The wind died.
In the shadow-choked heart of a crumbling cityscape, everything fell still. Dust hung in the air like ash from a silent explosion. Not even the birds dared to flee. And then—
The earth shuddered.
Windows cracked. Pavement fractured. Distant buildings trembled like prey sensing a predator's breath. Above them, fifteen feet in the air, Gyo floated—The Sovereign of Ruin, his mere presence warping the atmosphere into something suffocating. The gravity itself seemed to weep beneath him, kneeling to his will. The sky behind him was bruised and bleeding with stormclouds.
His voice broke the silence like a guillotine.
Gyo:
"I heard the little exorcists were hunting me. Hoping to drag me back into a cage… Tell me—do you think you can contain the inevitable? Do you believe you can chain the extinction of weakness?"
His eyes were voids—cold metallic gray, merciless and ancient, staring down at them like a god judging insects.
Hikari didn't flinch. But even her shadow trembled.
Hikari:
"What the hell are you rambling about? You're just another monster pretending to be more than a statistic. I've faced nightmares that twist reality. You? You're just… loud."
With a snap of both hands, a telekinetic blast launched from her palms, hurling Gyo through the air and into a building with the sound of a detonated thunderclap. The structure groaned, then collapsed partially, coughing up concrete and smoke.
She didn't watch him fall.
She turned toward Lila with urgency carved into her expression.
Hikari:
"You handle the cyber-freak. Gyo's mine."
Lila hesitated, caught between admiration and raw fear.
Lila:
"Are you sure? This is the same person that tore through a military base like it was made of paper. He's not like the others, Hikari. He isn't possessed. He is the storm."
Hikari stepped forward, placing her hands on Lila's shoulders, grounding her.
Hikari:
"I've survived everything this world has thrown at me. I will survive him. I'm going to prove to Nami… that mercy isn't weakness. That you can stop a monster without becoming one."
Lila's expression tightened—conflicted, mournful.
She looked at Hikari not like a comrade, but like someone witnessing a candle throw itself into a hurricane.
Lila:
"Hikari…"
Before she could say more, something blinked across their vision.
A blur. A shadow. A hum of energy crackled in the air like static tension begging to release.
Then it came.
The creature.
It struck the ground like a ghost of war—average height, but anything but human. 5'9" of lethal precision. Its slender, agile frame was wrapped in matte-black reactive armor that shimmered faintly, shifting with every motion. Augmented limbs pulsed with mechanical sinew, and glowing circuits shimmered beneath the exposed sections like scars of lost humanity.
Its face—what remained—was pale, eerily flawless, threaded with faint silver lines. Its eyes glowed an unnatural neon blue, flickering with adaptive rage as it scanned for threats like a machine woken from a long slumber.
It moved.
Not fast.
Instantly.
Before Hikari could fully turn, it was already lunging.
But Lila reacted.
Her eyes flashed.
A violent ripple of telekinetic energy gripped the creature mid-charge, hurling it like a missile into a nearby building. The impact left a crater of ruptured steel and shattered glass.
Lila's fists trembled, but her voice didn't.
Lila:
"Just… be careful."
She dashed forward without looking back, following the cybernetic specter into the dust cloud, her silhouette disappearing into ruin.
Then—quiet.
Too quiet.
Hikari stood alone in the stillness, staring toward the rubble where Gyo had vanished.
And from beneath the ruins… he rose.
Not limping. Not bleeding.
Laughing.
Stone slid off his back like raindrops.
His eyes—piercing, ancient, predatory—met hers across the broken city.
No words now.
Only the howl of wind returning.
[CUT TO:]
The pavement cracked beneath her feet as Hikari launched forward, Psionic energy spiraling around her fists—shaping into translucent, violet boxing gloves that shimmered like wrath made solid.
She didn't hesitate.
Her right hook tore through the air like a cannonball—CRACK!—the impact echoed like a war drum. Gyo's body hurled skyward, a streak of black and silver tearing into the clouds as if gravity itself had been severed.
