Consciousness returned not as a dawn, but as the slamming of a prison door.
Blade's eyes opened, each lid scraping over bruised sclera like gritpaper. The searing white salt flats of Rune were gone. So was the sun. The air he sucked in was hot, thick, and carried a stench that defied analogy, ozone, rotting blossoms, and a coppery tang of old, cosmic blood.
He was no longer facing Shiba's smug arrogance.
He was facing the void given form.
Rushifa did not sit upon his throne of frozen screams, he was the throne, the hall, the very atmosphere of dread. He was not a giant, yet he seemed to fill all space, a figure of elegant, smoldering shadow clad in armor that seemed to drink the faint, sourceless light. His face was both handsome and utterly alien, etched with lines of ancient, patient malice, and his eyes were twin pools of absolute black, stars dying in their depths. This was not a warrior. This was a principle. The embodiment of ending.
Movement flickered at the periphery. A slender, pale man with hair like spilled ink and a smile like a razor cut, Shito, directed a swarm of the lanky, grey demons with silent, efficient gestures. Two of them were hauling the limp forms of Birman and Burmilla away from the central dais, down a spiraling pathway that vanished into shrieking darkness.
"Stop!" The word tore from Blade's raw throat, a command that was a child's croak. Agony lanced through his broken arm, his ribs, every part of him Shiba had shattered. He ignored it. Using his one good arm, he dragged himself to his knees, then, with a shuddering gasp of pure will, to his feet. He stood, swaying, a battered boy painted in blood and dust before the lord of a hell dimension. "Who dares?!" he spat, the words tasting of salt and rage. "Interrupt my battle... steal my vengeance... Send me back! He is mine to finish!"
A sound filled the colossal hall. It was Rushifa's laugh. It held no humor. It was the sound of continents grinding, of stars cooling, of inevitability acknowledging a particularly amusing speck of dust. The psychic weight of it pressed Blade's ears, made his teeth ache.
The young Nekonian didn't flinch. He tilted his chin up, meeting those starless eyes with his own blazing green ones. The pain was a furnace, but his fury was the fuel. There was no fear in him. Only insult, and a demand for restoration.
A flicker of something, not interest, but a predator's recognition of unusual prey, passed through Rushifa's gaze. Blade, his mind already categorizing this new, overwhelming variable, asked the only logical question. "Who are you?"
The answer was not a name.
Fire, black and cold as the space between galaxies, shot from Rushifa's eyes. It did not touch Blade's flesh; it bypassed it entirely, spearing directly into his soul. It was not the pain of broken bones or seared skin. This was the agony of unmaking. It was every cell screaming in revolt against its own existence, every memory curdling into terror, every spark of his brilliant, arrogant mind threatening to snuff itself out to escape the sensation. Blade's body arched, a silent scream locked in his throat before it shattered into a raw, endless sound that echoed terribly in the vast hall. He collapsed, convulsing, the world dissolving into a white-hot nexus of pure, existential hurt.
That was who he was.
When the fire ceased, it left not a wound, but a void where Blade's sense of self had been. He lay twitching, tears of pure physiological trauma cutting through the grime on his cheeks.
A shadow fell over him. Rushifa had not moved from his throne, and yet he was there, standing over the broken child. A hand, clad in dark, seamless metal, reached down and closed around Blade's neck. It lifted him effortlessly, bringing the Nekonian's pain-glazed eyes level with his own fathomless ones.
"The small, proud animal is broken," Rushifa's voice was a soft, resonant vibration in Blade's very bones. "Good. Now, listen. The one you knew as father is ash. The ones you knew as rulers are memory. From this moment, I am your father. You are a child of Rushifa. My loyal son. A prince of Jigoku. Heir to a dark legacy that makes your dreamed-of Nekonian empire seem like a child's sketch in the mud."
He shifted his grip, holding Blade aloft like a craftsman examining a newly acquired, interesting tool. "Your people had a crude understanding. Strength equals supremacy. A simple, brutal logic. It is a start. But it is a small, lonely fire. I offer you the conflagration of all creation."
Rushifa's face drew closer, his whisper the hiss of a serpent coiling around the world. "Serve me. Excel for me. Harness that magnificent, furious little heart. And I will not only give you Shiba's head on a plate of his own pride... I will give you the multiverse to command. You will rule the infinite realities, not for their petty peace or prosperity, but in my name. To impose a final, beautiful order upon the chaos."
Through the ringing in his ears and the aftershocks of soul-deep pain, Blade's mind processed the offer. Revenge? Yes. Power? Limitless. But the final clause, in my name, stuck like a bone in his throat. A laugh, cracked and bloody, bubbled from his lips. It was a pitiful sound, yet utterly defiant.
"I don't... care about your multiverse," Blade gasped, each word a struggle. "I want... my people avenged. I want Shiba's blood. If I ruled... it would be for me."
For the second time, Rushifa laughed. This one held a shade of genuine, dark delight. "Oh, little spark. You will learn."
The black fire lanced from his eyes again.
This time, as Blade's universe dissolved into a white-hot hell of pain, a new sensation pierced through. A voice. Not in his ears, but etched directly onto the surface of his unraveling mind. It was not Rushifa's. It was older, drier, a whisper from the foundation stones of this damned place itself.
As the inferno within him reached its peak, the voice spoke three words, a cold, clear truth amid the agony:
"RUSHIFA IS."
And in that moment, Blade understood. This was not a title. Not a name. It was a statement of fact. A law of reality here, as immutable as gravity. To ask "who are you?" was a child's question. The only answer was existence itself, vast, cruel, and absolute.
The fire ceased. Blade hung limp in the demon king's grip, a vessel emptied of everything but pain and that one, terrifying truth.
Rushifa looked at the boy's still form, then at Shito, who had glided back to his master's side, his razor-smile unwavering. "Take him to the Pit of Clarity. Let the truth of Jigoku finish what I have started. Break the 'me' from him. Then... we will build something far more interesting in its place."
He dropped Blade. The demons caught him before he hit the obsidian floor, their claws gentle as a shroud. As they carried him away into the weeping darkness, the last thing Blade's consciousness registered was the sight of Rushifa turning back to his throne, the embodiment of evil already dismissing him, confident in the absolute, terrible process of becoming that had now begun.12Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeLk1SjBISQ
and then Add to home screen.