★148
ASTERI POV
"W..when?"
Blood erupted from my mouth in a harsh cough.
I looked down to see an arm, with obsidian scales, jutted clean through my chest.
Its claws, long and jagged, had torn straight through flesh and bone, cradling my pierced heart in a vice of death. A cold numbness spread through me, but the pain was impossibly clear.
"Your pit of abyss is indeed outstanding."
0, spoke from behind.
'When, when did he come back from the End of Time and Space?'
Asteri had once been untouchable. But now? He was the prey. That's just how terrifying the Star Realm is. Even the Supreme Star, hailed as the strongest since the dawn of the Realm had one cosmic horror.
With a snap of his fingers, White vanished, reappearing in Spectre's hand, as if I were never its creator. He let out a soft chuckle through the cracks in his broken mask, his voice touched with distant memory and rough with amusement
"You know... You almost had me."
He turned the dagger slowly in his hand, as if weighing the past against the present.
"I was in shock, I was frozen. I haven't felt like that since the day we confronted Valtonix."
"L-Supreme Valtonix...?"
Yin's voice cracked, horror creeping into every syllable.
"These... these are the ones who killed him?"
Yang muttered, his throat dry.
"If... if they really brought him down, then... these guys are..."
He didn't need to finish the sentence. The weight of it was already suffocating. The air trembled around them, their instincts had been screaming 'run', 'flee', 'scram' thousands of times but now the reason behind that was clear.
Yin and Yang exchanged a look, then whispered, not in awe, but in a voice barely above a whimper:
"The Phantoms..."
Their wings faltered, their hearts sank.
These weren't foes they could fight, these were nightmares made real. If these guys brought down the Dragon Deity known for his unmatched strength, these newborns would never stand a chance, even if the whole of creation was by their side.
However, the Phantoms didn't even react, they didn't need to.
"This belongs to you, right? You've forged a truly dangerous weapon here."
His voice held a rare hint of reverence as he studied the frozen dagger, its surface humming with dormant power.
"It's yours and it's brilliant. But I can't keep it."
He paused, not to taunt, but to acknowledge the weight of what he was about to do.
"I'll return it right..."
And then he drove White into my core. That strike wasn't meant to simply kill me, it was meant to erase me.
My arts, my aura, my skills, everything I had built and poured into that fragile nexus cracked in a single instant. The core itself was always a flaw... but I had prepared for this. If nothing else, I could transfer what remained to another Asteri. If I were fast enough.
But I bled again. I need no blood, but because this vessel, bound by law, had to bleed when wounded.
"...here."
He finished gently, almost with a strange respect, his broken mask unable to fully hide the faint, solemn smile beneath.
Normally, an outburst of energy should have erupted in an instinctive surge of power in response to a fatal blow. But nothing came. No shockwave or flare, just silence because the arm inside me was burning it all away.
From within, the obsidian-scaled limb pulsed with a devouring heat of annihilation. Every stream of magical and star and magical energy, arts, skills and the threads holding the thread of my being was incinerated before it could take form. It wasn't just piercing my core, it was unravelling me from the inside out.
Hinata and the dragons were frozen, unable to move not because of fear, but they just couldn't. Yin recoiled midair, wings folding instinctively as if trying to shield herself from the sight.
"Antares...?"
She breathed, the name choking in her throat. She had a grudge against him but something extremely bad just happened beyond what the eye can see.
Yang's snarl cracked the silence, a flash of white fire building in his throat, only to die out in a flicker of fear.
"Papa?"
His voice trembled, not from cowardice, but from the haunting realisation of how helpless they truly were. They just sat and watched Asteri get killed and now...'He' will die too.
Hinata's heart froze, her eyes widened, gold irises shaking as she locked onto Asteri's silhouette, skewered, bleeding.
Her maternal instincts screamed to move, to burn the world for what had just been done. But her body wouldn't obey. Not with the silver-haired guy and the Phantoms present.
