The darkness at Nyx's back stirred like a living thing.
It didn't just loom.
It moved.
The night behind the Primordial Goddess thickened, the way ink does when too much is poured into water. It slid over itself in slow, greedy folds, then surged forward in a soundless wave that rushed for Irina and Xenovia like a swallowing mouth.
It wasn't just a binding.
It was an overwrite.
That night reached for the two girls the way a system reaches for a file—trying to re-label them. Not "warriors," not "girls," not "Heaven's swords."
Just "hostages."
For a fraction of a heartbeat, both of them felt their own definitions tilt.
Then their Veils snapped.
Light didn't explode outward.
It didn't flare, didn't scorch, didn't blaze.
It cut.
The Calamity-Shearing Veil Ren had anchored to their Soul Palaces and Sacred Gears woke like a predator jerked out of sleep. Thin, invisible threads of Dao-essence they'd never fully understood slid between Nyx's night and the "rules" it was trying to write into them, slotting into place with absolute precision.
Chains that hadn't even finished forming shattered.
Hostage-marks unraveled before the strokes of the letters could finish etching themselves into their souls.
Nyx felt it.
Her eyes narrowed. For the first time since she had descended, her expression actually changed.
"…What?" she murmured.
The pressure of her night still pressed down. The sky over Kuoh was still swallowed, the world under an ink-dark dome.
But the clean conversion—the part where she turned someone's own power against them, pulled them neatly into her domain, tagged and filed away?
Blocked.
...
On the other side of town, in the warped street around the shrine, the same thing happened.
Angra Mainyu's curse, already wrapped around four girls like invisible barbed wire, tried to snap shut.
It slithered over Asia's prayers, trying to twist them into chains. It reached for Le Fay's magic, trying to rewrite her equations into sacrificial scripts. It whispered to Taotie and Qiongqi—Shigune's and Natsume's fiends—with promises of slaughter, of cities screaming and worlds burning, trying to lure their instincts into becoming his conduits.
The Veils refused.
Law-fragments Ren had woven into their Soul Palaces shone—still invisible to normal senses, but now active, deadly. The incoming curse-rules hit that lattice and came apart, stripped of labels and meaning. A whisper of "your faith will bind you" slid into the system.
Calamity-Shearing answered, cold and clinical:
Not in my framework.
Angra's presence coiled tight.
"…Interesting," he said.
For an Evil God whose entire existence was corruption, being denied purchase wasn't just an obstacle.
It was an insult.
Both gods moved at once.
Nyx's shadows thickened from night to tar. Gravity skewed, angles twisted, as she tried to crush the girls bodily instead of neatly rewriting them.
Angra poured raw malice into the warped shrine. Curse-light boiled, skittering over every surface, trying to drown the Veils in sheer volume—not a clever curse, just so much of it that resistance would snap.
Neither of them said Ren's name aloud.
But between one breath and the next, the thought formed, the same in both minds:
If we don't take them now, he'll come.
Power rose.
Goddess-class, god-class—weight that had made pantheons tremble in other battles. Far beyond what Xenovia, Irina, Asia, Le Fay, Natsume, or Shigune could match alone.
It never got the chance to land.
...
A glowing hand slammed down on Angra Mainyu.
The shrine wasn't really a shrine anymore. Under Angra's influence it had rotted into a tumor—walls weeping curse-sigils, floorboards soft with spectral rot, air full of suffering faces pressing in from every angle.
All of it compressed in an instant.
A palm of golden-white light, traced with faint, alien Dao-essence, descended from nowhere and pinned the entire construct to the street like a bug.
The curse screamed in a dozen languages at once.
Stone cracked in a perfect circle beneath the impact. The air shook. The stench of malice, thick enough to choke, buckled and folded in on itself, forced down by a weight that wasn't physical but conceptual—like someone's idea of "no" being given form.
Asia's vision cleared.
The pressure vanished so abruptly she nearly pitched forward. Her lungs dragged in air on a sob; only then did she realize she'd stopped breathing.
Le Fay gasped as the nonsensical formulae in her mind burned out. Her own circuits snapped back into place like a broken bone finally reset—painful but right.
Shigune's muscles unlocked. The devouring urge that Taotie had been drowning in Angra's scent flared, snarled—and then hit the patterns Ren had built around it, redirected and leashed. Inside her Soul Palace, Myriad Origin loops caught that hunger and turned it away from the world, into the curse pressing down on them instead.
Natsume's wind, freed from suppressive pressure, howled once—lashing around her like a living cloak—then settled, bristling and ready.
