absolute intensity in a sea of destruction. The air between them seemed to boil, reality protesting at the presence of so much power concentrated in such opposite, yet paradoxically similar, forms.
— Look who showed up. — Mei's voice broke the silence, laden with that unshakable confidence that was her trademark. A playful smile touched her lips. — Want me to break my personal record again? How considerate.
Inside, however, her mind was a supercomputer in crisis.
Did they switch? Dual consciousness in a single physical body? Are they two distinct souls sharing a host, or successive manifestations of a single entity? The prince's energy… vanished completely. Does that indicate definitive death? Or a state of hibernation? What is the trigger for her to take over? Critical damage? If I erase her now, will the prince reemerge? Or is this the final form, and eliminating her ends the game?
She observed our entire fight. Learned my patterns, my intensity, my tricks. These princes… are self-taught. And extremely dangerous. But the bigger question: are they immortal? Or do they just have multiple lives?
Each thought was a variable in an equation of survival. Each second, a risk analysis. Mei knew that against something like this, brute force, no matter how colossal, might not be enough. She would need pure strategy. She would need to be unpredictable. She would need to attack not the body, but the logic behind that thing's existence.
The princess took a step forward. The movement was calculated, economical, deadly. The black smoke coiled around her feet like a devoted serpent. Each luminous fissure in her skin pulsed softly, radiating an aura of power that was at once strange and vaguely familiar.
Mei took a deep breath, feeling the internal fire respond, crackling in her veins, readying itself. Her flaming aura stabilized into an intense, constant red, a sign of maximum focus.
— So that is how it is going to be… — she murmured, the words coming out like hot smoke. — Let the next round begin.
The air between them charged. Not just with energy, but with intention. The atmosphere grew hot and cutting at the same time, like being inside an oven full of blades. The battle had not merely continued; it had elevated to a new level of mutual understanding. It would be explosive creativity against voracious adaptation. Fire that created worlds against a white light that seemed to want to erase them.
And the princess advanced.
Elsewhere, a good distance from that battle and a few minutes earlier.
The first sensation was a buzzing. Not in the ears, but inside the skull. A noise of infernal static, of frequencies that tore at consciousness. Then, pain. A pain with no specific location; it was a general condition of existence. The pain of having been dismantled and hastily reassembled.
Confusion came next, a whirlwind of disconnected images: a flash that was the end of the world, a heat that dissolved the soul, a sound that was the silence of annihilation.
Dust clogged nose and throat. The smell was a horrible mix of burnt ozone, charred flesh, and pulverized concrete.
Until finally, with an effort that seemed to move mountains, his eyes opened.
The sight that greeted him made no sense for long seconds.
— What… was that…? — Tekio's voice came from his throat like something torn out, shaky, hoarse, unrecognizable even to himself.
His entire body tingled, a sensation of millions of tiny needles piercing every inch of his skin from the inside. It was like having been pressed between two walls of infinite force, crushed to the thickness of a sheet of paper and then inflated again. His muscles trembled uncontrollably, a deep, treacherous weakness fighting against a steel-like tension. It was the visceral sensation of having witnessed, and felt in the body, a nuclear explosion of spiritual energy.
The world around… no longer existed.
Not in a metaphorical sense. In the literal sense. Where there had once been streets, buildings, the familiar geography of an urban battle, now there was nothing. An uneven plain of dark earth, ashes, and fragments so small they were like sand. The sphere of light Stella had raised in a final act of heroic desperation—her Last Wall, a bubble of defensive force he had thought was nearly absolute—had been treated like thin glass. Now it was disintegrating above him, shattering into countless glowing fragments that fell in slow motion, spinning in the air like diamond dust before dissipating into the haze of destruction.
And even that barrier, that miracle of willpower, had not been enough. The impact had passed through it as if it weren't there. The raw wave of energy had hit them all.
Tekio remembered in flashes: the flash swallowing the sky, the sound that was the absence of sound, the sensation of being ripped from the ground and tossed like a twig in a hurricane. Clothes tearing on their own, not from friction, but from pure energy pressure. Pieces of fabric, part of his uniform, Dan's cloak, flying like feathers in a furnace. Skin burning, not with fire, but with the heat of pure force, leaving red, painful marks.
When the heavier dust began to settle, revealing the new world, Tekio felt his stomach churn.
There was no more city. There was no more ground in the conventional sense. Only exposed earth, black in some places, vitrified and shiny in others. Craters within craters. And the sky…
The sky was no longer sky.
The blue, the clouds, all had vanished. In their place, a nightmare spectacle. Inverted lightning rose from the horizon toward an invisible dome, sparks of pure energy shattering in silence. The celestial vault glowed with colors that hurt the eyes—deep purples that seemed to swallow light, acid greens, oranges that burned the retina. It was beautiful. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
Tekio staggered, trying to stand. His feet sank into the fine ash. He could barely feel his legs. His ears still rang, but above the buzzing, his mind screamed a single thing, a mantra of despair:
— DAN! STELLA! AMARA!
