The Null Eclipse screamed.
Not in sound—because sound had long since ceased to exist here—but in concept.
The realm convulsed as five hundred thousand enslaved Primals surged toward Ashura, their ethereal forms colliding, overlapping, distorting the very scaffolding of reality. Each of them was a genesis engine, a being capable of birthing universes, now reduced to weapons robbed of will.
Ashura stood alone at the center.
Coat fluttering.
Kuroha resting loosely in his hand.
Eyes calm. Almost bored.
They came like a tidal wave.
Ashura moved.
No flourish. No hesitation.
He vanished.
Not teleportation—authority.
Black Light flared, and the space he had occupied imploded inward. Ashura reappeared inside the front line, already mid-swing.
Kuroha traced a horizontal arc.
The dimension split.
Not cracked—split, like silk under a blade.
A crescent of black light expanded outward, erasing ten thousand Primals in a single motion. Their forms unraveled into raw potential, collapsing into nothing before they could even scream.
Ashura stepped forward.
Another slash—vertical.
The realm buckled as a canyon of absence carved downward, swallowing another swath of Primals whole. The wound in space refused to close, bleeding void and fractured timelines.
They tried to overwhelm him.
They failed.
Ashura discarded finesse.
He charged.
His fist drove through a Primal's chest, compressing its core into a singularity before detonating it outward. He grabbed another by the face and smashed it into existence itself, leaving an impact crater that rippled across multiple layers of the Null Eclipse.
Kuroha disappeared and reappeared at will—sometimes in his hand, sometimes already embedded in a skull three kilometers away.
Ashura fought like a calamity given form.
Every punch erased identity.
Every kick shattered causality.
Every sword stroke rewrote boundaries.
The enslaved Primals fell by the tens of thousands.
Eclipse watched.
At first, with fury.
Then disbelief.
Then something closer to dread.
"No—keep moving!" Eclipse roared, his voice cracking with strain. "Overwhelm him! You were made to create—DESTROY HIM!"
Ashura turned his head slightly.
Just enough to look at Eclipse.
And smiled.
In the next instant, Ashura jumped.
The distance between him and Eclipse ceased to exist.
He appeared before the Monarch of Null and drove his knee into Eclipse's abdomen.
The impact folded Eclipse's armor inward and sent him through layers of reality, crashing into the core stratum of the Null Eclipse. Ashura followed, already there when Eclipse tried to rise.
Gut check.
Another.
And another.
Each strike landed with casual precision, each blow detonating shockwaves that tore chunks out of the realm itself.
"This is your final form?" Ashura asked calmly, gripping Eclipse by the throat and lifting him. "Disappointing."
Eclipse snarled and unleashed everything.
Null energy erupted from his body in a catastrophic surge—Oblivion Dominion, his ultimate authority. Entire dimensions collapsed inward, attempting to crush Ashura between them.
Ashura didn't block.
He walked.
The collapsing realities shattered against his aura like glass against steel.
He swung Kuroha.
The blade didn't just cut Eclipse—it cut around him.
Dimensions broke.
The Null Eclipse fractured into jagged layers as Eclipse's armor split again, blood—black and star-flecked—spraying across nothingness.
Ashura grabbed Eclipse's head and slammed it downward, pinning him against a broken plane of reality.
"You ruled through theft," Ashura said quietly. "Through chains."
He raised Kuroha.
"You die forgotten."
One clean motion.
Eclipse's head left his shoulders.
The Monarch of Null froze—then disintegrated, his essence unraveling into harmless residue as his stolen authority collapsed in on itself.
Silence.
The remaining enslaved Primals stopped.
Their bindings shattered.
Ten remained.
They fell to their knees—not in submission, but exhaustion—and bowed their heads.
"You have freed us," one said, voice trembling. "We thank you, Eternal One."
Ashura looked at them.
And frowned.
"You are weak," he said bluntly. "You can birth multiverses, yet you let yourselves be enslaved. Your role was to observe, not interfere—and you failed."
The Primals trembled.
"I should erase you," Ashura continued. "But Draguel asked me to spare you. So thank him."
He turned away.
"Leave my domains. Do not return."
They vanished instantly, not daring to hesitate.
Ashura stood alone as the Null Eclipse began to collapse without its ruler.
He stepped forward—and the scene shifted.
Ashura emerged into the Throne Hall of Black Light.
The merged dominions resonated around him—Umbral Veil, Abyssal Forge, Garden of Silent Stars, Ecliptic Archive, Balance, Memory, Dream, Echo, Time, Ruin, Dawn, and Luminous Hollow—all connected, all responding.
He sat.
The throne accepted him.
Silence settled.
Then—
A gaze.
From beyond.
From a place that did not belong to this cosmology.
A Tier Zero entity observed his domain.
Ashura felt it instantly.
He didn't look up.
He simply smiled.
"…It will be your time soon."
The Black Light pulsed.
And the universe held its breath.