Katsuki tore through Japan at Mach 4, his body a living missile carving through the air. Buildings became vertical smears of glass and steel. Cars—frozen snapshots of mundane life—flickered past like frames in a film reel. The wind screamed in protest, but he pushed harder, faster, the ground beneath him cracking with each thunderous step.
In his arms, Lyra's body pressed against his chest, her heartbeat steady despite the chaos. Lila clung to his other side, wide-eyed but trusting.
Then—
RUMBLE.
The sound rolled across the sky like a god clearing its throat.
Katsuki's head snapped upward.
The sky was splitting.
A jagged tear ripped through the heavens, pure white light bleeding from the wound. It pulsed, expanding with each second—hungry, deliberate, wrong. The edges shimmered with distorted reality, as if the fabric of existence itself was being peeled back.
"Damn..." Katsuki's jaw tightened. "They're really going all-in on this merger. What the hell do they need to drag into this realm so badly?"
Lyra noticed it too. Her breath hitched. She bit her lip, eyes locked on the tear, calculating, planning.
Katsuki felt the shift in her body language before she even spoke.
"I know what you're thinking, babe." His voice was low, still steady despite the wind roaring past them.
"I didn't even say anything!" Lyra shot back, though her tone carried that familiar edge—the one she got when she was about to do something reckless.
"Doesn't matter." He adjusted his grip, pulling her closer for just a moment. "I know you. You want to jump out of my arms and go fight solo."
"And I can!" Her eyes flashed with defiance, that fire he both loved and feared.
"But I don't want you to." His voice dropped, firmer now. Not controlling—protective. There was a difference, and she knew it.
Lyra exhaled sharply, her fingers curling against his shoulder. "Katsuki... if we all stay together, we're just going to bottleneck ourselves. They'll swarm us. We'll be fighting them one-on-one anyway, except exhausted and cornered."
The wind howled between them.
Katsuki's jaw worked. She wasn't wrong. She was never wrong when it came to tactics.
Silence stretched for three heartbeats.
"...Fine." His grip loosened, just slightly. "But you better be careful."
Lyra's expression softened. That rare, genuine smile—the one she only gave him.
"Always~" She winked, and before he could second-guess himself—
BOOM!
A repulsive explosion erupted from her feet, launching her body backward in a controlled arc. She twisted mid-air, her form shimmering, distorting—
And then she was gone.
Her body transformed into pure electricity, a crackling bolt of violet lightning that shot toward the nearest transmission line. She threaded through the power grid like a needle through silk, zipping between substations, her essence humming through the veins of the city itself.
Katsuki watched her disappear into the infrastructure, his chest tight.
Come back to me.
He shook his head, refocusing. No time for doubt.
He glanced down at Lila, who was staring up at him with wide, determined eyes.
"Alright, Lila." His grin returned—sharp, feral, ready. "Let's go kick some ass."
"Yeah!" Lila's voice rang out, fierce and unshaken.
The tear in the sky pulsed again, wider now.
Blare's eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at the shimmering barrier Celeste Vireya had conjured—a radiant shield of impossible light that bent reality itself around its edges. Her jaw clenched. Her fists trembled.
"These fucking pests—" She stopped mid-breath, her gaze sharpening. Something was wrong. That energy signature. That divine resonance.
Her eyes widened.
"Wait a minute." Her voice dropped to a venomous whisper. "Is that supposed to be angelic magic?"
The realization hit her like a blade to the throat.
"No. No FUCKING WAY a mortal would DARE—" Her voice cracked into a shriek that split the air. "—even TRY to imitate divine energy!"
The atmosphere shattered.
A blinding light erupted beside her—pure white and molten gold, tearing through the fabric of space itself. The portal unfurled like the petals of some celestial flower, and from within it stepped Brutus.
The Archbishop of Pride.
Her presence was suffocating. The air grew dense, heavy, as though the universe itself recoiled from her divine supremacy. Her golden eyes burned with an innocent, childlike curiosity—yet beneath that gaze was the weight of absolute dominion.
"Did I hear someone trying to imitate divine energy?" Brutus's voice was soft, almost playful, but it carried the force of a divine decree. She tilted her head, her long dark hair rippling with ethereal light. "Who are they? Who dares to try to imitate my brother's energy?"