His own echo, hoarse and weak, was the only answer in the desert of ruins.
Tekio's heart tightened in his chest, a frozen knot of panic forming. His brain, still dazed, refused to accept the possibility. No… it is not possible. Not after everything. Not after we have come so far together. Not Dan, with his stubborn silence. Not Stella, with her stubborn light. Not Amara, whom we had barely recognized…
The war had exhausted him. His mind, his soul, were riddled with scars. Each loss, each death he had witnessed—of comrades, of innocents, of heroes—had dug a black hole inside him. Now, faced with the silence, faced with the possibility of having lost them now, that black hole expanded, threatening to swallow his sanity. Giving in to despair, collapsing and screaming, was an almost physical impulse.
But giving in was not an option. It never had been. It was the luxury his life had denied him.
He ran. His body protested, aching in every joint, but he ignored it. He crossed the landscape of ashes and melted fragments, stumbling over hidden rocks, his throat tearing in shouts that were more air than voice.
— Answer me! Please, answer!
Then, like a lifeline thrown into a sea of death, he heard.
A voice. Hoarse. Dry. But firm.
— Tekio… over here!
His body reacted before his mind processed. He shot toward the sound, his legs finding renewed strength. He dodged a twisted metal column emerging from the ground like the bone of a dead giant. The denser smoke began to part.
And he saw them.
Dan was on his feet. Not erect, but standing. His body was marked—diagonal burns crossed his chest and arms, his uniform reduced to bloody rags. But there was still fire in his eyes. And in his arms…
…he was holding Stella.
She was conscious, but struggling. Every breath was a visible effort, a painful movement of her chest. Her face, normally serene, was contorted in pain. Severe burns and deep cuts marked her arms and legs. But around her, weak but persistent, a golden glow still pulsed—the last remnant of the barrier she had conjured, the final breath of her spent power to cushion the impact for everyone.
— Stella…! — Tekio's cry was a mix of relief and agony. He ran to them, his chest aching to see her so wounded, so vulnerable.
She looked up with difficulty. The sharp pain in her golden eyes was like a stab. But then, with a willpower that took Tekio's breath away, she forced her lips into a smile. Small. Trembling. But real.
— They are just burns… — she whispered, her voice a thread of sound. — I will heal soon… Do not worry about me.
Dan held her firmly, his own muscles trembling with effort. But when his eyes met Tekio's, there was a clear message in them. A silent acknowledgment, a tribute: "She held. For us. She held back the end of the world."
The relief of seeing them alive, of seeing them together, was so overwhelming that Tekio's eyes welled up. He swallowed the lump in his throat. But one was missing.
— Amara…! — his voice rose in panic again. He spun in desperation, his eyes scanning the desert of ashes, his throat drying once more. — Amara!
Until he felt it.
A touch. Light. Almost imperceptible. A gentle nudge between his shoulder blades.
He turned so fast he almost lost his balance.
And there she was. Amara. Standing, a little apart, with dust on her face and in her silver hair, but unharmed. Her sun-lit sea-colored eyes were a little wide, a little frightened, but focused. Alive.
Tekio's heart exploded in a relief so intense he was left breathless for a second. A trembling, uncontrolled smile split his face, something between a laugh and a suppressed sob. He closed the distance in two steps and pulled her into a quick, tight, almost desperate hug.
— You… you are okay… — the words came out in a hoarse whisper against her hair. — Thank God… thank everything…
Amara did not return the hug with the same intensity. Her body remained a little stiff, her reaction restrained. But when Tekio pulled back enough to look at her face, he saw it. At the corners of her mouth, a faint smile had formed. Small. Almost imperceptible. But it was there. It was genuine.
Dan and Stella, still leaning on each other, exchanged a quick glance. A look laden with perception. There was something there. In the way Amara looked at Tekio, in the subtlety of that smile. This was not the time, the place, or the situation to ponder it. But the seed of observation was planted. "This… we will watch more closely in the future," the unspoken thought passed between them.
They all took a deep breath, a collective moment of reunion and reaffirmation. The air still smelled of death, but they were alive. Together.
But even in that fragile relief, a bigger, more frightening question burned inside them.
— What kind of attack was that…? — Tekio asked, still in shock, looking at his hands as if he did not recognize them.
Dan answered, his voice firm, anchoring them all in reality.
— You should know. You were the one who warned us to run. Who shouted.
— That is true… — Tekio furrowed his brow, trying to access the hazy memory. — But it was more… instinct than logic, to be honest. Yara was the first to alert me. A tug on the soul. But even she… she did not know exactly what was coming. She just felt. Felt something monstrous forming.
Stella, even breathing painfully, straightened her posture a little. Her voice came out weak, but clear.
