Chapter Text
"Roy! Rooooy! Find me! It's Rigel! Natsuki! Rigel!!"
It was a scream that tore through the throat.
Amidst the roaring wind and the grinding earth of Agzadd Canyon, Aldebaran released a desperate cry. His body was being forcefully healed by Felix Argyle's "Blue" magic, a process that prevented his death and blocked the use of his Territory.
"Natsuki Rigel. —I am Natsuki Rigel!!"
He screamed the name he had abandoned. It was a strange name on his tongue, but the only bait capable of drawing the monster lurking in the dust.
Then, she was there.
A shadow cut through the curtain of dust, moving with the speed of a bolt. Yae Tenzen. His loyal shinobi. His shadow.
She reached him in an instant, arms open to bring him down, to silence his self-destructive cry just as she always had. She was there to save him from himself.
But in that fraction of a second, before her arms closed around him, a memory flashed across her mind.
—That is love.
The words of the Oni maid, Rem. The girl who had declared she would support her hero even if it meant facing the entire world.
Yae hesitated.
Her hands stopped inches from Al's chest. The thought pierced through her resolve like a kunai: Is stopping him truly saving him? Or is letting him risk everything for his desire... is that what love requires?
She doubted.
And in that singular and fatal moment of doubt, the name escaped his lips.
"Roy! I'm right here! Eat me! Eat my 'Name'!!"
Yae Tenzen's hesitation anchored her to the ground, breaking the bond that was meant to protect her master. In the space her shadow left empty, the swirling dust vomited a different presence. Roy Alphard, the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, emerged with a twisted and ecstatic grin.
"Found youuu~!"
"Eat it!" He ordered, pushing his own existence towards the beast.
Roy's mouth unhinged, opening like a dark abyss. "Thanks for the fooddd~!"
Crunch.
The sound was metaphysical, a crack that reverberated through the soul instead of the air. The Authority of Gluttony, Solar Eclipse, activated.
The name "Natsuki Rigel" was devoured.
In an instant, the world changed.
Yae Tenzen, whose hands still trembled inches from Al, felt the threads of her will cut clean. The impact of having chosen not to act was surpassed by the crushing weight of ten years of servitude erased in a single stroke from her mind. Her eyes, once sharp as kunais, clouded with a terrifying vacuity as her master's identity unraveled. The physical exhaustion, held at bay until then by her unshakable determination, claimed her all at once.
She fell to her knees, arms outstretched towards a stranger whose helmet no longer told her anything. A broken moan, burdened by a confusion her memory could no longer justify, escaped her lips before her body finally succumbed, collapsing onto the parched earth.
The fierce offensive of the "Aldebusters" —Ram, Garfiel, Felt, Petra, and the others— suddenly wavered. The intense hostility that had been directed at the helmeted man evaporated, replaced by a void of confusion.
"Eh...?"
Petra, the "Witch of Melancholy," blinked, her Authority of Compression losing its target. She looked at the helmeted man standing there, and for a terrifying second, she didn't know why she was fighting against him. Who was he? An enemy? A stranger?
Why were they all attacking a single one-armed man?
Al did not waste the second of hesitation he had bought with his own identity.
He grabbed the bewildered Roy by the neck, sinking his fingers into the flesh with a brutal force that admitted no reply. "Take me. Now. To the edge of the geyser," he ordered with a voice that was pure steel.
Forced by the physical grip and the collapse of his own senses, Roy had no choice but to obey, activating his Authority under coercion. Space folded erratically, throwing them both to the precipice of the Great Geyser Mogolade.
But then, the horror switched sides.
"Gah!? W-wait, this taste is... urgh...!"
Roy Alphard doubled over, clutching his stomach with visceral agony. His face, previously radiant with euphoria, turned a ghostly and translucent green. The "food" he had just ingested was a compressed hell, carrying the unbearable weight of infinite cycles of death, oblivion, rebirth, and recognition.
It was a metaphysical indigestion of the soul. The Archbishop faced an agonizing elimination, a punishment for trying to devour what was not meant to be consumed. This was a loop of pure and undiluted nausea —an echo of endless deaths tearing his authority from within.
"Blergh...!! Aaah! Disgusting! Poison! It's poison! What is this!?"
Roy clawed at his throat, tears running down his face as he collapsed on all fours onto the hot rock. "Too heavy! Too much! Disgusting! Nauseating! It's not a meal, it's sludge! It's hell!"
The name "Natsuki Rigel" represented something much more vast than a simple designation. It was the anchor for Al's Territory, a vessel housing the weight of millions of deaths. Millions of loops. A hell that no mind, not even that of a Sin Archbishop, could digest.
"Blerghhh—!!"
With a wet and repulsive sound, Roy regurgitated the Name.
The fog in the world dissipated.
At the bottom of the canyon, eyes snapped open with renewed fury. The memory of "Aldebaran," the enemy, the traitor, returned suddenly to the minds of Ram, Garfiel, and the terrifying silver-haired half-elf.
"AL!!"
A roar of pure rage resonated from below. They were coming. Fast.
Al looked towards the abyss hissing beneath his feet, his eyes fixed exclusively on his own interior. He hunched over, lowering his helmeted head as he forced his fingers deep into his own throat, desperately seeking to extract what should never have been swallowed. His entire body contracted in a spasm of agonizing need, a violent struggle against his own anatomy and his own existence.
He fought until, with a nauseating sound of flesh and bile, he regurgitated the heavy black sphere.
The small gem, dark as a starless night and leaden with the weight of its content, hit the edge of the geyser with a dull thud. Inside it, in an absolute silence that contrasted with the external chaos, Natsuki Subaru and Beatrice remained frozen in their crystal prison.
"I'm sorry, brother."
The voice cracked behind the cold bars of the helmet.
He took a step towards the edge of the geyser. The fall was endless, a throat leading directly to the planet's burning core.
"Stop!!"
A voice like a silver bell. Emilia. She was fast. Terrifyingly fast.
But not fast enough.
Al swung his arm.
He threw the black orb.
It arched through the steam, a small dark comet falling into the abyss.
"SUBARU!!"
Without a moment's hesitation, the blue-haired Oni threw herself into the geyser. It was an act stripped of magic or calculation; she jumped with the sole purpose of sharing her hero's fate. She jumped to be with him.
"Rem!!"
Ram's scream tore through the sky.
But the Star had already fallen.
Al was left alone on the edge, listening to the sound of fading chains.
"Playball."
And then, he closed his eyes, waiting for the end that would not come.