Angela collapsed to her knees, her legs giving out beneath her as though the very ground had rejected her right to stand. Her trembling gaze lifted slowly—drawn helplessly toward the luminous Luna looming overhead, its pale radiance casting an unforgiving glow across her terrified expression.
A battle…? No—this wasn't a battle anymore. Not even close.
If she continued to support Tellewin, if she dared to raise that staff again… she would be throwing herself into a slaughter she already knew the outcome of.
Every instinct in her body screamed at her to run.
To turn away. To abandon all of it and flee while something of her still remained.
Angela: "T-Tellewin…"
Her voice trembled, fragile and splintering apart as it left her lips. She knew him.
Even now—especially now—he would never retreat.
Not after everything. Not after the humiliation. Not after the scars that still clung to his pride like parasites that refused to die.
Another loss would not simply break him.
And so… he would stay. He would fight.
Neither of them had reached Apex Output… not even close.
And yet, here they stood—cornered beneath a false sky, facing something that had already ascended far beyond the boundaries of mortality.
Angela's fingers clawed into her scalp, nails biting into bruised and battered skin as her breath hitched violently in her throat. A broken sound escaped her—half scream, half sob—before she suddenly slammed her head face-first into the fractured concrete below.
Angela: "FUCK! GOD—FUCKING DAMMIT!"
The impact echoed dully beneath the weight of everything collapsing around her.
Above, Tellewin hovered in silence.
His wings twisted uneasily behind him, each feather trembling as though something unseen had begun to infest them. The once-pristine plumes quivered under the suffocating influence pressing down from the never ending night—the overwhelming, divine presence of the Moon Titan bleeding into their very structure.
Something ancient had reached into the world… and it was rewriting the rules.
From the suffocated air itself, they emerged.
The Souls of the Moon Drown Elves.
Their translucent, teal forms drifted into existence like phantoms dragged up from a drowned grave, their hollow figures slipping through the ruined streets and wrapping themselves around the horrified townsfolk.
They clung and wept.
Their voices—if they could even be called that—poured into the world as long, echoing laments, filling every inch of the trapped peninsula with a sorrow so deep it felt older than memory itself.
The land had become a mausoleum.
A sealed casket.
Jerry: "Heh—still as beautiful as ever~"
All three of Jerry's lustrous eyes rolled across Senson Town with quiet fascination, drinking in the spectacle as though it were a carefully crafted piece of art made solely for his amusement.
Far above, the giant sphere of his Apex Output loomed at the very edge of the Diex Peninsula, its massive presence humming with silent authority.
Subtle ripples peeled away from its surface, slipping loose from its shadow like fragments of a dying dream before dissolving into the nearby seas.
There would be no escape.
Jerry's dark-scarlet war skirt fluttered sharply in the frigid air, snapping rhythmically against the restless currents.
He slowly rose to his feet. His posture loosened, as though none of this demanded urgency from him.
A soft giggle slipped from his throat.
His piercing gaze locked onto Tellewin.
There it was. Those tears.
Fresh. Clinging desperately to the edges of a king who had already begun to fall apart long ago.
Jerry licked his lips.
He raised his hands, curling his fingers inward in a slow, beckoning motion—inviting him forward with a gesture that felt less like a challenge… and more like mockery carved into flesh.
Jerry: "CMON! Don't let the pretty lights throw you off! I've been starving for something real—so stop holding out on me!"
His grin widened, stretching unnaturally across his face as his voice dipped into something hungrier.
Jerry: "Or what—is that it? You scared? Too scared to lose again? Too scared to watch it all fall apart right in front of you…?"
A low, breathy laugh escaped through his teeth.
Jerry: "Pfft… figures."
Tellewin remained suspended in the air, unmoving and silent.
His fists clenched tighter… and tighter… until the bones within his fingers began to bend under the strain. Faint cracks whispered beneath his skin as his body shook with something far deeper than anger.
Again?
Again…
Blood overtook his vision without warning, spilling from his sockets in thick, heated streams that blurred the world into a smeared canvas of red and gold.
It soaked into the fragile shimmer of his tears, staining them—corrupting something that had once resembled dignity.
His tongue clung uselessly to the roof of his mouth, drier than a sun-scorched wasteland, while his lips stiffened into something brittle and lifeless.
Every breath scraped against his throat like shattered glass, each inhale a punishment, each exhale a failure.
How dare he…
How dare he…
How dare that animal stand there and call him out like he was nothing?
In front of them. In front of all of them.
His people. His followers.
The ones who looked to him for salvation… for meaning… for proof that their faith had not been misplaced.
He dared to mock him?
To peel him apart in front of their very eyes?
Tellewin's thoughts fractured.
Splintered into jagged fragments that cleaved through his mind without mercy.
Memories bled through the cracks—old voices, old instincts, old commands buried deep within the marrow of his being.
