Ren was back—snapped into the card realm again, floating on lacquered platforms surrounded by snarling monsters. Their faces twisted with symbols: diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades. A grotesque deck waiting to be played.
Ren didn't respond. Not yet.
He stood slowly, silent, eyes cast down. Tearstreaks still clung to his cheeks, drying under the weight of something darker, deeper. His fists clenched at his sides, and the air began to hum—low, sharp, rising.
Trickstarr leaned forward, his throne of cards flickering beneath him. Gold eyes glowed. His grin widened to a manic, jagged thing.
"Tell me… what did your precious little Airi whisper in your mind?"
Ren's head snapped up.
"Keep her name," he said, voice low, raw, dangerous,
"…out of your mouth."
A single step forward.
The monsters tensed. The cards underfoot cracked.
Ren's storm-gray eyes blazed—not Trickstarr's glittering gold, but a storm's fury made flesh. Essence surged out of him in waves, carving wind into the very air. Floating platforms buckled beneath his pressure—gravity bent.
Then—he moved.
A blur.
The nearest monster lunged—Ren struck first. A single punch. Its mask crumpled like tin, spine snapping with a sickening crack.
Before the body even fell, Ren had launched into another. His elbow smashed through bone, his momentum carrying him into a spinning kick that sent another flying off the edge.
A roar. A pounce.
He caught the beast mid-air and hurled it—straight through two more.
They came in waves now—dozens, hundreds.
It didn't matter.
Ren didn't stop.
He couldn't.
He fought like a storm that had been held back too long.
His fists were comets, feet the lightning that split the heavens.
Monsters screamed—he answered with a roar.
Essence wrapped his limbs in coiling power—Celia's essence. The last gift she left inside him.
Each punch. Each scream. Each step forward—carved from love, grief, and rage.
Fragments rained. Black ichor splattered across floating stone. Ren stood surrounded by carnage—heaving, burning from within.
Trickstarr watched from his throne, lips parted in amused awe.
"I can feel your essence growing, Ren Kurose!" he purred.
But Ren didn't listen.
His eyes locked on the throne.
Then—dash.
A thunderclap burst behind him.
Ren launched from the last floating card, straight at Trickstarr—air bending around him.
Trickstarr flicked both wrists. Two cards flew down like blades—
Spade Queen. Club Queen.
They pulsed—
And rose.
A colossal form erupted—an amalgam stitched from sharpened suits, a towering giant of blades and diamonds, its limbs spiraling with razors, its core pulsing with glowing eyes. The Queen cards merged at the heart. Limbs turned into towers of rotating cards and jagged spades.
Trickstarr laughed from inside its chest.
"You're not the only one who can punch above your weight!"
But Ren—didn't stop.
He leapt, twisting mid-air—
—and drove his fist forward.
CRACK—!
His knuckles slammed into the center of the beast—through the Queen cards, through the churning armor of cursed suits, straight into the core.
Straight into Trickstarr.
The impact shattered everything.
A scream. A sound like a breaking sky.
The throne cracked. The entire Realm buckled.
Reality split—
—and the card world began to fall apart.
Shards of giant cards rained around them like falling stars, the once-polished surface now a torn tapestry of chaos and fading color.
Trickstarr staggered back, sparks and blood flickering from his chest. He looked down at his cracked torso, then back up at Ren, half-wheezing, half-laughing.
"Well… good jo—"
WHAM—!
Ren's fist nearly took his head off.
Trickstarr barely raised a hand in time, summoning a fan of spinning cards to deflect the blow. His expression warped from smug to desperate as Ren kept swinging—fist after fist, strike after strike, forcing Trickstarr into a backpedal. Cards spun up to shield him, slashing the air with shimmering edges, but Ren tore through them like they were paper.
Trickstarr snarled and snapped a card from his sleeve—Jack of Diamonds.
He hurled it.
FOOM—!!
The card exploded into a spiral of flame-laced slashes, curving like serpents toward Ren. The fire hissed through the air, slicing the battlefield in molten crescents.
But Ren blurred—gone.
He reappeared to the left, slamming his foot into the side of Trickstarr's ribs, sending the jester spinning across the ground.
Andre's voice echoed in Ren's head, steady and rough like gravel beneath bootheels:
"You let that essence build up too long, kid, and boom—you got yourself somethin' called a Critical Hit. Can't force it. It's luck, it's timing, it's will. But when it hits? One strike's all it takes. End of the damn story."
Ren closed the distance again.
He remembered them all.
The people of Tokyo who had turned into monsters.
The grieving mother, weeping over nothing.
Kaito's eyes in that final moment.
The look Celia gave him—right before she vanished forever.
All the lives cut short.
All the deaths wrapped in Trickstarr's grin.
This—
This was for all of them.
"Shit. He's going to land it."
In Trickstarr's mind—he felt it. That chill, animal sense.
That spike of inevitability.
"I can't let that happen—"
Desperation snapped into motion.
Trickstarr hurled the Ace of Spades—a monstrous black card the size of a tower, spinning like a guillotine shield, bristling with jagged edges.
Ren struck it full-force—
CRACK—!
The Ace shattered.
A thunderclap of black shards and light rained around him, dissolving in air like dust through fingers.
"NO—!!" Trickstarr shrieked, panic seizing his every movement.
The Ace of Clubs flashed next—
A wave of pure void-cold exploded outward.
Ice swallowed the space between them in a breath, freezing Ren mid-charge.
