Inside the white asylum, Null was mid-sentence when it happened. His thoughts were flowing steadily across the telepathic connection—warm, sincere, and carefully measured. "...so please, Sora-san—"
The transmission died in his throat. A primal jolt tore through his spine like a murderous chill. It wasn't conscious thought. It was pure, unadulterated survival instinct. Every nerve ending screamed: Danger.
His mind, wrenched itself out of emotional resonance and snapped into survival mode within a millisecond. His head whipped upward, staring at the dome of the asylum.
The sky above was burning. Dozens of streaks—no, hundreds—were raining through the canopy in a coordinated deluge. Pyre-Lances.
For a fraction of a second, time stretched. His thought processing accelerated. These were no stray shockwaves; That is a targeted barrage. Trajectory analysis, impact spread, vector angle, density—his eyes sharpened as he decoded his predicament precariously.
Mor'gan wasn't attempting to breach the asylum via concentrated force. He was saturating it, overloading its framework by forcing the protective runes to defend every square inch simultaneously.
Null's hand moved before conscious thought could catch up, reaching into his storage ring.
Twin grips materialized in his palms, a pair of Binary Blades whispered into existence. He dropped into a deep, center-weighted stance—knees bent, center of gravity lowered, respiration slowed to a steady rhythm.
By the time his preparation ended, the wave of pyre lances struck.
BOOM.
White radiance and dark-orange hellfire collided like dying stars. The impact sent violent fractured lines of light tearing across the asylum's surface like fissures in brittle glass.
Half of the projectiles spent their entire mass simply tearing chunks of brilliance away from the protective shell. But the remaining contingent punched cleanly through. The weakened surface gave way, and several lances pierced the interior, descending directly toward the coordinates where he stood.
Null saw them coming, and—
BOOOOM.
The ground exploded into a column of Infernal fire
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The exact microsecond the pyre lances breached the asylum, Sora felt it, as the source of its power.
"...Null-san?"
Then, the link distorted. A surge of chaotic energy, heat, and impact feedback flooded her senses.
Her heart plummeted.
"Nooooo!!!" Her voice, raw with anguish, tore through the air.
She didn't think; she didn't breathe. She simply vanished, light ripping across the battlefield. Abandoning the demon mid-exchange, she crossed the physical distance in a single, desperate flash.
Time twisted as sheer panic drove her faster than thought, each microsecond an eternity.
The only that met her was;
Ash.
Flame.
Cracked earth.
Gone.
She arrived too fast—and too late.
The vow of celestial asylum was gone, completely incinerated and shattered. Where the radiant protection had stood moments prior, there was only a molten crater and a towering column of black smoke spiraling into the gray sky.
"...Null?" Her voice emerged fragile, unrecognizable.
With desperate steps, She plunged into the roiling smoke without a shred of hesitation. The burnt, metallic air clawed at her lungs, and the residual heat stung her eyes. Her hands reached forward instinctively, grasping at nothing, flailing through the thick haze as if she could pull him back through the veil of smoke
"...Null-san?"
Nothing.
Her hands stretched further, trying to grasp desperately. Each passing moment felt like a crushing weight being tethered to her soul, dragging her downward into a hollow abyss she knew far too well.
Her vision began to blur, not from the billowing smoke, but from the resurgence of a Intimately haunting memory.
Seven years ago. A similar scene burned into every fabric of her soul.
Rubble, suffocating dust, frantic voices, and her hands reaching out in the exact same manner. Too late. Always too late.
Her subconscious mind began overlapping the present devastation with the phantom images of her past.
The harrowing recollection of helplessness as she watched on as the boy, absolutely precious to her, was torn away from her reality, a memory of agonizing melody forever etched into her consciousness.
The thick smoke before her morphed into the suffocating dust of that day.
The silence of the clearing became the oppressive silence from back then.
That unbearable sense of devastation; that hollow, crushing despair of losing something absolutely irreplaceable while she stood paralyzed
'No. No, not again.' Her breath tightened unnaturally.
Her mind replayed the trauma in a vicious loop—then and now.
She had firmly believed it was impossible for someone else to have ever matter to her as much as that child did. That was her absolute truth.
Yet now, this soul-wrenching terror clawed through her with the exact same suffocating intensity.
The same hollow, harrowing sensation in her chest; the absolute powerlessness of flailing in a world where the one most important to her was no more.
However, the cruelest thing clawing at her now was, not knowing whether the one she was flailing for was alive or dead.
She clung frantically to a microscopic thread of hope: 'He is alive. He has to be. I must find him. I must save him.'
Her hands kept moving through the black smoke, frantic and trembling. "...Null-san... please..."
'When did this happen? When did that playful, strange, enigmatic boy become this integral to my existence?'
Yes, his physical appearance was striking—absolutely bewitching. He was the most beautiful youth she had ever known.
Even she had been momentarily dazed, transfixed by the surreal perplexion that a mana-less Void Human could actually possess the same trait of unreal visage of beautiful features similar to her own.
It would be a lie to say she hadn't been attracted to him as a girl. She had been.
In fact, for some inexplicable reason, she was so intensely attracted to him that she hadn't known what to do with herself. Barring, mismanaging herself in every interaction with him.
In that moment she first met him, her soul shuddered with a 'sensation' she couldn't find the words to articulate.
Only now, kneeling in the ash with trembling hands, did she realize how irreplaceable he had become in her brief span with him.
Smoke coiled thickly through the molten crater as ash drifted down like black snow. Sora's hands still swept through the haze, searching for something that refused to be found. "Null…"
Then, a voice sliced through the heavy darkness—low, deeply amused, and dripping with venom.
"Sacred bitch..." The words slithered across the scorched earth like oil over water.
Sora did not turn. Sora did not react.
Mor'gan's heavy, armored steps crunched as he approached the perimeter of the molten crater, his molten-gold eyes gleaming through the thick smoke. "Don't tell me," he chuckled darkly, "that fragile boy was your boyfriend?"
"If so, he must be the single most unfortunate bastard alive."
"Did you see how pathetically he died?" His voice dripped with mock sympathy. "Incinerated. Without even understanding what befell him."
"Such is the misfortune of trying to swallow a swan of your status. If he had even a shred of sanity, he's probably cursing you in the afterlife. For dragging him into a predicament way beyond his worth. For getting him killed for nothing."
A wicked grin widened. "Damn… this feels good. I always hated you aristocratic prodigies. Whether human or demon, you brats are all the same. Inherently gifted, sheltered, and worshipped. Walking around like the world owes you reverence." His eyes danced with malicious glee. "But look at you now. The 'Saintess of Living Radiance' kneels in ash like a broken child."
"Hahaha. Completely pathetic."
Sora remained motionless. Her sky-blue eyes, once blindingly radiant and unyielding, were entirely hollow and lifeless.
Mor'gan's voice continued, driving the malice deeper. "What's the issue? Say something, sacred bitch. Where is that righteous glare? Where is that sanctified dignity?" He leaned slightly forward. "Or did they die with him too?"
Mor'gan savored the silence.
A brisk cough echoed from the furnace of the roiling smoke.
Both of them froze immediately. Mor'gan's triumphant grin faltered, and Sora's trembling fingers stopped dead. Another cough echoed clearly through the heavy haze, followed by the undeniable, crunching sound of shifting debris.
"Hey, greater demon…" A low chuckle slipped through the curtain of ash. . "Don't lump my worth in with the likes of you."
"There isn't a chance in a billion hells that I would ever have the heart to curse my Sora... least of all in the afterlife."
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