While Enishi was mid-conversation with Inazuma, a sharp sound sliced through the quiet, metal scraping against wood, followed by a muffled scream.
It came from his mother's room.
He froze on the cold floor, heart pounding, unable to move. More muffles came. Then whispers. Then full-blown screams.
"Well, what do we have here…"
A voice. Coming from the window.
Enishi slowly turned his head, and froze in horror. Raya's head lay severed from her body, resting gently on the bed as if she were still asleep. A tall man in a black suit sat on the windowsill, one hand drenched in blood, the other tugging casually at his slick tie.
Neither of them spoke.
Enishi just stared at Raya's body, replaying every harsh word, every missed apology, every "I love you" he'd never get to say again.
"Inazuma…" he muttered, his gaze locking onto the man. His eyes burned with something beyond fury, something devilish. Nothing more. Nothing less.
"Enishi," Inazuma warned, his voice like thunder behind the clouds. "I'm telling you, you will suffer for this."
Enishi gritted his teeth, fists clenching so tight his nails pierced his palms.
"I couldn't care less anymore." He exhaled, rage shaking his body. "Inazuma, Discharge."
His right eye ignited, blazing electric blue, while is left stayed dark blue
"Oh? So that's where Taiyou went…" the man chuckled, stepping over Raya's corpse like it was nothing. "Oh, my love… Why did you run from me?"
They stood there, locked in silence, predator and prey, until Enishi heard it.
"Don't hurt my son."
The voice came from the next room. His mother's voice.
He trembled, holding back tears as realization hit. There wasn't just one of them. There were more. He could barely fight one, and that man had decapitated Raya without even using a weapon.
As panic took root, Inaz in uma's voice cut through his mind like lightning.
"Fight, Enishi! Are you going to let them take everything from you with no consequence? Your love, dead. Your birth mother, dead. Both slaughtered in your own home. Fight, if not for yourself, then for their vengeance!"
The words lit a fire under him.
He was ready to strike, but the man vanished. Gone.
Before Enishi could react, the figure reappeared right in front of him. His presence alone froze Enishi in place, towering, monstrous, eyes like endless voids.
"Oh?" the man sneered. "No more Taiyou, I see. So… what's your name now?"
He kicked Enishi through the wall, no, through three walls, until Enishi crashed into his mother's room.
Groaning, Enishi pulled himself from the rubble. Then he saw it, what was left of his mother. Pieces of her scattered across the floor.
And there, sitting in the wreckage, was a grown man in tattered clothes, eyes glowing blood-red with a minus-sign iris, chewing on her skull. Her eyes still open.
Something in Enishi snapped.
Lightning exploded through every vein, every nerve, every inch of his body. His rage became a living storm.
He didn't think. He didn't breathe. He moved.
He shot forward, faster than light, frying the muscles in his legs as he punched. Not with strength. Not with anger. But with everything he was.
A single hit, and the tattered man's head burst apart, electricity crackling through the air. But Enishi's arm tore itself apart in the process, flesh burned, muscles shredded.
Then, the man in the suit stepped through the hole, backlit by the moon.
Enishi turned, eyes glowing like lightning incarnate, hatred burning through the pain.
The man barely moved. With a single kick, he sent Enishi crashing through the roof, launching him into the night sky.
For a moment, Enishi just… floated there. The world slowed. The full moon hung above him, glowing pure white, calm and cold.
"Am… am I okay with dying like this?" he whispered to himself, his body weightless beneath the light.
Then, before he could even finish the thought, the man appeared again. Right there in midair, grinning. His hand came down like a hammer, sending Enishi plummeting back to the ground.
He hit the house dead-center, the impact leveling everything,walls, floor, memories, all gone in a storm of dust and fire.
Enishi lay in the ruins, body shattered, unable to move anything but his head. Not to look at his mother. Not his lover.
Just to look, one last time… at the moon.
That beautiful, perfect, full-lit moon.
"No… I can't die. Not now. Not like this," he whispered, voice cracking. "Inazuma… please…"
But this time, nothing.
Silence.
As if the ring had never spoken at all.
"Fine," Enishi muttered, breath shaky. "Don't answer me. Guess I don't need you to tap into your power, right?"
With every ounce of human will he had left, he pushed himself to stand. His body trembled. His legs felt like shattered glass beneath him.
He coughed up blood, and then started laughing.
Not out of joy. Not out of madness.
Just pure, unfiltered defiance.
The man landed gracefully nearby, watching Enishi barely stay upright, beaten, muscle tissues shattered, yet still laughing like he'd already won.
A smirk crept across the man's face. Then, unexpectedly, he started laughing too.
"I'll admit," the man said between breaths, "you're way more fun to hunt than the old man. Truly. Thank you, boy."
He paused, wiping blood from his tie. "May I ask for your name?"
Enishi lifted his head, meeting the man's gaze one last time. His eyes glowed like lightning in human form.
"My name?" He cracked a faint smile. "Enishi."
He pulled his hands back, his body igniting with electricity so fierce it rippled through the air, expanding outward in a three-meter radius. The ground trembled.