From across the battlefield, Celeste Vireya's voice rang out—calm, defiant, unyielding.
"It's me. I dare to do it." Her heterochromatic eyes—one celestial blue, one infernal crimson—locked onto Brutus without a trace of fear. "And what are you two gonna do about it?"
Brutus's expression shifted. Her eyes narrowed, and for the first time, something dangerous flickered behind that childlike innocence.
"You brave mortal." Her voice was still soft, but now it carried the weight of cosmic judgment. "But ultimately… futile."
Both Blare and Brutus tensed, their bodies coiling like springs ready to explode—
And then they saw it.
A purple streak.
Coming fast.
Too fast.
Brutus's breath hitched. Her divine senses flared, and her gaze snapped toward the incoming blur. Her pupils dilated.
"The Yokai hybrid of war…" Her voice was barely a whisper. "The one that killed Dash."
The streak accelerated.
Reality bent around it.
Katsuki's voice cut through the chaos like a blade—cocky, sharp, unstoppable.
"KATSUKI DELIVERY!" His grin was audible. "I got a package for Hikari Sato!"
He launched himself into the air—twenty feet—his body spinning so fast he became a living tornado of violet energy. The wind screamed. The ground cracked beneath the force of his ascent.
And then—
He hurled Lila.
Not a throw. A launch.
She shot through the air like a missile, her body wrapped in a cocoon of Katsuki's Yokai energy, a blazing comet of purple and black that tore through the sky toward Hikari. The sheer force of it left a shockwave in its wake, shattering windows and sending debris spiraling into the air.
Brutus's eyes flared with divine fury.
"You speedy little fuck."
She raised both hands, and eight orbs of pure white light materialized around her—each one pulsing with the raw, untamed power of divine energy. They hovered for a heartbeat, glowing brighter, brighter—
And then she thrust her hands forward.
FWOOOOOM!
Eight beams of pure light erupted from the orbs, each one traveling at the speed of light itself—186,000 miles per second—tearing through the air with a sound like the universe screaming.
Katsuki dropped.
His feet hit the ground, and the pavement exploded beneath him.
He was already moving.
The first beam carved through the space where he'd been a nanosecond ago. The second followed. Then the third. The fourth. The fifth.
Katsuki zipped between them.
His body became a blur—no, a distortion. Space itself warped around him as he moved, his speed so incomprehensible that the beams of light seemed to crawl in comparison. He weaved through the onslaught like a phantom, his grin widening with every impossible dodge.
"Ooo, oh, I'm too fast~" His voice was a sing-song taunt, dripping with cocky amusement. "Too slow~ I'm out here making light shows~"
Another beam. He sidestepped it with a flick of his wrist.
"These beams are very slow~" He laughed, his voice echoing across the battlefield. "I'd expect more from the leader of such a deranged cult~"
He accelerated.
Hyper Acceleration.
The world around him shattered into fragments of frozen time. The beams of light—traveling at the speed of light—became stationary in his perception. He danced between them, his movements so fast they left afterimages that flickered like ghosts in his wake.
Brutus's divine senses flared. She mapped his trajectory, her cosmic awareness calculating his path with terrifying precision.
Her eyes widened.
"He's heading toward Alcor and the other Warden—"
"Damn IT!"
Her voice erupted into a telepathic roar that tore through the minds of every Archbishop across the battlefield.
"KILL ALL THE EXORCISTS!"
Back at the park, where Brutus had left the other Archbishops—
Arcturus's pupils dilated.
Heat began to swirl around his body—nuclear heat—distorting the air, bending light itself. His grin split his face, wide and feral.
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"Hahah… ahahah… HAHAHAHAH!" His laughter was a crescendo of madness and ecstasy. "I FINALLY GET TO UNLEASH MY RAGE! YESSSSS!"
Nuclear energy erupted around him—a blinding maelstrom of orange and yellow light that consumedeverything in its radius. The ground beneath him melted. The air ignited.
And then—
He launched.