But Hikari was already airborne, riding a surge of telekinetic force. She soared after him—hair lashing in the wind, eyes burning with purpose. In a blur of momentum and motion, she twisted her body midair and unleashed a spinning kick—BOOM! The strike connected with his ribcage, launching him higher into the atmosphere like a meteor rising in reverse.
But the storm does not fall without striking back.
Gyo's body stilled for a half-second midflight—then coiled with unnatural grace. His eyes snapped open, steel-gray and merciless. He twisted, then lashed out with a single jab—blinding in speed, brutal in execution. It collided with Hikari's chest like a sledgehammer dipped in thunder.
She spiraled backwards through the air, coughing, pain blooming through her ribs like a shockwave trapped in bone.
But she didn't fall.
No—she refused.
Hikari clenched her fists, and invisible hands gripped the air around her, yanking her body to a hard stop. Blood ran from her nose. Her breathing was ragged. But her glare? It could shatter mountains.
She raised both hands to the sky—and the air screamed.
Three hundred shards of pure Psionic energy erupted around her like a blooming halo—jagged, crystalline, deadly. They hovered for a breathless moment, humming with force, glinting like fragments of her will sharpened into weapons.
Then—she fired.
The shards tore through the sky in a barrage of violet light—an avalanche of fury, each one a promise of obliteration.
Gyo didn't flinch.
He simply pulled his arm back—and punched the very air in front of him.
BOOM.
A concussive wave exploded outward, the sheer force compressing the atmosphere into a visible wall of destruction. It met the Psionic storm—and shattered it.
Shards exploded into harmless particles, disintegrating in the wake of his dominance. The sky trembled, the clouds peeled away, and the world was forced to remember.
Hikari:
"You think you're so strong? Let's see how strong you are when you're locked in a cell for the rest of your life—again."
Gyo smiled, not with amusement, but with something closer to reverence.
Gyo:
"My child… you fascinate me. You really think this ends with me behind bars?"
His tone darkened, voice like a sermon carved in granite.
"No. This ends with one of us dead."
Before the last word had even finished leaving his lips, Gyo vanished—
—and then BOOM.
A titanic fist collided with Hikari's face midair. The blow ruptured the sky, birthing a shockwave that cracked the atmosphere. Her body blurred into a streak of violet and flame, plummeting toward the earth at Mach 3.
BOOOOOOOOOMMMM
The ground buckled. A miniature crater erupted where she landed, kicking up dirt and fractured concrete in a dusty ring of destruction. Hikari staggered to her feet, one hand clutching her face, blood trickling between her fingers.
Hikari:
"Damn… he hits hard as shit."
Before she could even steady her stance—
THUD.
Gyo landed in front of her like a divine executioner.
Gyo:
"Do you really think you stand a chance against me?" His eyes were cold, hollow with certainty.
"You're not the first to believe that lie… and you won't be the last to choke on it."
Hikari:
"So help me God… you're going back to prison."
Gyo gave a quiet chuckle—no malice, no joy. Just inevitability.
Gyo:
"So be it."
He blurred forward—lightning in human form. One devastating uppercut exploded beneath Hikari's chin, launching her thirty-five feet into the air with a detonation that sent shockwaves roaring across the battlefield.
He followed instantly.
No hesitation. No mercy.
His hand clamped around her throat mid-ascent, and before she could react—he drove her back down like a meteor cast from heaven.
BOOOOOM
The ground didn't just shatter—it surrendered.
The collision unleashed a dome of wind and dust that swallowed the skyline. Trees bent. Cars skidded. The entire street vanished under a curtain of smoke and screaming debris.
And when the dust began to settle…
Only one silhouette stood tall.
Gyo's fingers closed around Hikari's throat like a vice forged in hell—unyielding, deliberate. His eyes, cold and ancient, bore into her like she was already a corpse.
And then—
CRACK.
A fist like a warhammer slammed into her jaw.
The world turned into a blur of motion and screaming wind as Hikari's body was launched across the skyline. She shattered through building after building—glass, steel, and concrete exploding around her like fireworks of ruin. Offices, stairwells, lobbies—all reduced to rubble in her wake. Each impact knocked the breath from her lungs, each wall was a sledgehammer to the spine.
