A scream ripped through one of my classmates then another. The ground beneath us liquefied into glass, rippling with distorted reflections of our own faces — faces frozen in fear.
"Run!" Hiro shouted, grabbing two classmates by the arms. Kenta yanked another toward the shattered street, his voice cracking with panic.
Everyone scattered — screams, footsteps, chaos breaking like glass around us.
But I didn't move.
Because Miru, the middle-schooler couldn't.
He stood frozen, wide-eyed, tears streaking his dirt-covered cheeks as Vescarion's gaze locked on him like a hawk studying a mouse.
I lunged forward, grabbing his wrist. "Miru! Listen to me—wish to renounce the contract! Now!"
His lips trembled. "I—I can't..."
"DO IT!"
But before he could even form the words, Vescarion's hand flicked lazily through the air. Chains of messed-up geometry, impossible angles, glowing white-hot, burst from the ground and wrapped around Miru's body. He screamed as the sigils burned into his skin, suspending him midair like a crucifix of light.
"Renounce?" Vescarion murmured, tilting his head. "Oh, poor thing. You don't get to walk away from the inevitable."
"STOP IT!" I shouted, charging forward.
I didn't even make it two steps. The force that hit me was invisible, like a thousand tons of gravity collapsing into my chest. I hit the ground hard, sliding back through the cracked debris, coughing blood.
The classmates who hadn't fled were thrown like rag dolls. Hiro slammed into rubble, Kenta shielded two others with sheer strength, but even that barely slowed the destruction.
"Souta Renjiro," Vescarion said, tilting his head at me. "I told you we'd meet again."
The Unknown's laughter echoed across the shattered cityscape. "You renounced me… yet here you are, still using me as a crutch. Bold, if pathetic."
"What do you hope to achieve with just a measly residue of my power?"
I didn't flinch. My hand glowed with the residual energy, hesitant but alive. "I don't care if it's just a fragment. I'll use it to protect them, even if it's the last thing I do.
"Like how you protected Eve? No, Kae?" The Unknown responded mockingly.
My breath caught.
That name, Kae, hit me like a closed-up wound. The sound, the screams, even the wind—all swallowed by the weight of that single word.
Vescarion took a slow step forward. "You look surprised," he said, voice low and smooth. "Did you think I wouldn't know? You begged me, Souta. You pleaded for the power to change what you couldn't accept. And when it broke you, you blamed me."
I pushed myself up, trembling, the cracks beneath my hands glowing faintly with the energy leaking from my palm. "Don't—"
"—say her name?" Vescarion smiled, cruel and almost tender. "Why? It's just a sound now. She doesn't even exist in the same shape anymore… and it was all your fault."
Rage burst through me before I could stop it. The energy flared, wild and unstable, warping the ground in spirals of inverted light. The glass beneath me cracked into a whirlpool of mirrored reflections—each one showing a different version of me: desperate, broken and guilty.
"SHUT UP!" I screamed, lunging forward, energy bursting from my arm in a jagged wave.
Vescarion barely raised a hand. The wave disintegrated mid-air, scattering into burning glyphs that hovered between us like mocking laughter.
He tilted his head, eyes gleaming. "You still don't get it, do you? This isn't about renouncing or reclaiming. It never was. You're a nobody, Souta Renjiro."
Behind me, Kenta's voice cracked through the chaos. "Souta..! Don't listen to him!"
I turned for a split second—just enough to see Kenta staggering up, blood streaking his arm, Hiro helping two others limp away. Their eyes—terrified, but still fixed on me.
Vescarion's shadow shifted. "Still pretending to be their savior?" he whispered.
The ground erupted. A pillar of fractured geometry shot upward, trapping Miru higher into the air as the chains pulsed brighter. His scream tore through the warped sky.
"STOP IT!" I roared again, pressing my hand to the ground. The fragment of the Unknown inside me burned, screaming to be used—like a locked beast stirring awake.
"You cannot stop me, Souta." Vescarion's grin widened.
Before I could even raise my head, Vescarion was there. No movement, no transition—just instant presence. His hand moved once, and the air itself obeyed.
The impact came before the sound.
A crushing force struck my chest and sent me flying across the fractured ground. Every shard of glass, every grain of stone bit into my skin. I couldn't breathe. The world spun, my ears filled with static and a deep, rumbling and uncomforting hum that seemed to crawl inside my skull.
"Stand," he said. It wasn't a command; it was mockery. "Show us your pointless struggle."
I tried. I don't know why—instinct, pride, guilt, maybe all of them—but my legs trembled as I forced myself upright. The light on my arm flickered weakly, that last fragment of power I'd once cursed myself for touching.
He appeared again. This time his hand didn't hit—it simply passed through me like I was air. My bones screamed. My vision fractured into multiple layers of reality, each one twisting, bleeding into the next.
"Fragile," Vescarion said, his tone almost sorrowful. "You think you can protect anyone like this?"
The ground trembled beneath his feet, veins of white energy spreading outward like lightning under glass. Around us, the classmates who hadn't escaped were on their knees, clutching their heads as the world further distorted. Hiro shouted something I couldn't hear. Kenta tried to move toward me but Vescarion's eyes flicked in his direction, and the air turned inside out.
Kenta and Hiro were thrown back like leaves in a storm.
I stumbled forward, my voice raw. "Stop… this isn't..!"
Suddenly he was in front of me.
His hand gripped my throat, lifting me effortlessly off the ground. The contact alone seared through my skin like acid.
"Isn't right?," Vescarion said, his eyes glowing with infinite patterns. "Only the strong decides what's right. It is the natural order of the world."
