Down by the shattered docks, Makarov Dreyar stood frozen. His blinding golden aura had completely snuffed out, leaving only the image of a frail, trembling old man.
His hands clenched so tightly his knuckles turned stark white, shaking with an apocalyptic rage as he stared helplessly at the dark, bruised sky where Kai had vanished.
Above the harbor, the suffocating pressure of Jose Porla's magic lingered like a stain. The Wizard Saint was breathing heavily on his high platform, his body drained, but his expression twisted in sadistic satisfaction. Kai had been hurled into the cloud cover at terminal velocity, his spine fractured, his leg crushed, and his body smashed by the full force of a Saint's summoned construct. By every law of magic and survival, the boy was dead.
High above the cloud layer, the deafening roar of the atmospheric wind was the only sound.
Kai's upward momentum finally died. Gravity reasserted its absolute authority, and his broken, battered body began to plummet back toward the earth. The wind whipped violently at his torn coat, a rush that temporarily drowned out the blinding agony radiating from his shattered spine and fractured tibia. Consciousness flickered like a dying candle in a gale.
Then, a quiet, internal spark caught.
Beneath his blood-soaked clothes, the intricate arrays of magic runes tattooed across his skin reacted automatically to the extreme pressure. They didn't erupt in a flashy explosion of light; they hummed, a subtle, ethereal blue glow flickering along his arms and torso. The runes hungrily drew in the dense, ambient ethernano still lingering in the upper atmosphere from Jose's massive summoning, channeling just enough raw magic into Kai's core to forcibly jump-start his failing nervous system.
Kai's eyes snapped open.
His vision was blurred, swimming with red veins and white static. The ground was rushing up far too fast through the gray mist.
Left leg... unuseable. Spine... severe structural trauma. Ethernano reserves... fifteen percent. His mind, stubbornly analytical even through the fog of critical brain hypoxia, calculated the parameters instantly. If I hit the deck at this speed, not even a recovery lacrima will find enough of me to heal.
"Feather Fall," Kai rasped, his voice barely a whisper against the gale.
The violent rush of wind instantly died down to a calm breeze. The gravity-altering spell arrested his terminal velocity, bringing his descent to a near-complete hover high above the cloud deck. Kai winced, a sharp, involuntary gasp escaping his teeth as the sudden deceleration sent a wave of agonizing shockwaves through his fractured vertebrae.
Breathing was difficult; two of his ribs were pressing dangerously into his left lung.
"Pixie..." Kai gasped, his breath misting in the freezing high-altitude air. "Get... Lullaby."
From the spatial pouch at his waist, the tiny, multi-legged mechanical spider scurried out. Its metal legs twitched nervously as it maneuvered onto his chest, dragging a sinister, three-eyed black wood flute bound in brass and runic wire.
"Activate the health battery array," Kai ordered quietly. "Stitch the primary structures. Ignore the pain response."
The mechanical spider's internal lacrimas whirred and clicked in response. It depressed a precise, reprogrammed sequence of keys.
Immediately, the demonic artifact began to sing.
It was not the haunting, soul-stealing dirge the Demon of Zeref was forged to play. Instead, a deeply melodious, strangely peaceful hum filled the empty sky above the clouds. Ribbons of warm, golden-green light poured from the flute's hollow eyes, wrapping around Kai's broken frame like ethereal bandages.
Suspended in mid-air by his gravity spell, Kai floated in eerie silence as the repurposed artifact went to work. It wasn't a miracle cure—Lullaby's reprogrammed array was an aggressive, emergency medical patch. It forcibly knitted the deepest bone fractures and sealed internal hemorrhaging, a process so brutally fast that Kai's jaw locked to keep from screaming as his bones ground together in forced alignment. His spine stabilized, but the nerves remained raw and inflamed, burning like liquid fire. His leg was functional enough to bear weight, but the surrounding muscle was severely torn.
He was barely held together by magical sutures and pure spite.
Far below on the ruined battlefield, the oppressive, suffocating silence was broken by a faint, rhythmic melody drifting down from the sky.
Down in the mud and iron debris, Natsu's head snapped up. His sharp dragon-slayer ears twitched, catching the distant, precise cadence echoing through the clouds. His wide, bloodshot eyes narrowed, and then a sudden, feral grin split his face.
He had heard that flute before.
"KAI'S ALRIGHT!" Natsu roared, his voice booming over the crashing waves of the harbor.