Her breath came sharp.
"No..."
She whispered, voice trembling with fury.
Antares turned his head slightly, watching the scene unfold from the Mind as Asteri's core began to disintegrate. He watched with no anger, sorrow or urgency. Only a glimmer of annoyance flickered in his eyes.
'Tch... premature.'
He muttered, more like a disappointed scholar than a grieving mentor.
To others, Asteri might have been a friend, a comrade, a saviour or even a spouse. To Antares, he was data, a work in progress, a vessel for something greater. And now, that progress was being burned alive.
'I wasn't even finished.'
His gaze never shifted from the burning remnants. Cold and unfeeling. All the emotions he'd experience were completely dwarfed by his current state.
'I'll be needing another vessel.'
And just like that, Asteri's suffering was reduced to a line in a ledger and the experiment was paused.
'This is what I was looking out for. You're getting cold, Antares. Too cold.'
Entares, who's supposed to be the evil and apathetic one, was caring.
'Shut it. Eject from the body before you get affected.'
He replied, cutting off the communication link as he exists the Mind space.
"See that, Mother of Dragons, you'll need more than that to overthrow me from the throne."
The silver-eyed declared.
'So he's the one leading the Void Dragons.'
"Ugh"
'What's this?'
Asteri began to feel the real threat.
'It's White. It's affecting not only this vessel but your main body too.'
Entares replied.
'He remained calm, even with a dagger capable of erasing his very existence pressed against him. He has grown… and that made me glad.'
Asteri might be a puppet but he has a role and if his creator is benefiting from it, that's more than enough for him.
With White in my core, it's directly interacting with Antares, surpassing distance, time, space and location to render one's immortality useless. Because White is an unstable weapon of pure Energy. It can interact with Energy Fragments.
In short, it can kill the Master controlling a puppet by only attacking the puppet. I'm now a victim of my own forged weapon. A weapon that I have to think twice before using on my worst enemy. I don't blame it, White was simply following its script.
'So that's why.'
Just then, a promise I made years ago came to mind. My lips curve slightly as I began to formulate something for the future. My own archetype of destruction.
"I'll leave it here."
Spectre turned, calmly heading for the silver-haired dragon.
"Godly powers, too much potential, yet you still lose."
0 pulled out his arm and, in that instant, with all my remaining strength I let it go.
In a swift motion faster than a blink of an eye a portal cracked open, its edges hissing, and from deep within me a black mist erupted, tearing free and surging toward it in a desperate bid to escape.
It was almost there, halfway to salvation when a blur of silver hair appeared behind it. A hand closed around the writhing mass.
"Last hope?"
He asked, voice cold.
His grip tightened, crushing the symbiote-like mist until it screamed without sound... then it was gone, absorbed into him like it had always belonged there.
Then, all at once, his head snapped back in a violent jolt. His eyes widened, as he turned sharply, drawn by something he felt before he saw.
Beyond the newly-formed portal, chaos churned. A lump of darkness so impossibly black it seemed to drink in the void around it loomed in there.
From within that voidless form, two glowing violet eyes were burning, and beneath them stretched a wide, teethless grin. It was smiling:)
It smiled as if it had been waiting for this moment.
And in the silence, the grin began to stretch slowly and deliberately... just enough to feel wrong.
The Phantoms saw it but they didn't move closer nor did the silver-haired dragon.
Five long seconds passed and its grin grew a shade wider with each heartbeat before the darkness folded in on itself, sealing the portal as if it had never been there.
"...you four... You have no idea what you've stepped into...you will die... surely. Only after you've seen the gap between us... only after you've tasted the real depth of that difference... will you know true despair."
The words left my mouth like a curse, a promise for pain and suffering, before my body gave in and I collapsed to the ground.
"What was that?"
The silver-haired took some seconds to digest before replying.
"Whatever."
He turned, heading back.
"Can't let you!"