Between them and the flattened, twitching mass of curse-flesh stood a man.
Black coat. Loose, relaxed posture. One hand in his pocket, the other braced lazily on the metaphysical thing that was Angra's foothold in this world.
Ren Ming glanced over his shoulder at the four girls and smiled like they'd just bumped into each other between grocery aisles.
"Hey," he said, voice warm, easy. "You four holding up?"
Asia burst into tears.
She hadn't meant to. One moment the world had been collapsing and something ancient was trying to twist her prayers into hate, and the next—
He was there.
Standing with a hand on the monster's head like it was nothing more than a dog that had misbehaved.
"R-Ren—!" she hiccuped.
Le Fay's legs gave out. She ended up half-sitting on the curb, grimoire still clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Every magic circle she knew fluttered through her mind and died, useless in the face of what she'd just seen.
Natsume exhaled hard. Her whole body trembled with the aftershock of adrenaline, Qiongqi's battle joy snarling in the back of her consciousness, begging to rip and tear.
Shigune stared. Hands still braced on Asia's shoulders, tears bright in her own eyes, she shook with the effort of holding Taotie's devouring instinct back as the Evil God's presence writhed and screamed under Ren's palm.
"Sorry," Ren said gently. "Scared you, didn't I? I'll explain in a bit."
He pressed down.
The glowing hand sank deeper into the curse construct—not physically, but along the lines that said this is how Angra connects to this place. Angra's presence bucked, trying to slip sideways into other layers, to vanish into one of a dozen backup paths wired into his avatar.
Ren didn't let him.
"You've been busy," he remarked, conversational, to the writhing mass under his palm. "Digging little hooks into my town. Touching my girls."
The warmth dropped out of his tone on the last words.
A thin, terrible stillness settled over the warped street.
For a heartbeat, even Angra's curse-shadow stopped moving.
"I don't like that," Ren said.
The words were soft.
The promise inside them was not.
He turned back to the four girls. His smile came back, crooked and bright, like flipping a sign from closed to open.
"I'm going to be tied up for a minute," he told them. "Stay put. Breathe. Let the Veils do their job."
"Ren—" Natsume started, voice rough.
"W-wait—" Asia reached out, tears still streaking her cheeks.
Ren stepped close enough to tap Asia lightly on the forehead.
"I'll be back before you finish worrying," he said.
It wasn't a grand oath or a dramatic vow, just a simple promise spoken like an everyday line.
Space folded.
The street around them twisted with a soft, sharp click, like a lens refocusing. One step, one flick of his will through their Veil-marks, and the four of them vanished—reappearing inside the manor's reinforced lobby, wards flaring in alarm at their sudden arrival.
Ren wasn't with them.
...
For Irina and Xenovia, it happened at the exact same time.
Nyx's night surged inward.
The shadows moved to close like a coffin, corners locking, lids sliding shut. The sky above Kuoh became a solid slab of wordless black.
Irina's wings snapped open on reflex, holy light flaring as she pushed back. It was like trying to hold up a collapsing building with bare hands.
Xenovia's grip tightened around Durandal. The holy sword thrummed in her palms, blade straining against a pressure that wasn't quite darkness, wasn't quite gravity—something older, something that wanted to write the end into their souls.
"Oh?" Nyx said lightly. "You can still move. Impressive, for—"
A hand appeared out of nowhere and slapped her in the face.
There was no charge-up.
No magic circle. No chant.
One moment, Nyx was perfectly composed—a primordial goddess draped in living night, cold, beautiful, untouched.
The next, a palm the size of a normal man's hand but backed by something far, far heavier crashed against her cheek and drove her head sideways.
There was no dramatic knockback. Ren's strike didn't send her flying. It didn't need to.
It simply imposed a rule.
You go down now.
Nyx's domain winced.
The darkness blanketing the city shuddered. The immediate pressure around Irina and Xenovia broke like a soap bubble. Streetlights flickered back on in the distance—dim, confused islands of human color pushing through divine night.
Irina stared, wide-eyed.
"…Ren?!" she squeaked.
Ren stood between them and Nyx, coat hem still settling from whatever step had put him there. His arm was outstretched, fingers lightly pressed to Nyx's cheek as if he were just… holding her in place.
He glanced back at the Church duo and smiled, easy and familiar.
"You two okay?" he asked.
Irina's throat worked.
"I—yes," she stammered. "I think so. I can move again…"
Xenovia's breathing was a little fast, but her eyes were clear and sharp.
