CHAPTER 501: SHADES II

The second note fell.

Not as a strike this time, but as a ripple—a tidal soundwave that expanded outward, turning the chamber into an ocean of crushing resonance. The shards spun faster, each tone layering on another until there was no air left, only vibration.

Everyone staggered.

Milim roared back at the sound, her flames flaring bright enough to sear her own skin as she tried to push against it. Roman’s hammer met the ripple head-on, sparks bursting as the weapon screamed with the clash. Naval collapsed to one knee, abyssal currents spilling uncontrolled from him like leaking blood. Liliana’s barrier cracked audibly, spiderwebs of broken spirit-threads shooting across her spell. Roselia’s wards overloaded one by one, detonating into sprays of light.

Even Leon’s echoes buckled. Tripart Echo bent under the layered weight, its rhythm disrupted. Absolute Return tensed, but the resonance wasn’t a single blow—it was everywhere, spread across every frequency. He could reflect a strike, but how do you reflect air itself trembling?

His chest clenched. He felt the formation starting to break apart. One more pulse from the throne-being and they’d scatter, not as a team, but as dust.

Leon inhaled. The decision was already made.

The world slowed to his pulse. His Echo of Origin stirred.

For a heartbeat, his own resonance spread into the chamber—not loud, not violent, but fundamental. A deep tone that wasn’t heard so much as remembered. His pulse touched the waves of the throne-being, and the chaos of the second note... hesitated.

The shards faltered, their rotation no longer perfect. The sound-pressure that threatened to crush them thinned for just an instant, as though forced to acknowledge another conductor in the room.

The entity’s lattice-body trembled, the voice-decree shifting, questioning:

"...Origin...?

...How... can an echo command the root?"

Leon’s body screamed under the strain. His resonance wasn’t absolute yet—just a fragment of the true origin pulse. His arms quivered, his heart hammered, his blade rang as though it might split apart. But he held it.

"Not the root," he said, voice ragged but firm. "But close enough to remind you... your harmony isn’t the only one that exists."

Behind him, his team surged back into motion, breathing again, strength refilling in the cracks he had carved open.

Milim’s fire roared higher. Naval forced his abyss into a new shape, coiling it like armor around himself. Roselia rebuilt her wards on the framework of Leon’s echo. Roman grinned savagely and set his stance for another strike. Liliana’s barrier fused directly with Leon’s pulse, no longer resisting the weight, but moving with it.

The balance had shifted.

But the throne-being was not undone. The shards spun harder, tone rising, the halo bending into a spiral. It was preparing the third note. A sound that wouldn’t just crush space—it would rewrite it.

Leon wiped blood from his lips, staring into the lattice-body’s hollow face.

"Third note," he muttered. "That’ll be the kill-stroke."

The third note came.

It didn’t fall like the first.

It didn’t ripple like the second.

It rewrote.

The moment the lattice-being released it, the chamber shattered into non-being. The air peeled away. The floor inverted. The concept of "up" and "down" melted into static, and suddenly they weren’t in a throne-room at all—they were inside a universe where the only law was resonance obeys the master note.

And the master wasn’t Leon.

Roman’s hammer strike dissolved mid-swing, the metal stretching into silence. Liliana’s barrier turned transparent, as though it had never existed. Roselia screamed as her wards shattered inside her spirit-core, bleeding light. Naval’s abyssal armor cracked into ribbons, his form flickering like it might collapse into smoke. Milim’s flames bent backward, folding into her own body until her skin blistered and burned from the recoil.

Leon’s knees hit the not-floor. The pressure wasn’t crushing now—it was definition itself refusing him. His Echoes all stuttered, unable to catch rhythm in a space that wasn’t space.

The throne-being’s voice-decree rang, heavier than gods:

"Third note: All sound bends to the Absolute Conductor. You are audience, not orchestra. Return to silence."

The shards whirled like galaxies, forming a spiral that converged into a single point of collapse aimed directly at Leon’s heart.

For a moment, despair clawed at him. His team was unraveling. His pulse couldn’t stabilize the rewritten world. Absolute Return could reflect a strike—but what do you reflect when there’s no battlefield left?

And then, deep inside, something cracked.

Not his body. Not his spirit. His limit.

The shard of Shell Pulse’s Fifth Echo stirred. Fracture Requiem.

The unstable note that didn’t harmonize, didn’t reflect, didn’t echo—

—it broke.

Leon’s eyes burned violet-white. His blade screamed as he lifted it, resonance breaking free of his body like a storm tearing apart a cage.

"Then I’ll play the note you can’t!"

The world screamed. His resonance fractured the third note’s command, not defying it, not obeying it—splintering it. The spiral collapsed on itself, shards flying loose like meteors. For the first time, the throne-being faltered, its lattice-frame quivering under the impossible dissonance.

The chamber wavered between collapse and reality. His allies sucked in ragged breaths, their broken powers finding purchase again in the gaps Leon’s fracture carved open.

But Leon himself... his veins split open, blood misting as his resonance burned through him. Fracture Requiem didn’t come without cost. Each second it stayed active, it was destroying him more surely than the throne-being’s decree.

The lattice-being leaned forward, voice low, thunderous:

"...You wield the forbidden note. The requiem of endings. Do you even understand what you’ve called?"

Leon’s blade shook, but he forced a smile through bloodied teeth.

"Doesn’t matter... as long as you hear it."

The Fifth Echo howled again.

The Fifth Echo wailed again—

—a sound that wasn’t sound, a fracture in truth itself.

The chamber couldn’t contain it. Walls became broken notes. Floors flickered between substance and memory. Every shard of the throne-being’s lattice-frame screamed as if dragged across its own birth-song.

Roman roared through blood, hammer reforging itself in the cracks Leon carved open. He slammed it down, and for the first time the lattice-being staggered backward, its perfect balance cut by a fracture.

Milim burst forward, body ablaze with reverse-fire, her flames now fueled by the rebound of the throne’s twisted decree. Every strike burned hotter, not because of her will, but because Leon’s requiem refused to let the decree stay whole.

Liliana gasped, forcing her hands together, her broken core flaring with golden pulse. A barrier—not of defense, but of sound redirection—bloomed, catching the throne-being’s returning resonance and slinging it into emptiness.

Roselia’s voice rose in tandem, a raw, desperate hymn that layered with Leon’s requiem, not harmonizing but standing alongside it, jagged against broken. The two together made something unholy but undeniable—a scream-song the throne-being could not silence.

Naval’s form surged back into shape, abyss spilling like an ocean in storm. "You split it—I’ll drown it!" He cast his armor wide, enclosing the throne-being’s spiraling shards in a maelstrom of shadow.

The lattice-being reeled, its decrees faltering. Its voice came ragged, not thunder now, but cracked thunder:

"This... is disharmony. This... is annihilation."

Leon’s blade trembled in his grip. The Fifth Echo was eating him alive—bones fracturing with every pulse, veins lit with violet fire, heart seizing in broken tempo.

He could end it now. One more requiem pulse would splinter the throne-being utterly—unmake its lattice and end its reign. But that note would also burn him into silence, a requiem not just for the throne, but for himself.

He saw his team braced, fighting, bleeding—but alive, standing because he carved the opening.

A single thought hit him through the chaos:

If I fall now, they’ll finish it. If I endure... maybe I don’t have to.

The lattice-being raised its shattered arm, threads of broken light clawing toward Leon. Its voice faltered but still pressed decree:

"Choose, echo-wielder. End me... and end yourself. Or falter, and I reclaim your pulse."

The Fifth Echo screamed inside him, begging to be unleashed one last time.