Chapter 7: The Day The World Went Away (7)

The man in her arms thrashed with fading strength, teeth gnashing against the column of her throat. He bit and worried at her skin, his fevered breath hot against her neck. Yet for all his effort, she remained untouched. The collar of her shirt showed only dampness where his mouth had been, the skin beneath smooth and unbroken, porcelain-pale.

“I’m here,” she whispered into his ear, unsure who needed to hear it more.

Blood—not her own—smeared across her sleeve. His gaze had gone milky, distant. She had kept vigil through it all. Through the climbing fever that left him shivering, through the screams that tore his throat, through whispered promises she had known were lies even as she spoke them.

None of it mattered. None of it changed anything.

The dead crashed against her. They swarmed. Fingers snapped backward on contact. Jaws clamped onto whatever they could reach only for teeth to crack and splinter, mouths tearing open under the strain of biting what could not be bitten. Shoulders struck. Knuckles hammered. A forehead smashed into her temple—force enough to shatter bone.

Instead, each impact rang hollow, steel disguised as flesh.

The corpse that had struck her recoiled, its skull collapsing inward as it crumpled at her feet.

Her hands trembled as they held him. Crimson seeped through his chestnut hair. She traced the lines of his face—features she had memorized, now warped by whatever sickness had claimed him. And still, beneath the distortion, she could find him.

They had never knelt before one another. Never spoken vows. Their love had been simpler: quiet dinners, nights spent in. He had lived unburdened by cosmic design, unaware that he had given his heart to the Goddess’s chosen warrior, the daughter of dawn who bore the weight of divine purpose.

With him, she had known happiness.

Now it was gone.

Extinguished.

She looked up, unable to resist the pull from above. A dark speck hovered over the city, throbbing like a malignant heart.

The building had torn itself free from its foundation—glass, metal, and stone defying gravity as it hung suspended against the cloudless sky.

“What is that?” The question escaped her as a whisper. “Who is that?”

Her skin split with radiance, the glow beneath its surface rupturing outward like solar flares. The dead staggered back, rotting faces illuminated as shadows burned away. A column of brilliance speared skyward from her body. The infected ceased to exist—their forms dissolving into ash, frozen forever in their final, futile motions.

When the light receded, the street lay bare but for drifting gray dust and blackened silhouettes scorched into the concrete.

And hatred bloomed within.

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

Reina’s body was gone—Lilly had taken it away. He searched the cluster of survivors, attention snapping from face to face, hunting for that relieved, crooked smile.

It wasn’t there.

Midori was dead.

His fingers curled into a fist. Muscle knotted beneath his skin as his teeth ground together. He lowered his face toward the ground.

Never again. That was what he had sworn.

Hayate.

Tetsuya.

Yuka.

Midori.

Reina.

All dead.

The sound came moments later, piercing not his ears but something deeper. Bells. Holy bells. He knew that resonance—the ethereal toll that had silenced battlefields in an instant, leaving mages frozen where they stood.

“So,” he said, “you were alive.”

He turned toward her silhouette against the blinding sun. Light crowned her head, golden curls cut sharply at her jaw. Her white-and-gold suit caught the daylight, red trim stark as fresh blood against snow. Only her gaze remained unchanged—molten gold flecked with starlight.

Evelyn the Promised.

She held the Sword of Saint Luciann. The ugly, awkward blade should have dragged her arms earthward, yet she balanced it with the indifference of someone holding a kitchen knife. It rose between them, its tip aligning with his heart without hesitation.

“You seem like you’ve done well for yourself.”

A shadow crossed her face. The faintest crease formed between her brows.

“What have you done, Demon King?”

“The only thing I could.”

“It wasn’t enough to disrupt the balance of one world—you had to poison another?”

He closed his eyes, exhaustion settling into every cell. He had nursed a secret wish in the darkest recesses of his mind—one he never fully admitted. That Leon’s spell had taken only him. That she had been left behind in the void between worlds. That the universe might grant him that single mercy.

It hadn’t.

He had been a fool to think he could vanish into the mundane rhythms of this world. She had found him anyway. She always would have. Even if his body had not betrayed him, even if he had found acceptance here, she was the real reason he would never belong.

She would have hunted him to the edge of existence. And when she found him, she would destroy everything he had built.

Her hatred was not merely emotion. It was doctrine. Purpose. The axis around which her existence revolved.

