Alice’s mana explosion didn’t stop.

It continued to grow.

It wasn’t just a wave of uncontrolled power or a momentary surge of emotional energy. What was happening there was something much deeper, much more dangerous. The very reality around her began to respond to that force born of pain, despair, and desperate love.

The air grew heavy.

Not heavy like before, when demonic presences crushed the environment with pure spiritual energy.

It was something different.

Space began to bend.

Small, invisible fissures began to appear around Alice, thin lines that cut through the air like cracks in transparent glass. The mana flowing from her body wasn’t just expanding; it was altering the very laws of that world.

Time began to falter.

First, it was small details.

Fragments of stone that fell to the ground began to rise again by a few centimeters before falling once more. Dust that had been pushed by the previous explosion began to slowly return to its point of origin.

Then the effect intensified.

The cracks in the ground began to close.

Broken stones began to slowly recompose themselves.

The devastated battlefield of the coliseum itself began to rewind in tiny fractions of a second.

Alice was rewinding time.

Her entire body trembled as her mind, completely dominated by despair, instinctively used mana to force reality back to an earlier moment.

A specific moment.

The instant before Vergil received those fatal blows.

Sapphire noticed first.

Her eyes widened as she saw the stones begin to reconstruct themselves and the floating fragments slowly return to their original positions.

"Alice...?" Her voice came out almost as an incredulous whisper.

But the phenomenon continued to expand.

The red sky itself began to slowly spin backward, as if time were being pulled by an invisible force centered on the girl’s body.

Seris, observing from a safe distance alongside some survivors of that apocalyptic battle, also immediately noticed.

Her golden eyes widened in utter shock.

"She’s..." Seris barely managed to finish the sentence. "...rewinding time."

That was impossible.

Time manipulation of that magnitude wasn’t just rare. It was something even divine entities rarely achieved without paying exorbitant prices.

But Alice wasn’t using technique.

She wasn’t using theory.

She was using desperation... And desperation sometimes broke boundaries that no logic could explain.

At the center of the temporal distortion, Vergil’s body began to react.

The blood that flowed from his wounds began to rise again.

The six golden swords began to vibrate slightly as time itself tried to pull them back to the moment before they pierced his body. For a few seconds... It seemed like it would work.

It seemed like Alice would actually succeed.

But Dante was there.

The colossal demonic creature watched everything in silence as the surrounding reality began to slowly unravel under the temporal pressure created by Alice.

His red eyes followed the flow of mana that distorted the world.

Then he smiled.

"Interesting." His voice echoed calmly through the energy storm that dominated the battlefield.

He looked down. In his hand...

Was Yamato.

The blue sword had been ripped from Vergil’s own soul when Dante plunged the six sacred blades into his body. Now that legendary weapon rested firmly in his hand, responding to the demonic presence that held it.

But Yamato was no longer the same sword.

It had evolved along with Vergil. Its connection to space had become something much deeper, much more absolute.

Dante slowly raised the blade.

The temporal distortion continued to expand.

Alice was almost succeeding.

The golden swords were beginning to detach from Vergil’s body.

Time was almost returning to the previous instant.

Dante sighed lightly.

"Sorry, girl." Then he moved Yamato.

The cut was simple.

A single blue line crossed the air.

But that wasn’t just a blow.

Yamato cut the world.

Space opened up like a broken mirror.

The temporal distortion created by Alice was instantly torn in two, like a fragile fabric being destroyed by a sharp blade. Dimensional lines spread across the sky as Dante’s cut separated entire realities.

The sound that followed didn’t seem natural.

It was as if the universe itself had been shattered.

The dimensional wave that emerged from that blow began to expand rapidly, devouring everything in its path.

Stones.

Ruins.

Energy.

Even the air was being separated and disintegrated.

Seris saw it happen. And her heart almost stopped. "No!"

She raised her hands immediately.

Gigantic runes appeared in the air around her as a colossal magic circle formed in seconds.

"Absolute Protection Area!" A gigantic dome of blue energy surged around the battlefield survivors, enveloping Sapphire, Alice, and the few minor gods still alive.

The dimensional rift struck the barrier. For an instant that seemed eternal...