"That night…" she said slowly. "It wasn't just pressure. It tried to carve something into my soul. Your art blocked it."
"Good," Ren said. "That's what it's built for."
His fingers flexed minutely against Nyx's face.
She moved.
Not away from him; she couldn't.
But her gaze rolled toward him, pupils like twin pits in an endless sea of black.
"You," she said softly. "You should not be able to touch my night so casually."
Ren's smile thinned.
"You shouldn't have touched my students so casually," he replied. "Yet here we are."
Nyx's lips curled. Even pinned, she radiated disdain, the casual superiority of something born at the dawn of a pantheon.
"Your arrogance," she murmured, "will be your death."
"People keep saying that," Ren said mildly. "I'm starting to feel targeted."
He turned his head just enough to properly meet Irina's and Xenovia's eyes again.
"Things are about to get messy," he said. "Don't panic. Let the Veils and the Canon hold. If something feels wrong in your power, do not brute-force it—just breathe and follow the circulation I drilled into you."
Xenovia gave a short, tight nod. "Understood."
Irina swallowed, then copied her.
"…Right. I'll do it."
"There you go," Ren said, voice softening. "That's my girls."
The words slipped out with the same gentle ease he'd used in Kuoh's quiet training sessions, and for a heartbeat, Irina's cheeks flushed hotter than any holy light.
Ren's expression cooled again as his focus snapped back to Nyx.
"Now," he said, "wait for me at the manor."
"You're going to—" Irina began.
"End this," he said.
Light twisted.
Space folded.
The Veil-marks on their souls flared, moving not just power but coordinates. A beat later they were standing in the manor's lobby—right beside Asia, Le Fay, Natsume, and Shigune.
They all spoke at once.
"You—"
"Ren—"
"Where is—"
Every voice choked off at the same realization.
He wasn't there.
....
Ren Ming's eyes went distant.
Soul-deep.
The Immortal Soul Bone shivered.
For a moment, if someone had been able to see inside him, there was something like a spine behind his back, luminous bone etched with patterns no angel, devil, or god of this world could read.
It unfolded, not outward, but inward and outward at once.
Between his fingers on Nyx's cheek, reality warped.
"You two," he said, conversational again, as if they were standing in a hallway instead of above a city caught in a ruptured divine domain, "are just avatars."
His other hand shifted slightly.
Across town, on the warped street by the shrine, the glowing palm pinning Angra Mainyu's foothold pressed down harder.
"And I'm tired of playing remote-control."
Both Angra and Nyx felt it.
A presence—not a god, not a dragon, not any classification they had—slid through their domains. It traveled along the curse-threads and night-paths they'd painstakingly woven, using the same routes they had used to sneak into this world.
In one layer it looked like a hand.
In another, it was a spear of naked comprehension.
The Immortal Soul Bone bit down on their structures, not just suppressing them but reading them. Every pattern in their avatars—every sigil, every loop of divinity, every coordinate etched back toward their true bodies—lit up under Ren's gaze.
He didn't brute-force anything.
He understood it.
"…Oh," Angra breathed, sounding unsettled for the first time.
Nyx's fingers clenched into the fabric of her night-gown, shadows lashing wildly for a heartbeat before she yanked them still by sheer will.
"Stop," she said sharply—not to Ren, but to herself, to the panic clawing at the edge of her composure.
Ren's eyes sharpened.
"Found you," he said.
There was no magic circle.
No flash.
One instant, his hands were on avatars in Kuoh.
The next, Ren Ming was gone.
...
The deepest layer of the Realm of the Dead did not resemble the rest.
Above, higher strata still sort souls, maintain rivers, preserve a kind of grim order.
Down here, that pretense had been burned away.
The "sky" was a ceiling of cracked stone and slow, weeping flames. Chains thicker than mountains hung from unseen heights and vanished into unseen depths, looping through the darkness, binding things that didn't have names anymore.
Reality felt thin, like parchment that had been scraped and re-written too many times.
On a central platform of dead-black rock, Angra Mainyu waited.
This time there was no avatar.
He was here.
His form did not have a fixed outline. Shadow and horn and smoke and teeth slid over one another constantly. Eyes opened and closed wherever they were needed, each one different—some pupil-less, some bleeding inverted color, some full of prayers turned inside-out.
Every movement left behind streaks of color that smelled like ruined faith and burned offerings.
Around him, the air crawled with shapes.
Evil Dragons.
Not the original monsters that haunted legends and dragon myths; those had their own bodies, their own problems. But these constructs were woven from Angra's malice and stolen dragon concepts, patched together from scraps of beings like Aži Dahāka and the Heavenly Dragons. They prowled around the platform, snarling, tails lashing.
