Varek tried to raise his hand.
Nothing moved.
He could feel the strength in his shoulder. He could feel the bones of his arm, the weight of his fingers, and every part of the body that should have answered him. The command left him anyway. Silver stirred beneath his sternum, and the pain that followed reached somewhere deeper than the wound Shinryu was holding shut.
Varek looked down.
Varek: Move your blade a little to the left.
Shinryu: Why?
Varek: I'm taking the tissue out.
Shinryu changed the angle of his sword. Varek's chest opened around it.
Veins tore free beneath the skin. They came out in long, dark strands, carrying blood and pieces of the flesh through which the silver had spread. Varek did not lower his head or lose his breath. The emptied tissue grew again while the discarded veins were still falling. Fresh blood filled new vessels. His body closed around Shinryu's blade as readily as it had opened.
The silver remained.
Varek tried his hand again. His elbow stayed at his side.
Shinryu watched the wound instead of the flesh around it. The changing light of his sword exposed a thin silver line that no longer rested inside a vein, a muscle, or a nerve. It remained suspended where Varek's intention to move met the part of him that would carry it out.
Shinryu: It isn't traveling through your blood.
Varek: I can see that now.
Shinryu: Your body can replace everything around it. The command still has to cross this.
He pressed the edge of his sword against the line. It bent toward the light and tried to split around it.
Varek: Then cut the command.
Shinryu: If I cut before I separate it, I cut yours too.
Varek looked across the avenue. Sereon stood beyond Dark with Suigōraku angled toward the ground. Several broken pillars lay between them. Varek knew the distance to each one without measuring it. He could have crossed the street, taken Sereon by the throat, and carried him into the Edrassan Empire before the next stone fell from the ruined tower above them.
His hand did not move.
Varek: How long?
Shinryu: Stay still long enough for me to give you an honest answer.
Dark heard him. He shifted Kyuketsu in his bleeding hand and moved into the avenue.
Dark: Work. I've got him.
Sereon looked at the blood running from Dark's fingers.
Sereon: You say that every time someone stands behind you.
Dark: They're still standing.
He struck.
Kyuketsu met Suigōraku hard enough to break the stone under Sereon's rear foot. Dark turned his wrist, took the reflective edge away from his throat, and drove his free hand into Soul Ryūgu. The armor cracked beneath his knuckles. Sereon bent with the blow, allowing Dark to come closer.
Sereon: Your left shoulder.
Dark felt it fail.
The joint loosened as though it had already been dislocated. His sword hand dropped an inch. Suigōraku came toward his neck.
Dark drove his forehead into Sereon's face before the blade reached him. Bone broke beneath the impact. He stepped through the collapsing shoulder, let Ryo correct its position, and cut Sereon across the ribs.
Sereon's body returned to an unwounded condition beneath the torn armor. Blood remained on Kyuketsu. Dark kept it there, using the resistance of the real flesh instead of the distance his eyes offered him.
Dark: You didn't touch my shoulder.
Sereon caught his next cut.
Sereon: You listened.
A shot struck Sereon through the side of his head.
The Witness had fired from Tier's observation ground. The round left an absence where Sereon's cheek and part of his skull had been. Dark saw the wound clearly. He also saw Sereon standing two steps farther away with his face intact.
Tier's voice entered his ear.
Tier: The shot hit. Stay with the body you were holding.
Dark did. He seized the damaged shoulder and drove Kyuketsu deeper.
For an instant, Sereon's expression changed. The wound in his head could not close around the round's absence. Kigen answered by bringing forward a condition in which the round had not entered him. Dark felt the shoulder alter beneath his hand and tightened before it could leave.
Sereon spoke from beside him.
Sereon: Tier. You're looking at the wound you wanted.
The voice came from the body Dark held. It also came from the intact figure in the street.
Tier cut one of his displays. The second showed the damaged body. The third showed both.
Tier: I know what I fired.
The Witness fired again.