They begged him.
Run.
…
Again?
…
Never.
Tellewin: "I can't lose… I can't lose… I can't lose… I can't lose… I can't lose… I can't lose… I can't lose! I CAN'T LOSE! I CAN'T LOSE! I CAN'T LOSE! I SHALL NOT LOSE!"
A blinding celestial beam erupted from the Viax Ring's small, golden frame.
It detonated outward in a radiant column that clawed against the endless dome of darkness above. The brilliance collided with the false night, grinding against it in a vicious clash of divinity and abyss.
Tellewin's arms transfigured. Flesh twisted. Bone reshaped.
Light tore through his veins as colossal wings burst forth once more, far larger than before. Their span eclipsed entire streets as they unfurled with staggering presence.
He let out a guttural roar, dragging more power from within himself—far beyond what his tool's very existence had ever been meant to endure.
The earth ruptured, splitting apart. From the depths below, they rose.
Massive, angelic appendages—over ten in number—erupted from the terrain, tearing through stone and soil as they stretched outward into the open air, their sheer scale dwarfing the structures around them.
The citizens of Senson gasped as the wings revealed themselves in full glory.
Their ivory feathers danced within the raging winds, curling with delicate precision as they wrapped around entire districts.
They cradled them, saving them from the destruction swallowing the land below. People slid along the downy surfaces, clutching onto one another as their homes were carried upward alongside them.
They were torn free from their roots yet somehow spared from ruin.
Some saw him, catching glimpses of their savior. Their king. High above the world.
Tellewin Seer.
He was drenched, drowning in his own blood.
Crimson sprayed infinitely from fresh wounds across his body, each drop flung into the air as his frame trembled under a level of agony that bordered on incomprehensible.
This annihilation stretched thin—forced into motion through sheer, unrelenting will.
He was pushing his Blessed Tool beyond its design.
It was too much. It was wrong. But he couldn't have cared less.
His cloak was gone—lost to the chaos long ago.
His armor hung in shattered remnants, pieces of it barely clinging to his body while others sailed away into the destruction below.
Through the ravaged remains of his chestplate, torn fabric peeked through—tattered, barely holding together what was left of him.
Fragments of blackened armor slipped from his mangled form one by one, vanishing into the darkness as he drew himself back.
His resolve had hardened into something monstrous.
Tellewin: "I'll fucking DIE before I let you win!"
Tellewin's wings stretched wide across the moonlit skies.
Their vast wingspan caught the pale light as it refracted across each individual feather, casting prismatic glimmers through the frigid air.
A broken, unhinged laugh clawed its way out from his chest.
Below, held within the immense curvature of those divine constructs, the people of Senson clung to one another. They lifted their eyes skyward as prayers spilled from their lips in desperate waves.
All to their God-King. The last hope… against the abomination standing beneath the moon.
Tellewin raised his head, facing the Luna that had chosen a monster.
Jerry: "YES!"
The word ripped free from Jerry like a celebration. It was as if he had been waiting his entire existence for this exact moment to unfold.
Tellewin answered with a raw, barbaric roar. His wings snapped inward, folding violently toward one another until they compressed into a dense, feathered-mass.
Something formed. A fragile sphere.
Small at first, but rapidly swelling as torrents of gray and white mist spiraled together.
Layer upon layer of atmosphere was dragged into a single strangling point held between feather and bone.
Tellewin: "Release!"
The compressed sphere erupted outward into an enormous typhoon, an abysmal spiral that dwarfed his previous attack so completely it made it seem insignificant by comparison.
It tore across the sky, a distorting pillar of wind and pressure that devoured distance. It lunged straight toward Jerry.
The earth buckled as the storm passed overhead, shockwaves rippling outward in rapid succession. The very land howled beneath the torment.
Jagged streaks of golden electricity lashed through the vortex, splitting the air apart in radiant bursts as the storm carved a path through the region like a divine punishment made manifest.
Beat.
Jerry's exposed heart pulsed.
Once.
A single, deliberate contraction.
Jerry: "New Moon."
Nine Cycles. Nine Blessings.
Jerry lifted his hand—and seized the air itself.
His fingers caught surged through it.
Then he gripped it.
He pulled at it as if though the atmosphere had become nothing more than a stretchable membrane under his control.
Jerry dragged it backward to impossible lengths, causing space to warp subtly around his grasp.
Then he drove his fist forward.
The impact didn't land on anything visible.
A shatter rippled outward as neon-violet strands burst from the point of contact, threading themselves into existence like luminous veins.
They laced through the fabric of space itself.
Jerry: "Reverse."
The incoming typhoon shuddered violently.
For a fraction of a second—it resisted.
Then it broke.
The entire storm inverted mid-flight, its monstrous rotation snapping backward as though seized by an unseen hand before being hurled in the opposite direction with even greater force than before.