She hadn't even hit the ground when Gyo was already there.
Mach 5.
He rocketed through the same holes she'd left in the city, a trail of superheated air spiraling behind him like a comet. Before her body could even finish tumbling midair, his hand snapped forward, seizing her by the wrist. The grip was cruelly precise—like a predator toying with broken prey.
With zero hesitation, he yanked her toward him and uppercutted her with such monstrous force that her body arced upward and crashed through the side of a skyscraper like a missile. The building trembled. Glass rained down like glittering blood. Steel groaned and twisted.
And then—
Collapse.
The skyscraper folded in on itself, toppling into a maelstrom of dust and debris. But Hikari wasn't in the rubble.
She exploded out the opposite end, barely conscious, her body skipping across the pavement like a stone over water—ripping through asphalt, tearing up entire chunks of road before she finally slid to a halt in a haze of dust and blood.
But there was no time to breathe.
No time to think.
Because Gyo was already there—again.
In the same breath, he delivered a brutal jab to her cheek. The impact didn't just knock her back—it launched her into a nearby eighteen-wheeler. The truck crumpled like paper, its metal frame folding inwards as Hikari crashed through the side and vanished in a storm of twisted steel.
She coughed, blood pooling in her mouth. Pain throbbed in every bone. But she wasn't done—not yet.
With a pained groan and sheer force of will, she pushed herself up and launched into the sky, her telekinesis flaring like violet wings behind her. The air trembled as she ascended—100 feet… 150… 200…
235 feet. Nine seconds.
And then—
He was there.
Like a ghost. Like gravity itself.
Gyo appeared above her, eyes cold and merciless.
His fist collided with her ribs.
BOOM.
The pain was immediate—white-hot, blinding. She felt something give. Maybe a rib. Maybe more. Her body ragdolled through the air, flung like garbage into the wind. Her breath fled her lungs in a scream she couldn't finish. The sky twisted around her. Her vision blurred.
And all she could hear was the wind roaring past and the sickening silence that always came right before impact.
Gyo tore through the air like a living warhead, a sonic boom trailing behind him as the atmosphere screamed in protest. The sky split around him—clouds disintegrated in his wake, the ozone trembling from his velocity. He zeroed in on Hikari like a guided missile, his arm cocked back, energy rippling off his skin like a star about to go nova.
Then—contact.
His punch detonated against her chest like a goddamn nuke.
The world bent.
Hikari's body was obliterated from Tokyo's skyline in an instant. Buildings around the point of impact crumbled from the shockwave alone—windows shattered across entire districts, car alarms screamed, and the very earth beneath them cracked like glass.
She was launched across the globe.
No control. No resistance.
Just a blur of pain and light and speed.
She skipped across the Pacific Ocean like a stone tossed by a furious titan, each bounce carving massive tsunamis that rippled outwards and swallowed cargo ships whole. Waves hundreds of feet tall consumed fishing villages and coastal cities in the chaos. The ocean churned with fury as she finally tumbled across the surface, flailing helplessly—
And Gyo was already there.
He appeared behind her in the upper stratosphere, grabbed her by the back of her neck like a ragdoll, and dragged her down again.
Then he started punching.
Once. Her nose shattered.
Twice. Her cheek split wide open.
Three times. Four. Five.
Over and over—twenty-five monstrous blows—each one creating a localized sonic explosion that vaporized the air around them. With every impact, a shockwave rippled across the globe—causing seismic readings in countries thousands of miles away. The sky around them fractured into violent rings of compressed energy, and even satellites above briefly glitched out from the interference.
Blood sprayed through the air, hanging like crimson mist in zero-gravity.
Then—he drove his fist into her gut.
Hikari didn't scream. She couldn't.
All the air in her body was violently ripped from her lungs as she was launched like a meteor—this time toward Europe.
Her broken body tore across the continent like a comet.
