The annihilation beam tore through the darkness, and with it came a second strike that carved straight into the demon god Malinākṣa. In an instant, his towering form was ripped apart, shattered into fragments that scattered across the battlefield like broken meteors. His body dissolved into nothingness, but his remnants - dark shards of his essence - fell in different corners of the land, like curses taking root.

For a breath, silence held. Then came a thunderous cheer. Soldiers erupted with wild relief, their voices breaking the air like cracking flames. They believed it was over. They thought the demon was gone.

But then a roar split the world apart.

A roar so deep, so vicious, it shook the ground as though the earth itself wanted to crawl away. "Who did this?" The voice thundered across the field, rolling like an endless storm. Its eyes were burning, searching, cut through distance, moving in rapid blinks until they fixed upon one figure near the ruined statue of the white tiger.

A madman.

Guards saw him too, cornering him like prey. But that madman only grinned, his hands clutching a strange object. His voice rasped through cracked lips with dancing like a joker.

"I only wanted to destroy it… That thing… That thing is huge, it can destroy us, all…"

He lifted what he carried, holding it high in the sickly light. His grin widened, laughter spilling from him like poison. "If you hurt me, I will destroy it! Hehehehehe!"

That man's aura flared, his energy shaping into a monstrous paw that gripped the madman like a rag doll, by pulling it from bottom. His voice broke into a twisted confession.

"I made a mistake that day… when I released you by her words. You—" his tone sharpened into fury, "—you are the real culprit of this war."

The captured man sneered, eyes boiling with madness. "Hehehehe… you will die today…"

With nothing but pressure, pure, crushing spiritual force, the man's hand closed over the madman's skull. Flesh, bone, and thought collapsed into a single burst of blood. The madman's face was erased, reduced to a crimson mist.

The man took back the object in his grasp. It was the statue of the Heavenly Tiger. His eyes lingered on it, hollow and reverent, before he looked to the dome above. The dome was collapsing, fading away like it had never been.

He muttered to unseen allies. "Hide them deep underground. None must came up. Seal them with Śūnya-Chāyāḥ seal. Make sure they remain intact. No one must ever find them."

He spread his senses, cold and merciless. Every living spark nearby he tested. Those who posed even the smallest threat were snuffed out instantly, crushed under the same invisible weight that had splattered the madman's skull.

Far away, a demonic whisper stirred. "The first step is done… but the seal rests in his hands."

Then came the command. The battle surged anew. "Attack them with all might!"

The walls shook with the answering roar of soldiers. War erupted like fire catching dry fields—screams, blades, blood, and shadows. The strong butchered the weak. Death took form in every direction: stabbing, cutting, tearing, howling, choking.

Amid the storm of violence, a lone swordsman stood. He watched from the rooftop of a mansion, gaze locked upon the carnage below. His expression was unreadable, as though this destruction was not new, only a repetition of yesterday.

An eagle descended, wings cutting the smoky air, and dropped a message at his feet. The swordsman unrolled it, eyes flickering with recognition.

"Friend, guard them for one-quarter sand hour. I am coming."

The swordsman's lips curved into the faintest smile.

And below him, the battlefield screamed.

.........

He shouted in all directions, voice like thunder:

"Seal Masters! White Tiger Guardian Seal!"

The seal masters stamped arrays into the ground with their legs, hands raised above their heads. A colossal heavenly tiger flared into being over them, its body of light and shadow, fangs dripping with unseen hunger, like a war general carved from storm and bone.

They answered as one: "Next command!"

"North troops! Four-Fang Execution!"

The earth split. Four titanic fangs erupted upward, spearing the battlefield. They closed like jaws, rushing forward in a snapping motion, a monstrous mouth bent on devouring everything before it. The ground shook like it was screaming.

"East! Heaven-Devouring Fang Seal!"

A black orb churned into existence, a void with no bottom. From its hollow surface, arrows poured in endless volleys, shrieking as they cut the air, burying themselves in flesh like the voice of a grave opening.

"West! White Tiger Spirit! Lock their souls!"