Like a living missile, Arcturus shot into the sky, his body trailing a comet's tail of radioactive fire. The shockwave of his ascent shattered the earth below, leaving a crater of molten glass in his wake.
The battlefield had become a warzone.
And the war had only just begun.
Katsuki, still deep in his turbo form, became a violet streak against reality itself.
The world blurred. Buildings became watercolor smears. Sound collapsed into a singular, high-pitched whine as he shattered the sound barrier—then doubled it—then tripled it.
His target: the white-dressed Archbishop standing like a monument of greed incarnate.
Alcor.
Katsuki's grin widened beneath his phantom jaw mask.
Let's see how fast divine arrogance can move.
He launched.
The ground beneath him exploded from the force of his acceleration. Pavement cracked in spiderweb patterns. Windows shattered for three blocks. The shockwave of his movement carved a trench through the air itself, leaving a vacuum that screamed as atmosphere rushed back to fill the void.
Alcor's crimson eyes flickered—barely—toward the approaching distortion.
Too late.
Katsuki left the ground, his momentum carrying him through the air like a missile with a heartbeat. His body twisted mid-flight, violet energy crackling around his fist as he cocked it back, every muscle in his frame coiling with kinetic devastation.
He passed Alcor in a fraction of a second.
CRACK!
The sound came after the impact—a thunderclap that shattered every remaining window in a two-block radius.
Katsuki's fist had bypassed Alcor's vector shield entirely, the sheer speed of the strike moving faster than the Archbishop's passive defenses could redirect. The blow connected with Alcor's ribs—a perfect, devastating hook that carried the accumulated force of Katsuki's impossible velocity.
Alcor's eyes went wide.
His body folded around the impact point.
And then he was gone—launched like a cannonball through the air, his pristine white coat fluttering uselessly as he rocketed backward. He crashed through the facade of a building, the impact creating a perfect Alcor-shaped hole in the reinforced concrete. Glass, steel, and debris exploded outward in a cascading wave of destruction.
BOOM!
The building shuddered. Cracks spiderwebbed up its structure. Dust and smoke billowed from the wound Alcor's body had carved through its side.
Katsuki skidded to a stop directly in front of Solan Oryx, his feet carving twin trenches through the asphalt before he came to rest. Violet energy still crackled around his frame, his hair whipping in the wind of his own residual speed. The phantom jaw mask dissolved from his face, revealing his trademark smirk.
"Hey, dragon boy~" His voice was light, almost musical with satisfaction.
Solan Oryx straightened from his combat stance, his steely grey eyes—flickering with hints of molten gold—fixed on Katsuki with the intensity of a predator evaluating another apex hunter. He dusted off his armored coat with deliberate precision, each movement controlled, measured. The gesture was almost insulting in its casualness.
"Sutaro Katsuki." Oryx's voice was a low rumble, like distant thunder promising a storm. "The yokai hybrid of war. The fastest being in the supernatural world." He paused, his gaze tracking the destruction Katsuki had left in his wake—the shattered pavement, the displaced air still settling, the building Alcor had been punched through. "Your reputation continues to precede you."
Katsuki flipped invisible hair over his shoulder with exaggerated flamboyance, his grin widening. "That's right~ It seems my legend just keeps growing, doesn't it?" He struck a pose, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing dramatically. "Though I have to say, the look on that Archbishop's face when he realized his fancy vector shield meant nothing? Chef's kiss."
Oryx's expression remained impassive, but a muscle in his jaw twitched. "Why are you here?" His tone carried an edge now, sharp as dragon's teeth. "I had this Archbishop contained. Another thirty seconds and I would have—"
"Oh, let's not lie to ourselves now, Smaug." Katsuki's voice dropped the playful tone for just a moment, becoming something sharper, more pointed. His brown eyes—still flickering with violet energy—locked onto Oryx's with unsettling directness. "But even if you were about to win..." The playful tone returned, but with an undercurrent of steel. "I think you'd be better suited for a different fight. With a differentArchbishop. One that's, y'know, actually on your level~"
Oryx's eye twitched. The gold in his irises flared brighter, just for a moment. "And what's that supposed to mean, kid?"
The word 'kid' hung in the air like a thrown gauntlet.