They were weaker than the true ones.
They didn't have to be strong.
They were numerous.
High above, thrones were cut into the abyss walls.
On one sat Nyx, now in full—not the slim projection from Kuoh, but the full weight of a Primordial Goddess of Night. Her gown was darker than the void around her, the edges constantly bleeding shadow back into the darkness that birthed her. Her presence made every flame in this layer burn lower, as if ashamed to show light in front of her.
Beside her, Tartarus sat like a hole in existence. He was less a figure and more a humanoid outline carved out of abyss. Where his gaze passed, stone sank, pulled toward a depth that had no bottom—a Primordial Abyss given the pretense of a shape.
Both turned their heads at the same time.
A ripple moved through the abyss.
Space cracked.
Ren stepped out of a fracture in the air the way a man steps off a bus.
His coat fluttered once in the heavy, stale wind. The oppressive gravity of this place pressed down on him, met something in his body, and slipped off like water off oiled stone—Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique turning the weight of hell into something irrelevant.
He took in the scene with a glance.
Angra Mainyu and his prowling dragons.
Nyx on her throne of shadow.
Tartarus, the abyss seated in his own depths.
The chains above and below.
Then he snorted.
"So," he said. "This is the famous Alliance of Hell's basement, huh."
Angra's mouths stretched into something like a smile.
"You walked into my nest," he said, voices layered and echoing. "No army. No dragons. No gods behind you. Just yourself."
Nyx's lips curved, though her eyes stayed narrow.
"Arrogant," she said. "You stand in our environment and speak as if this place belongs to you."
Tartarus laughed, the sound reverberating in the bones of the realm.
"This layer eats intruders," he rumbled. "You are impressive, little outsider, but you are not beyond the abyss."
Ren's gaze slid past them.
He looked up, toward the darkness above the chains.
"Hades," he said casually. "If you're listening…"
He smiled—slow, bright, and utterly without warmth.
"You're a bitch for not coming down to greet me yourself."
A low, furious rumble went through the entire layer.
The walls shook. The flames crawled higher, turning a sickly green at the tips. Far above, something vast and resentful shifted, just once, before going still again.
Hades did not descend.
Ren shrugged.
"Doesn't matter," he said. "I wasn't here to negotiate anyway."
His attention returned to the three in front of him.
"Time's up," he said simply. "I warned you. You still reached for my people. So now…"
His smile vanished.
"…we're doing this my way."
Angra's aura spiked, thick and foul.
"You think," the Evil God hissed, "that ancient titles and an unfamiliar system make you untouchable? You bleed. Your women bleed. I only need you to make one mistake—"
Nyx's night swelled, closing in like layered seals forming at the edges of the realm, trying to stabilize everything in her favor. Tartarus' abyss deepened, stones groaning as they began to sink toward him, pulled toward a point of no return.
Ren's aura unfolded.
Not explosively.
Just… wider.
Nine Fate Palaces turned behind him in the unseen sky, each one a blazing world, orbiting a True Self these gods had no language for. The weight of an Ancient Saint's complete foundation—and more than that, a foundation from a different Dao epoch entirely—settled over the deepest layer of the Realm of the Dead.
His Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique didn't roar. It simply existed, and the realm had to decide whether it would hold its shape or yield.
It yielded.
"Sit," Ren said.
It wasn't a shout.
It wasn't a technique name.
It was just a word, backed by the full weight of his Physique and Soul.
Every Evil Dragon construct in range froze mid-snarl.
Nyx's shadows flinched, their flow stuttering for a fraction of a second.
Tartarus' gravitational sink hiccupped, the pull going out of rhythm.
For the first time since this abyss had been carved out under the Underworld, it belonged, even slightly, to someone other than its rulers.
Angra's eyes widened, all of them at once.
"…What—"
The Immortal Soul Bone flared.
Light ran along Ren's inner spine and spilled outward into the air, coalescing into a halo of shifting sigils around him. For an instant, the entire layer was reflected there—cages and seals, divine brands and curse-knots, the footprints of every god, dragon, and monster that had ever left a mark on this place.
Ren skimmed them like pages.
"Good," he murmured. "You all left more fingerprints than you thought."
He lifted his hand.
All across the worlds, something answered.
...
The sky split.
Not just over the Realm of the Dead.
Everywhere.
