William lay on the cave floor, surrounded by walls that didn't just shimmer; they breathed. The blue light oscillated against the jagged quartz, casting rhythmic, spectral shadows across the trio. Kaito's breath came in ragged, frosty hitches as he leaned heavily against the stone.
"We have to go deeper," Kaito rasped, his voice barely audible over the rising, crystalline hum of the cavern. "Just in case they find us."
"AHHHHH!"
The scream tore through the silence, raw and rugged. William's eyes snapped open, but the pupils were gone, replaced by twin suns of emerald fire.
"The beast core... it's erupting!" William choked out, his body curling into a tight knot of agony. "Too much energy... Kenji... you have to destroy it! Stab me... in the heart!"
The cave hummed in sympathy. The blue crystals began to groan, their molecular structure warping under the pressure of William's surging Hybrid Heart. They stretched and sharpened, morphing into needle-thin rods that pointed hungrily toward his chest.
"The cave is drawing the mana in," Kaito shouted, shielding his eyes from the glare. "It's amplifying the core!"
Kenji looked at his friend, and for the first time in years, the "Zero" felt Despair.
He had no sword and no power, only the choice to kill his brother or watch him atomize. Acting on instinct, he reached out and snapped a crystalline rod from the wall. It was freezing to the touch, biting into his palm.
He didn't hesitate. With a guttural roar, he plunged the crystal into William's chest.
CRACK
The sound of shattering glass echoed through the chamber. The rod in Kenji's hand didn't break; it transformed. It drank the emerald eruption, the blue mineral bleeding into a dark, visceral red as it absorbed the essence of the beast core. The glow faded. The pressure vanished. Kenji dragged the shard out, his hands trembling.
"William?" Kenji's face was a mask of distraught relief. "Are you... alive?"
"Surprisingly," William wheezed, clutching his chest. A faint, red crystalline scar sat where the rod had entered. "I think I'm ready to retire from this life."
A hollow, relieved chuckle broke out between them, the kind of laugh shared only by those who have cheated the grave.
"What happened to the crystal? Why is it red?" William asked, staring at the humming shard.
"You're worried about the rock?" Kaito snapped, his frustration boiling over. "You were a second away from becoming a crater!"
"It healed me," William whispered, touching the scar. "But it wasn't the Overclock. It didn't hurt. I feel... like my power is back." He looked at the rod in awe. "Let me see it."
Kenji tossed the shard.
"AHHH!" William recoiled as the crystal glowed slightly. "It burned me! What the hell?"
Kaito reached down, but the moment his fingers grazed the red stone, a brilliant flare of light scorched his skin. "That's crazy," he hissed, nursing his hand. "It feels like a furnace."
Kenji stepped forward. "Kenji, don't touch it!" they both yelled.
Kenji ignored them, closing his fingers around the base of the mineral. He flipped it once, catching it with practiced ease. "What are you two idiots talking about? It's just a rock."
"A rock that reacts to mana," William muttered, dumbfounded. "Since you have none... it has nothing to fight against."
"A win for the Zero," Kaito laughed. "But wait, before we go, let me try something with G-Shift."
Kaito placed his hands over the shard. Under the crushing weight of a localized gravity field, the crystal groaned and flattened. The molecules fused, becoming denser and sharper until the rod was gone. In its place lay a sleek, lethal blade of dark-red glass.
"And now you have a blade," Kaito said, bowing his head with a tired smile.
"Let's go test it out," William said, his fist outstretched.
Kenji stepped to the cave entrance.
He smiled.
A new light shimmering in his eyes. As they descended toward the base of the mountain, the newly formed sword began to pulse with an angry, crimson heat.
"It's reacting to the mana in the air?" Kenji realized. "The stronger the source, the hotter it gets..."
The thought was cut short as a pack of Frost-Gaunts emerged from the white-out, their long, spindly limbs clicking against the ice.
"WE'RE READY, BITCHES!" Kaito yelled.
Kenji charged first, a blur of motion as he dodged the sweeping hand of the lead monster.
SLASH.
The red blade hissed as it passed through the Gaunt's limb. It didn't just cut; the heat of the mana-reaction melted the ice-flesh like a hot wire through wax.
"Like butter," Kenji smirked.
Above him, Kaito flipped the axis of gravity, shooting himself toward the enemy. He touched a monster and, with a sudden increase in mass, slammed it into the earth with the force of a falling star. BOOM.
William charged next, cocking his fist back for a killing blow.
THUD.
The impact was soft. No explosion. No Overclock shockwave.
"Where's my power?"
The Frost-Gaunt didn't wait. Its claw swept out, severing William's arm at the elbow.
"William!" his friends screamed. Kenji spun, his blade a red streak as he finished off the beast that had attacked.
When they looked back, a sickening sound of knitting flesh and snapping bone filled the air, squelch, crack, pop. In three seconds, a new arm had sprouted, perfect replica and unscarred. Kenji, clinical and curious, flicked his sword and lopped the new hand off again.
"DUDE!" William yelled.
Again, the muscles braided themselves together like living silk.
"Am I the only one confused?" Kaito muttered his eyebrows raised.
"It's my old power," William said, looking down. Around his feet, despite the sub-zero wind, tiny, pale flowers were sprouting from the permafrost. "But it's... cranked up to the max. I'm... I'm an earth healer again." his eyes filled with joy
They gave him a hand up off the snow.
"It's time to go" Kenji said, looking toward the peak. "I think I know a way to kill the Adjons."