She slammed into Big Ben with such force that the iconic clock tower erupted on impact. Steel girders twisted, the tower's ancient bricks exploded outward in all directions, and a deafening crack signaled its complete collapse. Thousands nearby were thrown off their feet by the sheer force of the air displacement. The bells were still echoing as they plummeted into the Thames.
And then Hikari hit the ground.
Hard.
Her body smashed into the street like a collapsed satellite. The earth cratered beneath her. Roads buckled. Cars were flipped like toys. Glass from nearby buildings rained down like razors.
She lay there—limp, broken.
One arm curled over her torso, her face bloodied and nearly unrecognizable.
"F-Fuck…" she croaked. Her voice was barely more than a whisper, shredded by exhaustion and agony. "Everything… hurts… everything hurts so much…"
And just like that, the moment of silence was gone.
BOOM.
Gyo dropped from orbit like a devil unchained. He crashed into the ruins of London with the force of a meteor strike, carving a massive crater that swallowed entire blocks. Streets split open. The Underground collapsed. Shockwaves cracked the foundations of buildings miles away.
He grabbed her by the throat before she could move.
Then he flew.
At Mach 10.
He plowed her body through skyscrapers, historical monuments, and entire shopping districts—dragging her through reinforced walls, data centers, and high-rises like she was nothing but a human battering ram. The environmental damage was cataclysmic. Structures imploded around them, entire buildings tilted and collapsed in on themselves, crushing civilians beneath rubble.
Fire spread. Sirens blared.
People screamed—but not for long.
Gyo didn't just level buildings. He used Hikari to end lives—dragging her body into fleeing crowds and tearing through human bodies like they were paper. Dozens gone in seconds. Blood painted the air. Bones cracked beneath their velocity. He didn't slow down. He didn't hesitate.
By the time he stopped, London's skyline was a smoldering ruin, and the air was thick with dust, screams, and the acrid scent of burning flesh.
Hikari coughed blood. Her limbs twitched in the wreckage, her body barely holding together. "W-Wait…" she rasped, eyes blurred and swimming with pain. "Let's… talk—"
Gyo didn't let her finish.
With zero hesitation, he drove his fist into her sternum and slammed her into the ground with seismic force. The impact ruptured the earth—no, it detonated it. A crater hundreds of meters wide exploded beneath them, swallowing buildings, roads, vehicles, and dozens of fleeing civilians into a spiraling vortex of pulverized stone and dust. The air rippled with a deafening boom as the shockwave rippled outward, shattering windows miles away and flipping cars like cheap toys.
"Talk?" Gyo sneered, voice drenched in venom. "You think I'm gonna negotiate? You're the only thing standing between me and a bloodbath."
He reached down, grabbing Hikari by the back of her neck—fingers like a vice, crushing tendons and muscle. He yanked her into the air like dead weight, her body limp and twitching.
"Let's not forget," he hissed in her ear, "if you wanna keep saving innocent lives… then you better grow some goddamn balls and kill me yourself."
With a single blink, they were gone.
He took off—faster than sound.
He dragged her like a dying banner behind him as he flew to the edge of the United Kingdom. Air ignited around them as they crossed the hypersonic threshold. The clouds parted like curtains in their wake, spiraling into chaotic vortices. Entire ecosystems—forests, rivers, mountains—shuddered from their passage.
And then he stopped, hovering above the English coast. The ocean raged below them.
"This," Gyo growled, hoisting Hikari up like a trophy, her blood dripping onto the earth, "this is what happens when you show mercy."
Then he dropped her.
Not into the sea. Not into the sky.
He smashed her face-first into the ground.
And didn't stop.
Gyo drove her through the countryside like a human missile, her skull tearing trenches through entire towns. Her body raked through farmland, villages, highways—leaving nothing behind but a burning scar carved through the heart of the nation. Buildings imploded as they passed. Forests combusted. Power grids sparked and collapsed.
Then—he accelerated.
Mach 5.
Mach 8.
Mach 12.
Mach 35.
The land beneath them couldn't keep up. It fractured and screamed.
The United Kingdom began to split in half.
The impact force triggered earthquakes across Europe—entire tectonic plates shuddered. Cities collapsed into themselves. Subways became tombs. Oceans foamed and churned with tsunamis from the sheer energy being unleashed.
