Chapter 27: Who Is Worthy?

The battlefield was finally quiet.

Too quiet.

Ash drifted like snow through the cracked desert air. 

Bodies, broken steel, and smouldering sand lay as grim testimony to the clash. For the first time in hours, no fire or water screamed across the skies.

Luna stepped forward, her boots crunching against glassed sand. Her eyes found them—the two figures who had torn through Zodiacs like myths come to life.

“Hey… you two,” she said softly, almost disbelieving.

Jordan turned first. Her golden aura dimmed, and for a brief moment, the battlefield melted away. Her lips curled into a smile that wasn’t forged for war but for memory.
“Luna? Damn, it’s been years.”

They clasped hands, not as Hunters or legends, but as classmates who hadn’t seen each other since school halls echoed with laughter instead of screams. A fleeting warmth in a world of ash.

Richard, however, did not look up. His silver shimmer pulsed dark as he pressed his boot harder against Aries’ chest. 

His voice was calm, cold, final.

“I don’t know or care about this war of yours. But hear me, Zodiac—if you ever come for me or Jordan again, I’ll take your most precious possession.”

His hand gestured toward the unconscious Anya, her red blade fallen, her chest barely rising.

Aries’ body writhed, his voice a guttural rasp.

“You fool… this—this is where you were meant to be…” His words cracked, as if torn between pain and prophecy. “You can’t… escape it.”

Richard’s eyes narrowed, but before he could reply, the earth beneath them convulsed.

A deafening tremor split the ground.

The battlefield itself seemed to scream.

From below, a surge of power burst upward—the Seal flickering like a heartbeat on the edge of death. Ancient lines glowed, scorching themselves into the sand.

Richard staggered, clutching his head, the silver light around him stuttering.

“Ahhh… that voice again!”

Jordan spun to him instantly, her golden aura flaring as she steadied his collapsing frame.

“Richard! What is it?!”

His eyes were wide, fevered, staring past her into a void only he could see. His voice came out hoarse.

“It’s inside my head… the same voice… it’s asking…”

The world around him blurred.

The battlefield faded.

Only the question remained, pounding like a war drum inside his skull:

Who is worthy?
Who is worthy?
Who is worthy to open the Seal?

 

The earth groaned beneath them, shaking with a force that felt alive. Dust spilled from broken walls, and the battlefield scattered into chaos. Those still standing ran, carrying the wounded.

Ava turned, her chest heaving, and saw Anya lying where Jordan had struck her down. Without hesitation, she sprinted back. “Don’t you dare die on me,” she muttered, hauling Anya onto her shoulder before fleeing with the others.

The tremors peaked. Then—

The world stopped.

A black light erupted, swallowing the Limpopo province whole. The horizon folded in on itself, shadows bent unnaturally, and the air reeked of burning metal. For a heartbeat, everyone’s shadow pointed in the wrong direction. Then the light blinked out, and silence returned.

Confusion rippled across the survivors. No one spoke. No one could.

And then Jordan saw it—
A figure standing behind Richard.

Its hand pierced straight through his chest, emerald-green light shimmering where flesh should have been. Richard’s eyes widened, his silver aura flickering out.

Jordan lurched forward instinctively—but her body wouldn’t move. Her muscles strained against invisible chains. Her breath froze. Her voice was trapped inside her throat. All she could do was watch.

“Not again—please, not him!” The scream never left her lips.

Inside his collapsing body, Richard heard the voice again.
Who is worthy? Who is worthy? Who is worthy?

But this time, he answered. With blood on his lips, he whispered to himself:

“…It was never me.”

The figure said nothing. Its emerald aura pulsed once, warping time itself. Tears that should have spilled down Jordan’s face hovered like glass beads, frozen midair.

The new Zodiac lifted Richard as if he weighed nothing, his emerald-lit hand still buried in the boy’s chest.

His presence was suffocating—like gravity itself bent toward him. His eyes burned with a cold, unnatural green, and faintly, in the silence, Jordan thought she heard his voice echo with the same question Richard had been hearing.

Who is worthy?

The figure turned, carrying Richard toward the trembling seal. No one could move.

The war they thought they were fighting had already shifted into something far greater.

And Richard—the one they thought had secured victory—was now being offered as sacrifice.

 The Seal Cracks

The new Zodiac carried Richard like an offering. His emerald-lit hand pulsed in rhythm with the trembling earth, each beat answered by the seal’s flicker at the battlefield’s heart.

 

Who is worthy?

Who is worthy?

Who is worthy?

The words thundered inside Richard’s skull, drowning his ragged breaths. His body writhed, but his eyes—bloodshot, desperate—stayed locked on the seal, as if it were calling him home.

 

Then the visions came.

A void with Sol burning at its center.

A war that shattered constellations.

A winged figure embracing another beneath a sky of fire.

A garden. A man and woman reaching for forbidden fruit.

A serpent whispering.

 

Richard gasped, his lips slick with blood, but when he lifted his head, his eyes no longer burned silver or emerald. They glowed crimson.

His body straightened unnaturally, as though a force not his own moved his limbs.

The new Zodiac released him, but Richard did not fall.

He stood in front of the seal, his form trembling, yet his voice carried with unshakable authority:

“I am worthy… to open the Seal.”

The battlefield held its breath.

A sound like glass fracturing filled the world. The seal split once. Then again. Cracks webbed across the earth in patterns of light.

And then—
It shattered.

The sky tore open.

Clouds split into nothingness, revealing not stars but the void itself.

 

A trumpet blared, its sound so immense it shook souls more than stone.

 

Every head tilted upward—whether in Limpopo, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, or Geneva. Soldiers, civilians, believers, atheists—all stared as the heavens unravelled.

A hand, vast and unseen, pulled at the stitches of the sky. With every tug, the fabric of reality came undone. The stars blinked out like dying embers. Darkness bled through the seams until the whole sky was a gaping wound.

And then people began to vanish.

One by one, they dissolved into dust—screaming mothers, wounded soldiers, broken machines—until even the cries themselves were swept away. The dust scattered upward, carried into the void above.

Miloslav.
Maya.
Even John’s lifeless body.
All erased, piece by piece, as though they had never existed.

The survivors clung to the moment, terrified. But the void showed no mercy. Cities warped, oceans collapsed inward, and continents folded like paper, swallowed into nothingness.

Until only the void remained.

Only the Zodiacs, Ava, Megumi & Jason remained.

Jordan staggered, clutching her chest. The tears she thought had run dry welled again. Her voice trembled as she whispered, almost to herself:

“…This place… this is the Spiritual Realm.”

Her gaze darted—and froze.

Richard floated not far from her, his body weightless in the void. She reached for him, desperate, yet hopeful—

But stopped cold.

It wasn’t Richard anymore.

His eyes glowed a burning crimson, brighter than any silver shimmer she had ever known. 

His aura, once steady, writhed like a storm of blood and fire. He moved with a slowness that felt wrong, deliberate, as if each gesture was borrowed from something ancient.

He raised his left hand to cover his left eye.

Ava’s blood turned to ice. She knew what that meant.

“Everyone—get back!” she shouted, her voice cracking. “He’s going to use it—his Spiritual Volume!”

Richard’s lips curled into a smile that was not his own. The void itself seemed to bend closer, waiting.

He whispered the chant, each word a blade slicing the silence:

“Length. Width. Height.”

His hand dropped from his eye. The crimson blaze erupted, burning through the void like a scar across existence.

“Spiritual Volume…” he declared, his voice echoing with inhuman weight.

“Evil Eye.”

 

 

—End of Volume One