As the cloud fades and vanishes, so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up – Job 7:9

Alternate Final Chapter Prototype - Oblivion

The M-Bomb failed.

The Tenkai Reppuzan failed.

I have failed.

The Neuroi Matriarch erased my existence from the mortal plane with one swift beam. I could only see the terror in Yoshika's eyes as my body was vaporized into nothingness.

When I gained consciousness, I was in the Realm of Amaterasu. Immediately I requested a feed from the battlefield, but Amaterasu only stepped aside, and I saw her. Yoshika was lying behind her, unconscious as I was a few seconds ago. I ran up to her, she regained consciousness, and told me what happened. In a suicidal attempt, she charged at the Neuroi Matriarch, but she was swatted down like a fly. As she stopped talking, another of our comrades appeared by my side. It was Mio Sakamoto.

At first, she was stumped by what she saw around her, but then it came to her. She knew that she was now dead. I begged Amaterasu for more details, and she told me what was going on now. The 501st has officially ceased to exist, and the Matriarch started her march from Berlin to the rest of the world. Yoshika started crying, Mio started outright cursing Amaterasu face to face and I had to stop her. I explained them how the world works behind the scenes. They both looked as if a boulder fell on their heads.

Amaterasu then said something that rattled our souls right to their cores. She explained that the thing that powers gods is the energy they receive from prayers. Less believers equaled lesser power and conversely, if a god has many believers he has more energy to his disposition. While they outright can't use it to do stuff, they have to 'power' their realms and their own existence. Mio and Yoshika didn't have a clue what Amaterasu was talking about, but I quickly deciphered what is going on, but the truth was too grim for me to tell them.

A month has passed, during which Akiko, Sayaka, Grandma, Mami and a few others joined us. And then, something appeared. A black belt on the horizon. Both Mio and Yoshika saw it, and asked me what it is. I didn't know, but Amaterasu helped me out of the predicament. If finally happened. The last Shinto believer was killed about two weeks ago, and the energy reserves of Amaterasu were now slowly depleting. Her Realm was now being consumed by the Void. Nothing could save them now. Once they all realized it, some of them wanted to spend their time with their families. There was no hope for that however. Their souls were already rotting in Yomi, and now that this realm was devoured by the Void, it was disconnected from the universe. She could only apologize…

It took only two days for the Void to reach their whereabouts. Amaterasu gave us some words of comfort. Energy isn't lost in the Universe. If we get absorbed by the Void, we get 'recycled'. We may become a new star, a new planet, a new form of life somewhere. But not on Earth. The Neuroi left only a lifeless husk of a planet, covered in miasma…

Somehow, driven by some impulse, everyone besides Yoshika and me embraced the Void on their own while we were sleeping. Yoshika, who was already depressed, almost fell into a catatonic state after finding out that her mother and grandmother were now gone.

We are now on a small field of edelweissen. The Void left us only a two-meter wide circle in which we stood embracing ourselves, with Amaterasu hovering over us.

"So… This is the end? This is how it all ends?" Yoshika asked me.

"Yes… Humanity is now gone… Places of afterlife are getting wiped… The Neuroi have won…"

"So much effort… Everything went to naught... Toshiro, please, promise me, that we will find ourselves in the vast Universe… Please…"

"I promise you, Yoshika…"

I kissed Yoshika in a final kiss, feeling as our souls were being devoured by the Void.

If somebody would observe the Summer Triangle, one would see that Vega and Altair have mysteriously began radiating with intense light, and came closer to each other. It was a true puzzle why that happened.

Surprised? Confused?

This was written eons ago. There was no Kye in my story, Livy was just a one-time occurrence in her sword form, and Toshiro was only a mortal through and through. This is just flavor material, a non-canonical 'what-if' of old.