By the time they reached the shoreline again, half the country was a gaping wound, a molten, burning canyon that bisected the land. A scar visible from space.
And Gyo? Gyo laughed.
He stopped mid-flight, spun once—and threw Hikari across the goddamn planet.
Her body tore through the sky like a meteor sent from Hell.
The Atlantic buckled beneath her as she skipped across it—each bounce creating mile-high tsunamis that drowned everything from Iceland to the East Coast. Aircraft caught in the path were shredded instantly, disintegrated by the trail of supersonic force in her wake.
Then—impact.
West Philadelphia never stood a chance.
She crashed through it like a bomb, leveling entire districts. Apartment complexes crumbled like sandcastles. Roads erupted like volcanic veins. Infrastructure that had stood for a century was gone in seconds, vaporized by the force of her entry.
Hikari finally came to a halt somewhere in the heart of the city, embedded in a crater miles wide—rubble, fire, and screams all around her.
The air was thick with smoke and panic. Sirens were drowned out by the roar of collapsing steel. Flames lit the sky like a second sun.
And above it all…
Gyo hovered on the horizon, his silhouette backlit by the burning wreckage of two continents.
Hikari stood, bones broken like porcelain underfoot, ribs shattered inward, one eye nearly swollen shut. Blood spilled from her mouth with every breath—a gurgling symphony of failing organs and determination.
And yet she rose.
Not because she believed she could win.
But because she couldn't let herself lose.
Her voice trembled, more from rage than pain.
"You… You're going to jail. I'll prove it—mercy isn't weakness… it's strength."
Gyo tilted his head, amused. His scarred face twisted into something worse than a grin—a verdict.
"I don't need you to fight me," he said, voice like gravel grinding in a furnace. "I need you to break. Weakness is a choice, girl. And you've chosen wrong."
He moved.
Time folded.
His fist collided with her face before the air even had time to tremble, and her body launched—torn from the earth like a missile of flesh and shattered will, flying through the decaying remains of West Philadelphia like a human meteor. Buildings cracked. Glass exploded. Entire blocks groaned under the aftershock of her impact.
But she didn't fall.
She refused to fall.
Midair—blood dripping, vision fading—something inside her twitched. Like a scream in her soul. Like her nerves were snapping awake.
Her pupils dilated. Her aura flared.
Cyan. Then ultraviolet. Then something unnamable.
A pulse erupted from her chest, shattering nearby glass, warping space like heat on asphalt. Adrenaline surged—not just a chemical response, but a cosmic ignition. Her cells tore themselves apart just to keep up.
Something ancient stirred.
Something terrible.
Gyo narrowed his eyes as the air changed. It was faint, but palpable.
"…Interesting," he murmured. "You're not breaking. You're evolving."
And then—she screamed.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH—!!"
Her voice was not human. It was pressure. Momentum. She vanished into a sonic boom, tackled Gyo mid-air, slamming him through the ionosphere like she wanted to erase him from Earth. They spiraled through cloudbanks, tore through sea salt and lightning, until the entire ocean parted beneath their speed.
Mach 90.
In a blink, they were over Japan.
With a thought, she wrapped her telekinesis around his frame and hurled him downward like divine punishment. He tore through three skyscrapers before skidding to a halt in midair, grinning as smoke peeled off his body.
He launched back, fist cocked like a warhead.
But she was ready.
The ground beneath him erupted—matter bent, folded, and speared upward as a twisting psionic pillar shot toward him.
He punched it to dust.
"You fight like a girl still hoping to be saved," Gyo sneered. "But no one's coming. Just you. And me. And the truth."
He twisted, aiming a spin-kick toward her jaw.
She was gone.
She reappeared behind him—eyes cold, mouth bloodied—and pressed a palm against his back.
A telekinetic blast ignited, launching him like a ragdoll through a bullet train station. Screams echoed as the infrastructure collapsed in the distance.
But Gyo stood up. Still laughing. Still intact.
