It was as if an invisible giant hand had pressed heaven and earth into an ink pool.
Thick, impenetrable lead-gray storm clouds hung low.
They weighed heavily over Shogun Castle, completely swallowing the last trace of daylight.
Then, torrential rain poured down as though the Milky Way had overturned.
Raindrops the size of beans pounded against roof tiles, the ground, and the river.
Their crashing roar echoed throughout Edo, stirring up a hazy mist.
Gale-force winds shrieked through buildings and alleyways, tearing the curtain of rain along their path into crooked, distorted sheets.
At the heart of this pitch-black storm.
Before Paradise Bridge within Shogun Castle.
In the Yamazato-Maru district, surrounded on three sides by the rushing inner river.
It had now become a terrifying battlefield beyond mortal comprehension.
The Shogunate Samurai, Oniwabanshu ninja, and the onmyoji of the Ketsuno Family and Shirino Family, who had been fighting relentlessly moments ago.
Had long since stopped their swords, kunai, and talismans before an even more dreadful threat.
Soaked to the bone, their faces mixed with rainwater and uncontrollable terror, they huddled in every corner among the ruins.
Their eyes remained fixed on the existence at the center of the battlefield, something beyond all common sense.
A dark-purple pillar of light nearly ten meters in diameter, viscous enough to seem solid and constantly churning with malice, rose from the ground and pierced straight into the rolling storm clouds above.
Like the Karma of an evil god that had intruded upon the World of the Living.
Around the pillar, the air warped. Before the raindrops could even draw close, they were tainted into strange black droplets of slime that fell to the ground.
Beneath the pillar stood a massive monster with charred-black skin, two horns, and blood-red eyes.
A creature entirely composed of