"ENISHI HOSHINORI!"
The man's grin widened. "Well then, Enishi…"
He cracked his neck and dropped into a stance.
"Let's dance."
They charged.
Enishi was first. A sideways kick sliced through the air, textbook and fast, but the man dodged it, but the second leg came in at the speed of light connecting hard with his jaw. He stumbled back.
When he steadied, Enishi was gone. The man scanned left, right, then blinked. Enishi's boots slammed into his skull from above, sending a hollow crack through the night.
The man didn't fall. He grabbed Enishi's legs, flipped him, and followed with a kick to the back that planted Enishi face-first in the dirt.
"Come on, Hoshinori, you can do better," the man taunted, blood leaking from his nose.
Enishi dragged his head up, grit and dirt in his mouth. He wiped the blood at his lip and then vomited, spitting up fresh iron taste onto the ground.
"Enishi, stop, you're gonna kill us," Inazuma warned, panicked and sharp.
"Shut up!" Enishi barked, voice ragged. "You told me to avenge them,so that's what I'm doing."
A sly, smooth voice from the man cut in, "Is Inazuma giving you trouble? Don't worry, I'll take him off your—"
Enishi threw a kick into the man's face mid-sentence. "Shut up, creep!" he screamed.
They clashed again, speed against precision, lightning against a grin, each strike leaving the air buzzing with static and the taste of blood.
Punches flew. Kicks sliced the air. Metal and bone sang a brutal rhythm.
Enishi was bleeding out both his eyes, every strike cost him. The electricity that had been his lifeline tasted like static and iron; each breath pulled another spark from him. The man across from him wore that same cruel grin, like he'd been built to fight forever.
Enishi's light dimmed. He'd reached the edge. A slash tore his chest open and sent him skidding through what was left of the house. Debris showered him, but he pushed up. One more hit, he thought. One more and maybe—
Would it matter? Were any of his hits worth the blood? Those were the questions he'd been avoiding since the fight started, the questions he'd shoved down when he first locked eyes with that grin.
"Come on, Hoshinori, keep dancing!" the man taunted, voice oily with amusement.
Rage coiled in Enishi like a living thing. His vision narrowed to a slit; his world was the man's chest. Enishi blue eyes burned brighter both his irises changing star like, each one a bright little flare. Then the air around him split.
Invisible blades, wind that carried shards of his own sanity, sliced through the man. Hundreds. Thousands. The guy barely blinked. He walked through it like rain.
"Seriously?" he sighed, stepping closer through the storm. "All that noise and this is what you bring? I'm disappointed, Hoshinori. Maybe in another life we could be real dance partners."
He reached to end it. Enishi readied for the impact. The last of his strength pooled into his limbs. He saw the hole where his home had been, the moon punching a hole in the sky. He thought of Raya. Of his mother. The weight of everything sharpened into one terrible point of clarity.
He stood.
"THIS LIGHTNING THAT KILLS ME" Enishi roared, voice splitting the night, "IS THE SAME ONE THAT KILLS YOU TOO"
He moved like a comet. The strike was light-speed and holy-violent, a line of blue-white fury aimed straight at the man's heart.
The man didn't fall. But before his blow landed, another figure tore through the wreckage, metal screaming, snapping up pieces of the ruined house and folding them into a jagged cage around the suited man. The stranger's hands were like wrecking crews; he scooped Enishi up, bolted, and vanished through the smoke.
The suited man heaved and smashed through the makeshift prison, metal shrieking. He lunged and grabbed the stranger mid-escape. Enishi's world tilted. Pain convulsed through him, the same violent seizure that had nearly killed him in the hospital, his body spasmed, electricity going wild and uncontrolled.
"Ahh kurogane" the suited man said
The rescuer dropped him, eyes frantic. Enishi's consciousness spilled out like light bleeding through glass. He slid from wakefulness into that black place again, lungs rattling, heartbeat a dying drum.
Inazuma stood in the black realm while Enishi lay broken, eyes fixed on the void above. From the shadows came the distant sounds of his rescuer and the suited man still tearing the night apart, metal screeching, a grunt, the hollow thud of impact.
"Well, I warned you, kid," Inazuma said, dropping down beside him. Enishi could barely turn his head to watch the lightning figure of a man
"This why I never wanted to help, either way there was no escaping the suffering you'd have to endure"
"Not even close," Enishi rasped, every breath a blade. "I didn't suffer one bit. But I swear it, on Raya's grave, on my mother's, I will never stop. I will not rest until I kill that man."
"How do you think you'll achieve that?" Inazuma asked
"Easy, I'll just never stop thinking I can't" Enishi replied with a smile showing his bloodied teeth
Inazuma laughed, a long, rolling sound that echoed like distant thunder. Enishi, hearing the metal and the clash of battle, felt something break inside him and laughed too: a raw, ugly sound that tasted of iron and grief.
They laughed together, two broken things sharing one hysteric moment, until, suddenly, the outer world snapped shut.
Sound cut off like a hand closing over a bell.
Silence swallowed everything.
Then suddenly the outside world was silent.