END OF THE FUTURE ARC PART FOUR

Across the shattered expanse of the Demon Realm, far from the roaring clash between Shu and Bayonetta, Hannah stood alone on the opposite edge of the battlefield. Her once-imposing figure was now battered and blood-soaked—crimson rivulets of her own blood mingling with thick, tar-like black ichor from the five Demon Lords she had fought. Deep gashes refused to close; her kantar, usually so swift to mend flesh, flickered weakly, barely holding her together. Her chest heaved with ragged, desperate pants—clear evidence of exhaustion that bordered on collapse.

Yet her eyes burned with unyielding focus.

Before her stood the five remaining Demon Lords—or what was left of them. Two had the entire left half of their bodies erased into non-existence, ragged voids where limbs and torsos should have been. The other three had lost both arms and half their faces, jagged wounds exposing bone and pulsing darkness. Despite the catastrophic damage, not one of them showed the slightest tremor of fatigue.

Hannah muttered under her breath, voice hoarse but steady. “These five… there’s something strange about them. Individually, they’re at least first-class demons. But together… they’re fighting with the full force of a high-end Demon Lord. I can barely sense even an ounce of kantar from them—and despite how ruined they are, they show zero signs of exhaustion.”

One of the faceless ones spoke, voice flat and mechanical. “We can no longer fight effectively as separate entities due to high amounts of damage.”

The second responded instantly. “Shall we commence fusion mechanisms?”

The third’s tone carried a strange, almost nostalgic edge. “It’s about time. It’s been centuries since we’ve been whole.”

The fourth and fifth remained utterly silent, as though speech itself had been stripped from them long ago.

Hannah’s eyes narrowed. Confusion flickered across her face, but her guard never dropped. She whispered to herself, “Fusion mechanisms, huh… I heard rumors that five of the Seven Demon Lords were actually a single being split into parts. Never thought the rumors were true. Let’s see what you truly look like, then.”

Without warning, the chests of all five began to glow a violent, pulsing purple. An invisible force seized them—yanking their ruined bodies together like iron filings to a magnet. They spun in a tightening vortex, faster and faster, until they collided in a cataclysmic slam.

A blinding explosion erupted.

The shockwave tore across the battlefield, hurling Hannah backward like a ragdoll. Even miles away, the blast reached Shu and Bayonetta’s duel. Both fighters paused mid-strike.

Shu, wreathed in the crackling red lightning of his Kantar Manifestation state, spoke in an ethereal, echoing voice. “What the hell was that?”

Bayonetta—still wearing his copied form—smirked, eyes gleaming with dark amusement. “It’s the awakening of the Third Demon Lord.”

Shu’s glowing eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘awakening of the Third Demon Lord’?”

Bayonetta sighed, the sound surprisingly soft. She gave a small, half-teasing, half-honest smile. “I’m not supposed to be saying this… but you kinda rub me the right way, so I guess I can make an exception.”

She turned her gaze toward the still-blinding light. “Originally, there were five of us Demon Lords: me, Dracula, the Wolf King, His Highness Lucius… and him. His power was beyond anything seen in the Demon Realm—or any realm, frankly. And the strangest part? He doesn’t use kantar at all. Not dark, not light, not regular human kantar. He runs on something else entirely.”

She paused, voice dropping. “After Dracula fell and the Wolf King died, he split himself to keep our numbers from looking weak. Gave the Demon Realm the illusion we were still dominant. In reality… we’re slowly becoming extinct. At least the naturally occurring higher-class demons are.”

The blinding light finally faded.

The fiery rivers of the Demon Realm froze solid in an instant. The crimson skies turned pitch black. The scorched rocky ground vanished beneath a sudden blanket of ice and snow.

Hannah and Shu stared in stunned silence.

Bayonetta seized the distraction—coating her hands in Hannah’s stolen purple kantar and lunging at Shu.

But Shu was no novice. Even in his heightened state, his senses were razor-sharp. He twisted aside effortlessly, then unleashed a ferocious barrage of lion-gauntleted punches straight into her torso. Each impact cracked like thunder.

“Did you really think,” he said in that same ethereal, lightning-crackled voice, “I wouldn’t sense that attack coming? My Kantar Manifestation state turns me into raw lightning kantar. I can feel your movements without even looking—your kantar reacts with my body.”

Their duel resumed in a storm of sparks and purple erasure.

Meanwhile, Hannah—for the second time in her life—felt goosebumps crawl across her skin, the same primal dread she’d experienced when she first made her contract with the berserkers. The cold seeped into her bones faster than any kantar chill she’d ever known, as though the realm itself was remembering something older than celestials or demons.

From the heart of the pitch-black blizzard that had replaced the explosion site, a monstrous silhouette emerged.

Gigantic. Towering nine feet tall. Built like an unbreakable fortress of muscle—every cord and sinew bulging, impossibly firm. Blue skin gleamed under the unnatural snow. Four pitch-black eyes stared out like voids, swallowing light itself. Antelope horns curved longer and sharper than any forged blade, and snow-white hair cascaded down its back like a frozen waterfall.

It fixed those abyssal eyes on Hannah.

A roar erupted from its maw—cold wind and razor-sharp ice blasting outward. Hannah raised her arms to shield her face; frost locked them in place instantly, the burn of it searing deeper than any wound.

“Kantar Manifestation: Wrath of the Destroyer.”

The words rumbled like an avalanche.