One snap.
Tellewin's life flashed before his eyes.
The storm was already there.
Mere inches away.
Blazing gold erupted from his body in a desperate reflex as he threw his wings forward, throwing them across his form in a frantic attempt to shield himself from his catastrophic creation.
Impact.
The typhoon slammed into him with tremendous force, burrowing into the flesh of his wings as the spiraling winds shredded through layers of bone.
He screamed in pure agony. It was too much.
Tellewin wrenched his arms away, forcing the storm off his body and hurling it upward into the sealed heavens. It dispersed against the prison of darkness encasing the peninsula.
Tellewin hovered there, trembling, his breath ragged and uneven as he lowered his battered wings slightly.
His chest heaved and his vision started to blur. The dizziness began to overwhelm him… but he quickly snapped out of it.
His gaze darted frantically across the ruined remains of Senson Town, scanning through devastation with growing urgency.
Tellewin: "Angela! Can you hear me!?"
Beat.
Jerry: "Waxing Crescent!"
Windfield launched himself from the towering pillar in an instant, his body snapping forward with unnatural acceleration.
His scarred knuckles drove straight into Tellewin's torso before he vanished entirely from sight, leaving only a broken echo of his presence behind.
The world didn't immediately understand what had happened… until a moment later.
Great streaks of neon-violet thunder began to coil through Senson Town, weaving between buildings like living serpents.
Each glittering strike arrived with precision, yet the moment they made contact with the ground, they ceased to exist entirely. They left only the searing pockets of flame blooming where impact should have been.
It wasn't weather.
It was him.
Jerry.
Moving at a velocity the world could no longer interpret as motion.
Beads of sweat streamed down Tellewin's face in uneven rivulets, sliding across cracked skin as his eyes tracked the impossible cyclone of acceleration ripping through the battlefield.
The swift strikes were multiplying, cascading into patterns that began to accelerate beyond comprehension.
Faster.
Even faster.
A burst of fire exploded as Jerry emerged from the burning chaos like a launched comet, his body piercing through the inferno as he drove directly into Tellewin's midsection.
The impact bloomed like a collapsing star.
Flames and embers erupted in a chaotic halo, scattering across the sky as Tellewin's entire frame locked under the pressure of the collision. His wings buckled as he absorbed damage that even his divine reinforcement struggled to comprehend.
Jerry pushed off his torso, catapulting backward and spinning through the air.
He landed gracefully on a single outstretched hand upon the terrain below, as though gravity itself had chosen not to claim him.
He flipped once and stood.
He casually brushed strands of his lavish blue curls back into place, before slowly tilting his head upward toward the hovering figure above him.
Jerry whispered.
Jerry: "Just enough to make sure I can still enjoy dessert…"
Tellewin's expression twisted in fury.
His pale fingers twitched violently under the strain of holding himself together, muscles tightening beneath his skin.
His entire body trembled against the sheer cognitive overload of what he was witnessing.
How much longer could this continue? How much more torture could he endure?
Tellewin: "I still got more than enough for y—"
Jerry: "First Quarter!"
Tellewin froze mid-breath.
The radiant glow within his ruby eyes dimmed, as though something unseen had begun draining color directly from perception itself.
Above them, the dome of darkness began to shift—splitting just slightly at its highest point as a faint channel of sunlight seeped through, like a wound opening in the sky.
The light descended, gathering directly above Tellewin and layering itself over his suspended form.
He slowly lifted his head, squinting his eyes.
That's when a tiny, innocent drop of liquid fell from the sunshine.
It struck his forehead with a soft, wet squelch.
Tellewin paused.
The fluid was cold.
Tellewin: "W-Water…?"
The Diex Peninsula began to rumble. Bottomless fissures webbed across its terrain like the veins of a dying world.
Cataclysmic tremors rolled outward in smothering waves, hurling shattered earth and fragmented stone into the ashen skies above. The debris hung there for a moment before being swallowed by the wind.
From the surrounding seas, an impossible tide began to awaken.
A vast body of water rose in silence at first, then with increasing hunger, swelling higher and higher until it loomed beyond the dome's broken curvature.
It was like a wandering ocean god pressing its face against glass.
The waters did not simply rise pressed and expanded, folding into themselves with unnatural cohesion.
It was boundless.
Glimmering currents collided and merged in fierce harmony, forming spinning columns of liquid pressure that groaned under their own mass. Air pockets burst within the ascending flood, releasing clusters of bubbles that shot upward through the aqueous ascent like fleeing spirits.
Windfield chuckled as he lifted his bruised fingers.
Jerry: "Let's be honest, Tellewin… you lost this battle the moment you abandoned your post years ago."
A faint smile tugged at his lips, thin and careless.
Jerry: "Sorry… heh—no, not really."