The fissure was expanding.
The dark crimson sky above looked like an oil painting being torn apart by sheer brute force. Over Shibuya, the fabric of reality itself was coming apart at the seams.
The weight pressing down on Nikaido Hiro was unlike anything she had ever felt before — not physical pressure, but a corrective force called Historical Fact, flooding through the crack like a raging torrent.
BOOM——!
A dull thunderclap detonated somewhere deep beneath the earth.
Hiro stumbled, right hand clamping hard against her temple.
It felt like a red-hot iron needle had drilled straight into her brain. Countless alien memories were hammering against the walls of her reason, frantic and relentless.
It was a history that had never existed: a world where the gods had never departed — where the calamities known as "Defiant Gods" had wandered the streets of Tokyo since time immemorial.
The memories were so vivid, so utterly convincing, that she nearly forgot she had just been agonizing over what to have for dinner.
"Hiro-chan! Snap out of it!"
Illya's urgent cry rang out right beside her.
The silver-haired girl blazed with brilliant magical radiance, forcibly scattering the dark crimson mist that had been trying to warp their perceptions.
"Something is happening — stay sharp! Don't let your cognition get contaminated!"
Nikaido Hiro clenched her jaw. Cold sweat slid down her temple, soaking into the layered crimson flower ornament pinned at the side of her hair.
"I know... this kind of... uncertain... falsification..."
She raised her head. In her deep red eyes burned a clarity that bordered on obsession.
As a girl who had spent her entire existence clawing for truth in the depths of death loops, her defense of her own cognition was almost physiological in its ferocity.
"Trying to rewrite my mind — that act itself is the greatest [Wrong]!"
By now, all of Shibuya had been transformed.
The buildings lining the streets looked as though some colossal hand had kneaded them into new shapes — ancient Greek stone columns and modern glass skyscrapers fused together in grotesque, impossible configurations.
The passersby who had collapsed into unconsciousness were beginning to stir. But there was no fear in their eyes.
They knelt calmly upon the ground, sending devout prayers toward the presence descending from above — as if the entity that had shattered their lives had been this land's rightful sovereign since the very beginning of time.
Two Tokyos, completely superimposed upon each other in this moment. Held together beneath [Cognitive Collapse], fused but not broken.
And at the very center of that dark crimson fissure, a small figure was slowly descending.
She appeared no older than twelve or thirteen. Long silver hair whipped and coiled wildly through the void around her. She wore an ancient gown rich with an otherworldly aesthetic, her bare toes barely grazing the air — and with every step she took, ripples of death spread outward across the sky.
This was the goddess who held dominion over wisdom, war, and death — Athena.
This was her record from the other Tokyo: the one who had abandoned the divine responsibilities of mythology and descended for no purpose but to spread calamity. A Defiant God.
"I have felt it..."
Athena tilted her head slightly, her gaze locking onto the two figures standing in the center of the intersection.
"So... this is the world I have longed for?"
Hiro wasted no words.
The Zanpakuto in her hand — its blade wreathed in the intricate patterns of red spider lilies — erupted with a devastating surge of Reiatsu. She drove it down in a single, decisive press.
"Correcting the world's wrongs is my duty."
Hiro's form flickered into motion. Her black skirt carved a resolute arc through the wind.
"Bankai — [Crimson Lotus of the Farther Shore]!"
Countless vivid red spider lilies bloomed across the void. Every single petal transformed into the sharpest of spirit-particle blades — carrying the full force of Hiro's near-obsessive will, surging toward the goddess in the sky, intent on tearing her to pieces.
"What an interesting little insect."
Athena murmured softly.
She didn't even raise her hand. The air around her instantly solidified into an impenetrable obsidian barrier.
Clang — clang — clang!
A cacophony of dense impacts rang out through the night sky. A Reiatsu strike powerful enough to level a small mountain looked utterly powerless before divine authority.
"Hiro-chan, I'll cover you!"
Illya swung her ruby staff, and countless brilliant magical projectiles tore through the darkness, weaving a dense curtain of fire across the sky.
The torrent of magical energy and the crimson lotus of Reiatsu intertwined, completely engulfing the space around Athena.
But the goddess only breathed a single word:
"Petrification."
It was a concept-level Authority.
The surging torrent of magical power froze the instant it drew near Athena — inexplicably suspended in mid-air. Then it rapidly drained of all color, hardening into grey-white stone pillars that plummeted to the ground and shattered into dust.
Hiro's pupils contracted sharply.
This power had already surpassed every definition of "powerful enemy" she had ever constructed.
This was not a matter of raw strength. This was divinity itself, crushing her absolutely.
"Upon this land, I am the rule."
Athena's form vanished from where she stood in an instant. When she reappeared, she was mere inches from Hiro.
The goddess's cold little hand pressed gently against Hiro's chest.
"Your 'justice' is nothing but a tower built upon sand — so fragile it makes me want to laugh."
CRACK——!
A terrifying concussive force detonated.
Hiro was hurled backward, smashing hard into the department store at the roadside. The solid marble wall crumbled against her spine. Her black tights tore from the friction, exposing scraped and bloodied knees.
Had her constitution not been hardened by all the Reiatsu training she'd pushed herself through in recent months, a blow like this would have been enough to snuff her out — the her from just a few months ago would never have survived.
"Hiro-chan!"
Illya moved to rescue her, only to be casually swatted aside by a wave of Athena's divine power.
Hiro struggled to rise. Without hesitation, she activated Witch-transformation, forcing her spiritual energy even higher.
But would that be enough to win?
Enough to overcome a god bearing the name "Athena" — a deity who had fused herself with the very Land of Return?
"Your struggle ends here."
Athena hovered above the ruins, her fingertip condensing a pillar of divine light capable of piercing the entire city through.
"There is a scent on you that intrigues me greatly. If I kill you and absorb your soul, perhaps I shall obtain what I desire."
The shadow of death descended over Hiro in an instant.
She had already prepared to activate [Death Simulation] — to reset the world back to how it had been.
But in the very moment that pillar of divine light was about to swallow everything —
Hmmm——!
Through the previously ashen air, a chill far colder than winter snow surged without any warning.
A pure white aurora descended from the sky with no preamble whatsoever, tearing straight through Athena's domain of divine authority as though it were tissue paper.
"Seriously, Animus — won't take me out to play, just leaves me here to stand guard..."
"I was practically falling asleep from boredom. But it seems there's at least a little entertainment to be had after all."
A voice — languid on the surface, laced with extreme danger beneath — rang out through the dead silence of the ruins.
From amid the swirling smoke and the wreckage of shattered divine light, a girl in a casual sundress reached up to steady the brim of her sun hat. She stood quietly between Hiro and the threat ahead, in no particular hurry at all.
"Good work, little Hiro. To think even you've grown this much."
"It seems Animus has had results on his end too. Convenient — once we clean things up here, we'll go join him."
The snow-haired girl turned around to face Athena.
「God hath decreed: upon beholding the Divine, all false gods shall retreat ten thousand leagues.」
____
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🔥 New history: Reborn as Naoya I Really Am Here for Revenge!
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