Reality trembled... The magic dome cracked in several places... But it held. The dimensional wave swept over them, traversing the devastated coliseum and continuing until it disappeared on the world’s horizon.

Silence fell over the battlefield.

Time had been interrupted.

Alice fell to her knees.

Her mana was unstable.

His spell had been broken.

And Vergil was still dying.

Dante looked at Yamato in his hand.

He slowly spun the blade, watching the bluish glow travel along the sword’s perfect edge.

"Hmm." He smiled again.

"This is quite useful." But at that exact moment...

Something appeared before him.

Sapphire.

She had appeared in such a swift movement that the air behind her was still tearing when her body stopped directly before Dante.

Her eyes were burning.

Her divine aura had exploded.

She didn’t say a word.

She only raised her hand.

And at that instant...

The world seemed to hold its breath.

Flames erupted.

They weren’t ordinary flames.

They weren’t natural fire.

It was the Flame of Olympus.

Sapphire’s ultimate technique.

A divine fire so pure that it represented the authority of the Olympian gods themselves. The flame didn’t just burn matter or energy.

It burned existence.

The white and gold flame exploded from Sapphire’s hand and surged directly toward Dante like a sun rising on a battlefield.

The impact illuminated the entire destroyed coliseum.

But Dante didn’t move.

He simply lifted Yamato.

And smiled.

The blue blade descended in an elegant motion.

The cut opened a perfect dimensional rift in the air before him.

When the Flame of Olympus reached that space...

It vanished.

It wasn’t blocked.

It wasn’t destroyed.

It was redirected.

The divine fire was sent to another reality.

A distant flash shone on the horizon of some unknown universe as the dimensional rift closed again.

The battlefield fell silent.

Sapphire froze.

Dante looked again at Yamato in his hand.

He twirled his sword once, clearly satisfied.

Then he looked at Sapphire... and smiled.

"I think..." He raised the blue blade. "...that I’ll keep this."

The silence that fell over the battlefield was worse than any explosion.

It was the silence of defeat.

The coliseum that had once been a colossal monument was now just a graveyard of scattered ruins, giant craters, and fragments of stone that still trembled slowly from the residual energy of that absurd war.

Dust floated in the air.

The red sky seemed heavier than ever.

And in the center of it all...

Vergil remained standing.

Or at least his body remained upright, supported only by the six golden swords that pierced him completely. The sacred energy of the blades continued to slowly burn his demonic flesh, emitting small crackles of divine light that evaporated into the air like dying embers.

Blood still flowed.

Slow.

Steadfast.

Alice was kneeling on the ground.

Her body trembled.

Her hands were resting on the broken stone as her breath came out ragged, almost choked with despair. The mana explosion that had destroyed space-time moments before was now slowly fading, like a storm that had burned everything and now left only ashes.

She had no strength left.

Her eyes were fixed on Vergil.

But her mind no longer seemed fully present.

It was as if something inside her had simply broken.

The man who had changed her life...

Who had saved her...

Who had become the most important figure she possessed in that world...

He was dead.

There wasn’t enough magic.

There wasn’t enough power.

There wasn’t enough miracle.

Nothing could bring that back.

Sapphire stood a few meters ahead.

Her body still radiated the intense divine aura she had used to attack Dante, but now even that presence seemed less. Her chest rose and fell slowly as she watched Dante holding Yamato as if that sword had always belonged to him.

Her gaze was hard.

But inside...

She knew.

She knew she couldn’t win in that state.

The invisible chains that the demons had placed within her very existence still limited her power. That ancient curse, created specifically to prevent her from reaching her true strength, was still active.

She couldn’t fight as she truly was.

She couldn’t use her full power.

And facing a monster like Dante...

That made all the difference.

Seris knelt beside one of the broken columns of the coliseum.

Her magic circle of protection still trembled slightly in the air, the weakened arcane symbols flickering like a flame about to go out. The spell she had used to contain Yamato’s dimensional rift had drained almost all her energy.

She was still conscious.

But her body barely responded.

Her heart pounded heavily as her mind desperately tried to think of a solution.

But there was none.

Dante was there.

Stronger than ever.

With Yamato.

With the fragments of Lucifer. With enough power to crush any remaining resistance.

He observed everything calmly.

Like a predator that had already won.

