The world broke.
Not with a scream.
Not with an explosion.
With silence.
Across every city, every village, every hidden corner of humanity,
the broadcasts played.
The same images.
The same death march.
The same name whispered like a curse and a prayer:
Asura.
World leaders sat frozen behind fortified walls.
Presidents.
Kings.
Guild Sovereigns.
All their armies.
All their technologies.
All their strategies.
Meaningless.
Reports flooded in:
"Eastern Capital — fallen."
"Southern Defense Lines — gone."
"Northern Sigil Towers — erased."
"Entire continents — surrendering or collapsing."
Emergency broadcasts played on endless loops.
"Remain calm."
"Evacuate immediately."
"Await further instructions."
There were no instructions.
There was nowhere to run.
In the streets, civilians sobbed openly.
Families huddled in ruins.
Priests shouted desperate prayers to gods that had already abandoned them.
Some took up broken weapons —
knowing they were marching to die.
Some simply waited —
staring at the black horizon swallowing the world.
The soldiers who remained?
They dropped their guns.
Their Sigils flickered and died.
Not from battle wounds.
From despair.
Because how do you fight the silence?
How do you fight something you created?
Asura marched.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Inevitable.
Wherever he walked, the world fell apart.
Sigil fields destabilized.
Natural laws unraveled.
Hope disintegrated.
From the ashes of one broken boy,
an entire species began to die.
And in their final moments,
they realized:
They hadn't lost because they were weak.
They hadn't lost because they were unlucky.
They lost because when a boy begged for mercy,
when a boy cried for help,
when a boy reached for someone to save him —
They turned away.
And now,
he turned away from them.
The System delivered its cold verdict:
[Global Stability: 6%.]
[Projected Human Survival Rate: 1%.]
[World Collapse Event Imminent.]
In the center of it all,
Arin still stood.
Bleeding.
Broken.
Burning with the last stubborn light.
Facing the silence.
Facing the abyss.
Facing the boy the world forgot —
and the king the world created.
The final battle wasn't about survival anymore.
It wasn't about hope.
It was about atonement.
It was about standing one last time —
even if the world didn't deserve to be saved.
Arin tightened her grip on her cracked sword.
Her vision blurred.
Her heart thundered.
Asura approached.
Silent.
Unstoppable.
Crowned in ash and ruin.
And somewhere deep inside him,
so deeply buried even he could barely hear it,
a voice whispered:
"They deserved this.
But you didn't."
He crushed the voice.
He marched forward.
And the price of silence
was death.