He descended like a feather and fell like a feather, his world going blind upon the release of Mukoku's power.
Air, ground, space, time—everything sang collectively as the sheer concept of Severance was weaponized against the Lagarakei.
Ran, arrested by awe, laid where he'd fallen, debris from the crushed Palace no longer collapsing around him. He laid down and watched.
He bore witness to history being made in the sky.
"Kaito Ran," a voice called.
It sounded far away. It was a sound that had somehow managed to be heard over this broken silence.
Pushing himself up to a seated posture, he cast his gaze about in search for whoever it was that sought to find him.
A loud, whispering vibration came from above, shattering the silence in a paradoxical sound—equally quiet and thunderous.
Ran made to look up into the sky again, but then— "Kaito Ran!"
He looked around, there was no one. It was just himself and fallen debris in the courtyard.
"Who's there?" He decided to respond, his heart beating so loudly as the weird sound continued above him.
"Soran Haru. I saw you falling from the city, are you alright?" Soran Haru asked—voice heavy with worry.
Ran glanced down at himself. He looked fine. He was sure that he was totally fine.
There was no pain, he couldn't feel any. What there was, and plenty of, was shock.
He still could not think clearly, he wasn't sure he could trust himself to act reasonably in this moment.
Then who could he trust if he couldn't trust himself?
He flinched suddenly as another terrible sound came from above. He whipped his head up and looked at the hovering form of Mukoku.
She was unleashing upon the leviathan of the sky a power without substance. It glowed—it was blinding, like the aura of a thousand stars. But there was no substance that could be pointed at as the source of this glow.
It was like a mark of Naraku's resistance to such an eldritch power being wielded within its confines.
For every hit scored on the Lagarakei, something disappeared. First it had been the eyes, then over a dozen of its head, and now she'd severed the beast's legs from existence.
The Lagarakei turned in preparation for a retreat, its tendrils lashed out at all the forces clashing against it in order to push them back and make way for its escape.
But the armies of hell were not eager for a pyrrhic victory. They shared an eagerness to fell this beast of death and destruction.
The Lords of Hell in allegiance to Mukoku, came together. They held hands, each lord holding one another to form a chain.
Then seals—searing—glowing red, began to form upon their Assarian flesh.
As Kaito Ran watched, little by little, each lord and lady, the hellish dukes and duchesses, were unmade as the seals spread all over their body.
They were unmade and transformed into a heavy, huge chain of glowing hellfire—long as a thousand serpents joined in a Siamese union. A sentient chain that moved like the prehensile tentacles of the beast it sought to bind.
And bind the Lagarakei they did.
Flowing around it, snaking around its multitude of heads and tendrils, the chain coiled around the beast.
A single chain so long it went around the beast over a hundred times.
It moved like a snake, binding around the creature with sheer constricting force.
The sound was audible as they all heard the organo-metallic flesh of the creature groaning. A beast of soggy metal flesh this was, a flesh like unbreakable molten metal.
As the chain of hell tightened around this flesh, it groaned in a sound that made ears bleed and minds black out.
"Kaito Ran!"
Ran gazed away from the shapeshifted Lords of Hell, and looked in the direction he'd heard Soran Haru's voice come from.
It sounded much closer now and he could see a torch, its fire dancing in the wind.
The light came closer and he could soon make out the form holding the torch.
He rose to his feet just as Soran Haru got within a twenty yards distance.
They stared at each other and he saw the acolyte visibly exhale in relief as he visually confirmed Ran's wellbeing.
And then they heard it—
It was like a boiling ocean acting as a background cadence to the sound of thousand banshees shrieking as one against a deafening thunder echoing around the growls of billions of dying demons.
It was an abomination of sounds—it was a Lagarakei's scream.
"By my kin," the acolyte swore, glancing up.
Ran did likewise at the same time and what he saw defied logic and reasoning. Space around the Lagarakei was distorted—out of order.
Not only in a way that made up down, but also in ways that made a single head of the creature exist in five places, fully warped in a spatial vortex.
Its tendrils, bent through this irregular curvature of space, formed chains around it.
They were braided against their will and used as a rope to join the Lords of Hell in restricting the great creature.
Above it all, stood Mukoku—the Queen of Severance—gesturing like she was conducting an orchestra.
"She has severed space around it," Haru gasped out, his voice wobbling in awe and terror.
"W…what does that mean?" Ran asked, his throat suddenly dry.
"There is no more space around the Lagarakei. It's either going to be warped into nothingness, or…"
Before the boy could complete his sentence, Naraku groaned as though it struggled to bear the weight of the sky above it.
Ran, who hadn't stopped looking up, saw it the very moment it happened.
The Lagarakei—it was like a puppet whose strings had been cut. It shuddered, as it had appeared to be doing for a while, to shrug off the forces that held it bound.
Except that when it did so this time, there was no space to brace against.
The beast shuddered, the beast staggered in emptiness, the beast wobbled like an pendulum in slow motion, and then the beast—
"...come crashing down upon us," Haru finished, voice strained.
—the beast fell.
"Ran!" Haru screamed his name in a guttural roar.
Overcome by shock, he hastily turned to look at the boy.
"Run!" The young acolyte yelled, already turning around, picking up speed.
Ran looked back up, the leviathan of the sky fell, bound by forces of flesh and hell, it descended like a meteor of ruin, its path—straight down towards the palace.
Ran, his eyes widening, his heartbeat speeding up, his blood pumping through his veins, stood still in a moment of flight and freeze.
He stood and watched, watched as a titan fell.
"Ran!"
Haru's voice forced him out of his stupor, Kaito Ran turned around and took to his heels.
He fled to the sound of a titan's fall, fled to the fright of his soul, fled even as everyone watched the greatest descent in recent history.
Ran ran, and he ran with all the might he had.
Haru was way ahead of him, calling him out to run faster while unleashing kin forces to destroy any debris that stood as a hurdle in his way.
Ran followed the path the boy had made for him, moving at his best speed.
Chancing a glance up. He saw that it was hopeless.
The Lagarakei did not possess the Queen's aura of protection. It did not die a thousand times in fear as it fell, it fell not like a feather but like a behemoth sucked down the gullet of a blackhole.
Haru might make it, but Ran did not believe that he (Ran) was going to.
Still, he ran. He ran as hopelessness filled his heart, he ran—tears trailing down his cheeks—he ran, he ran thinking about his father, he ran in regret that was not going to complete his mission to save his father.
"No, no, no," he whispered.
"NO!" He yelled his defiance to the world even as in sorrow he wondered how quick a death of being crushed by a Lagarakei was going to be.
A yell of rage and terror spilled out of his lips in defiance.
Above him, in a final descent, a titan fell.