Dark ducked beneath the shot without being told. It passed through Sereon's restoring temple and continued into an empty tower. Dark followed it with Kyuketsu, cutting across the point where Kigen had changed the body.
Sereon stepped back. Dark went with him, then stopped when he saw what the retreat would give him. Shinryu stood directly behind the space he was about to leave.
Dark turned his advance into a kick. Sereon crossed the street instead of drawing him nearer to Varek.
Dark: Tier. Keep shooting.
Tier: Keep giving me a target.
Above them, a black monitor turned beside Tier's shoulder. Beneath his glasses, Pre Iris had already marked the next movement of Sereon's fingers. Three drones left the platform and spread sensor dust through the avenue. Tier watched the dust settle around a body that appeared to occupy two positions.
Gilmuar leaned toward the central screen.
Gilmuar: Your gun's shooting the one on the left.
Tier: The one on the left has Dark's hand on him.
Gilmuar: Both of them do.
Tier looked at the display, then directly at the street.
Tier: I noticed.
Dantero stood behind them with one hand pressed against a cracked pillar. The stone had been warm when he touched it. Now it was hot enough to blacken the skin beneath his palm.
Dantero: Kaelith. Your bloody fire's in the floor again.
Kaelith glanced down.
Kaelith: That isn't mine.
Dantero lifted his hand.
Dantero: Lovely.
Rykaou crouched and touched the heated stone with two fingers. His senses reached through the platform, down the broken supports, and into the street beneath it.
Rykaou: Pressure's climbing from below. Tier, lift us.
The platform rose before the heat reached its center. A compressed point fired out of the stone where Dantero had been standing. The Witness turned and erased it in the air.
Dantero stared at the hole.
Dantero: All right. That one I noticed.
Leona held Lara's bell between both hands. Its clapper rested against one side. She had stopped looking at the false arrival still replaying in her memory and watched the real Shinryu instead. His sword had not left Varek's chest.
Gilmuar glanced at the bell.
Gilmuar: You rang it properly this time.
Leona: I heard it the first time too.
Gilmuar: I know. So did I.
She closed her fingers around it.
Leona: For a second, I thought he'd already come.
Gilmuar looked at the street, where Dark had taken another cut across his palm.
Gilmuar: Sereon's good at making a second feel like enough.
Tier enlarged the pressure around Shinryu's blade. Several silver threads were beginning to separate inside the wound.
Tier: Shinryu's making progress.
Cron came closer.
Cron: Can Varek move yet?
Tier: No.
Gilmuar watched Dark surrender another strike to keep Suigōraku away from Shinryu. His axe rested against his shoulder. He moved it into his other hand, then returned it when the screen shifted.
Cron noticed.
Cron: You're counting the square.
Gilmuar: It's empty.
Cron: Most of it.
Gilmuar pointed to a section beyond Dark.
Gilmuar: That much is enough.
A pressure descended through the fractured sky before Cron could answer.
Sukojo landed on the upper floor of a ruined tower overlooking the avenue. Torn shorts covered his hips. The markings across his chest and arms moved beneath skin bare to the cold air, and the broken half of a black halo followed his head as he looked down.
His gaze stopped on Shinryu.
Sukojo: You answered a bell.
Shinryu kept working.
Shinryu: Leona rang it.
Sukojo: I can see her.
Shinryu: Then you know why I came.
Sukojo put a foot on the tower's edge. Dark and Sereon broke through a wall below him. The Witness fired across the opening and forced Sereon to change his grip on Suigōraku.
Sukojo watched Kigen correct the body.
Sukojo: He's become difficult to keep dead.
Shinryu: You came to tell me that?
Sukojo's mouth tightened. Shinryu had spoken without looking up, with the same calm Sukojo remembered from Halewick. There had been a time when that calm had interested him enough to break whatever stood beside it.
He looked toward the True Emperors above the capital.
Raiku was watching him.
Sukojo remembered the sky filled with Ultimato. He remembered the blink that had ended it.
The tower disappeared beneath him.