“Evelyn. Today’s been hell.”

Her lip twitched.

“Me too.”

She moved.

His remaining arm tensed too late. The phantom limb rose first, confused signals racing through his body. Her molten gaze locked onto him, burning with the cold, merciless clarity of an executioner.

The distance vanished.

His fingers unfurled. The runway imploded beneath Evelyn, collapsing into a jagged crater. The shockwave tore outward, ripping loose anything not anchored. She hovered inches from him, suspended in crushing pressure, sword arm trembling as invisible weight pinned her in place.

“Weak.”

Her elbow drove forward.

The impact detonated across his face. The world dissolved into motion and pain as his body was hurled end over end. He struck once—skidded—tore through the terminal wall in an explosion of glass.

Screams followed him in.

He dragged himself upright, copper flooding his mouth as blood ran from his nose. Through the haze of dust, people scattered or hid—huddled shapes crouched behind shattered cover. He rose onto one knee and swayed, balance tenuous amid the debris.

That was when he saw them.

Aki.

Haruka.

Terror had drained their faces of all color.

“Did you save these people?”

Figures stared upward, mouths open in disbelief. She hovered above them, feet resting on nothing, sunlight cutting around her form as wind tugged at her curls. Her gaze swept the survivors below.

“Are you protecting them, devil?”

He launched.

The ground detonated beneath him as gravity inverted, his body becoming a missile. He slammed into her shoulder-first, the impact cracking the air as he drove her higher, forcing distance.

They climbed together—until Evelyn stopped them both.

Momentum died in an instant. The sudden halt tore a gasp from his lungs as her knee buried itself in his gut, folding him before she kicked him free. He tumbled, sky and earth trading places in a violent blur of blue and gray.

“You’ve failed.”

The sword descended. A crescent of pure radiance tore free—wide enough to swallow the runway whole.

His fingers splayed. Space hardened before him as the arc struck an invisible wall, the collision erupting into a thunderous blast. Shockwaves rippled outward. The terminal shuddered beneath the strain.

“Stop!” The plea ripped from his throat before vanishing into the open sky. “They’re innocent! Will you slaughter them too?”

The breeze stirred the edges of her immaculate suit.

“We don’t belong here.”

The words slid beneath his skin, finding the hollows where certainty should have lived. How many nights had he lain awake beneath that same thought? How many times had his reflection looked back at him like an intruder?

“These people are already dead,” she said softly. “Were it not for you, they would have died on the first day.”

He shook his head sharply.

“That’s bullshit!”

“If you truly wanted to protect anything,” she said, “you should have kept to yourself, devil.”

Her blade blurred. Each swing birthed a point of light, burning like stolen stars. Only he could follow the dozen strikes as they ignited the air. The constellation of her hatred screamed toward him—overlapping arcs of white-hot annihilation.

His hand snapped forward. Gravity surged from his palm as space warped and bent. The light crashed against his barrier, detonating into blinding coronas. He pushed harder. Each collision fed the next, a chain reaction of explosive force. Smoke billowed outward until the world beyond his fingertips ceased to exist.

His arm shook. Each defense drained him further. Cold seeped into his limbs as if winter had claimed his veins. Warmth traced his upper lip, crimson droplets staining his chest.

Already?

A single ray pierced the smoke.

It screamed past his shoulder and struck the terminal.

The building erupted—glass atomized, steel twisted, screams cut short beneath the roar.

“No—!”

He spun, panic fracturing his thoughts. Where were they? He needed to see them—needed proof—

Air shifted behind him.

Too late.

Evelyn appeared overhead, sword raised, its edge singing with living light. The purest affinity. Life itself.

He clawed at his power, desperate to steal momentum from the blow. The collision consumed him in white fury before hurling him earthward. Concrete shattered as his body carved a trench through the runway. Sound collapsed into a shrill whine. Shapes swam.

When he tried to rise, his arm buckled.

There was nothing left. No reserve. No final gambit. He had spent everything, and what remained unraveled like rotted cloth.

She touched down before him without a sound.

“And after?” he demanded, spitting out blood and forcing himself upright. “After you kill me. After you kill them. What then?”

She looked at him. And he recognized the emptiness there—the nothingness of someone who had watched their world burn to ash.

Twice.

“There is no after,” she said. “This is the end. For all of us.”