Above the devils' Underworld cities, above the shining gates of Heaven, above Grigori's floating headquarters. Over Kyoto's shrines, over Vatican spires, over deserts and mountains and hidden divine territories. Wherever the supernatural world had built a roof over itself, a rectangular tear opened.
Not physically.
Not magically.
A projection—pure, sharp, uninvited.
In domed meeting halls and war rooms, on television monitors and crystal orbs, in scrying pools and Ajuka's light-screens, in Yasaka's fox-fire mirrors and Odin's polished stones, the same image appeared.
A cavern of cracked stone and dead flame.
Evil Dragon constructs circling like hungry sharks.
Angra Mainyu, Zoroastrian Evil God, full manifestation, aura black enough to stain the air.
Nyx, Primordial Night, on her throne.
Tartarus, the Abyss given shape.
And one lone man standing in front of them, coat fluttering, hands loose at his sides, nine translucent palaces turning behind him like distant suns.
In Kuoh, the manor living room went absolutely silent.
Rias, Akeno, Asia, Koneko, Le Fay, Irinia, Xenovia, Issei. Sona and Tsubaki. Serafall, Rossweisse, Ravel. Azazel's projection. Tiamat's human form curled lazily through a spatial window. Natsume, Shigune.
"…Ren," Asia whispered, hand flying to her mouth.
On other continents, other gods straightened.
In Takamagahara, Amaterasu's fingers paused on a fan, light sharpening in her eyes as dragon and god auras spiked far below. In Heaven, Michael broke briefly from prayer, gaze turning toward the small blue planet that never slept.
High above another sky, Hades' expression twisted into a snarl as he realized the deepest layer's feed was no longer under his control.
In the projection, Ren raised one hand in a lazy little wave.
"Miss me?" he asked.
His voice rolled out not just through speakers and displays, but through the foundations of the world's systems. Devils heard it as a quiver in their demonic power, angels as a tremor in their light, youkai in the hum of senjutsu, dragons in the beat of their hearts.
"Today's special," he said, smile widening. "These guys tried to put their hands on women I like. So—"
The smile thinned, edges going sharp.
"—I'm going to show you what happens when someone ignores my warnings."
Angra laughed harshly.
The sound still trembled around the edges.
"You broadcast your own execution," he sneered. "How considerate. Watch closely, everyone. This is what happens when a man starts believing his own legend."
Nyx's mouth curved, darkness thickening around her throne. Tartarus' abyss deepened, chains creaking as their tension shifted.
Ren nodded, completely unbothered.
"Sure," he said. "Let's give them a good show."
He dropped his hand.
"Come on, then."
He didn't charge.
He didn't raise a guard.
He let go.
The pressure of his aura, which had been pinning the realm, eased—not fully, just enough.
Rules loosened.
"That's it," he said quietly. "No excuses later. Don't say I surprised you. Don't say you were sealed. Take your best shot."
Angra struck first.
Curse-sigils erupted from stone and air and the cracks in reality itself. Rivers of suffering memories flooded in, faces of the damned swelling and overlapping until they formed a storm-front of agony around Ren.
The dragon constructs roared and lunged, jaws opening to spew beams that carried concepts—"extinction," "devouring," "eternal night"—as payload.
Nyx's night folded over all of it, making it deeper, harder to cut. Every shadow sharpened into a blade aimed at Ren's soul, every sliver of darkness carrying compressed fragments of ancient terror.
Tartarus added sheer, crushing weight.
The world around Ren tilted toward a singularity—toward a point where everything fell down, and "down" meant into him.
In the projection, the entire pit vanished under an avalanche of divine, draconic, and abyssal power.
The Realm of the Dead shook.
Even beings watching from safe realms felt it—shockwaves shuddering through the architectures of Heaven, Underworld, and beyond. Barriers hummed. Wards flared. In more than one palace, attendants fell to one knee under a sudden, nameless dread.
In the manor, Issei grabbed the edge of the couch hard enough to make the wood creak.
"Sensei…" he whispered.
Rias' nails dug into her own arms. Akeno's lightning crawled over her shoulders in thin, restless arcs. Sona's glasses hid eyes that had gone very small and very sharp.
"Come on," Serafall breathed, hands clenched under her chin, voice uncharacteristically low. "Show off, boyfriend…"
Vali, watching from another location with Tobio and Lavinia, said nothing. His eyes were narrow, Dragon King aura flaring in instinctive response to the violence on the screen.
The storm built.
Curse-rivers crashed.
Night folded.
Abyss pulled.
Dragons screamed.
For a moment, it felt like the entire foundation of their world was being hammered, over and over, trying to see if it would crack.
The storm peaked.