The hordes of monsters roared like mad, gnawing at the air and filling the arena with roars and groans. The team had no choice but to stand against the black wave.
Minamoto charged first, his chains slicing and slashing through the earth like an iron spear; each strike shattering flesh and scattering stones. Korol moved with deadly coldness, his scythe mercilessly crossing the creatures' necks; no pause, no reflection, just slashing and falling.
Hairu Shin sat there beside Taiko's body, as if unable to believe what had happened to him. He did not move, his eyes blank, his hands clutching Taiko's gloves as if grasping a last thread of his memory.
Amid the commotion, Kaito walked toward Meral with steady, fearless steps. His eyes were black except for two silver pupils that shone like a window into an endless night. The six slits on his cheeks were no longer just visible lines, but tongues of night pulsating beneath the skin; new black fissures extended down his hands, as if darkness itself were burrowing its breath into his flesh.
Kaito raised his sword. It wasn't a fleeting gesture; it was a call for an earthquake. He slashed down with a sword that shattered the earth, leaving a long crack in the stone behind the blade, and debris flew around him as if blood had turned to stone. A swarm of monsters rushed at him in an instant, but in the blink of an eye, the scene transformed: scattered pieces, viscera of shadows, scattered bones as if whatever touched his sword had occupied the space and transformed it into a brief silence.
Miral stood, alarmed. Something about his movement, the speed of his vision, his thirst for revenge had become more than acceptable. She found her feet trembling; death whispering its proximity to her; an ancient obsession surfacing from the depths of memory.
Swaying between the slaps of the current, she remembered: The shrine had once stood tall, its whiteness shining like a mirror. She was a little girl then, swimming in a cold ritual, walking among boys from other tribes who were about to ascend to some shrine. With childish spontaneity, she asked her father, the owner of the shrine, "Why do they slaughter them?"
He answered in a majestic voice, "Because they are unlucky, because they carry bad luck. You you are different. You will become the owner of the shrine, you are distinct from them."
Then her memory suddenly interrupted another scene: the shrine reduced to rubble, stifled screams, a black body as darkness passing through the rubble and killing without restraint; white eyes dangling like two lifeless stars. That was the last thing she remembered before the noise of the present swallowed her up.
Her return to reality was a shock; as if the past had become a sword in the hand of the present.
In the battle, Kaito stood directly before Meral. No words, no calm; his sword pressed against everything, and her legs realized they could not move. In a brief lull, Kaito plunged his blade into her abdomen with a penetrating wound pain, blood, a legible scream but Meral immediately revolted and moved away with a strange lightness, as if life itself sustained her.
She began to stammer, her eyes blazing with anger mixed with ancient fear:
"You... are the cause of all this." "You must die... I will kill you... I will kill you!"
Her screams echoed in the stone, and the creatures around them roared as if summoned to greater rage.
This time, their swords and chains faced off in a confrontation not just physical, but hereditary; a confrontation between those shaped by the rituals of the past and those who refused to remain slaves to similar rituals.
End of chapter