Katsuki's grin never wavered. "Nothing, nothing~" He waved a hand dismissively, but his eyes were calculating, watching Oryx's every micro-expression. "Just that you'd be better equipped to fight thatguy." He pointed upward with casual precision.
Oryx followed the gesture, his gaze tracking skyward until he saw it—the bright orange and yellow light ascending like a second sun being born. The nuclear glow of Arcturus, the Sin Archbishop of Wrath, painting the sky in colors of apocalyptic fury.
"That little light show?" Katsuki continued, his voice taking on a more serious edge. "That's the Sin Archbishop of Wrath. Arcturus. Nuclear energy manipulation, rage incarnate, and about as subtle as a meteor strike." He tilted his head, studying Oryx's reaction. "Since you're a dragon—and you've got the abilities to actually deal with that kind of heat and radiation—you should fight him. Makes tactical sense, doesn't it?"
Oryx was quiet.
His mind worked through the variables with the precision of a battlefield commander who'd survived four decades of supernatural warfare. The Sin Archbishop of Wrath. Nuclear energy manipulation. The most violent and prone to rage of all the Archbishops, according to intelligence reports. Someone that volatile required a specific kind of opponent—someone who could match that destructive output while maintaining tactical clarity.
Arcturus's main ability is nuclear energy manipulation, Oryx thought, his analytical mind dissecting the threat. Radiation, heat, kinetic force—all things my draconic physiology can withstand and counter. My elemental sovereignty gives me multiple vectors of attack. My durability means I can engage in prolonged combat without degradation.
He considered the alternative: continuing to fight Alcor, the Archbishop of Greed. Vector manipulation, matter control, spatial warping within his Dominion. A fight that would require constant adaptation, perfect timing, and—if Alcor activated his full Dominion—near-impossible odds without support.
The yokai is right, Oryx admitted internally, though the realization tasted like ash. Tactically, I'm better suited for Arcturus. My abilities counter his. And Katsuki's speed...
He glanced at the building Alcor had been punched through, at the impossible speed-trench carved through the street.
...his speed might be the only thing that can keep pace with Alcor's reality manipulation.
"Fine." Oryx's voice was clipped, professional. He began to turn, his body already preparing for the transformation. But he stopped, his grey eyes—now fully gold at the edges—fixing Katsuki with a look that could melt steel. "But don't ever talk down to me again, Sutaro." His voice dropped to something dangerous, something that rumbled with the promise of draconic fury. "Let's not forget that those abilities you're so proud of? They aren't even yours."
The words hung in the air like a curse.
Katsuki's playful expression didn't change, but something shifted in his eyes—a flicker of something darker, something that suggested the yokai hybrid of war was far more dangerous than his casual demeanor implied.
"I'd be careful what you say, Commander." Katsuki's voice dropped, losing all its playful inflection. The temperature around him seemed to drop several degrees, violet energy pulsing more intensely around his frame. "Because those?" He gestured to himself, to the power crackling around him. "Those are fighting words~"
The tilde at the end didn't soften the threat. It sharpened it.
For a moment, the two apex predators stared at each other—dragon and war god, commander and chaos incarnate. The air between them crackled with potential violence, two forces of nature barely restrained by the thinnest veneer of allied purpose.
Then Oryx turned away.
His body began to change.
CRACK. SNAP. TEAR.
Bones elongated with sounds like breaking timber. Flesh stretched and reformed, muscles expanding exponentially. His skin rippled, darkened, hardened into obsidian-black scales that gleamed like polished mirrors. His spine extended, vertebrae multiplying, forming a tail that lashed through the air with enough force to shatter concrete.
His face pushed forward, jaw extending, teeth multiplying into rows of ivory daggers. Horns erupted from his skull like spears of shadow-forged iron. His eyes blazed molten gold, slitted and ancient and hungry.
Wings—massive, batlike, armored along their leading edges—burst from his back with a sound like tearing reality. They spread wide, blotting out the sky, each membrane threaded with veins of pulsing crimson that matched the lines now glowing across his entire draconic form.
Commander Solan Oryx, the Dragon of the Veil, stood in his full glory—fifty feet of coiled, apocalyptic power.