He stood before Raiku. His right knee struck the ground. His left followed. Sukojo caught himself on one hand and tried to rise, feeling each muscle answer without his legs lifting him.
Sukojo: I came to watch.
Raiku: Then watch.
Sukojo looked down at his knees.
Sukojo: Let me stand.
The capital fell silent. He stood before an ocean beneath a dark red sky, crowded with bodies he had consumed. Some were near enough that he recognized their faces. Others lay under the water, among gods and creatures whose names he had never bothered to learn.
His old sword stood before the throne on the far shore.
Sukojo: This again.
Raiku stood beside him.
Raiku: You were deciding whether to go down there.
Sukojo: I decide that myself.
Raiku: Yes.
Sukojo looked toward the throne. He had expected a command. Raiku gave him the water, the bodies, and the silence instead.
Raiku: What remains when you have eaten everything?
Sukojo: You asked me that already.
Raiku waited.
At the far end of the ocean, Sukojo imagined his own voice traveling across an empty World. There would be nobody to hear it. He could destroy the throne if it annoyed him. He could sit on it until sitting became unbearable. Neither choice would give him anything else to consume.
Sukojo: Me.
Raiku: Decide whether that is enough before you go down.
The ocean vanished.
Sukojo stood beside Raiku above the capital. He could not remember getting off his knees. Below, Shinryu had drawn a silver thread halfway out of Varek's chest. Dark kept Sereon on the far side of the street.
Sukojo rubbed one knee with his thumb.
Sukojo: I'll watch.
Raiku stepped aside. Sukojo remained where he was, looking once toward Shinryu before returning his attention to the fight.
On the platform, Gilmuar had stopped studying Sereon's body. He watched the stone around his feet instead. Dark forced Sereon backward. Sereon turned. Dark changed direction before the sword moved, protecting the same narrow section of street again.
Gilmuar placed his axe against the floor.
Gilmuar: I can hold that section shut.
Tier looked at him.
Tier: How long?
Gilmuar: Long enough for Shinryu to finish.
Tier: That's an answer to a different question.
Gilmuar put one hand on the monitor and drew a circle around the empty square.
Gilmuar: I don't need the avenue. I don't need Shinryu inside it. I take Sereon, Dark stays outside, and you keep talking to me.
Cron studied the circle.
Cron: Your western edge reaches a damaged foundation.
Gilmuar moved it.
Gilmuar: There.
Tier checked the force map. The new boundary ended before the foundation and left Shinryu clear.
Leona came beside Gilmuar.
Leona: Tell Dark first.
Gilmuar touched the channel at his ear.
Gilmuar: Dark.
Dark blocked a cut with Kyuketsu.
Dark: What?
Gilmuar: Empty square. I can put Gravitas around Sereon there.
Dark: Stay on the platform.
Gilmuar: You're keeping him out of one piece of street while he's making you defend three.
Dark: I know what I'm doing.
Gilmuar: So do I.
Sereon's free hand turned. A dark point formed against his fingertip. The Witness erased it before he spoke, and Dark drove Kyuketsu through the hand that had held it.
Gilmuar watched the blood cross the stone.
Gilmuar: You've got Tier's shots. You can wait outside my boundary. If it slips, you get Sereon before he gets Shinryu.
Dark: Gilmuar, I said stay there.
Gilmuar lifted the axe.
Gilmuar: I heard you.
Cron took his shoulder.
Cron: Keep the center where you put it. Don't chase him if he makes you change the edge.
Gilmuar glanced at the hand, then at Cron.
Gilmuar: Kenzo spent months making me do exactly that.
Cron: Then use the months.
Tier placed a bright mark over the square.
Tier: I'll watch your hands as well as your Domain. Answer me when I call.
Gilmuar nodded. Leona stepped back enough to let him lift the axe without catching her coat.
Leona: And don't knock the monitors down when you land. Tier hasn't stopped complaining about the last ones.
Tier: They cost more than his axe.