"If you let me live," he called out, voice echoing in her mind like a promise, "I'll burn another city down. Maybe two. Can you live with that, Exorcist?"
Hikari froze.
She hesitated.
Because she hadn't come here to kill.
Because somewhere inside, some stubborn ember still believed in redemption.
Gyo saw it.
And in that one, small moment—
He struck.
His fist sank into her side with surgical cruelty, rupturing her liver with a sickening pop. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her knees buckled beneath her.
"Ahhh—!"
"Mercy will only get you killed," he whispered, almost lovingly.
Then his hammer-fist came down.
She bounced off the asphalt like a broken doll. Before she could recover, he grabbed the back of her skull like a beast claiming its kill, leapt into the air—and drove her face-first through three buildings in succession, concrete exploding like confetti.
Steel twisted. Glass cascaded. The city howled in pain.
When they finally hit the ground, it wasn't a landing. It was a funeral bell.
Hikari twitched, her limbs barely responding. Blood poured from her mouth, painting the rubble below.
A haze bled into Hikari's vision—shadows trailing at the edges of her sight, sound muffled like she'd been submerged underwater. Her breath stuttered. Her thoughts scattered.
"I…"
The word spilled from her lips like a question she hadn't finished forming—halfway between confusion and awakening. But Gyo didn't care. He surged forward, all brute momentum, like a living warhead aimed to silence her.
And then—
Snap.
The air shimmered.
A pulse tore through the space around Hikari's body, violent and beautiful—cyan light exploded from her core, tendrils of psionic energy writhing outward like serpents given form. She didn't move.
She vanished.
His fist cut through empty space.
She reappeared behind him—a flicker, a whisper, a scream trapped in light. Her eyes had changed. Gone was the girl clinging to reason, to restraint. What looked back at Gyo wasn't fury. It was the calm before the cosmos split in two.
She moved again—faster. Her outline blurred into streaks of cyan as she circled him, weaving through broken gravity and tension that cracked the ground beneath her. Around her, the city trembled. Concrete groaned. Steel twisted.
She raised her hand—and the skyline answered.
The air became dense with pressure as the structures around them began to warp, unravel, obey. Buildings fractured mid-frame, their materials liquefying, reforming—spikes, lances, jagged constructs of psychically repurposed steel screaming through the air toward Gyo like divine punishment given shape.
Thunk. Thunk. THUNK.
He grunted as the constructs impaled him, embedding deep into his body—but he didn't scream. Not yet. His body buckled, but refused collapse. He tore through the spikes like a beast breaking through a cage. Blood sprayed from his wounds, yet his eyes burned brighter. A lesser being would've perished.
He was not lesser.
And neither, he was starting to realize, was she.
Hikari flew upward, trailing light like the remnants of a dying star. She hovered high above, the wind roaring beneath her. Her silhouette against the city's broken skyline resembled something neither divine nor demonic—something forgotten. Something primordial.
With a single motion, she swung her arm sideways.
And the foundation of an entire skyscraper slid clean off—as if cut not by force, but by intent. The towering monument to man's arrogance shuddered, hesitated… then collapsed in on itself.
The building fell sideways like a guillotine aimed at Gyo.
BOOM.
The impact was seismic, kicking up dust, flame, memory. Glass shattered for blocks. For a moment, nothing could be seen.
Then, through the smoke, a figure exploded from the ruin, debris peeling away like ash in a hurricane.
Gyo. Alive. Enraged. Charging.
His muscles cracked with every movement, like tectonic plates grinding against each other. His roar fractured the quiet that had just begun to settle.
But then—
The world stopped for her.
Everything. Froze.
Her heart slowed. Her body didn't. Time fractured again, but this time, it fractured around her.
Her breath hitched.
Her aura didn't flicker—it expanded. The distortion around her sharpened. Cyan light bled into ultraviolet, hues impossible to define. Her fingers trembled as she raised her hands, palms outstretched.
And then—she reached deeper.
Not into the world. But into something beneath it.
She touched the building blocks of reality. Subatomic threads danced like marionettes to the rhythm of her will. The molecules in the air vibrated faster—until friction birthed ignition. Until fire became thought.
