The air thickened without warning.
Black fumes bled into existence, slithering through the vault like living serpents. They wrapped around the ruined body of Michael's at its center—half-burned arms, torn legs, flesh that should have remained scattered across the floor like discarded meat. Instead, it returned.
Bone dragged itself back into alignment with a sickening insistence. Muscle knitted together in violent spasms. Skin crawled over sealing itself with grotesque determination. This was not healing. It was reconstruction—forced, invasive, unwilling to accept death as an answer.
The sound eclipsed the sight.
This was not something meant to happen in reality.
Things like this belonged in nightmares—half-remembered horrors whispered in fear. Yet the vault bore witness to it in brutal clarity. This was real.
Bheeshma didn't knew where the fumes came from. And he didn't understood why they clung so desperately.
A flicker of disbelief cracked through his hardened expression. A man who had carved his way through wars and monsters—who had ended countless lives without hesitation—stared at the floating figure as if it were the aberration.
"What's happening…?" His voice fractured.
Behind the suspended body, Vault B10 groaned.
The restricted zone—steel walls layered with reinforced alloys, encrypted locks, and C.O.S.M.O.S.'s obsessive paranoia—began to throb like a living organ. Metallic pulses rippled outward, vibrating the air, rattling teeth, setting nerves on edge.
Then came the pressure.
Not heat.
Not force.
Oppression.
A weight that did not belong to physics—but to evil itself.
It spread like a demonic dominion, an aura so wrong that reality recoiled from it. The chamber groaned as if the world were being compressed by an unseen fist.
The air thickened, turning viscous, suffocating. Oxygen itself felt hostile—each breath a labor, each inhale a struggle against something that did not want life to continue.
Bheeshma staggered.
The weight doubled.
Then tripled.
His legs buckled, and he crashed to one knee, sweat pouring down his face as veins bulged against his skin. His heart pounded violently, threatening to burst under the pressure.
This wasn't mere power—
It was malevolence.
And then—
The reinforced vault trembled.
The structure—engineered specifically to safeguard ancient weapons, layered with suppression seals and reality anchors—split open.
BOOOOM!!
The rupture was violent, but wrong.
No fire.
No heat.
Instead, a detonation of darkness.
Like a nuclear blast stripped of flame, the vault tore apart as black fumes erupted outward, carrying with them a black light that devoured illumination rather than casting it.
The shockwave tore through subterranean levels, racing upward toward the surface.
Above ground—
C.O.S.M.O.S soldiers and Executioners locked in brutal combat froze mid-motion.
At the epicenter of the battlefield, Bheema—the elder brother of Bheeshma—was locked in a desperate, life-or-death struggle against the A-Rank Interstellar Necadron, a monstrosity born from a meteor strike.
Blades halted.
Energy attacks faltered.
Every being—human and monster alike—collapsed to their knees.
They felt it.
That evil aura, rising from beneath the earth.
Bheema's eyes widened as the pressure crushed against his chest.
"What the hell are you doing down there, Bheeshma?" he roared, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
B10 – Underground Vault
From within the drifting black fumes, something emerged.
Something impossible.
Bheeshma trembled—not from fear alone, but from instinctual terror, the kind carved into the soul itself. Whatever this was, it carried a depth of evil he could not comprehend.
Then he saw it.
A lotus.
Blacker than shadow itself.
Its petals did not reflect light—they consumed it, swallowing illumination whole.
Each movement was unnervingly smooth, fluid like oil sliding across water. It did not rush. It did not hesitate.
It did not react.
It chose.
Bheeshma's composure shattered completely.
"What… what is that flower…?" His voice cracked, desperation bleeding through.
"That evilness—Chairman… what secrets have you hidden?"
The lotus drifted toward the suspended body.
Toward Michael.
And then—
It unfurled.
Twenty-four petals spread open, each one sharp, precise, gleaming like surgical blades forged from darkness itself.
There was no warning.
No hesitation.
No mercy.
The petals pressed forward—
Into Michael's lifeless eyes.
One. By. One.
Agony erupted instantly.
Not a slow burn.
Not a rising pain.
It was absolute.
Molten torment tore through the skull as if liquid fire were being poured directly into the brain, shredding neural pathways, carving away vision and replacing it with something alien.
Veins lit up beneath the skin like overloaded circuitry, glowing violently as power surged through flesh never meant to contain it.
Bones creaked.
Cracked.
Threatened to rupture from within.
Michael's body convulsed violently against its restraints as something ancient, forbidden, and utterly wrong began to take root.
This was not awakening.
This was possession by evolution.
Michael was no longer human.
Bheeshma watched, frozen—not by fear, but by helplessness. His fists clenched, not in rage, but in the realization that rank, power, and authority meant nothing here.
Then—
Silence.