Yin roared, surging forward and unleashing a torrent of violet flames.
But with a single, fluid motion, he seized control of the fire, twisting it, hardening it into jagged, amethyst spikes that shot backwards, piercing all the way to the very source of Yin's flames.
A guttural screech tore from Yin's throat as her massive form convulsed, then came crashing down before the group.
"Y... Yin!"
Hinata's voice broke as she screamed her name.
"Poor Drag..."
Jagarette was about to mock them when her head burst apart in a spray of gore, her body hanging lifelessly in the emptiness of space.
"There."
Spectre snapped, his eyes locking upward before most would've even felt the shift in the air.
From high above, three arcs dropped in a blur so fast they seemed to tear through the space between moments, their edges vibrating with a dangerous hum.
They moved with alien precision, cutting a perfect path as though they already knew where their targets would be.
Spectre moved in the same instant, his arm snapped in a sharp twist, swatting one arc out of the scene only for it to whip back in from his blind side a heartbeat later, just as Rose Fang came in from the front. Both struck at once.
The first arc slammed into his flank with a bone-jarring crack, the blow shunting his body sideways while Rose Fang drove through his chest with brutal precision, its point punching past muscle and bone until it punched into the cavity of his heart and all the way back.
The shockwave of the hit rippled through his whole body before the sheer force launched him clean off the Island.
The third arc streaked toward the silver-haired dragon head. He turned lazily, eyes locking on the incoming strike. He saw the danger but didn't move. Death didn't scare him, nor did whoever dared send it.
Inches away from his skull, a firm grip caught the arc mid-flight. It dissolved instantly in that hand. It was 0.
The dragons, Hinata and 0 looked up, their eyes locked onto the new character in the Cardinal World.
"Well well well, look who we have here."
The silver-haired dragon spoke, his eyes taking in the presence of the blonde hair and azure-eyed Star.
[[IMAGE]]
[[IMAGE]]
"Hello, Dragon Vessel."
Zhou addressed in a calm voice yet his presence indicates otherwise.
"Yo, Prodigy."
Dragon Vessel replied, raising the 'peace' hand sign. It vibrated and Spectre reappeared, his destroyed arm and impaled chest glitching before returning to how it was.
"Zhou of Serpens."
His voice seethed with malice.
0 stepped up, standing next to 1. The Phantoms were ready to take him on, right here and right now. This was their speciality, taking care of Hypergod Teir Stars and above.
"Easy guys. Our job here is done."
Dragon Vessel said.
"What about Antares?"
Spectre inquired. Their goal was to kill him and retrieve his corpse.
"Oh, I also forgot."
As he turned, an amethyst barrier was summoned, sealing his corpse. Both Zhou and Dragon Vessel were taken aback by this sudden action.
"That's impossible."
He said, finally, turning to leave.
"See ya later, Prodigy."
Mid‑stride, a portal flared and swallowed him whole. Jagarette, recently resurrected, was pulled from the battlefield as well.
"Heh, someone gets to live another day."
Spectre spat, then glitched out. The departure of 0 went unrecorded—but he was gone.
"Yang, check on Yin."
Hinata commanded and flew straight to Asteri's corpse.
Sensing the vile yet familiar force, Zhou slowly turned toward Asteri's corpse. He didn't rush or tense up. He just stood there, staring with a vacant expression.
Grief was an emotion he had no use for; to him, death was neither tragedy nor mercy. Mourning was a concept meant for those still bound by feeling.
His gaze drifted downward. Beyond the shimmering barrier, Hinata was a ruin of herself, pounding against it with everything she had.
Her fists were raw and bleeding, each strike more frantic than the last. Tears streamed endlessly down her face, blurring her vision, but she didn't stop.
Zhou's presence was like frost in the air, while on the other side, Hinata broke apart piece by piece, her despair spilling out in every desperate blow.
One lost her husband, the other, a disciple.
To be continued:(