He looked down at Katsuki one last time, his voice now a resonant rumble that shook the ground. "Don't die, yokai. I'd hate for your arrogance to be the last thing the supernatural world remembers about you."
His wings flapped once—BOOM!—and the shockwave flattened everything in a thirty-foot radius. Cars flipped. Trees bent. The ground cracked.
Oryx launched into the sky like a missile of scales and fury, his massive form ascending toward the nuclear light of Arcturus with terrifying speed. The wind of his passage created a localized storm, debris and dust swirling in his wake.
Katsuki watched him go, his smirk returning. "Dramatic exit. I respect it."
Then he heard it.
BOOM.
The sound of vectors being forcibly redirected. The sound of matter being manipulated. The sound of a very, very angry Archbishop freeing himself from a building.
Katsuki turned, his grin widening into something feral.
Alcor emerged from the wreckage like a ghost of vengeance. His pristine white coat—somehow, impossibly, still immaculate despite being punched through a building—billowed around him as he stepped through the Alcor-shaped hole in the structure. Debris floated around him, suspended in mid-air by invisible forces, each piece rotating slowly as if caught in a localized gravity well.
His crimson eyes burned.
The air around him shimmered with barely contained power, reality itself seeming to bend in his presence. The veins of his aura—that passive field of deprivation and want—pulsed visibly now, creating distortions in the space around him.
"Well, well, well." Alcor's voice was smooth, controlled, but underneath it was a current of rage so profound it made the air taste like copper. "If it isn't the yokai hybrid of war." He took a step forward, and the ground beneath his foot cracked, not from weight but from the sheer pressure of his presence. "I've been dying to meet you, Sutaro Katsuki."
Katsuki could feel it now—the draining energy passively emitting from Alcor's body. The Aura of Famine, the Desolation Field, the metaphysical weight of want and emptiness that surrounded the Archbishop like a second skin. It pressed against Katsuki's own energy, trying to find purchase, trying to drain.
It found nothing.
Katsuki's immunity to energy and strength drain—a fundamental aspect of his war-god physiology—rendered Alcor's passive aura completely ineffective. The Archbishop's field of deprivation crashed against Katsuki's existence like waves against an immovable cliff.
"Same here~" Katsuki's voice was light, almost cheerful, but his eyes were sharp, calculating. "Needed to meet the notorious White Hoarder they call the Archbishop of Greed and Horseman of Famine." He tilted his head, his smirk taking on a more predatory edge. "Second strongest Archbishop, right? This should be fun."
Alcor's expression shifted—pride, satisfaction, the beginning of a monologue. "That's right. It seems my reputation precedes me. I am—"
"Quick thing though." Katsuki interrupted, his tone shifting to something almost innocent. "Why would you be the Horseman of Famine?" He gestured casually, as if genuinely confused. "Shouldn't that be, like, the Archbishop of Gluttony instead? Since they go hand-in-hand better than Greed, y'know? Consumption and all that?"
The effect was immediate.
Alcor's face went crimson. Not the pale flush of embarrassment, but the deep, violent red of absolute fury. A vein—thick and pulsing—emerged on his forehead like a fault line about to rupture. His crimson eyes widened, the pupils contracting to pinpoints.
His carefully maintained composure shattered.
"You—" Alcor's voice cracked, then rose to a roar that shook the surrounding buildings. "You DARE to interrupt me while I'm speaking?!" His hands clenched into fists, knuckles white, trembling with barely contained rage. "Not ONLY that—you DARED to downplay my position as The Hollow Sovereign of Deprivation?! The Void Walker?! The Master of the Barren Throne?!"
He took a step forward, and the ground beneath him didn't just crack—it disintegrated, matter breaking down at the molecular level from the sheer intensity of his fury.
"Do you have ANY IDEA what I represent?!" Alcor's voice was climbing, becoming more unhinged with each word. "I am the FUNDAMENTAL FORCE of cosmic entropy! I am the INEVITABLE CONCLUSION of all acquisition! I am the LIVING EMBODIMENT of the truth that all consumption leads to VOID!"
His aura flared, visible now as a distortion in reality itself—a shimmer of wrongness that made the air taste like ash and emptiness.