— The origin was clear. It came from the dome. The epicenter.
She paused, raising her eyes to the distorted sky, that spectacle of impossible colors. Her expression was one of pure analysis, trying to read patterns in the chaos.
— Either Mei… or Dante.
Silence fell over them, heavier than the dust.
Then, Amara spoke. She did not hesitate. Her voice, always so neutral, came out with absolute conviction, as if stating an obvious fact.
— It was not Dante.
The three turned to her.
— I lived with Dante for years — she continued, her blue eyes fixed on the horizon, as if seeing through time and space. — He would never destroy the Veil. Ever. The Veil was… the physical proof of his dominion. His mobile throne. Destroying it would be admitting something could force him to that. It is against his nature.
Dante is a strategist warrior. He takes it slow. With precision. He does not waste power on spectacular explosions. He concentrates it. Like a needle. Not a hammer.
Stella nodded slowly, her eyes lighting up with understanding.
— So… it was her.
The name hung in the air between them. It did not need to be spoken. It was an invisible banner raised in the midst of despair.
Mei.
And just the memory of her was enough. Like a fuse lit inside their chests. The image of that woman—not the distant Empress on her throne, but the guide, the protector, the force of nature who had taken them in when the world had rejected them. Who had raised them, trained them, reprimanded and encouraged them. Who, even carrying the weight of an empire and an eternal war on her shoulders, always appeared, like a red bolt in the darkest sky, when they needed her most.
She was not just a title. She was Mei Nuhay.
Stella closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, and even though it hurt, she used it as fuel. She straightened, shoulders back. The wounds on her arms began to close, the golden light working, slow but steady. Each pain seemed to feed her determination.
— It is not over yet — she declared, and it was a statement, not a hope.
Amara looked at each of them, her face serious.
— So what do we do?
Dan did not hesitate. His answer came immediately, practical.
— Search the area. We need to understand what happened… what really happened. And what is still going to happen. We need information. Now.
It was then, almost in unison, that they looked to the northern horizon.
The more distant dust was dissipating, blown by thermal winds. And what was revealed behind it made each of their hearts stop for a beat.
In the middle of the ravaged plains, rising against the backdrop of the deformed sky, a fire burned.
It was no ordinary fire. It was a living flame. Colossal. Twisting and roaring like a chained divine beast. Its base was wide, feeding on the devastated earth, and its tip was lost in the heights, mingling with the anomalous colors of the sky. Every spark that leapt from it seemed to have consciousness, every flare broke into recognizable shapes—claws, wings, eyes of fire—before dissipating. It was a manifestation of power so pure, so identifiable, that there was no mistaking it.
— Mei… — the name left Tekio's lips in a choked whisper, laden with a mix of admiration, relief, and a deep dread.
They could see her. Even at that monstrous distance, even shrouded in the chaos she had helped create, that flame was an unmistakable signature in the universe.
The strongest Sif in the world.
The Absolute Empress.
The Sun-Woman.
But Tekio could not look only at her. While Dan and Stella fixed their eyes on the distant pillar of fire, something disturbed him. A deep discomfort, like a thorn embedded in his soul, a dissonant note in the symphony of power. He narrowed his eyes, forcing his vision, but more than that, forcing his spiritual perception. Trying not just to see the scene, but to feel the flavor of the energy in that quadrant of the devastation.
— Wait… — he murmured, his voice so low it was almost lost in the hot wind.
Dan and Stella turned to him, alert.
— What is it, Tekio?
Tekio took a deep breath, feeling a cold shiver run up his spine, contrasting with the heat of the environment. His hands clenched into fists unconsciously.
— That… that raw power, that fire… it is Mei. No doubt. But…
He closed his eyes for a second, concentrating. — I do not feel his soul there. I do not feel Akira's presence.
The three exchanged glances. The implication was clear and terrible.
If Akira, in the form of Dante, was not facing Mei, then what was? And more importantly...
Tekio opened his eyes. They were sparkling, not with tears, but with a cold, concentrated fury rarely seen in him. The name hanging in his mind now was more than a word. It was a sentence.
— Where…
The silence that followed was heavy, oppressive, like the air before a storm.
— Where is that bastard…? — Tekio finished, each word coming out like a shard of ice.
And in that instant, they all knew. With a certainty that froze their blood. The worst was not what they had just survived. The worst was not in that distant pillar of fire.
The worst was still to come. Hidden. Smiling. Planning.
They all knew the name.
The damned name that weighed on their souls.
The anger, the fear, the urgency—it all exploded inside Tekio, breaking the bonds of shock. He raised his head to the sickly sky and his cry, laden with all the despair and determination of his soul, tore through the silence of the desert of ashes:
— WHERE IS DANTE?!
The cry echoed, unanswered, lost in the vast void of destruction. But it was a beginning. It was an oath. The search had merely changed its target.
To be continued…