Hannah’s kantar surged to its absolute limit. She entered her own Kantar Manifestation state—“Overdrive.” Her power spiked violently. She dashed forward, body wreathed in destructive purple energy, and drove a brutal punch straight into the giant’s chest.

Her kantar flooded into him—aiming to erase him from existence.

For a heartbeat, he began to dissolve into nothingness.

Then the air grew impossibly colder. Snow swirled. His body reformed from the falling flakes, whole and untouched.

He roared again—louder, deeper. The sound shook the depths of the underworld itself. Rifts tore open between realms, bleeding frost and ancient power.

Hannah hovered mid-air, eyes wide with realization. “Wait… I know what you are. You’re from the Old World.”

The giant stretched one massive arm. From the nearest rift, a colossal battle-axe flew into his grip. He slammed it into the ground.

A sonic boom erupted—shockwave hurling Hannah backward.

Before she could recover, the giant was behind her—axe already descending for the killing blow.

Hannah reacted on instinct. Five kantar clones materialized between them. The axe cleaved through all five in a single sweep. She caught the blade bare-handed as it reached her, purple energy flaring.

She tried to channel her erasure technique into the weapon.

Nothing.

The giant pressed harder. The axe inched forward.

Hannah’s veins bulged, glowing purple as she pushed back with every ounce of amplified strength. Sweat beaded on her forehead, freezing into tiny crystals before it could fall.

As I feared… even my erasure is useless. Kantar hierarchy only matters within its own domain—Old World life force sits above it all, just like the elders warned when I first learned the types.

Her eyes flared brighter purple. Veins across her body pulsed with glowing light. She was burning through her reserves at a terrifying rate.

The giant’s strength overwhelmed her.

The axe sliced clean through her hands—and then through her torso.

Hannah was cut in half.

The world went dark.

She awoke in a vast, lightless void. No sound but the distant drip of water. No warmth, no wind—only the oppressive weight of absolute nothing.

The only illumination came from a single beautiful woman standing before her.

Hannah stared for a long moment, breath shallow. “…Olethros? Is that you?”

Olethros nodded silently and stepped closer. Her footsteps sounded like walking through shallow puddles—soft, echoing, endless. She knelt beside Hannah, voice calm and neutral, yet carrying the weight of inevitability.

“You lost that battle. The frost giant cut you in half. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue—but you were sliced by a weapon from the Old World. It’s literally preventing me from healing you. Your kantar is blocked.”

Hannah closed her eyes, the pain of her bisected body a distant echo in this place. She had known this moment might come—the price of her celestial fall, her contract, her refusal to let Shu face the world alone.

“I have to do it, don’t I?”

Olethros remained silent. Only the occasional drip of water echoed through the endless dark, each one a reminder of time slipping away.

Hannah exhaled slowly. “The berserkers are supposed to be the only remnant of the Old World. How the hell did the Demon Realm get their hands on a frost giant?”

Olethros cut her off gently. “That’s not important right now. May I remind you—you’re dying? You have to do it. Activate the power… for Shu’s sake.”

The name hit like a punch. Shu—her son, her reason for everything. The boy who carried her fallen legacy and a destiny heavier than any celestial crown.

Hannah nodded once.

She rose and walked into the darkness.

This landscape was nothing like her usual kantar realm—no swirling purple voids, no echoes of erased enemies, no comforting hum of her power. Instead, it was cold, endless, and strangely familiar. She moved with quiet certainty, as though she had always known this path existed, waiting for the day she had no other choice.

She walked for what felt like hours—each step heavier, the drip of water growing louder, more insistent. Her wounds didn't bleed here, but the cold gnawed at the edges of her soul, whispering that time was running out.

Finally, she found it: the second source of light.

A dark, demonic statue of a deranged man wearing the skull of an antelope. Blood still dripped from its eye sockets, thick and endless. The light it emitted was a deep, malevolent red—pulsing like a heartbeat.

Hannah stopped before it. She stood silent for a long moment, staring at the figure that represented everything she had tried to bury: the primal rage, the hunger for battle, the cost she had sworn never to pay again.

Then she spoke, voice calm but laced with resignation.

“Awaken, oh terrible one that resides in front of me. The time for me to use your power is nigh.”

The antelope skull fell away with a wet clatter.

Beneath it was the face of a half-decaying human—manic grin stretched wide, blood pouring endlessly from hollow eye sockets.

It stared at her.

“The thrill of the fight is my delight… and your soul the sacrifice.”

The words sank in like hooks. Hannah felt the pull—the statue's red light wrapping around her, cold and hungry. Memories flashed: the first contract with the berserkers, the taste of rage, the fear that she would lose herself completely.

She closed her eyes.

For Shu.

The darkness claimed her again.

Barely any time had passed in the real world.

The frost giant—poised to turn her bisected corpse into ice cubes—froze in shock.

Hannah rose.

She was no longer the same.

A hollow human skull mask covered her face—black stripes running from the top left and top right downward like tears of shadow. Her body was clad in jagged armor forged from bone—plates shifting like living exoskeleton, cold and unyielding against her skin.

All her kantar had separated from her flesh, manifesting as a towering astral projection of a berserker looming behind her—hulking, savage, eyes burning with primal fury. Its presence pressed on her mind: a constant, whispering hunger for battle, for blood, for more.

She looked up at the giant.

When she spoke, the voice that emerged was no longer entirely hers—demonic, layered, echoing with ancient rage.

“Time for round two.”