Chapter Title: The Clock,The Gourd, The Blood Moon.
The field lay still.
Dust clung to the air in slow motion, suspended in amber light. Sir Varion stood upright, planted between the scorched earth and fractured sky, facing Huey and Julius without moving an inch. His broad cloak fluttered faintly behind him, a long ripple of shadow edged in silver from the setting sun.
He didn't lift his eyes. Instead, he tilted his head down toward the ashen ground and spoke with deliberate calm.
"Andrei," he said, voice low but resonant. "Can you move?"
Behind him, near a mound of rubble, Andrei exhaled shakily and coughed. He was on one knee, a deep gash trailing from his shoulder, his hand pressed tight against the unmoving chest of Mujin.
"Yes," Andrei muttered. "Zichen and Mujin—they're out cold."
Varion closed his eyes for a half-second.
"Then stay with them," he said. "Keep them breathing. That's your fight now, that's your mission."
Andrei didn't hesitate, but then gave a tight nod. "Understood."
Without another word, Varion began walking forward. Each step was deliberate, boots crunching debris and cinders underfoot. Wind swept across the ruins, tugging at his cloak with rising urgency. As the wind surged, his right hand lifted slightly, the fabric of his sleeve snapping back to reveal his forearm bare, pale, and marked with faint inked spirals.
The hand moved in rhythm with his steps—forward, back, forward again—like a pendulum set to a warrior's tempo.
He muttered the words under his breath.
"Lining Release: Hapkido."
With a crackle like chalk grinding on stone, pale spiraling lines surged around his arm. They danced from fingertip to elbow, looping in perfect, ever-shifting geometry, creating a vortex of glowing chalklines that twisted tighter and tighter as he moved forward.
Huey narrowed his eyes. Julius cocked his head, a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Still, Varion advanced. Wind coiled around him, cloak lifted like the wing of some dark, waiting hawk.
The battle wasn't yet resumed—but the shape of it was already forming in the air.
At the northern gate sector, The wind still carried ash when Ravenfeather landed.
His boots touched down in a soft, fluid motion—no thud, no tremor. Just presence.
Wei, who had been panting and half-slouched against a cracked pillar, jumped sideways like he'd seen a spirit crawl out of a mirror. "What the—! Chiro, who is that?"
The figure beside them looked wholly out of place. Draped in loose black robes with ink-feathered fringes, Ravenfeather's appearance felt more ceremonial than martial. His face was obscured behind a spiraling lacquered ink drawings, segmented and sharp like a bone whistle. On his back: a thin gourd secured by braided red cords that pulsed faintly with internal light and a leather of coat around him.
Before Chiro could answer, Vincent rolled his eyes so hard his head tilted with it. "Gods above, Wei—you're dumb. It's reinforcements, obviously. Shaman Hunters. From Suha. You know this are the people Suha sends when we almost die?"
Wei blinked, then blinked again, squinting at the figure. "He looks like he just walked out of a funeral for dragons."
Behind them, the ground began to groan.
The first of the Red Ice Walkers had risen fully now—more than a dozen, maybe more. Their skeletal frames were thin but lined with glowing red sinew that hissed vapor. Ice shards clung to their ribs like armor, and their eyes were empty sockets radiating cold crimson light. One by one, they marched forward in unison, their movements eerily mechanical.
SFX: THRUUUUM. KSHHT. THRUUUUM.
The sound they made wasn't a roar or scream—it was pressure and pulse, like something ancient cracking through stone and bone.
Ravenfeather remained still, mask turning slightly as his gaze scanned Wei, Vincent, and Chiro.
He spoke for the first time, voice layered with quiet echo, like someone speaking through a dream.
"You'll want to shift backwards. Now."
All three of them moved without hesitation.
Ravenfeather lifted his hand—slender, ungloved fingers—and reached to his waist. His palm rested on the gourd. A click, then a twist. The cap loosened.
He whispered to the bottle.
"Spirit Manifestation: Red Snake Dragon."
The gourd pulsed once, then unleashed.
The gourd pulsed once, then unleashed.
From its mouth, crimson energy poured out in a smooth coil, luminous and fluid like silk in a storm. It twisted in mid-air, a slow spiral at first—then the shape began to shift. The energy condensed, sharpened, and lengthened, forming scales from vapor, fangs from flame, and eyes from molten quartz.
It roared.
SFX: KRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH—
The Red Snake Dragon sprang forward, its translucent body flashing across the air like a whip of fire. The ground beneath it cracked from the pressure. The moment its jaw opened, it didn't bite—it devoured. The front line of Red Ice Walkers were swallowed whole in a blink, disintegrating into frozen mist and flickers of pale bone as the dragon whipped through them.
Wei dropped to his knees instinctively, shielding his face from the spiraling heat.
More Walkers marched toward it. The dragon didn't slow. Its entire form surged forward like a snake striking prey: smooth, merciless, and blindingly fast.
SFX: WHSHHHHHT—BOOOOM—SHRRRRAAAKKK
Ten, twenty, thirty—gone in seconds. The dragon twisted through them in wide, predatory loops, turning the air to a scorched red blur as it carved through every last one. It didn't leave corpses. Only silence, and shards of steam where flesh and bone had stood.
Then, slowly, it turned.
The Red Snake Dragon's jaw closed. Its body hovered in the air for a heartbeat, then reversed course, slithering backward, back toward the gourd. As it reentered the bottle, the energy dimmed, curling smaller and smaller until only a final flicker of its eye could be seen before the cap clicked shut.
Chiro stared at the spot where the battlefield had been. Her mouth parted, eyes wide with the kind of awe that doesn't wear off quickly.
"We've been—" she began, then stopped. She turned to Vincent, gesturing weakly at the now-empty plain. "We've been struggling here. Bleeding. Dying. And he—he just—"
Vincent wiped soot from his forehead, watching Ravenfeather calmly twist the gourd closed and reclip it to his waist.
"—gets the job done in one motion," Chiro finished, barely believing the words.
Vincent exhaled. "I suddenly feel very underqualified."
Back at the Southern Gate
The storm from Twin Cherubim had finally begun to die down.
Ashes danced in the wind, floating gently around the crater left in the aftermath of Sakamoto's attack.
Silas was… no longer a man.
Where his body once stood was now a pool of blood—a dark, swirling mass of liquid flesh. Only a single eye of his floated above it, along with a mouth full of jagged teeth, still twitching, still breathing.
It was grotesque.
Sakamoto's sword vanished back into his shadow as he stepped forward cautiously, surveying the remains. He glanced at Asger beside him, who was panting, injured but alert.
"…Can you heal him?" he asked. "With your tissue bending?" ( Sakamoto was Referring to Madagascar )
Asger gritted her teeth. "I can try," she said hesitantly. "But…"
Her eyes locked on the crimson light of the Blood Moon, which had begun to melt like wax, dripping slowly into the pool where Silas remained.
"Destroy that," she said. "It's feeding his seizure. If we don't sever the connection—his soul may never stabilize and I do not trust that at all"
Sakamoto turned his head slowly.
"Got it."
The scene grew eerily silent as he stepped toward the falling Blood Moon, glowing liquid hissing as it touched the icy soil.
The final shot, Sakamoto standing beneath a bleeding sky, preparing to sever the last thread of Silas Moraku's monstrous resurrection.