Chapter 525: Inevitable X
Naval’s trident jammed harder into the void-floor, anchoring the group against the Maw’s gravitational pull. His voice thundered with the weight of seas.
"Leon—don’t give in to collapse yet. Ride it, damn you. Ride it!"
Roselia pressed her staff to the void, her flame flaring despite the hunger gnawing at it. She shouted hoarsely, desperation twisting her hymn.
"If you break now, you take us all with you! Fight it, Flamebreaker!"
Liliana’s hands shook, threads flickering between her fingers as she bound Leon’s fractures faster and faster. Each strand bled her resonance dry, but she refused to stop. Her whisper cracked into a scream.
"You don’t get to fall here!"
Roman slammed both fists into the ground, his veins bulging, body-force roaring like a war drum. He forced the void itself to hold together beneath their feet.
"You’re the damn center of this fight—hold, Leon!"
Milim pressed harder into his back, her flames feeding into him in roaring currents. Her teeth clenched, eyes blazing with feral resolve.
"Take it—all of it! If you’ll burn out, then do it on my fire, not alone!"
The Fifth Pulse screamed. The fractures across Leon’s chest pulsed outward, every line of ruin now glowing like molten rivers. His rings spun faster, tearing the air with jagged harmonics.
And then—he looked up.
His bloody grin widened, defiant even as light leaked from the corners of his eyes. His voice came broken, layered with countless echoes.
"If the Maw is endless hunger..."
He raised his hand, cracks splitting his arm to the bone. The Fifth Pulse howled, fracturing reality around his fingertips.
"...then I’ll feed you my refusal until you choke!"
The resonance detonated.
Fracture Requiem tore outward in a storm of splintering threads, not in a single strike but in waves, each one amplified by the rhythm of his allies’ wills. The cracks in Leon’s body became conduits, every fracture a channel for raw defiance.
The storm slammed into the Maw’s crown. Black fire screamed as it was split into shards of impossible color, each petal of fracture scattering across the void. The chorus of devoured thrones stuttered, their voices glitching into silence before roaring back louder.
The Maw’s voice boomed, vibrating through marrow and thought.
"You break louder, brighter—but every fracture is still mine to consume!"
The crown expanded again, the hunger surging to swallow the resonance storm.
Leon roared, veins bursting with light, his body one breath from collapse. But his allies anchored him—tide, flame, thread, stone, and sun—feeding his rhythm, refusing to let him fall.
And with them, the Fifth Pulse rose beyond fracture.
A rhythm not of breaking alone, but of all their defiance, stitched together into one impossible chord.
The void shook. The Maw shuddered.
And Leon screamed:
"Fifth Pulse—Oblivion Fractured!"
The clash reignited, not as strike against strike, but as the collision of hunger against the refusal of an entire world.
The instant the words left Leon’s mouth, the void convulsed.
Oblivion Fractured wasn’t a pulse—it was a verdict.
The resonance didn’t simply split reality. It rewrote collapse itself.
Cracks spidered through the Maw’s crown, each fracture carrying not Leon’s rhythm alone but the tide’s roar, the flame’s hymn, the thread’s lattice, the stone’s drum, the star’s blaze. Every ally’s will bled into the Fifth Pulse until it was no longer his alone.
The Maw staggered. The crown of hunger buckled inward, voices of countless devoured thrones crying out in jagged, discordant screams. What was once inevitability trembled like a broken scale, unable to decide whether to consume or be consumed.
Glothar’s massive frame lurched, his helm snapping down to glare at Leon through searing crimson slits. His voice was no longer chorus but a bellow of defiance, as if the Sovereign himself resisted being torn apart by his own greater maw.
"NO! Hunger does not yield—"
The fracture storm cut him off, slicing through his words like blades. His black-fire gauntlets cracked, flame bleeding out in chaotic ribbons.
Leon’s knees buckled, his body tearing further, light flooding from every vein. But his grin held, wide and bloody. His voice was little more than a rasp, yet it thundered in resonance.
"Then choke on us all."
Naval roared, twisting his trident to drive the storm higher.
Roselia’s hymn broke into a scream as her flame ignited into pure resonance, feeding the fracture with fire that could not be swallowed.
Liliana wept as her threads snapped and rewove, every stitch binding the storm tighter, sharper, more absolute.
Roman bellowed, his fists slamming in time with the Pulse, drumming the void into rhythm.
Milim shrieked her fury into the void, her sunfire wings exploding into the fractures, flooding them with star-blood.
The storm became blinding. The void peeled back in shards, every edge humming with refusal.
And the Maw cracked.
The crown shattered, shards of black fire dispersing into silence. The voices of swallowed thrones cut out in a single, ragged gasp.
Glothar staggered to one knee, the Sovereign’s helm split down the center. His body burned with leaking black fire, every plate of his armor shaking like it might disintegrate.
Yet his head tilted, that crimson glare never dimming. His voice rasped, broken but unyielding:
"...you fracture... beautifully."
Leon collapsed to one knee too, his body a ruin of light and blood, held together by threads and will alone. His rings spun erratically, half-shattered, his breath nothing but a gurgling rasp.
But his eyes—burning through the haze—never left Glothar.
The void went silent. Both forces bled ruin, both refusing to fall first.
The silence cracked.
Glothar’s gauntlet clenched, black fire pooling into his palm like molten shadow. The shattered crown did not fade—it bled, streams of hunger curling upward, refusing to die.
He rose. Slowly, inexorably. His frame burned with fissures, yet the Maw’s remnants poured into him, fusing Sovereign and abyss into one. His helm tilted back, crimson slits blazing brighter than ever.
"You thought to unmake hunger," the chorus of devoured thrones returned, jagged and broken but still vast. "But hunger does not vanish—it evolves."
The void warped. Where once the Maw loomed as a crown above, now it bent inward, fusing into Glothar’s chest. His armor shattered outward in shards, revealing a body no longer forged of steel alone but of writhing flame and devouring void.
He had become the Maw incarnate.