Tiger lilies scattered across the blood-soaked soil. Wherever they touched, spectral tigers erupted, blue outlines blazing. They lunged, tearing bodies apart, chewing with deliberate cruelty, their growls mixing with human screams.

"South! Eternal Roar Seal!"

The wall trembled—and then the roar came. Not sound, but obliteration. Those rushing from the south were shattered to dust, flesh peeled into vapor, bones crumbling mid-stride. The roar left only silence and a stench of burning emptiness.

In the centre, the Four Guardians Strike formed. One half-human, half-tiger; another a winged beast of talons and stripes; another a single-eyed tiger scarred from brow to jaw; another a simple beast, but its outline glowed with unholy light. Each hovered, assisting the seals, striking where weakness bled through.

From the horizon, the jesters came. Faces twisted, grins split wide with too many teeth, star-marked brows glowing, eyes empty as pits. Some smiled with sorrow, others laughed with no sound. Their painted faces shifted like masks peeling skin.

He muttered in silence, low, almost breaking:
"One wrong step… marching towards doom. It's fake… she might have taken it away… but why?"

.........

Then came the same mask as before, two jester faces, but this time they fused into one. A hideous contortion, lips twisted into a grin that dripped with rot. From the merging surged a demonic human jester, his body stitched together from the screaming forms of nearby demons. He sucked in the remnants of the so-called demon god, inhaling it like smoke.

His flesh rippled. Bones cracked and tore through muscle, wet pops echoing like snapping branches. Six arms burst out, crooked and swollen, skin stretched tight until it split. This was no illusion, it was real. The thing swelled and evolved, towering skyward in minutes.

The mask warped, peeling into a grotesque eye that twitched and rolled, weeping black ichor. The creature's torso split apart in jagged seams, from which sprouted hundreds of slick, writhing tentacles. Behind its back, something monstrous pushed through—the tail of the black loon, thick as a pillar, thrashing in the air with a wet slap.

Then its hands plunged into the bodies of the demons around it. A chorus of crunching ribs and tearing cartilage filled the air, mixed with the metallic reek of fresh blood. One by one, it ripped free vertebrae and chest bones, dripping with marrow and gore. The bones clattered together unnaturally, rearranging themselves with the grinding sound of stone teeth.

It stabbed a vertebra into the earth. The spine twisted and elongated, hardening into a sword slick with steaming black residue. The chest bones stretched, shrieking like steel being torn apart, six of them thickening into spider-like legs. From the seventh to the tenth bone, they didn't break away—instead, black tissue wrapped them, pulling tight like rotting leather. The bones fused into grotesque wings, membranes bubbling and sagging as if stitched from corpses' skin.

A stench of rot and iron flooded the battlefield. Soldiers gagged where they stood, some vomiting even before the creature roared.

Then came that roar—a heaven-shaking bellow that rattled lungs and split eardrums. The ground trembled, loose stones cracking apart.

The spider-fused human demon hefted its bone-sword and swung once. Everything nearby—soldiers, demons, even human warriors—was cut clean in half. Blood sprayed in sheets, spattering the ground in a steaming haze.

It sprinted toward the wall, its spider legs pounding with a crunch that shook the soil. One grotesque hand spun an energy sphere, its surface crawling with veins of red and black. The demon played with it like a bauble, its claws clicking against the sphere, before hurling it forward.

On the man's fingers, another sphere of blue energy circled, spinning violently. With a sharp motion, he hurled it toward the oncoming mass. The two attacks collided mid-air. The impact shrieked through the sky, splitting the very wind apart. A deafening blast followed—sand, dust, and smoke burst outward in a violent wave, choking every trace of sight.

In that choking storm, soldiers from both sides turned rabid, hacking into one another. Their screams cut through the smoke, wet, gargled, unfinished.

Then that bone sword pulsed. It began to drink. Bodies collapsed like husks, skin shrivelling against bone as their blood and breath were torn away. A reddish-black aura spiralled into the blade, thick as congealed tar, wrapping around it in tendrils. The stench of scorched flesh and burning marrow coated the air.

And still, the black mass spread, stitching itself into the weapon, into the wings, into the legs—faster and faster, until the thing was no longer just a demon, but a walking apocalypse.

To be Continued...