The entire battlefield froze. The sound washed over the exhausted, battered members of Fairy Tail. They recognized it too. It was Lullaby—the terrifying dark artifact that their resident tinkerer had casually confiscated, broken down, and re-engineered into a portable medical unit.
If Lullaby was playing, Kai was still breathing.
The emotional shift across the harbor was instantaneous and absolute. The crushing despair that had gripped the guild vanished, replaced by a fierce, terrifying second wind.
Elfman, who had been trembling in fear of losing his mind to his magic, let out a deafening, earth-shaking roar. If Kai could survive being crushed and thrown into the sky and keep fighting, how could he call himself a man for cowering? His body expanded, muscle and dark fur tearing through his clothes as he fully surrendered to his power. "BEAST SOUL: FULL BODY!"
Natsu erupted into a towering pillar of crimson flames, his exhaustion burning away as he charged back into the fight with wild, unpredictable ferocity.
Erza's eyes softened with profound relief for a split second before hardening into cold, unbreakable steel. She glared at Aria, who took a hesitant step back. With a flash of golden light, dozens of summoned swords materialized in the air behind her. "This ends now."
Gray just smirked, wiping a streak of blood from his jaw as he looked up at the sky. "Figures. No way that crazy bastard would let a guy named Jose get the last laugh." He slammed his hands together, flash-freezing Totomaru's flame-sword before shattering it into ice dust.
Cana picked up her scattered tarot cards with a battle cry, while Macao, Wakaba, and Loke surged forward. Mirajane wiped her tears, smiling through the grit, and even Master Makarov blinked, his trembling fists slowly loosening as he felt that familiar, stubborn, mathematically precise magical signature descending from above.
Up on the fortress balcony, Jose's triumphant smirk withered. He growled like a cornered animal, staring up at the clouds in utter disbelief.
High above Magnolia, Kai broke through the cloud deck.
He looked terrible. His coat was shredded, his face was pale and smeared with dried blood, and his breathing was shallow, rattled by damaged lung tissue. His body screamed at him to stop—every nerve was firing pain signals, warning him that he was operating on borrowed time.
Jose is exhausted, Kai analyzed silently, his golden eyes scanning the ruined fortress below. His ethernano pool is depleted from 'Call of the Abyss.' But he is still a Saint. If I give him time to recover his breathing rhythm, his baseline power will still overwhelm me. I have one window.
"Hey, ugly!" Kai yelled down, his voice carrying over the wind.
Jose stared up, his face twisting into a mask of pure rage. "How... HOW ARE YOU ALREADY UP?! Kill him! TEAR HIM TO PIECES!"
The remaining shadow creatures from the Abyss horde turned away from the lower decks, surging upward into the air like a cloud of black locusts to intercept the falling mage.
Kai didn't attempt to dodge. Sweat beaded heavily on his forehead as he pushed his damaged core.
"Runic Overdrive," Kai muttered.
It was a dangerous, volatile enhancement mode he had only tested in controlled laboratory environments a few hours prior. Instantly, the blue runic tattoos covering his skin flared into a dangerous, blinding crimson.
The backlash was immediate and severe. A violent tremor ran through his nervous system, his vision flared white, and a spike of agony shot down his spine as the forced magical output strained his newly stitched muscles to their absolute limit. His body was literally burning through its own tissue to handle the flow.
My body is compromised, his mind registered coldly. I have about ninety seconds before cardiac arrest or complete nerve burnout.
Reaching into his pouch with his trembling left hand, he pulled out his collapsible steel spear and snapped it open.
"Tinkerer Arts: Create."
Three high-density, empty lacrima crystals flew from his pouch, locking into a tight, rapid orbit around the spearhead.
"Kairos Sunveil Original Arts..."
A massive, intricate magic circle erupted into the sky behind him, followed immediately by a second and a third, locking together like the interlocking gears of a clock mechanism. Runic script crawled rapidly up the spear shaft, glowing with volatile, compressed light.
Kai pulled his right arm back. The muscle tissue strained under the forced output of Body Strengthening and Piercing Strike. His torn shoulder muscles groaned, but he locked his grip.
"Dark Singularity!"
He hurled the spear downward with a deafening sonic boom.
The weapon didn't just fly; it warped the air around it. As it plunged into the rising swarm of shadow creatures, the localized gravity well generated by the orbiting lacrimas activated.
