CALAMITY : Legends Of The Chosen

Max was finished.

His legs wouldn't move. His arms lay limp, scorched and numb. The wound on his shoulder wouldn't stop bleeding. VYTHRA: 0%.

And the Catalyst-class demon still stood.

Twisted, mutilated from the battle, but grinning.

Max could only watch as the beast staggered forward. His heart slowed, his vision pulsed black, but his instincts—his last shred of pride—refused to let him go quietly.

So he did the only thing left.

He pointed his finger to the sky.

And fired.

The last 0.01% of VYTHRA he could scrape from the walls of his soul, a final pulse of black lightning — not aimed at the demon, but the sky above.

A flare. A message.

A beacon of surrender.

A warning to his friends.

I've failed.

And then… nothing.

The demon raised its claw.

Max dropped his head.

Until—

The sky shattered.

Like the sound of a million drums breaking through the clouds, a deafening, cosmic thunder roared across the entire realm. The beacon Max had fired upward returned from the heavens — not as a crackle, not as a bolt…

…but as the wrath of a storm deity.

A beam of black lightning thicker than mountains.

Amplified a hundred million times.

It screamed down from the heavens and struck the battlefield with godlike fury. Everything went white. The ground didn't just shake — it crushed. The air didn't just explode — it ceased to exist.

The Catalyst demon didn't even scream.

It was incinerated instantly — atomized, erased, reduced to burnt ozone and ash beneath the divine magnitude of the bolt.

And from the eye of the storm…

Max rose.

Eyes wide.

Alive.

[VYTHRA Restored: 1%]

His body glowed faintly, surrounded by humming strands of electric energy. His arms were no longer torn — they shimmered, reinforced by something new.

Something impossible.

Black sigils etched themselves into his skin like divine circuitry. They pulsed with rhythm. With life. With power.

Then he heard it.

Not from the sky. Not from inside.

But from everywhere.

A voice.

Calm. Low. Deep.

"You cried out not in prayer—

But in defiance."

"You aimed your final spark at the sky—

And I returned it, multiplied."

"I did not forget you, Max Conrad.

I waited…

for when you were ready to be more."

A surge of energy washed through Max's limbs. His hands twitched. Then his forearms transformed.

Electric plates of shadow-forged lightning wrapped around them — molding into crossbows, sleek and compact, humming with internal storms.

Black lightning hummed across them like strings on a cursed instrument.

Then a new system message appeared:

[New Divine Ability: Indra's Arrow]

Forged by the will of Voltraeus.

Two forearm-mounted lightning crossbows.

Each shot consumes only 0.01% VYTHRA.

Every bolt is composed of supercharged, condensed black lightning — the same intensity that once crippled your nervous system.

Now yours to fire in rapid succession without pain.

A divine machine gun of storms.

Max blinked, dumbfounded. His fingers instinctively flexed—

And the crossbows hummed.

He raised both arms toward the horizon and pulled the invisible triggers.

CHRRRRTTTTT—

A volley of black lightning bolts shot out in a precise spread, crackling like machine gun fire, the sound echoing like a jet engine tearing apart steel.

They struck a nearby boulder and disintegrated it instantly.

Max's mouth dropped open.

He laughed.

Giddy. Awestruck. Exhilarated.

He looked at the crossbows on his arms, glowing faintly with the power of the storm, and whispered:

"…This is insane…"

Then he looked up.

At the sky.

At where the voice had spoken from.

His voice cracked a little.

"…Thank you."

The winds carried one final whisper from above:

"Do not waste this second chance."

Scene End — Max Lives Again

He stood in the middle of the glassed battlefield, body glowing, crossbows gleaming, VYTHRA slowly stabilizing.

The team would see the divine lightning even from miles away. They would know Max had survived.

But more than that—

They would know something awakened.

It started as a flicker.

Then a tremor.

Then—

The entire sky split open in black and violet light, streaking high above the horizon like a divine fracture through heaven itself.

The team had just begun packing at dawn, ready to move west toward a distant crater Shojiro had scouted earlier. Karl was syncing his drone. Enme was stretching her back beside Leone. Morgz, chewing on a bar of rationed jerky, glanced up at the sudden flash.

Then they all froze.

Shojiro's heart dropped.

"That's… Max's lightning," he whispered.

Karl's visor zoomed in on the source.

There, piercing the edge of the horizon like a burning wound—

A bolt of pure black lightning rose straight into the sky, unmoving. Steady. Like a flare.

Or a message.

"No…" Enme's voice cracked.

"He fired it into the sky… not at a target." Karl's voice was cold. Analyzing. But even he couldn't hide the tremble.

Morgz dropped the food.

> "That's not a victory shot… that's a signal…"

Shojiro's hands clenched. His VYTHRA flickered erratically, instinct trying to activate something that just wasn't there.

Leone's voice broke through, shaking. "He said… if I don't come back stronger, then maybe I don't come back at all."

A silence spread like blood in water.

Karl whispered, "He's dead, isn't he?"

No one replied.

Then, like a dam breaking—

Enme screamed.

Not a battle cry. Not rage.

But grief.

She stumbled forward, falling to her knees. Her barrier sigils blinked and shattered midair like cracked glass.

"WHY—WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT ALONE?!" she sobbed, fists pounding the ground.

Zans stood motionless, shadow quivering under his feet. His mouth was a flat line. Kuro did not speak. Not even she knew how to fill this silence.

Shojiro dropped beside Enme and held her shoulder. She was trembling so hard her glyphs couldn't stabilize. He didn't know what to say.

Because truth be told—

He believed it too.

Max was gone.

Their loudest voice. Their dumbest smile. Their defiant, reckless lightning storm.

Gone.

Leone covered her mouth with both hands, tears leaking through her fingers. Her bow clattered to the dirt behind her.

"He always acted like he was invincible," she whispered. "Like he'd never break… I didn't think— I didn't think we'd actually lose one of us."

Morgz sat down hard, back against a crumbled wall. He didn't cry. He didn't yell. He just… stared.

Like his brain refused to compute a Max-less world.

Karl's visor dimmed. He knelt beside the others and removed it. His voice, always mechanical, was barely audible now.

"I told him it was suicide. He called me a smartass and walked away."

He shut his eyes. "And I let him go."

The clouds still glowed faintly with the aftershock of divine lightning.

No one knew it was Voltraeus.

To them, it was the death scream of a final, defiant attack.

One last act before Max vanished.

Shojiro looked at the team, at his friends, all broken in their own ways. And he finally said what no one wanted to say.

"He's not coming back."

Scene End: "Burial Without a Body"

As the morning rose, none of them spoke for a long while.

They didn't move.

They didn't prepare.

For once, there was no next battle to plan for.

Only the silent weight of a comrade lost.

Only the echo of that flare — Max's final shout — still burning in the sky.