The Dream Gate towered above the ancient city of the Demon of Destiny, emanating a blinding, incinerating brilliance. It was like an incandescent wound dealt to the world, radiant cracks spreading through the air around it — as if reality itself was about to come undone.
The merciless white abyss of a godless sky invaded the dark depths of the Underworld through it, annihilating the true darkness that had always dwelled in this lightless realm.
The annihilating light spread in all directions, reaching far and wide. Nephis had grown still just before the Dream Gate opened, so she wasn't immediately destroyed — in fact, she was one of the few beings in the world who could move in that harrowing light, albeit not for long and only if she was ready to pay a gruesome price. Sunny, however, was not. Now that his shadow had fused with Nephis, neither of them knew what would happen if she moved — but chances were, this incarnation of him would be burned off her graceful figure, turning into a cloud of ash.
So, Nephis stayed motionless even as the very ground beneath her quaked and turned into a slope.
Her dark copy, however, had not remained still when the infinite white abyss of Sun God's fallen realm invaded the darkness of the Underworld. As a result, the fearsome apparition melted in the furious light, destroyed in a matter of moments.
No trace of her remained in the pristine abyss of merciless radiance, as if her profane existence was not allowed to leave a stain on it.
The light of Godgrave was not indiscriminate in its destruction, though. Even in the cursed land where it originated, it only destroyed things that moved. So, the city itself, with its magnificent stone buildings and wide promenades, should have been safe from it.
It was just that when the merciless radiance of Godgrave collided with the boundless sea of elemental darkness, something that no one could define, let alone fathom, was unleashed. A dreadful cataclysm shook the very foundation of the world, happening on higher planes of existence than what mortals could perceive.
The universal laws of existence themselves were shaken by the unimaginable calamity, groaning and twisting around the ancient city. That upheaval echoed in the material world, causing untold devastation and making the colossal stalagmite quake. The mountain-sized stalactites above swayed, as well, and enormous slabs of stone fell from the distant ceiling of the great cavern.
‘This... might be my greatest stunt yet...’
Even Sunny, who was directly responsible for summoning hell into the Underworld, was stunned and shaken by what he and Nephis had unleashed.
In fact, he was a little horrified.
‘No, no... it's alright!"
They had accomplished their goal, after all. The dark copies were gone, erased from existence by the annihilating light — so there was no cause for alarm. Everything was going according to plan.
Right?
As light and darkness clashed in a terrifying conflagration of destructive forces, Nephis aimed her gaze at the empty void surrounding the radiant Dream Gate. There, incandescent fractures seemed to be spreading through the vacuum, slowly expanding as their brilliance swelled.
It looked like a dam ready to burst.
The dam, in this case, was reality itself. Sunny felt his heart sink.
‘Right?’
He was about to tell Nephis to hurry up and close the Gate, but before he could, the darkness surged forward. It was as if the dark abyss hidden in the great chasm below the city was launching a counterattack against the radiant abyss of Godgrave — as if the creature that had been playing with them before was finally getting serious.
The bottomless chasm boiled as it exploded with gargantuan tendrils of darkness — each similar to the one that had been controlling the Jade Titan and the one that had created the dark copies. Only now, there weren't just two of them.
There were dozens... hundreds... thousands? An endless forest of them rose above the city, twisting and writhing like a mountain chain. It was as if the Abyss itself was trying to crawl out of the chasm, provoked by the sudden invasion of brilliant light.
Looking at the twisting dark forest of gargantuan tendrils, Sunny forgot how to breathe. He had no material form at the moment, but if he did, his heart would have skipped a few beats. A cold sense of terror enveloped him, eradicating all thoughts from his mind.
‘What... what is this? How can such a thing exist?’
Even Nephis, who rarely felt fear or hesitation, seemed shaken and paralyzed by the harrowing visage in front of them.
In that moment, both of them realized one simple truth...
It was that they had severely underestimated the abyssal horror, and at the same time severely overestimated themselves.
A single word crossed both of their minds.
‘Unholy...’
‘Unholy!’
The abyssal horror was a Creature of Darkness, so it did not fit into the framework of Ranks and Classes they knew. It was not an abomination corrupted by the Void, but if it had been... then it would have been equal to those of them who were Unholy. To the most powerful and dreadful beings in existence, the hidden rulers of the Dream Realm.
They stood no chance in a battle against that thing. They weren't even qualified to stand in its presence.
And now...
They had made it angry.
'Crap.'
Sunny barely managed to form a coherent thought.
At that moment, the mountain chain of colossal tendrils surged forward like a dark avalanche, slamming into the ocean of radiance spilling from the Dream Gate. Dozens of them boiled and melted, dissipating in the furious light — but even as they did, more reached into the incinerating inferno, swallowing it with their unfathomable mass.
It was as if a flood of darkness was devouring the sky like a tenebrous tide. More and more tendrils were annihilated by the merciless radiance of Godgrave, but the rest continued to flow forward, devouring the world.
Still... Godgrave was what remained of the Sun Realm. The white abyss above it was no different from the dead flesh of Sun God, the Lord of Light. Even in death, one of the great gods was far more fearsome than any Unholy Creature could be.
As the tide of darkness rushed forward, it was consumed by light, shrinking and slowing down. Countless tendrils were incinerated, and countless more were severely damaged, falling into the white mist below and disappearing from sight.
In the end, only a few of them remained. Two of them shielded the third, dissolving in the furious radiance of the Dream Gate... But the third one flashed forward, wrapping around the blinding fissure in the fabric of the world.
And then, as its coils tightened, the annihilating radiance was extinguished.
The Dream Gate shut close and collapsed, plunging the world into darkness once more.
It had been torn apart, shattered... completely destroyed.