Gilmuar: Then build cheaper ones.
He folded gravity beneath his feet and left the platform.
Dark saw him land and turned sharply.
Dark: Go back.
Gilmuar drove the butt of his axe into the street.
Gilmuar: You've already got that speech ready. Save it until I close this.
Varek tried to move toward him. The silver tightened inside the command, and his body remained where Shinryu had placed it.
Varek: Gilmuar. Wait.
Gilmuar looked at the Grand Regent. He could see the new tissue around the wound. Whatever Shinryu was removing was still there despite it.
Gilmuar: I'm giving him room to work.
He turned toward Sereon.
Sereon had lowered Suigōraku. His other hand remained damaged from Dark's cut, though Kigen was correcting it.
Sereon: You've brought an axe into a sword fight.
Gilmuar: You can borrow it when I'm done.
Dark stepped beside him.
Dark: Keep it tight. I'm waiting outside.
Gilmuar planted his rear foot.
Gilmuar: Domain Verse.
The square darkened. Broken buildings withdrew from his sight as a boundary rose around the space Tier had marked. Sereon took one step and found the ground dragging his boot toward Gilmuar.
Gilmuar's grip tightened.
Gilmuar: GRAVITAS.
Weight settled across Sereon's shoulders. His rear leg bent. Suigōraku came up, but the hand holding it had become heavier than the arm could carry.
Gilmuar drove the axe butt deeper into the stone.
Gilmuar: Axis of Absolute Weight!
Sereon's knees struck the floor.
The force crossed his body from several directions at once. Soul Ryūgu cracked along his back. His ribs broke, returned, and broke again as Gilmuar closed his fist.
Dark felt the Domain's outer surface against his palm. It ended exactly where Gilmuar had said it would. Shinryu and Varek stood beyond it.
Dark: Sword arm.
Gilmuar: I see it.
He crossed the distance and brought the axe down. Bone snapped above Sereon's wrist. Suigōraku left his fingers and struck the floor.
Gilmuar sent the blade into the stone. He drove his knee under Sereon's jaw and followed the motion down, taking hold of Soul Ryūgu before Sereon could turn away. The armor broke beneath his hand.
Sereon tried to speak. Blood came out instead.
Gilmuar: Take your time.
He struck him with the axe haft.
Outside, Tier's displays agreed for the first time. The visible body, the pressure in the square, and the soul reading occupied the same place.
Tier: Your center is stable. Keep the western edge where it is.
Gilmuar: It's there.
The Witness fired through the boundary at a point forming beside Sereon's free hand. The shot erased the point and two of his fingers. Gilmuar pressed the hand against the floor before Kigen could correct it.
Gilmuar: That helps.
Tier: Keep giving me fingers to shoot.
Sereon's restored jaw moved beneath Gilmuar's knee.
Sereon: Tier has become more direct.
Gilmuar increased the weight.
Gilmuar: He's always been direct when you break his things.
Sereon lifted his eyes toward the axe. Gilmuar felt him test the force around its blade. Instead of relying on the pressure alone, he stepped around Sereon's shoulder and brought the weapon down across Soul Ryūgu.
The blade entered his chest.
Sereon's body folded beneath it. Kigen put the flesh back around the axe, and Gilmuar forced the corrected body down again.
Gilmuar: Dark. He's staying here.
Dark looked toward Shinryu. The changing sword had drawn another silver thread from the wound, but its far end remained joined to the line holding Varek.
Dark: Shinryu?
Shinryu: I'm separating the beginning. Give me a little longer.
Dark returned his attention to the sphere.
Dark: Gilmuar, don't spend everything on the first hold.
Gilmuar looked at Sereon under his axe.
Gilmuar: I'm not.
He could feel the strength he had used. The center was where he had placed it. The edges returned to him cleanly. Kenzo had made him hold far uglier arrangements during training, changing the direction of his attacks while Gilmuar stood with his eyes closed.
Sereon moved his free hand. Gilmuar caught it with gravity and dragged the elbow back to the floor.