"Gluttony?! GLUTTONY?!" Alcor's laugh was manic, unhinged. "That simpering collection of appetites doesn't understand the FIRST THING about true deprivation! They consume for pleasure—I consume because it is the NATURAL ORDER OF EXISTENCE! They eat until satisfied—I DRAIN UNTIL NOTHING REMAINS!"
He was pacing now, his immaculate coat swirling around him, his hands gesturing wildly as his carefully constructed persona of controlled superiority collapsed into ranting fury.
"I am the one who takes EVERYTHING—power, life, hope, EXISTENCE ITSELF—and leaves only the hollow echo of what once was! I am the ARCHITECT of cosmic starvation! The PROPHET of inevitable emptiness! The SOVEREIGN of the space between desire and fulfillment!"
Alcor's voice reached a fever pitch, spittle flying from his lips as decades—perhaps centuries—of carefully maintained composure evaporated in the face of having his titles questioned.
"I have consumed CIVILIZATIONS! I have drained DIMENSIONS! I have reduced GODS to whimpering husks begging for the mercy of non-existence! And you—YOU—dare to suggest that my position should belong to some GLUTTONOUS FOOL who can't even comprehend the PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS of true famine?!"
He stopped, chest heaving, eyes wild, the veins on his forehead pulsing with each rapid heartbeat.
"I am the SECOND STRONGEST ARCHBISHOP for a REASON! My power doesn't just destroy—it ERASES! It doesn't just kill—it UNMAKES! I don't simply take—I ensure that what I take can NEVER BE RECOVERED!"
Katsuki watched the entire meltdown with an expression of delighted satisfaction, his smirk growing wider with each unhinged sentence. His plan had worked perfectly—he'd found the exact psychological pressure point and pressed it with surgical precision.
Got him, Katsuki thought, barely suppressing a laugh. All that power, all that control, and he's got the ego of an insecure middle manager who just got passed over for promotion.
"That's... a lot of nicknames you got there, bud~" Katsuki's voice was the picture of innocent observation, but his eyes gleamed with predatory amusement.
Alcor's rage reached a boiling point.
The air around him began to warp. Reality itself seemed to strain under the weight of his fury. Debris started floating, not from his vector manipulation, but from the sheer pressure of his presence distorting local gravity.
"You may be a fast mortal," Alcor hissed, his voice dropping to something dangerous, something that promised annihilation, "but that means NOTHING when I can control your direction and momentum! Your precious speed? I'll REDIRECT it! Your kinetic energy? I'll DRAIN it! Your very EXISTENCE? I'll—"
"Wanna test that~?" Katsuki interrupted again, his voice light, playful, taunting.
The challenge hung in the air like a thrown gauntlet.
Alcor's eyes widened, then narrowed to slits. His hands began to glow with that terrible white light—the manifestation of his Absolute Dominion preparing to activate. The ground beneath him started to crack in a perfect circle, reality itself preparing to be rewritten within his sphere of influence.
Katsuki's body tensed, violet energy crackling more intensely around his frame. His eyes—brown shot through with violet—fixed on Alcor with the focus of a predator who'd successfully baited his prey into exactly the position he wanted.
The battle was beginning to reach a boiling point.
Two forces of nature—speed incarnate and dominion absolute—stood on the precipice of a clash that would reshape the battlefield.
Around them, the war raged. Exorcists fought desperately against Archbishop forces. Buildings burned. The sky itself seemed to crack under the weight of supernatural power being unleashed.
But in this moment, in this space between heartbeats, there was only Katsuki and Alcor.
The unstoppable force and the immovable object.
The yokai hybrid of war and the Hollow Sovereign of Deprivation.
And somewhere, watching from positions across the battlefield, other combatants paused—sensing that something significant was about to occur.
Yet the exorcists stayed determined.
Their resolve unshaken.
Their purpose clear.
Because in the face of cosmic horror and divine fury, humanity's defenders had learned one fundamental truth:
Determination doesn't require power. It requires the refusal to surrender, even when surrender seems inevitable.
To be continued...
Wraithbound is an original series by Figures, The Architect.
? 2025 Veilbound Productions. All rights reserved.