Kai hadn't tried to brute-force thousands of monsters with sheer power. He had analyzed the structural composition of Jose's spell—they were constructs made of high-density, unstable dark ethernano. The gravitational singularity violently disrupted the internal coherence of the shadow magic, pulling the creatures apart at a molecular level. Instead of exploding harmlessly, their destabilized magical particles were sucked directly into the revolving lacrimas, compressing the energy and feeding it into the spear's payload.
He was weaponizing Jose's own army against him.
Jose screamed in desperation, pouring his last remaining magical reserves into his beasts to hold the spear back. It was completely useless. The spear chewed through the Abyss, growing denser and brighter with every yard it descended.
Watching from above as he descended, Kai snapped his left hand shut.
The spear struck the center of the upper platform.
For one infinitesimal moment, everything went silent.
Then the world exploded.
All the compressed shadow magic stored within the revolving lacrima crystals collapsed inward before detonating outward in a catastrophic sphere of black and golden light. The localized gravity core imploded for a fraction of a second, dragging the surrounding ethernano toward its center before releasing everything at once.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
The upper platform vanished beneath the blast.
Reinforced steel warped like soft wire. Massive stone supports shattered into fragments, while the accumulated shadow magic of Jose's Abyss horde erupted outward in a colossal shockwave.
Jose's eyes widened.
"No—!"
He threw both hands forward.
A massive barrier of dark purple magic materialized in front of him.
It lasted less than a second.
CRAAACK!
The barrier shattered.
The shockwave swallowed Jose whole and hurled him backward through the ruined platform.
But the explosion did not stop there.
It raced across the walking fortress like an invisible wall.
On the lower deck, Natsu barely had time to look upward.
"What the—?!"
The shockwave struck.
Natsu was lifted clean off his feet and thrown backward, skidding violently across the rain-soaked steel before crashing into a heap of broken masonry.
Gray crossed his arms over his face.
"Brace!"
The warning came too late.
The blast caught him in the chest and sent him tumbling backward through the air. He smashed through a damaged railing and landed hard against the opposite side of the deck.
Erza dug her boots into the steel, trying to anchor herself.
Her armor screeched against the floor.
"Hold!"
For several seconds she actually managed to resist the force.
Then the railing behind her tore free.
Erza was launched backward with it, spinning through the air before landing in a controlled roll several yards away.
Elfman wasn't nearly as fortunate.
The enormous Beast Soul transformation was ripped off its footing and sent tumbling across the deck like a massive ball of fur.
"WHOOOAAAA—!"
He disappeared behind a cloud of debris.
Across the battlefield, Phantom Lord suffered the same fate.
Aria's eyes widened as the shockwave approached.
"Impossible..."
The blast struck him head-on.
His body was hurled backward, his massive frame crashing through several damaged sections of the fortress before disappearing into the smoke.
Totomaru managed to create a wall of flame in front of himself.
It lasted just long enough to make him think he had survived.
Then the shockwave tore straight through it.
"YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"
He was sent flying.
Sol didn't even have time to react.
The blast caught him from behind and launched him across the deck, his body disappearing into the debris.
Gajeel planted both feet firmly against the steel.
"Not again..."
The iron dragon slayer braced himself.
The shockwave hit.
Gajeel was swept away regardless, crashing through a pile of broken machinery before finally disappearing into the churning smoke.
And then the force reached Juvia.
The ice prison Gray had created around her shattered instantly.
CRACK!
Fragments of ice exploded outward.
Juvia's eyes snapped open.
"Juvia is—"
The next instant, the remaining force caught her and launched her straight into the harbor.
"—FREE!"
SPLASH!
She vanished beneath the dark water.
For several seconds, the entire harbor seemed to shake.
The shockwave rolled beyond the fortress and slammed into the surrounding shoreline, scattering loose debris, overturning damaged carts, and sending waves crashing against the docks.
Cana threw an arm over her face as the blast reached them.
"DOWN!"
Lucy dropped instinctively beside Mirajane.
The wind tore through their hair and clothes, forcing them to stagger backward.
Mirajane grabbed Lucy by the wrist to keep her from being swept off her feet.
"What was that?!"
"I—I don't know!"
Cana looked toward the fortress through narrowed eyes.
The upper half of the walking fortress was completely obscured by a colossal cloud of dust and smoke.
For a moment, nobody could see anything.
Then the clouds above Magnolia began to move.
