The thing is, the track field didn't stay empty that no one could shake the real life. In that way, he would take the initiative of what it means to be alive. This real life could get real. But not really, the initiative was vain and purposeless. The day would tremble in a devastating way.
That is to say that the sun had bled out completely red horizon swallowed by night and the floodlights hadn't even flickered on yet when the air turned wrong that no one can shake. Heavy. Thick with the scent of burnt ozone and something sweeter, darker like roses left to rot in a sealed coffin. In this way, nothing can shake him, but devastate it. Maybe, this shaky life cannot shut up about what happened a few hours ago.
Basil felt it before he saw it.
The black star-sun on his chest flared once hard, warning then dimmed like it was trying to hide the honesty of reality.
A tear opened in the sky above the center line. Not a portal. Not a prayer. Not death. Not lightning. Just absence. A perfect circle of nothing that drank light and spat silence. From it stepped Nero. As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge
He wasn't beautiful like Mamu. Wasn't regal like Yasaka. Wasn't half-rotted poetry like Hel.
He was beautiful the way finality is beautiful cold, absolute, inevitable.
Seven feet of midnight skin that wasn't skin more like living shadow given edges. Wings six of them blacker than black, feathers edged in void-silver that drank starlight and gave nothing back. Horns swept back from a face carved from obsidian and hunger high cheekbones, full lips curved in perpetual disdain, eyes twin pits of Z-rank cosmos darkness ringed in faint violet corona. The thing is, nothing could ever see what can be true. Maybe, it is just real. But they lack the vision to actually come to grasp. No pupils. Just endless nothing staring back.
His body was sculpted violence broad shoulders, chest ridged with muscle that looked carved from night itself, abdomen a ladder of shadow and sinew leading down to hips that narrowed into powerful thighs. That is to say that no one can come to see it. The thing is, it was much more than torture. This came to be something legendary.No clothes. No need. Shadows clung to him like liquid armor flowing, shifting, caressing every line of him like jealous lovers. Cock hung heavy between thighs thick, dark, veined in faint violet glow like it was already half-hard from the promise of ruin.
Nero landed without sound. Grass beneath his bare feet blackened instantly crisped to ash in perfect wing-shaped patterns.
Nero: Logos-child. That is to say that your name echoes even in the black between stars. Basil Pi. Widower of endings. Husband to frost-rot and fox-fire. I am Nero, Cosmos Z-rank angel-demon, firstborn of the void that birthed Oblivion-Eros. Mamu sent her little dream-tease. You tasted her hunger. Now taste mine. Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us "better"; but I know it makes us more profound... In the end, lest what is most important remain unsaid: from such abysses, from such severe sickness, one returns newborn, having shed one's skin... with merrier senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been before.
His voice was velvet dragged through broken glass low, resonant, vibrating in Basil's bones like a second heartbeat.
Basil didn't step back. Yin-Yang eyes spun fast red-blue spirals locking on the void-stare.
Basil: Hahaha… pretty. That is to say that you look like someone took an angel, fucked it with a demon until they fused to make you, then dipped the whole thing in black paint and called it art for you to exist huh?. You here to collect what Mamu couldn't? Or just jealous she got a taste before you? HAHA! That is pathetic.
Nero's lips curved slow, cruel.
Nero: Jealousy is for lesser hungers. That is to say that I do not want your lust. I want your erasure. Every thrust you've given into Hel's rot, Yasaka's tails, Mamu's dream-throat—they are stains on the silence I serve. Oblivion-Eros whispers that your broken desire is the last spark keeping infinite lust from collapsing into perfect nothing. What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure - as a mere automaton of duty. So I will fuck the spark out of you. Not with pleasure. With absence. I will bury myself in you until every moan you've ever pulled from a woman becomes silence. Until your sorrow forgets how to ache. Until even your mother's name tastes like ash on your tongue that you cannot see.
Wings flared wide six black voids blotting the stars. Shadows poured from them living tendrils that lashed toward Basil like whips made of night.
Basil moved.
Not fast. Precise.
He sidestepped the first lash shadow whip cracking where his head had been, gouging a trench in the track that smoked black. Second whip came low he leaped, bare feet planting on air for half a heartbeat (Kun Peng's echo stirring in his blood), then dropped behind Nero.
Fist snapped out carrying every push-up, every sprint, every fuck fueled by grief.
Connected with Nero's kidney.
The impact echoed like thunder in a grave.
Nero didn't flinch. Just turned slow, inevitable shadows coiling around Basil's wrist like cold silk chains.
Nero: Cute. That is to say that your strength is impressive for a mortal shell. But I am not flesh to bruise. I am the dark between heartbeats. That is to say that I will pierce you endlessly. The nothing after the scream. Feel it. To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil that you cannot have after piercing what can be seen on the surface
He pulled.
Basil flew forward slammed chest-to-chest against midnight skin that burned cold. Nero's hand clamped around his throat not choking. Pressing. Shadows seeped in through skin icy, numbing, whispering absence into veins.
Nero: Your sorrow is loud. Let me quiet it. That is to say that I will fuck you up until every memory of warmth leaks out. Until Yasaka's cedar-musk fades. n the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain Until Hel's frost-rot feels like fiction. Until even your mother's face is just another shadow I swallow.
His free hand slid down clawed fingers raking Basil's shirt open. Black star-sun symbol flaredbright, defiant pushing back the cold.
Basil grinned through the gripteeth flashing.
Basil: Hahaha… you talk like absence is a weapon. That is to say that I've fucked absence itself. I married it. I made it scream my name. You think you can erase me? Try. I'll fuck the nothing right out of you until even Oblivion-Eros has to admit some hungers refuse to die quiet in the most violent way. Maybe, you would forget what consciousness. Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good
He headbutted Nero hard, sudden forehead cracking against obsidian cheekbone.
Nero staggered one step.
Shadows recoiled.
The black star-sun blazed brighter red-blue light spilling across the field like spilled dawn.
Nero licked blood from his lip violet ichor that smoked on his tongue.
Nero: Good. That is to say that I wanted you to fight. Makes the silence sweeter when it finally comes.
Wings snapped wide again.
Shadows surged.
The field plunged into absolute dark.
And in that dark, two hungers circled each other—grief-soaked and void-born—both refusing to kneel.
O my sorrow so big it finally found darkness hungry enough to match it.
The floodlights flickered on late.
But by then the fight was already screaming.
Really, this should be why I took a rest.