The heavy iron door clicked shut with a hollow boom, leaving Shigenori completely alone in the darkness.
But he wasn't alone inside himself.
Something stirred. Something ancient, furious, and wrong.
Shigenori's breathing quickened to a ragged stutter. His body writhed against the restraints—once faint tremors now full-blown convulsions. His veins glowed, no longer shifting between colors, but settling into a sinister dance of deep red and sickly green, pulsing through every inch of his flesh like molten cracks in broken earth.
A vision slammed into his mind—a clear, sharp image.
Lucifer.
Standing above him, wings unfurled, those crimson eyes filled with cruel amusement.
And somewhere inside himself, Shigenori snapped.
"I'll kill you—" he choked out through gritted teeth, "I'LL RIP YOU APART!!"
The celestial table under him—the Throne of Tempering—shuddered.
Golden runes blazed brighter, trying to suppress him, but the boy's mutation was accelerating beyond divine predictions. The Neatherblight infection surged like a river breaking through a dam. Black and emerald flames licked along his arms, crawling up his spine, bursting across his chest in jagged, living patterns.
His fingernails splintered off—replaced by razor-sharp black talons.
His teeth elongated into wicked fangs, poking out from lips now split and trembling with rage.
The restraints began to crack—not break, but struggle, groaning as each bolt and rune fought desperately to hold the thing that Shigenori was becoming.
His once human face twisted between forms—moments of clarity where his eyes flickered purple ,then crimson red and acidic green, swallowed by the war raging inside his own blood.
The golden runes seared his flesh, smoke rising where the holy magic touched him, but even the pain wasn't enough to stop the metamorphosis.
Still pinned down, Shigenori roared—an inhuman sound that echoed deep into the mountain's bones. The shadows on the wall warped, as if recoiling from the monstrous energy bleeding into the air.
His mind fractured between two halves.
The human, crying for his sister, clinging to the boy he once was.
The Neatherblight, whispering to destroy, to consume, to end everything.
Sweat poured from his skin, now half-twisted into something demonic, as he thrashed again. The chamber itself began to hum with unstable magic, lights flickering wildly above.
The table bent under the strain, ancient metal groaning, golden inscriptions fighting for dear life.
And still, Shigenori's voice rose in a guttural chant.
"I won't die… I won't die… I WON'T DIE!"
Something in the walls themselves—an ancient warning system—began to glow. Red sigils pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
The heavens had locked away many threats over the centuries…
But never had they faced a Neatherblight that fought back.
The air in the chamber grew thick, heavy like a brewing storm. Every breath Shigenori took now carried sparks of raw, corrupted energy, his body convulsing against the divine restraints still pulsing desperately beneath him.
The Throne of Tempering—crafted by the heavens to bind even the greatest abominations—began to falter.
One arm, twisted with glowing black veins and bulging, rage-fed muscle, flexed upward.
The thick restraint buckled, groaned—and with a deafening CRACK—the corner of the celestial table split.
Pieces of sacred stone and shimmering metal sheared off, flinging sparks into the air. The holy inscriptions etched into the table strained to rebuild themselves—magnetic-like fields of golden light snapping back toward the damaged edge, trying to force the structure to heal.
But it wasn't enough.
Shigenori roared, veins bulging down his neck, and kicked his right leg forward with unnatural strength. The band securing his ankle snapped, sending another fracture across the table's surface like a spiderweb shattering glass.
The moment his foot was free, the celestial defense mechanisms surged again—streams of burning golden chains firing from the broken runes, trying to latch onto him.
But now…
He understood the rhythm.
He felt the pulse.
He twisted violently, extending his right arm fully outward—and the final threads of light holding him down snapped like frayed wire.
His left side, already weakened from the earlier breaks, crumbled with far less effort. Shigenori tore free his left arm and leg in quick succession, and for the first time since the infection, he stood…
Unrestrained.
The entire Throne of Tempering shook violently before it collapsed inwards with a final wail of dying divine magic, shattering like a broken star into the surrounding floor.
Shigenori staggered forward, his body hunched from pain and transformation. Each step he took left behind footprints of scorched stone, and the Neatherblight mist curled up from his body, painting the air green and violet.
Then the walls of the chamber ignited.
A celestial defense trigger activated: a failsafe from ancient times, designed for one outcome—
Containment at all costs.
Blinding yellow light flooded the room, surging down from the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. Massive runic circles spun into existence, locking onto the center where Shigenori stood. Energy crackled into a cage of pure divine fury.
For a moment, he stood in the epicenter, shoulders rising and falling heavily, his head hung low, the aura of raw destruction clinging to him like a second skin.
The blinding light forced him to close his mutated eyes.
But as he lifted his head slightly…
As the energy surged and tightened around him, screaming like the chorus of a thousand angels trying to suppress a nightmare…
Shigenori smiled.
A smile that wasn't fully human anymore.
A slow, terrifying grin peeled across his face as the light pressed harder into him, like it was testing if it could break him now that he was free.
He didn't scream.
He didn't fight the light.
He absorbed it.
The runes flickered.
The light stuttered.
A low, vibrating hum filled the chamber—no longer one of containment… but something else awakening.
The celestial defenses dimmed for the briefest moment.
Not gone.
Not broken.
Just… hesitating.
As if the very magic of the heavens was afraid.
In that pause—so small it could have been a heartbeat—Shigenori's glowing eyes snapped wide open.
He moved and the entire mountain shook.
And somewhere deep within the heavens, alarms began to scream—alarms that hadn't sounded since the first Fall.