Five.

Kain flew back towards Necrograd on the back of Pluton, the wind whipping through his short hair and his eyes set firmly towards his home. It had been a nice change of pace, his vacation, but work needed to be done. It would only be a matter of a few months at most before the dreaded barrier that Lord Wolfenstein had told them about would be inoperable and the invasion could begin. If worst came to worst, they might end up losing several armies worth of undead in taking the territory, not to mention the number of living that would fall before the occupation was over.

Four.

Still, he had a terrible feeling in his gut. He felt like something very, very bad was going to happen, but he could not for the life of him figure out what it would be. Perhaps the unknown entity that had possessed Nagato and likely was responsible for the magi armies in Rusk was going to rear its ugly head again? No, this feeling felt far worse and several orders of magnitude more dire. If only he could figure out where this sense of dread was coming from, maybe then he could do something about it.

Three.

Either way, it was unlikely that he would not be able to overcome it, whatever it was. There was no enemy he could not conquer, no nation he could not defeat and no limit that could not be broken. And, if by some terrible miracle the feeling of dread came from an invasion aimed at his capital, well the best of his forces were currently on standby in the event that something went wrong. No one could assault Necrograd and emerge victorious. Not since the time after he resurrected and did so had anyone managed to take his city. In fact, there was no need to worry about invasion at all. Who would be so foolish as to try and siege the unsiegable?

Two.

Then he felt it. An absurd storm of energy building above his capital. The tempest felt so similar, yet also so very foreign. It bore the mark of Kevin’s Mega Pistol, but also a great deal of other energies as well. It was like a cacophonous maelstrom of thousands, if not tens of thousands of different magical signatures, all of them being directed by what felt like a mix of Kevin’s signature and something…. Bizarre.

One.

Leaping from Pluton’s back and flying towards his capital at supersonic speeds, Kain hoped he could make it in time. This… whatever it was… was powerful. If it was unleashed… well, he had no delusions as to what kind of destruction it could do. It would be worse than a nuke going off, and that was at minimum. He just needed to push himself that little bit faster, that little bit harder. He needed to get there and-!

…

For a brief moment there was a sound of something cracking followed shortly thereafter by the sound of what could only be described as a ‘buzz’. The moment after that, there was a flash of light that could be seen over one hundred miles away. The tempestuous storm of magic that had roiled and churned over Necrograd had erupted and, in that moment, everything changed. For both friends and foes of Darksol, that one moment would be forever known as the catalyst that unleashed something that no one was ready for. In that insignificantly small moment, Necrograd and all within were wiped from the face of Mortis. The capital city of the Greater Darksol Empire vanished without a trace, and both its Empress and its two Imperial Heirs were nowhere to be seen.

…

As the Church celebrated the erasure of Necrograd, a feat that they made happen, Kain stood stock still in the middle of what once was the greatest city in all of the Europan Continent. No one who came to the crater in the next few days dared to approach him, as he seemed to be waiting for his family, his people and his city to just reappear like it was all some kind of bad dream that he could not wake up from. As the week passed, something inside Kain began to crack, and all those with any ability to sense mana began to feel a horrible change in the world’s natural flow of mana. Something was twisting it, forcing it to move faster and faster, making it move in ever more chaotic and malign ways.

Mages, or at least the smart ones, stopped using their magic altogether in order to avoid their spells going out of their control. The weather all over the world began to become harsher and more prone to violent patterns. Those with any kind of intelligence on the Europan Continent realized that this was all due to the man standing in the middle of what once was his city.

A week and a half after Necrograd’s erasure, all throughout the world began to be plagued with horrible nightmares. Cities burning, massacres unlike any that had ever been seen before and twisted horrors rampaging uncontrollably and more were all mixed together into a nightmare that no one could alleviate. All that was listed before and more began to take their toll on everyone, no matter where they lived or what god they followed.

The provisional government of the Greater Darksol Empire, set up in the wake of Necrograd’s erasure, tried to hatch a plan to end the looming calamity that Kain’s grief was causing. The Army, Navy and fledgling Airforce of the Greater Darksol Empire tried to recover from the moral shock and begin the invasion, but right before they could cross the border something shifted in the world.

…

Everyone felt it. It was like a switch had been flipped, and while no one in that moment knew what had changed, they all somehow knew that it would not be pleasant for the surviving member of the Luminas Confederacy. In that crater where Necrograd once stood, a single man who felt like he had lost everything he truly cared about began to laugh. It was a soft, slow laugh at first, but it built up bit by bit until anyone who dared to listen could hear only the laughter of a man who had been mentally broken.

Kain’s eyes already glowed red before, but now there was nothing left in them but a blind and empty rage-fueled madness. Whatever semblance of sanity once held him back was entirely gone, and in its place was something truly Abominable. Before either side could react, Kain was no longer at his place of grief. The earth was shredded as he flew across the surface at hypersonic speeds, the shockwaves killing anything he moved past as his aura spiraled out of control.

Behind the madness that could be seen in his eyes, something was changing inside of him. The bonds of sanity that had completely shattered were being forged anew. Before Kain broke, there were two halves to his whole. But now both halves were broken beyond repair. The only way for his sanity to be restored was to take what had been irreversibly broken and make something new out of it; something that would never, ever, be broken again by anything or anyone.

Before this point, there were two Kains; one was the original Kain from Mortis and the other was the ‘will’ of the one who created not only Kain but the entire original world of Mortis. Now, both of them were all but no more and in their place was arising something new. Something terrible was coming to the last survivor of the Confederacy, something that was far more wrathful than the Kain they had broken would ever have been.

The Confederacy wanted to fight an Angry Devil, but now they were going to face a Wrathful God.