His limbs locked. His breath crystallized.
His vision tunneled—q
And then—
He vanished.
A pop of movement—Ren reappeared behind Trickstarr in a pulse of light, frost still burning down one arm, but his right fist already pulled back, trembling, glowing with essence.
His eyes—wide with grief. Blazing with fury.
A hurricane held inside one broken boy.
"This is for everyone."
The blow came forward.
A final strike.
A Critical Hit.
For one perfect heartbeat—it was over.
Hope surged like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
The monster would fall. The nightmare would end.
But—
SSSHHHK—!
A red flash across the air—too fast to see.
The Ace of Diamonds.
A razor-sharp card, gleaming red and cruel, slashed through Ren's extended arm—his striking arm—just before it landed.
His right hand exploded in pain, blood spattering in a wide arc as the fist veered off-course. His scream tore the air.
"AAAAAGH—!!"
The blow missed.
His knees hit the ground.
The essence scattered into the air like embers snuffed too soon.
Trickstarr stumbled back, pale and panting—but alive.
The Ace of Diamonds floated back to his hand, edges stained with Ren's blood.
He grinned.
"Almost," Trickstarr breathed, his voice trembling with residual shock—but delight quickly returned to his face.
He lifted a hand, pinching his fingers close together, grinning through teeth stained red from essence backlash.
"You were this close to landing that Critical Hit."
He paused for dramatic flair—then shrugged, voice soft with faux regret.
"Alas."
Ren's breath was ragged.
He was still on one knee, blood trickling steadily from the mangled stump of his right hand. The air shimmered faintly around him as he instinctively tried to weave essence into his body—to numb the pain, to not pass out. His vision pulsed in and out, but he held on.
Trickstarr paced now, casually twirling the Ace of Diamonds between his fingers like a magician rehearsing his next trick.
"Still," he mused, eyes flicking back to Ren, "credit where credit's due."
He pointed at Ren, almost reverently.
"Your essence reserves are off the charts. Far beyond any of the other experiments." His voice lowered with an edge. "Subject #0197. You are the best one yet."
Ren froze.
"Subject 0197…"
A memory flashed—
The smell of antiseptic. Blinding lights.
A masked doctor leaning over him on the operating table—his chest open, heart exposed.
A voice muffled behind a surgical mask:
"Subject 0197's vitals are stable. Proceed with integration."
"Let's hope this one survives longer than the last."
Ren's eyes widened—his scream choked on disbelief and agony.
"Wh—what…?"
His head throbbed. This can't be real.
Trickstarr chuckled, hands clasped now like he was finishing the last act of a stage play.
"Theres a lot to this story isn't it? Ren Kurose" he cooed.
Ren clutched at his chest as if trying to stop it from beating.
He felt bile rise—essence and grief churning in his stomach like poison.
But he grit his teeth, forced himself to breathe.
Through the haze, he gathered his will.
The essence began to pulse down his arm, weaving faintly into the shattered nerves, sealing off the worst of the wound with raw force.
He stood.
Shaking. Broken. But upright.
"…I don't care," he rasped. "You're still not winning."
Trickstarr smiled wider.
"Oh, but we're not done."
He lifted a final card between two fingers—its back black and gold, embossed with the laughing face of a jester.
The Joker.
"I've saved the best trick for last."
Without hesitation, Trickstarr plunged the card into his own chest.
The world screamed.
A surge of essence erupted from Trickstarr's body, and then—
He began to change.
His skin got covered—card by card—layers of shifting suits.
Diamonds cracked like porcelain, Spades stretched like sinew, Hearts throbbed like pulsing red tumors. His limbs elongated, joints bending backward as his grin split impossibly wide—eyes swirling into an unreadable mess of numbers and laughing masks.
Each finger became a fan of cards—razor-sharp and twitching.
A black and red cloak of joker faces flowed down his back like writhing tentacles. His head tilted unnaturally, mouth smiling across the entire lower half of his face, teeth made of flickering Ace cards.
A walking, giggling amalgam of madness.
Like a theater's curtain made flesh.
Like death trying to tell a joke it doesn't understand.
Ren's jaw clenched.
Even as pain burned through his nerves, even as the world twisted—he stared forward.
"That's… not even a monster," he whispered.
"That's something else."
Trickstarr's new voice echoed with layers, each tone slightly off from the last:
"Let's bring down the house, shall we?"
Ren braced. Readied himself for the oncoming attack.
But he wasn't ready.
In an instant—Trickstarr vanished.
FLASH—!
Ren barely twitched before a massive hand materialized in front of his face—larger than before, warped with twitching jester masks, fingers sharp like card edges, grinning with each knuckle.
"Smile for the audience," Trickstarr purred, and then—
BOOM—!
He leapt.
The impact was instantaneous—Ren's skull was driven backward with such speed that the entire realm warped, Trickstarr's hand slamming his head through the air and directly into a towering skyscraper of cards in the distance.
CRRRKK—KKA—THOOM!!!
The tower shattered on impact. Ren's body punched straight through the steel-like core of it, splinters of burning cards and essence-fused debris exploding outward in every direction.
Before the dust could settle—Trickstarr didn't stop.
He was already airborne, still holding Ren's head like a doll, his grotesque new form twisting mid-leap as he carried Ren like a missile.
BOOM—!
He dove into the next structure—this one shaped like a floating casino palace, dozens of stories high, with glowing slot reels and roulette wheels.
They crashed through it.
Floor by floor.
Ceiling to basement.