The pain ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
The lotus vanished.
The fumes receded.
And the body descended.
It was no longer a nineteen-year-old boy.
The figure stood taller. Heavier. His shadow warped unnaturally, stretching across the broken floor as if it no longer belonged to him. Reflected in a shard of shattered steel was not a man, nor a beast—but something carved from nightmare.
Power rolled off him in suffocating waves.
His movements twitched, blurred—limbs responding before intention, instincts acting before thought. His body obeyed commands written deeper than consciousness.
And there was no resistance.
Why would there be?
Blood spilled effortlessly. Flesh tore beneath casual motion. Dominance coated his hands—hot, slick, undeniable.
Bheeshma's expression twisted.
Not fear.
Humiliation.
For an A-rank soldier, failing to kill a target instantly was sacrilege.
"Don't you dare think you'll walk out of here alive!" he roared.
His aura ignited. Blaze Chakra erupted violently.
"Judgement Arc!"
Flames screamed through the air, each swing capable of shredding steel into ribbons.
Not a single strike landed.
Before Bheeshma could even draw breath, a fist buried itself into his abdomen—dead center, crushing the blaze Chakra core.
The impact folded him.
His body tore through floor after floor—ten levels down—leaving ruin in its wake.
The transformed figure landed lightly, an executioner's blade cutting through the chaos.
Soldiers lay scattered. Moaning. Silent.
Dead or unconscious—it did not matter.
The battle with Necadron was still raging.
Its massive serpentine body twisted through the battlefield, dozens of shifting eyes opening and closing across its scales.
Each eye tracked a different angle, a different threat.
Every time Bheema moved to strike, the creature evaded—or retaliated from a blind spot he didn't even realize he had.
Bheema grit his teeth.
Slowly, painfully, he began to understand its rhythm.
Its timing.
Its hesitation windows.
He hardened his arms, veins bulging as earth-energy reinforced bone and muscle.
With a roar born of desperation, he stepped in and hammered the beast with everything he had.
The impact sent Necadron flying.
For a brief moment, silence followed.
Then the monster's many eyes snapped toward something else.
Toward Michael.
Bheema's breath caught.
He saw his brother lying motionless on the ground.
"Bheeshmaaa!?" Fury tore through his voice.
He rushed forward—then stopped.
His instincts screamed.
That presence—
It did not belong to this world.
Bheema slowly raised his head, eyes narrowing at the figure standing there.
"What are you…?"
Before the question could settle, Necadron roared behind him—as if answering on his behalf.
Bheema snarled.
"Terra Fist!"
His strike crushed into the monster, forcing it back as stone surged upward, sealing Necadron inside a hardened dome.
"Terra Aegis."
"Don't interrupt me, worm."
Necadron responded with a psychic roar.
The sound wasn't heard—it was felt.
Pain lanced through Bheema's skull.
Blood streamed from his ears as he staggered, vision blurring.
But the monster wasn't focused on him anymore.
Every one of its eyes was locked on the figure standing beyond the dome.
And Necadron understood.
Something worse than itself stood there.
Michael moved before thought.
The Terra Aegis—an earth-forged fortress—ripped apart like wet paper. A single, casual strike smashed into Necadron's skull.
The scream that followed wasn't rage.
It was fear.
Black fumes poured from its ruptured body, spiraling through the air and funneling into Michael.
And with them came understanding.
Those fumes—
They were his.
They had always been his.
Soldiers hadn't fallen to monsters.
They had fallen to him.
To his hunger.
Necadron collapsed—blacked out, empty.
Power surged through Michael's body.
Heavier than blood.
Sharper than thought.
The chaos drew attention.
Media helicopters hovered in the distance.
Reporters screamed into microphones. Cameras zoomed in—but Michael was too far, too distorted.
Only a silhouette.
Without hesitation, Michael seized Necadron's corpse and swung it.
The impact obliterated a supporting pillar of the hanging headquarters.
The structure collapsed in a thunderous roar of steel, rubble, and screams.
Lives—begging or silent—meant nothing.
Through the dust and smoke, eyes watched.
Hundreds of them.
Michael leapt.
Again.
And again.
Higher and higher—bounding across buildings and skyscrapers.
Weightless.
Each leap revealed the city below.
A vast, beautiful landscape—
Twisted by the people who lived in it.
"Beautiful," he murmured.
"Not as beautiful as my mother."
He paused, then laughed—arrogant, absolute.
"Soon, I will make this world more beautiful. A world filled with happiness."
His smile widened.
"But that 'everyone'… will be the ones left after eradication."
Then dizziness struck.
Gravity reclaimed him.
He fell like a stripped meteor, slamming into the earth and carving a crater into the road.
Darkness followed.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Black Lotus acknowledges your existence.
Welcome, slave of the petals.