Drip...
The square still slled of iron.
Valerie’s blood hadn’t even dried.
The crimson rain had stopped, but the screams had not.
People whimpered in corners. Knees shattered from kneeling too long. Soldiers who once barked orders now held back tears, staring at the impaled bodies of their commanding officers.
And above it all—
Ji Xuehong stood motionless.
The illusion of a sea of blood flowed gently behind her, touching nothing—yet seeming to stain everything.
Luna leaned lazily against a broken drone turret. Her matte-gray armor shimred under the dim sky, and her smile only widened at the terrified gazes.
Soone dared glance at her—silently begging for an explanation, or rcy.
"Don’t look at ," Luna said, brushing white hair from her eyes.
"Who told you to anger the Prince’s daughter by calling her a proxy?"
The word daughter hit like a bomb.
Takashi Yamamoto stiffened.
Even Li Zhiming raised a brow, but said nothing—just exhaled slowly through his nose, like he knew this was going to spiral the mont she arrived.
Luna looked over the crowd. She could see it—the flicker of disbelief, confusion, recognition, dread.
"The only one here fulfilling official Guardian duties is ," she added with a half-shrug. "But sure—go ahead, point fingers at the blood-drenched Warlords behind . See how long you live."
She laughed softly. Not because it was funny. Because it was inevitable.
"This wasn’t in the plan, obviously," she continued. "But when has Prince ever followed protocols?"
She tilted her head toward the crimson figure in the distance.
"If you think she needs permission to kill... you’re new."
The crowd slowly turned to Ji Xuehong.
And they shivered.
She’s the daughter of that man?
The thought spread like a plague.
Of course.
The silent rage.
The sovereign presence.
The terrifying calm. The aura of judgnt.
No one else could spawn that... except him.
And she—she was worse.
Not because she was colder, but because she was present.
She killed in front of the world.
Wang Xiao destroyed regis in silence.
Ji Xuehong erased them in daylight.
Valerie tried crawling.
Tried to scream.
Tried to beg.
Her lips ford a word—"Wait—"
SPLASH.
Her head rolled cleanly across the marble.
No ceremony.
No grand execution.
Just removal.
As if taking out trash.
The blood sprayed higher than the podium itself, caras captured it all.
A few soldiers snapped into instinct.
Training took over.
"Protect the—!"
SLASH. SLASH. SLASH.
Their heads were gone before their rifles were halfway raised.
Blood fountains erupted across the White House steps.
The crowd scread.
People clutched loved ones, parents pushed children beneath chairs. So urinated in fear. A few simply passed out.
They didn’t understand what was happening.
They couldn’t.
And then—
The sky turned black.
Not night.
Not clouds.
But obliteration.
The second sun that had arrived with eclipse vanished.
In its place, a mist bled outward—slow, suffocating. It didn’t darken the sky.
It replaced it.
The moon disappeared. The satellites blinked off. The sun was swallowed. Light had abandoned them.
Around the Earth, space telescopes captured a terrifying phenonon:
A barrier of dark matter—a complete planetary shell—had sealed the Earth from all external communication.
All sensors blacked out.
Except one stream.
One voice.
It echoed everywhere.
Across phones, laptops, military radios, neural implants, loudspeakers, bathroom mirrors, hearing aids.
It wasn’t shouted.
It wasn’t spoken.
It was declared.
Calm, and commanding.
As if the planet itself had decided to speak.
"The Breakouts have begun."
A silence spread across every street in every country.
"Creatures from the Other Side are breaching the veil."
"A realm far more brutal than yours is colliding with your world."
"They will offer peace. Power. Salvation."
"They are lying."
Inside the White House wreckage, Reed Halvorsen’s head dropped. His hands trembled.
Takashi didn’t look at him, he only stared at the sky, lips pressed together.
He knew this voice.
He rembered it from Frostholm.
He still had the scars.
"Any attempt to cooperate with the Other Side will be treated as high betrayal."
"Like the woman you just saw."
The cara panned across Valerie’s headless body.
"There will be no forgiveness."
"No negotiations."
"Only verdicts."
And then ca the "Truth."
History. Rewritten. Projected into the sky itself.
Aether flowing through constellations.
Star-choked civilizations.
Gilded towers floating across the galaxies.
Gods forgotten.
And a single truth—
"You were not born of this world. You are the descendants of prisoners—sent from the Hellverse to harvest Aether for a dying empire."
"You were abandoned."
"They fled."
"And now they return—wearing smiles and handshakes."
"You owe them nothing."
"You owe nothing."
"But if you wish to survive—stay out of my way."
The illusions ended.
The sky began to clear.
One by one, stars returned.
Sunlight seeped through the mist.
And as people blinked against the returning light, one single truth remained burned into their minds:
Wang Xiao did not need to appear to change the world.
He had returned Aether to the world.
He had rewritten their history.
He had judged them—without raising a hand.
And they understood now—
He could crush this Earth like paper if he wanted.
But he didn’t.
They weren’t his enemies.
Not yet.
So people broke into tears.
So collapsed in prayer.
So whispered apologies to the sky.
But all of them...
All of them now knew what the Guardians already did.
They were on the sa side as the demon.
And it was the safest place to be.
___
1st January, 2032 — Global Broadcast Archive Feed
The silence didn’t last.
It never did.
Because silence... was a luxury.
The very next mont, a new broadcast began. No blood, no sky-splitting rage—just a sterile, calculated update. As if none of what had just happened was extraordinary.
The planet was still shaken, and yet—
The screen flickered.
Briefing File: 000 — Multiversal Collision Event
It began with a simple voiceover.
Neutral. Robotic.
"This briefing has been compiled for the understanding of all Earth-bound life forms. Please remain calm."
And then—
The flood ca.
The feed outlined a concept no one was ready to digest:
"Your universe is not alone. It never was."
Two nas appeared on screen:
Universe-8: Infinity (Your world)
Hell: The Netherworld (The invading realm)
"In the past, Overlords of the Netherworld expanded their dominion by draining Aether from other universes."
"Aether is not unique to you. It is known by many nas across planes—Spiritual Energy, Mana, Qi, Psychoelectric Vitalis, Etherium Flow..."
Wang Xiao didn’t speak directly this ti—but his fingerprints were everywhere.
Visuals were pulled from his astral plane mories.
Places no human had ever seen.
Worlds he’d visited when traversing the Void, often while others slept unaware.
Among them—
Yolong Dou, a Dou Qi-driven civilization reduced to cinders.
A clip showed Xie Yuanqui, the last survivor, being held in a crystal sarcophagus, her soul tethered, her body restructured, mouth opening to speak words written by Wang Xiao himself.
"The beings you call ’Hell Spirits’ have crossed through such cracks before. They caused the collapse of all of Frostholm and triggered a great war that led to a nuclear tragedy and the reopening of the gates."
"Henceforth, all information pertaining to Project ’Deviant’ shall be made publicly accessible, including detailed accounts of the conflict that erupted five years prior between the Deviants and the Hell Spirits—an event that marked the prelude to the Great Reset."
The truth of the Deviants—beings once feared as monsters—was far more harrowing: they were but children, trafficked across continents and centuries in a coordinated sche spanning worlds, all to forge super soldiers for war.
The discovery shattered what little trust remained in the governnt. It was a dark history, long buried beneath layers of lies and silence, now unearthed by none other than the Prince, exposing the rot they once dared not na.
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