The enormous displacement of air punched a hole through the storm layer.
Dark clouds peeled away from the center of the city.
A single shaft of sunlight broke through the gray sky.
It illuminated the ruined harbor.
And everyone stared.
The battlefield had gone eerily quiet.
The Distant Witnesses
Miles away, deep within the East Forest, the shockwave finally reached the trees.
Porlyusica stood outside her treehouse, arms folded tightly across her chest.
Around the clearing lay dozens of torn and burned banners bearing the crest of Phantom Lord—the remains of the guild's scattered sub-branches that Mystogan had dismantled earlier.
Beside her, leaning casually against a wooden post, Mystogan watched the distant horizon.
His mask concealed his expression.
One hand held his staff.
The other held a half-eaten apple.
The distant sky suddenly erupted with black and golden light.
The trees around them shuddered.
Leaves tore free from their branches and spiraled through the air.
Porlyusica narrowed her eyes.
"...That's Kai."
Mystogan took another slow bite of his apple.
"Yes."
Porlyusica's expression darkened.
"He's using his original arts again."
Another distant rumble rolled through the forest.
She sighed through her nose.
"That fool is going to fry his own neural pathways if he keeps forcing techniques with that level of output through an already damaged body."
Mystogan chewed thoughtfully.
"He is fighting a Wizard Saint."
He took another bite.
"Neural pathways are likely secondary on his list of priorities."
Porlyusica's eye twitched.
"That is not remotely reassuring."
"I wasn't attempting to reassure you."
Porlyusica gave him an irritated glare.
"You sound entirely too calm."
Mystogan looked toward the distant glow.
"I have known Kai for long enough to understand that if he has decided something is possible, the laws of magic are merely suggestions until proven otherwise."
Porlyusica grunted.
"Brats."
She turned toward her treehouse.
"Every single one of them."
Mystogan remained where he was, quietly eating his apple as the distant glow slowly faded.
Neither of them said what they were both thinking.
Please let the idiot still be alive.
The Ruins
Back in Magnolia, the smoke began to clear.
The upper half of the walking fortress was simply gone.
What had once been a massive mechanical fortress was now little more than a fractured stone platform resting precariously atop its damaged mechanical legs.
Chunks of metal continued falling from the sky.
Dust drifted through the sunlight.
The harbor was almost completely silent.
Then something moved.
Jose Porla.
The former Wizard Saint lay in the center of the ruined platform.
His clothing was burned and torn. Stone dust covered his body. His face was blackened with soot, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
The terrifying aura that had once blanketed Magnolia was gone.
There was no abyss.
No army.
No overwhelming wall of dark magic.
Only a battered man struggling to breathe.
Jose planted one trembling hand against the stone.
"Haa..."
His fingers shook.
He pushed himself upward.
"Where..."
He coughed violently.
"Where are you...?"
His eyes frantically searched through the smoke.
Nothing.
The platform was empty.
Jose's breathing became increasingly desperate.
He looked around at the devastation.
His ultimate spell was gone.
His summoned creatures were gone.
His fortress was destroyed.
His magic reserves were almost completely exhausted.
And yet...
Kai was nowhere to be seen.
A horrible thought began forming in his mind.
Did the explosion kill him too?
Jose's lips slowly curled upward.
Despite everything, a weak, hysterical laugh escaped him.
"Ha..."
He coughed.
"At least..."
He struggled to stand.
"At least that insolent brat died with me."
A quiet voice spoke directly behind him.
"Right here."
Jose froze.
His eyes widened.
He didn't even have time to turn around.
BOOM!
Kai's combat boot slammed directly into his side.
The impact sent Jose flying across the fractured stone platform.
He crashed through a pile of rubble, rolled several times, and slammed into the remains of a shattered support structure.
CRACK!
Jose cried out as the impact fractured his hip.
He collapsed onto his side, clutching it instinctively.
For several seconds, he could do nothing but gasp.
Then the battlefield finally saw him.
And they saw Kai.
Kai stood several yards away in the settling smoke.
Only now, with Jose already down, was the full extent of his condition visible.
He looked like he should have collapsed already.
His coat hung from his body in shredded strips.
His face was pale beneath layers of dried blood and soot.
His hair was disheveled, with several strands stuck to his forehead.
His right arm hung completely limp at his side, the muscles having suffered severe backlash from Runic Overdrive and Dark singularity.
