NOVEL NEXT Chapter 476: The Day the Sun Fell
The Umbral Star dimmed. Then the world tore itself apart. Tsunamis swallowed coastlines. Earthquakes split cities. Mountain peaks crumbled into themselves. Across the Sea of Death, yawning fissures opened and slammed shut in violent rhythm. The sand sea vanished in an instant, devoured by surging walls of earth. Geysers erupted in random places, spearing hundreds of feet into the air.
Even Hurricane City, perched like a crown atop its sky-piercing peak, was not spared. The mountain groaned and shook, and a third of its summit sheared away, tumbling into the abyss below. It was the same everywhere—every land, every race, every living thing believed the world had reached its end.
The cause was singular.
One of the nine suns that spanned the sky began to retreat… until it vanished altogether.
The sheer scope of the event froze even Uncle Jed—a War God on the brink of Saint-rank, where he stood. His eyes, so long unshaken, flickered with fear. Only when the sun was fully gone did the disasters begin to still, the chaos settling into an uneasy quiet.
---
"Look! Up there—what is that?"
Even amid the lingering tremors, the vast light screen above the Windspirit Faction's mountain still glowed. A single cry drew every gaze skyward. On the display, streams of tiny meteors blazed toward some unseen point. Then a fireball, colossal beyond comprehension—tens of thousands of times larger than the meteors—filled nearly the entire screen. It dragged a blazing tail across the void, streaking toward the same mysterious destination.
"Could that… be our sun?"
"No… it can't be… right?"
---
[Beep, beep, beep… Superpower system… shutdown countdown… three seconds…]
[Two seconds…]
[One second…]
The ground heaved. The Spirit Realm shook so hard the very air felt torn apart.
With a roar, the earth sagged—one hundred feet in a single instant. Lava surged up from fractured depths, flooding the depression. And in the center of the molten lake, a pillar a thousand feet thick thrust skyward. Atop it, an enormous armored bird—something like a monstrous quail—perched with demonic steam curling above its head.
---
"We… held it…" KH3106's voice crackled weakly from inside the Shatterstar mech.
[Beep… Normal power restored. Remaining energy: 0.2 percent. Left arm damage: forty-five point two five percent. Rapid repair unavailable. Memory metal self-repair engaged…]
Relief spread through the team like a wave. Blackie flopped down where he stood.
"Good… good. If we'd taken one more hit like that, we'd have been done—"
Boom.
The words died in his throat. The sky flared, flooding the land with blinding red light.
[Warning… Sudden temperature spike detected. External temperature: sixty-three point five degrees Celsius… climbing at zero point six degrees per second…]
"Damn it, Blackie!" someone snapped. "You've got the mouth of a cursed crow."
Above the Spirit Realm's hazy sky, a fireball the size of a basketball appeared—close, far too close. Its presence alone was enough to scorch the air. Everyone knew what it was. The sun itself.
[Warning… Stellar body approaching… impact in ten minutes, forty-nine seconds…]
[Warning… Insufficient energy. Cooling system ineffective…]
Shatterstar's alarms screamed.
"It's Ethan," Julian muttered, eyes darting from the unending stream of meteors to the massive fireball. "Something from Beyond the Stars—he called it here."
"Then tell him to stop!" Micah's voice cracked. "If he doesn't, we're all dead!"
---
"Stop!"
The shout came before KH3106 could even relay the warning. The voice was huge, furious—and afraid.
Ethan froze, then narrowed his eyes. "Who the hell are you to order me around? You say stop, and I just stop?"
"If you don't… you, me, them, and every last one of the eighteen thousand three hundred and twelve souls in this world will die."
The urgency was unmistakable. Ethan glanced at Shatterstar, hovering unsteadily overhead. It was running on fumes—that much was obvious.
"KH3106! Can you get them out?" Ethan barked.
"Insufficient power. Mobility impossible," the mech replied.
"Damn it…" Ethan's expression twisted between anger and something like grim amusement.
"Julian… Blackie… Micah… Red Snow… KH3106—are you afraid to die?"
"Only an idiot isn't," Micah said shakily.
"Ethan, can't you stop it?" Julian's voice was calm, almost unnervingly so.
"Holy hell, Boss, don't scare me!" Blackie yelped.
"I won't die," Red Snow said quietly.
Clearly, KH3106 had opened Shatterstar's comms for all to hear.
Ethan's bitter laugh rang out. "Julian's right—it can't be stopped. But there's someone here more afraid than we are." His gaze turned upward. "The coward is the will of this place."
"You…"
That single word from above carried panic. For all its power, the Spirit Realm's will was not calm. Not anymore.
Ethan tasted ash in his mouth. He had only meant to jolt the place—pull in a large star, nothing more. Instead, he'd dragged down a real one. The power he'd wielded through the Ancient Demigod skill was beyond his comprehension. He could only handle a droplet of its oceanic strength, and even that droplet had called destruction on a planetary scale.
He tried to invert the skill's gravitational pull into a repelling force. Again and again, he failed. It had been a reckless, rage-fueled cast—and the range of the Forbidden: Starfall Barrage covered nearly the entire eighth layer of the Spirit Realm. Now, with the sun growing from basketball-sized to the width of a washbasin in the sky, its heat shimmered visibly. The Spirit Realm baked. Outside the mech, every living thing scrambled to shield itself.
"Looks like we'll cook before it even hits," Ethan muttered.
The massive quail vanished, leaving him exposed to the searing air. His clothes turned to ash instantly. Shatterstar awkwardly pivoted, scooped him up with its good arm, and deposited him into a small escape pod in its chest. A hatch opened, and Ethan stumbled out into the mech's cavity.
"Boss, you okay?" Blackie steadied him.
"Not dead yet… but close. I'm sorry, everyone." He met each person's gaze—except Red Snow, who stood with her back to him.
"Before you die, at least put some clothes on," Julian said with a small grin. His lack of panic made Ethan admire him all the more.
Only then did Ethan realize his state. He pulled on a fresh set of clothes. Micah's eyes were locked on the fireball, fear clear in his face—but not resentment. That hurt more than anger would have.
---
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A shadow hammered at the Spirit Realm's hazy ceiling, again and again.
"As the will of this place, you think you can flee on your own? Pathetic. Like master, like servant."
The voice was old, cutting, and filled the air like rolling thunder. Ethan froze. Then his face broke into a smile.
"We're saved," he breathed.
Those were his last words before collapsing into Blackie's arms.