The air between them was vacuumed away.
The sky-piercing longsword descended upon Zephyro in absolute silence and finality.
…
Zephyro made no attempt to defend.
He allowed the strike to land directly on his core.
In an instant, an explosion of energy powerful enough to annihilate countless galaxies erupted, surging toward Phainon as he followed the blade’s arc.
Caught off guard, Phainon felt a flash of resentment.
“As expected of Destruction’s madman—willing to damage his own core just to unleash such an attack.”
He hastily raised his sword to block, but Zephyro was faster.
Their blades clashed, and Phainon was sent flying once more.
He spat out a mouthful of golden blood and forced himself back to his feet.
Just as Zephyro assumed Phainon had no fight left in him, the latter suddenly erupted.
Countless feathers detached from his golden wings—not scattering wildly, but transforming into billions of golden chains wrapped in blood-red thorns.
They ignored the explosion’s shockwaves, piercing precisely into every node and every black hole vortex of Zephyro’s energy form.
Like chains binding a dragon, they coiled and tightened around him.
The chains greedily drained Zephyro’s Destruction energy, slowing his regeneration.
They emitted a grating metallic screech as they bound him at the level of fundamental law.
“Gaze upon the stars… This is the prelude to your ordained end.” Phainon brought his hands before his chest.
A dead, silent planet materialized above Zephyro’s pressured form.
“Do you see it? The reflection of finality…”
“Foundation: Stardeath Verdict!”
When Phainon’s hands closed as if gripping the crumbling white realm itself into his palm, an unprecedented “silence of death” descended.
Time did not stop, but space itself seemed cast from lead of infinite density.
Air was no longer flowing gas, but a viscous, freezing solid.
Every thought of movement was weighed down by a burden of a thousand tons.
The black hole vortices spinning across his surface slowed to a crawl, like rusted gears grinding against the fabric of space itself.
A vast, cold, inhuman will flooded the battlefield.
This was not Phainon’s own will, but the collective final lament and ultimate judgment of countless fallen civilizations.
It crashed down upon Zephyro’s consciousness like billions of invisible tombstones.
The phantoms of Amphoreus’s three guardian Titans—Creation, Calamity, and Foundation—materialized at the edges of the domain.
They were no longer Amphoreus’s protectors, but the executioners of civilization’s end.
Their gazes locked onto Zephyro, delivering an undeniable, inescapable final verdict: “You shall be annihilated!”
Enveloped by this will, what arose was not fear, but the complete negation of existence itself.
As if his very being were an error code the universe needed to purge.
This was a despair deeper than death: your destruction is a necessary step for the cosmic order to return to “correctness.”
The billions of golden chains binding Zephyro suddenly let out a soul-piercing shriek.
They were no longer binding chains, but billions of fuses.
Each chain erupted with blinding light capable of scorching stars, yet at their core lay the cold, absolute law of finality.
As the dead star of finality descended from the heavens, the billions of chains instantly annihilated into countless golden lances of pure Destruction will.
These lances were not physical entities, but the embodiment of the concept of “finality.” They ignored all physical defenses and energy shields, for they attacked not matter, but the “continuity” of existence itself.
The moment the lances appeared, an absolute sense of “piercing” locked onto Zephyro.
No matter how he twisted space or created gravitational traps, these lances struck true like weapons of causality, precisely piercing every critical node of his energy form, every core of his black hole vortices, every structural gap attempting to regenerate.
Each piercing was accompanied by the horrifying sensation of “existence being permanently deleted.” There were no explosive shockwaves—only the silent erasure of the pierced points, leaving behind voids rimmed with deathly golden light.
At the zenith of all energy, the entire space seemed compressed to its limit.
Phainon’s golden wings spread fully, their tips seemingly piercing the boundaries of the world.
Above the heavens, an indescribably vast phantom of a “Pillar”—composed of pure Destruction law—manifested with earth-shaking force.
It was not matter, but the ultimate manifestation of the concept “Foundation: Stardeath Verdict.” Get faster updates on g.com.
This phantom “Pillar” carried Phainon’s hatred of Destruction, the final weight of Amphoreus’s civilization, the endless resentment of all worlds destroyed by Zephyro, and the cold corrective will of the universe against entropy runaway.
Slowly, inexorably, it descended.
Its target was not Zephyro’s body, but the “singularity” of his core existence.
Space shattered into primordial quantum foam beneath it.
Time twisted and fractured along its path.
Its descent was synonymous with “finality.” Under its crushing weight, any existence could only be reduced to a single insignificant speck of cosmic background radiation.
With that strike spent, Phainon fell helplessly from the sky.
Gazing at the distant Aeon of Destruction, who showed no emotional response, he profoundly understood the inadequacy of his power.
If even a single Lord Ravager under His command could be this powerful, then what of His true self?
Pointing his sword at that majestic figure, Phainon made a silent vow.
“Someday, I will bring you the Destruction you desire.”
Yet the battle between him and Zephyro did not end as he had hoped.
From the rubble where the Pillar had fallen, a broken form rose slowly, burning with endless fury.
The massive shell of star debris and black hole vortices had indeed been grievously wounded by Phainon’s final “Stardeath Verdict.” Much of its body had disintegrated, revealing a core of ominous crimson spinning wildly within.
But the exposed core did not weaken.
Instead, having devoured the energy of Phainon’s all-out attack, it erupted with even more terrifying gravitational pull, like a ravenous abyss.
Phainon tried to gather his power again, but the faint glimmer at his fingertips was instantly torn apart and devoured by Zephyro’s core.
His wings let out a strained cry, crumbling in larger chunks.
With each dissipation of energy, his form grew more transparent, as if he might fade completely into the void at any moment.
The fire within him blazed fiercely, yet in an instant, it was carried away by the endless gravity.
Everything that made him who he was—his power, his will—was being gradually stripped from him.
Desperate silence flooded Phainon’s heart.
The pupils that symbolized Worldbearing slowly lost their light.
“So… when the fuel is spent… all that remains… is emptiness…”