And thought became plasma.
FWOOOOOSH!
A wall of searing psionic flame erupted around her, spiraling downward, chasing Gyo mid-flight. The very air combusted, raw psychic energy carving jagged lines across the atmosphere like lightning that refused to obey gravity.
He couldn't dodge.
The plasma hit.
Gyo was ragdolled, his body engulfed in light and sound and pain. His scream tore through the air, primal and warped, sizzling flesh turning to charred meat beneath the assault of condensed thought set ablaze.
Gyo: "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
Hikari slammed into the earth like a meteor made of pain.
The impact tore through her bones, sending shockwaves of agony through her ruined body. Her lungs barely worked. Breathing was like trying to inhale broken glass. Her ribs were shattered—no, caved in—her nose crunched against her face, blood leaking into her throat. She tasted iron. She tasted death. Her vision doubled, blurred, then swirled into a nauseating tunnel of red static.
She was a breathing corpse.
But she wasn't dead.
Neither was he.
A grotesque silhouette rose from the smoke and ash—Gyo.
He looked less like a man now, more like a walking nightmare sculpted from hatred and flame. His skin had been burned off, leaving only raw, blackened muscle and patches of bubbling tissue. One side of his face had melted, exposing jawbone and teeth in a skeletal snarl. He didn't look angry anymore. He looked primordial. Rage, distilled into flesh.
Gyo: "I told you. This ends with one of us dead."
Hikari tried to move. Her body screamed. Her brain howled.
She blinked blood out of her eyes. Her vision pulsed in and out. Her heart wanted to stop. Maybe it already had, and her body hadn't gotten the memo yet.
She felt something strange crackle inside her—
Not power.
Not adrenaline.
Something older. Colder.
Resolve.
Her hands trembled against the broken ground as she pushed herself up, spine curving like a dying animal, thoughts flickering like broken neon.
Hikari (Thoughts):
"Why is he still alive…?
I burned him. I shattered him. I gave everything. Isn't that supposed to be enough…?"
And then, from the back of her fractured mind—
Voices.
Sylvia. "You're too soft."
Nami. "Hikari, the world won't wait for your conscience."
Lila. "If you won't kill, you'll die."
They weren't wrong.
They never were.
But she hadn't wanted to believe it. Because that meant changing.
That meant crossing a line she could never uncross.
She stared at Gyo—this thing that kept standing.
Kept breathing.
Kept defying reality.
Hikari (Thoughts):
"…They were right. I wanted to believe there was another way. I wanted to believe mercy mattered. But mercy doesn't stop monsters. It just gives them time to reload."
And then something snapped.
Not a bone—this time, it was something deeper.
Her hesitation. Her guilt.
Her humanity.
She roared.
Dragged herself forward—
One broken step at a time.
Every movement lit her nerves on fire, but she moved anyway, because this was it. This wasn't justice. This wasn't revenge. This was survival.
She slammed her fist into his melted face.
It squelched.
The sound alone nearly made her puke.
He staggered.
She grabbed him by the throat, fingers digging into cooked flesh.
She lifted him—not out of strength, but desperation. Her scream echoed through the ruined air as she smashed him into the ground, the crater forming beneath them like the world itself wanted this over.
And then—
She punched.
Once.
Twice.
Over.
And over.
Her knuckles cracked—bone piercing skin.
Didn't matter.
She switched hands.
That one broke too.
Still not enough.
She leaned in.
Slammed her forehead against his.
Crack.
Again.
Crack.
Blood sprayed her eyes. His face had turned into pulp.
Unrecognizable.
Not a man. Not even a monster anymore. Just… a mass of destruction she couldn't allow to exist.
Her body finally gave up—but not before she knew.
Knew he was gone.
Not coming back.
Not this time.
She collapsed beside what was left of him. Her blood mixed with his, hot and thick and soupy like oil slicks. Her chest rose and fell in ragged gasps. Every inch of her screamed, but none louder than her mind.
Hikari (Thoughts):
"I killed him."
"…And something in me died too."
END OF ARC 3