"I'm merely fulfilling my new client's wishes… to erase the concept of mathematics from existence"
He slammed me into the ground. Cracks exploded outward like a spider's web, the air bursting from my lungs. My hand twitched against the glass… if it was still glass.
I coughed blood, forcing words through the pain. "If… if this is 'right'… then I'd rather be… wrong."
Vescarion leaned closer, his expression unreadable. "You have to be one of the most foolish predecessor I've ever had."
His hand tightened around my throat, the geometry of his fingers burning through my skin. My heartbeat was slowing, echoing like a countdown in a collapsing world.
Then the air rippled.
Not from distortion, but from something opposite to it. A vibration that felt... holy.
A single voice cut through the chaos, low but carrying the weight of command.
"The 27th Psalm."
Vescarion's head turned sharply. The sound of that voice made even the distortion hesitate — just for a heartbeat.
And then the horizon split open. A blinding light erupted from the sky, searing through the clouds of ash and twisted geometry. The storm itself screamed as lines of gold tore through it. From within the light stepped the Arch-Exorcist, his long coat whipping in the celestial wind, eyes blazing with conviction.
Behind him, hundreds of exorcists formed a circle across the shattered cityscape. Their voices rose together, chanting as one:
"יְהוָה אוֹרִי וְיִשְׁעִי מִמִּי אִירָא
יְהוָה מָעוֹז־חַיַּי מִמִּי אֶפְחָד"
Each verse hit like thunder. The ground beneath us resonated with the rhythm of the chant, holy sigils igniting around the city like constellations made of light.
Vescarion's grip on my neck loosened. His smile faded.
"Oh…" he said softly, and for the first time, his voice shifted in tone, recognition and rage.
"That hymn… those words…" His form distorted, shadows and geometry retracting. "You—"
The Arch-Exorcist raised his staff, its top glowing like a fragment of the sun.
"Let him go," he said. "This ends here."
Vescarion didn't react immediately. Then a quiet laugh slipped out of him, low and dry, like he'd just heard something mildly disappointing. He tilted his head, studying the man in front of him with a kind of detached curiosity.
"Like father, like son…" he muttered.
The air above us shifted slightly, not tearing, not breaking—just… giving way, like it didn't want to argue with him. Vescarion glanced up at it for a second before looking back at the Arch-Exorcist.
"I remember him," he continued, his tone almost bored now. "The same voice and the same look in his eyes."
"He tried to stop me too."
The light around the staff didn't waver, but something about the space between them tightened, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Vescarion's gaze sharpened just a little. He lifted his hand, tearing the sky open above him.
"He lasted longer than you will." He added.
The chant reached its crescendo. The air split with a sound that was like thunder. Every fragment of light bent inward toward a single point above the battlefield, drawn as if by gravity. The chant of the exorcists rose and fell like the beating of ancient wings.
Then the world shifted.
A rift bloomed in the sky, not of fire or storm, but of radiance so pure it seemed to erase shadow itself. Feathers, or rather... shards of refracted light—spiraled downward in slow, reverent descent. Each one hummed with a faint hymn, a language older than creation, harmonizing with the exorcists' voices.
And from that rift descended an angel.
Not clad in armor, but in robes woven from luminescence, every thread pulsing with scripture. His form was human only in suggestion; his wings, six in total shifted between flesh, light, and geometry. The first pair wrapped around him like a cloak of dawn, the second extended wide as the horizon, and the last fanned behind his head like a halo.
His face was hidden, not by veil or helm, but by concept. Looking upon him was to feel your sins rearrange themselves into memory. His eyes burned with a stillness that could silence storms, their color not gold nor silver, but meaning itself.
The moment its feet touched the earth, the entire world shook.
Vescarion hissed. "You dare summon that here?"
"Better here than in Hell," the Arch-Exorcist replied, voice sharp as judgment.
The angel raised its hand, and the corrupted geometry began to crumble. Miru's chains shattered into light as he lands safely on a secluded area. The exorcists' chant roared even louder, echoing through what remained of the city.
The angel's wings unraveled, light pouring like a waterfall from the motion, bathing the broken earth in warmth, making the distortion to cease. His sword, a blade formed from intersecting verses descended into his grasp, each word upon it burning with fire.
Vescarion's form wavered, his smile now nothing but hatred. "Stop it, STOP IT!! You all are serpents in my garden just like in the beginning."
The Arch-Exorcist didn't flinch. "To think even the descendant of the father of lies can deceive himself," he said quietly.
He turned his gaze toward me and in that moment, I understood. The angel was there to buy me a chance.
And I'm not going to waste it.
Not a flicker of courage, not a fragment of power. Every heartbeat, every shattered step, every scream of stone and sky will be the fuel poured into this fight.
Miru hangs at the epicenter, like a small light in all the chaos. The air feels heavy, almost like it's solidifying, and the sky looks like it's cracking apart. It's all overwhelming, and he's stuck right in the center of it.
Vescarion moves, near-omnipresent and unstoppable, yet the angel descends, a pillar of light that splits the void itself, each movement a hammer against the darkness.
I stare at Miru, at Kenta, at Hiro and the rest of my classmates — their faces mirrors of hope and terror. My hands tremble, my lungs burn, but giving up would mean forsaking the future and everything I believed in.
This is it. The collision of wills, of gods and monsters, of light and shadow. And in the eye of that storm, we will either rise again… or everything will fall.
No one can turn away. No one can look back. The future waits for no one and neither will I.
The final battle begins…