Sereon: Kenzo taught you to feel the center.
Gilmuar: He taught me to stop staring at the man trying to hit me.
Sereon: That must have taken time.
Gilmuar drove the axe another inch into the floor beneath him.
Gilmuar: You have no idea.
Sereon laid two damaged fingers against the stone.
Sereon: Gyuro One.
Gilmuar shifted the weight toward them. A small point formed beneath the nails, compressed until he could barely distinguish it from grit.
Sereon: Karyū.
The point fired sideways.
Gilmuar raised a wall of weight across his chest, but Karyū passed through the floor instead. It traveled to the edge of Gravitas and left a pinhole in its boundary. Gilmuar closed his fist, pulling the surrounding force toward the puncture until it sealed.
Gilmuar: Too small.
Sereon watched the repaired section.
Sereon: You closed it quickly.
Gilmuar struck his wrist with the axe haft. The hand broke again.
Gilmuar: Don't sound so disappointed.
Dark moved around the outside of the sphere. He could see Sereon's fingers correcting beneath Gilmuar's boot. The Witness fired once more, leaving a hollow in the new hand.
Tier: Gilmuar, keep that hand apart from the sword.
Gilmuar: I've got both.
A second dark point appeared beneath Sereon's thumb.
Sereon: Gyuro Two.
Gilmuar forced it toward the floor. It moved, then stopped without striking anything.
Sereon: Niren.
Another point answered the first beyond the Domain's edge. Gilmuar felt the pair pull toward one another. Gravitas tried to assign the outer point a weight, reaching a little way beyond the boundary to do it.
Gilmuar drew the force back.
Gilmuar: Tier. One inside, one outside. They're pulling through the edge.
Tier: I see them. Don't bring the outer one in.
Gilmuar changed his grip on the axe.
Gilmuar: I know.
He lifted the weapon out of Sereon's chest and struck the inner point. The compressed force burst through the floor. Gilmuar caught it, turned it downward, and buried Sereon beneath the breaking stone.
The sphere held.
On the platform, Cron watched Gilmuar's shoulders settle.
Cron: He caught it.
Leona could see him breathing through his mouth. His expression was irritated rather than frightened.
Leona: Tell him the sword's moving.
Tier: Gilmuar. Suigōraku, behind your left foot.
Gilmuar stepped aside and forced the blade back into the floor. Sereon tried to get his repaired hand around the hilt. Gilmuar struck the hand before it closed.
Gilmuar: Stay down.
Far from the capital, Kenzo felt Gravitas reach him.
He stopped between two broken Worlds and looked toward its pressure. Gilmuar's center was clear enough that he could tell how firmly his brother had placed it. Something small pulled at the outside, then another force answered nearer to him.
Kenzo crossed the distance.
His next step returned him to the same ground.
He looked down at his boots.
Kenzo: That's new.
He lifted two fingers.
Kenzo: Domain Trick.
The pressure around him shifted.
Kenzo: Bastion Override.
For an instant, he stood adjacent to the law that had sent him backward. The boundary passed around him. He stepped through it successfully and arrived before another broken World.
Gilmuar's gravity was still ahead of him.
Kenzo looked back. The place he had left carried the same pressure as the place in front of him. He had bypassed the obstruction. The destination itself had been repeated.
Kenzo: Gilmuar. What are you standing in?
Inside Gravitas, Gilmuar heard his brother faintly. He kept one hand on the axe and lifted the other toward the outer point.
Gilmuar: Tier, can you hear Kenzo?
Tier checked the signal.
Tier: I have him.
Gilmuar: Tell him I'm holding Sereon. He doesn't need to enter.
Tier opened the channel.
Tier: Kenzo. Gilmuar has a stable Domain around Sereon. Stay outside for a moment.
Kenzo heard Tier's voice before the channel opened.
He looked at the air beside him.
Kenzo: You already told me that.
Tier frowned.
Tier: I've only just reached you.
