To imprison a god, one must first forget what it means to be mortal.
The air was swollen with tension — the kind that presses against the ribs, invisible but heavy, like the weight of a truth no one is ready to say aloud. Beneath the bones of an abandoned base — once a sanctuary, now a slaughterhouse of dreams — Noct stood, his presence gnawing at reality like rust on an old altar. His form was eerily still, the soft hum of the broken lights above casting flickers of false divinity across his face. He did not breathe. He did not blink. He simply was, like a thought waiting to be believed in.
"I'm warning you," he said, voice barely above a whisper, yet filled with the resonance of judgment. It didn't echo — it invaded. "I will kill you."
Zeph stood opposite him, motionless in the faint haze of dust and silence. His eyes, sharp and distant, stared not at the man before him, but into something far beyond — a memory, perhaps, or a prophecy not yet fulfilled. He knew Noct wasn't threatening him. He was declaring a natural law — as calm and final as gravity. Still, Zeph did not tremble.
Instead, he moved.
One breath, and he rose like a bird mid-battlecry — a twist of muscle and defiance. His body arched into the air, perpendicular to all reason, a silhouette etched against the fractured lights above. The movement was not human — it was art painted in motion, a rebellion against the laws that govern flesh.
And from that motion came a name.
"Solvent Division… Heaven and Earth."
He spoke it not as a spell, but as a verdict.
Immediately, the world around Noct bent inward. The corridor fractured like a mirror dipped in oil, and then — absence. Not darkness in the common sense, but something deeper. A metaphysical hush that swallowed light, thought, and time. It was as if a veil had descended over the eyes of reality.
Noct blinked. He was no longer standing in the hallway. He was suspended — or perhaps anchored — in a space that existed outside of names. Around him pulsed Concept Dlump — not a place, but a container of existence itself. Its interior was a throb of black and violet light, like the inside of a philosopher's regret. And from the walls of this unspeakable prison emerged tentacles.
They were not mere limbs. They were ideas given limb and weight — the tentacles of fate, of language, of decay. They coiled around him with unspeakable intimacy, not touching his skin, but binding his identity. They wrapped around his potential. His will. Even the hidden names carved into his soul.
The smell was unbearable — like ink, blood, and betrayal.
Zeph watched from outside the box, his breath shallow, his lips trembling not from fear, but from exhaustion. That technique, the Concept Dlump, was never meant to be used. It had been sealed away — spoken of only in dead tongues and footnotes written in madness. It was a tomb for metaphysical anomalies. And now it held a man who called himself Noct.
"Squad A," Zeph called out into the choking silence.
Shadows peeled themselves from the walls.
Seven figures emerged — some cloaked, some masked, some missing limbs, but all bound together by a singular oath: If one of us falls to Agony, we all return to dust. They did not speak. They did not need to. They had watched comrades burn, watched gods bleed, and now… they would obey.
"We have minutes," Zeph said, voice hoarse with urgency. "He will break the box. He's already begun."
He gestured to the nearby corridor, to the faint trail of blood, to the silence that screamed too loud.
"Find Neo. Shiro. Tian Yu. And the girl… Find them. If they're still alive, we bring them out. If they're not—"
He paused, eyes tightening.
"Then we give them a grave that time won't forget."
The soldiers nodded. Not one of them asked about their own safety. Not one of them hesitated. They disappeared like ghosts back into the metal veins of the base.
Meanwhile, inside the Dlump, the tentacles flexed, trembled… cracked.
And Noct smiled.
That same cold, curious smile.
A child reading a sacred text just to see if it would burn.
"You think this holds me?" he whispered. But the sound didn't travel — it rewrote. The Dlump's walls pulsed, as if remembering something older than themselves.
"You've grown clever, Zeph," he said, his voice resonating in the cracks between reality. "But cleverness is the armor of the weak."
He tilted his head back. The tentacles tried to silence his intent.
But it was too late.
"I am not a man," Noct whispered, grin now full. "I am the flame that survives the flood."
A single tentacle snapped.
And somewhere far away, in the cold of the hallway, Zeph felt a chill creep up his spine.