His breathing was shallow and uneven, each breath accompanied by a faint wet rattle.
His left leg trembled violently beneath him .
He had to keep most of his weight on his right leg just to remain standing.
The magical runes across his body had faded from their brilliant crimson.
Some still flickered weakly.
Others had gone completely dark.
Even his golden eyes had lost much of their usual brightness.
Yet he was standing.
That was enough.
Kai slowly straightened his back.
Pain immediately shot through his spine.
His expression twitched.
He ignored it.
He looked down at Jose.
A faint, exhausted smirk appeared on his face.
"I told you earlier..."
His voice was hoarse.
"...I was going to put my foot up your ass so hard it would leave a dent."
Kai coughed once, then winced.
"I keep my promises."
Jose stared at him.
He couldn't speak.
His expression had completely collapsed.
This wasn't the arrogant confidence of the Wizard Saint anymore.
It was disbelief.
Fear.
He had watched Kai fall.
He had watched the boy get battered by his summons.
He had watched him disappear into the sky with catastrophic injuries.
He had believed, absolutely, that the fight was over.
And now that same boy was standing over him.
Barely.
But standing.
Down below, the Fairy Tail members slowly emerged from the debris.
Natsu was the first to lift his head.
His eyes widened.
Gray pushed himself upright beside him.
Erza climbed out from the wreckage, her armor damaged and covered in dust.
Elfman emerged from beneath a collapsed section of railing.
Cana stood frozen near the shoreline.
Mirajane still had one arm wrapped around Lucy.
Even Juvia had surfaced from the harbor, coughing as she clung to a floating piece of debris.
One by one, their eyes traveled upward.
To Jose.
Then to Kai.
Silence.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody seemed to know what to say.
The Master of Phantom Lord—the Wizard Saint who had terrorized an entire guild—was lying broken in the rubble.
And above him stood the young researcher everyone had just watched get thrown into the sky.
Lucy covered her mouth.
"He's..."
Her voice trembled.
"He's really alive."
Mirajane's eyes filled with tears again, but this time she smiled.
Natsu's face split into a massive grin.
Gray simply stared.
"That absolute bastard..."
Erza exhaled slowly.
A mixture of relief and disbelief crossed her face.
Cana looked toward the ruined platform.
"He's actually standing..."
Even Makarov said nothing.
He simply stared.
His eyes moved over Kai's battered body, taking in the limp arm, the trembling leg, the ragged breathing.
Then his gaze shifted toward Jose.
The Saint was down.
Kai was standing.
The impossible had happened.
Kai took another uneven step toward the fallen Master of Phantom Lord.
Jose instinctively recoiled.
For the first time since the battle began, the Wizard Saint looked at the young researcher in front of him...
and realized that he was afraid.
Kai limped slowly toward the rubble, his steps heavy and uneven. "That spell of yours was structurally impressive, Porla. Overlapping the shadow dimension onto real-space takes an absurd amount of ethernano density. But as a shadow and spatial magic user, I know the limits. You spent everything maintaining the portal. Once the anchor was disrupted, you had nothing left to protect yourself."
"H-How..." Jose stammered, backing away on his elbows, his eyes wide with fear. "How are you alive..."
Kai tilted his head, a faint, tired smirk touching his lips. "Wouldn't you like to know? But you didn't say please, so I'm not telling. Just remember for next time: don't celebrate until you've verified the body."
Panic completely hijacked Jose's remaining sanity. He couldn't accept this. He was a Wizard Saint. He was superior.
With a frantic, desperate shriek, Jose swiped his hand through the air, compressing the absolute final dregs of his dark magic into a tiny, hyper-dense sphere of purple destruction right in front of Kai's chest. It wasn't a giant, theatrical spell—it was a point-blank, lethal execution attempt.
For a fraction of a second, the air burned with lethal intent. Even depleted, a concentrated Saint-level blast at zero range would blow a hole straight through Kai's chest.
Kai didn't flinch. He didn't even try to dodge. His golden eyes simply tracked the formation of the spell circle.
"Tinkerer Arts: Dismantle," Kai said softly.
He raised his left hand, his fingers twitching in a precise, subtle gesture.
He had spent the entire fight studying Jose's spell casting sequence. He understood its nodes, its runic connections, and its exact dimensional tether. Without Jose's overwhelming ethernano pressure to protect the spell's internal architecture, the formula was completely exposed.