The demonic creature slowly raised Yamato, observing the bluish gleam of the blade as he twirled the sword between his fingers with an almost amused air.

The silence on the battlefield was absolute.

Hope...

Simply no longer existed there.

Then...

A voice emerged.

"Six thousand years..." The voice was soft. Beautiful. Delicate. But at the same time... It carried a weight impossible to ignore. "...and fragments of you still exist."

The whole world trembled.

It wasn’t a metaphor.

Reality truly trembled.

The ground cracked in various directions as if the earth itself had recognized that presence that had just emerged. The air became heavy, heavier than any demonic or divine aura that had dominated that battlefield until now.

Alice didn’t see where it came from.

She only heard... First... The sound of heels.

Toc. Toc. Toc.

The steps were light.

Elegant.

But each time the heels touched the ground, small invisible waves swept through the entire space, making stones vibrate and particles of dust slowly disperse.

Alice looked up.

And saw only the woman’s legs passing beside her.

Elegant black leather clothing that moved smoothly with each step. The presence of that figure was so intense that the air around seemed denser.

She walked slowly.

Without haste.

Without fear.

As if she were walking in a silent garden and not on a battlefield dominated by monsters.

Dante stopped smiling.

His eyes finally focused on the approaching figure.

The woman passed Alice.

Without looking at her.

Without saying anything.

Her steps continued until she stopped directly in front of Vergil.

She looked at him.

His body pierced by the six sacred swords.

The blood slowly trickling down.

The silence of death.

For a moment...

She simply watched.

Then she crouched down.

Her delicate fingers slowly extended and touched Vergil’s face, holding his chin with an almost maternal gesture as her eyes analyzed every detail of that destroyed body.

Her eyes softened slightly.

"The good part of my ex-husband still lives on..." Her voice came out low. "...I think that’s enough."

At the same time... Another portal opened behind Sapphire.

A silent distortion in the air.

Sepphirothy emerged from it.

Her body still carried the weight of everything that had just happened in the Abyss, but her eyes were steady now. She walked a few steps until she stopped beside Sapphire.

Then she placed her hand on her shoulder.

Sapphire turned her face immediately. "Sepp?"

Sepphirothy nodded slightly. "I did it."

Her voice was calm.

But it carried a deep relief.

She then raised her eyes.

Looking at the woman who was crouching before Vergil.

The woman who had touched her face with compassion.

Sepphirothy took a deep breath... "Mother..."

"It’s good to know you’re alright, Sapphire." Lilith spoke without looking at her daughter. Then she slowly turned her face to Dante. "So... it’s you." she said.

Dante held her gaze, his teeth clenched. "Who are you?" He spoke, his voice thick with irritation.

Lilith took a strand of her own hair between her fingers, sliding it behind her pointed ear with an almost insulting calm. "I am someone who deeply hates... that side of you." She spoke, smiling coldly.

Then it happened.

A colossal pillar of demonic energy exploded from within her body, tearing through the air as if the world itself were being pierced. It was an absurd pressure—a tide of darkness, hatred, and primal power condensed into pure force. The ground trembled. The air became heavy.

Alice fainted instantly.

Dark energy surged into the heavens like a living column of darkness, pulsing with an ancient fury. Even Sapphire and Sepphirothy were forced to take a few steps back, the weight of that presence crushing everything around them.

"I was sealed away," Lilith said, her voice echoing within the very storm of power. "They took my motherhood from me... and treated me like a mere incubator because of that insignificant being you are trying to become."

The hatred in her voice seemed to materialize in the air.

"I will kill you," she continued, each word laden with a cruel promise. "I will destroy every part of you... in every way possible... until nothing remains but a sack of crushed flesh and bones."

She raised her hand.

From the shadows that seeped from her own body, something began to form—a long, grotesque black spear, made of pure condensed darkness. The shadows coiled around the weapon like living serpents.

She pointed the spear at him.

"I am the one who refused to bow to the first human."

The demonic energy around her roared like an awakening abyss.

"I am the primordial night."

The ground cracked beneath her feet.

"The mother of all demons that ever existed."

Her eyes burned like dead stars.

She smiled.

"I am your progenitor."

The world seemed to hold its breath.

"I am Lilith."