Chapter 36: A Sun of Two Worlds

The sky over Gantz was torn open. A wound of violet and bruised gray bled into the heavens, and from it, a creature of impossible geometry descended. It was a thing of writhing tentacles and a thousand screaming mouths, a shape that the mind refused to hold, constantly shifting like oil on water. It was an echo of Apep, a shadow of Cthulhu, a nightmare given form by a god playing with cosmic clay. Panic, raw and primal, was a physical wave that slammed through the city streets, turning order into a stampede of terror. The city guard's formations broke before they could even fire a single enchanted arrow. Magic sputtered and died against the entity's aura of pure anti-reality.

 

Fiona Russell stood on her balcony, her knuckles white where she gripped the cold stone railing. Her meticulously constructed network, her spies, her political leverage—all of it was meaningless before this kind of apocalypse. This was not a demon or a beast from some known plane; this was an unraveling. She felt a profound and chilling helplessness, the kind that came when one realized the rules of the world had just been rewritten without their consent.

 

From his hovel on the edge of the slums, Ephram Krell fell to his knees, but not in fear. His eyes, wide and manic, drank in the glorious, terrible sight. He saw not an ending, but a new and magnificent beginning. The world needed to be broken before it could be remade in a new image. His lord had promised a sermon, and the sky itself had become his pulpit.

 

Then, as the first tendrils of the abomination touched the city's highest spires, turning stone to a weeping, viscous sludge, a new light dawned.

 

It did not come from the horizon. It bloomed in the very center of the sky, directly opposite the profane tear in reality. It was a perfect, golden sphere of warmth and order, a second sun in a sky that could barely contain one. The light was not merely bright; it was *absolute*. It carried the weight of authority, the promise of creation, and the unyielding certainty of dawn. The panic in the streets faltered as thousands of heads turned upward, their terror momentarily replaced by awe.

 

Descending from the heart of this new sun was a figure. He wore no armor, carried no weapon, but was clad in the simple, radiant light of his own being. Leo—or Sandrew, as the city would come to know him—had made his entrance. His expression was serene, his gaze fixed on the horror he had unleashed. This was not just a battle; it was a performance. And on the stage of a dying world, he was about to play the part of its savior. The crimson light of his own sun-domain on Earth bled through the interdimensional fabric, a reflection of the drama playing out light-years away. For a moment, two worlds held their breath, united under a single, impossible sky.