The purple sphere glitched violently. Its runic lines misaligned, flickering out of sequence, before shattering harmlessly into a cloud of useless, purple sparks.
Jose stared at his empty palm, completely paralyzed.
"You really should stop showing me how your magic works," Kai noted coldly, stepping forward. His left hand extended, reaching straight for Jose's throat. His thought process was entirely pragmatic: He's dangerous, unpredictable, and unstable. If he lives, he remains a threat to the guild.
"That's enough, Kai," a voice said.
Before Kai's fingers could close around Jose's neck, a small, calloused hand clamped onto his wrist. The grip was unyielding as a mountain.
Makarov Dreyar stood beside him. The old Master's face was calm, but his eyes carried an immense, quiet weight. "Enough blood has been shed today, my boy."
Kai stared at Makarov out of the corner of his eye for a long, tense second. His muscles remained coiled, his mind calculating whether he could bypass Makarov's grip to finish the job. But his body was completely at its limit; Runic Overdrive was shutting down, and the physical crash was hitting him like a tidal wave.
Kai scoffed, pulling his wrist out of the old man's hold with a faint wince. "Fine," he muttered, turning his back on the ruined Master of Phantom Lord. "Have your geezer talk. I don't care."
He limped slowly toward the edge of the platform, dragging his bad leg. Every step felt like walking on broken glass. He made it about twenty feet before his adrenaline completely ran out. His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto his back against the cold, shattered stone with a heavy breath.
"Finally..." he mumbled to the sky.
A frantic series of high-pitched clicks echoed near his ear. Pixie, his mechanical spider, crawled out of his torn pouch, scanning his chest with a red laser and chirping distress tones.
Kai closed his eyes, his breathing slowing down as exhaustion finally dragged him under. "Yeah, yeah... I know I'm a mess, you dumb robot. My coat is ruined, my reserves are negative, and everything hurts."
He let out a long, quiet sigh. "...I'm taking a nap. Wake me up when the cleanup is done."
Makarov stood alone over the defeated Master of Phantom Lord.
Jose lay in the rubble, bloody and broken, his pride stripped away, glaring up at the Fairy Tail Master with pure, bitter hatred.
"Have you come to mock me now, Makarov?" Jose spat, coughing up blood. "To preach about your precious guild? To brag about how you won?"
Makarov looked down at him. There was no anger in his eyes—only a deep, profound sorrow.
"Jose... you were an extraordinarily talented wizard," Makarov said softly. "You had the power and the standing to lead the next generation, to teach them, to build something truly lasting. Yet you wasted it all on petty jealousy and pride. Trying to destroy children to feed your own ego... if you had spent half as much time raising your guild as you did competing with mine, Phantom Lord would have been magnificent."
"Don't you dare speak to me like that!" Jose shrieked, his voice cracking with humiliation. "I built Phantom Lord from nothing! I pushed it to the top of Fiore! And you... talent just fell into your lap! You were given monsters! Erza, Natsu, Gray... and now that damn boy! What did you do to earn them?! You did nothing! And yet the everyone praises you!"
Makarov listened quietly, letting the broken man vent his final rage. When Jose finally collapsed back onto the stone, gasping for breath, Makarov let out a heavy sigh that seemed to age him ten years.
"They didn't fall into my lap as you see them today, Jose," Makarov said, his voice quiet, carrying the unshakable weight of a father. "They were broken children. They were terrified, abandoned, and had nowhere else to go. I didn't make them strong. I merely gave them a home where they could heal. What they became was their own effort—I have never taken credit for their strength, nor will I ever."
Saying this, Makarov turned his back on the fallen Saint and began walking away toward the edge of the platform where his children were waiting. "The war is over, Jose. Take what remains of your people and leave."
"Get back here!" Jose screamed pathetically at his back, dragging himself forward on one elbow. "Makarov! Face me! MARAKOV!"
Makarov stopped at the edge of the platform. He didn't turn around, but his right shoulder hitched slightly.
"And one more thing..."
In a split second, Makarov's right arm expanded, transforming into a massive, golden fist of condensed magical pressure. Without turning his body, he swung it backward, slamming it down onto Jose with the force of a falling mountain.
BOOM!
The stone beneath Jose shattered.
Jose's eyes rolled back as the force drove him into the platform, his consciousness finally giving out.
Makarov slowly lowered his arm.
"That was for hurting my children."