Kenzo closed his eyes. The message came again, with the same breath between Gilmuar's name and Sereon's. He could feel where the repeated pressure ended now.
Kenzo: Keep talking. I'm stripping the false ones away.
He opened his palm.
Gravity gathered across both broken Worlds. Kenzo did not strike the same obstruction again. He took hold of every place presenting itself as the source of Gilmuar's Domain and pressed them apart.
One disappeared. Another resisted. The third carried his brother's familiar weight.
Kenzo stepped toward it.
Inside Gravitas, the outer point brightened.
Gilmuar felt his boundary stretch.
Tier: Western edge. Pull it back.
Gilmuar reached for it. Suigōraku remained buried in the floor, but Sereon's voice reached him clearly.
Sereon: You've closed your hand.
Gilmuar felt his fingers meet his palm.
The western edge settled.
Dark saw the sphere grow.
Dark: Gilmuar! Your hand's still open!
Gilmuar looked down. His fingers were spread. He had felt the movement finish, had felt the relief of completing it, but the hand had not moved.
He shut his eyes and tried again.
Sereon: There. You have it.
Gilmuar felt the center settle.
Tier: No. Your hand hasn't changed.
Gilmuar opened his eyes. Blood had begun running from his nose.
Gilmuar: Keep watching it. Don't tell me what the Domain looks like. Tell me what I'm actually doing.
Tier: Your first finger moved. The others haven't.
Gilmuar concentrated on the next one. He felt its tendon draw against his palm.
Tier: Second finger. Good.
Dark drove Kyuketsu into the outer boundary at Tier's mark. The sphere shook. Gilmuar took hold of the impact, using it to pull the stretched edge back.
Gilmuar: Again!
Dark struck.
The outer point moved toward Kenzo.
Kenzo felt his brother's gravity falter. He stopped stripping the false destinations and pressed his hand toward the one that remained.
Kenzo: Gilmuar, answer me.
Gilmuar heard the force behind his voice before the words reached him. Gravitas tried to give it a place inside its law. The Domain widened past the square.
Gilmuar: Don't push into it! I'm closing it!
The answer reached Kenzo as an echo of something Gilmuar had already said. Kenzo tore that echo apart and went after the real sound.
Shinryu looked up.
Weight had reached the avenue.
The loose stones beside him lifted, then turned toward the square. Varek's body stayed still, but he could feel the pressure gathering around the part of him Shinryu was trying to free.
Varek: Gilmuar. Keep it off the sword.
Gilmuar dragged the spreading weight toward his own center. The stones around Shinryu dropped. The pressure left Varek's wound.
Gilmuar: It's clear. Keep working!
Gravitas expanded again.
Sereon: Tell me Gilmuar, do you know what takes shape after a Domain Verse?
Gilmuar: Huh?? What are you babbling about?
Sereon: Your control over your domain has improved by a lot. But do you know how to control what's larger than it?
Sereon's lips curled into a faint smile.
The Domain Verse reached beyond the shape Gilmuar had learned to hold. Its law crossed the capital, touched the places Kenzo had pulled apart, and joined them through the outer point.
For an instant, it became a Domain World.
Gilmuar felt every part of it at once.
His knees bent. Light moved beneath the skin of his arms, growing brighter as the Domain drew more from him. The axe felt heavier. He shifted it into both hands and kept Sereon pinned while he searched for the portion of Gravitas he could release without sending its weight into Shinryu.
Sereon: You can do this Gilmuar. Just control this one too.....
Sereon looked into Gilmuar's eyes.
Gilmuar: GGRR.. RRRAAAAHHHHH!!!!
Sereon: Try controlling something far beyond your reach when you lack the energy.
Dark broke through the boundary.
His first step brought him no nearer. He cut down into the stone, found the pressure underneath the false distance, and followed it toward Gilmuar.
Dark: I'm inside. Look at me.
Gilmuar turned his head.
Gilmuar: You weren't supposed to come in yet.
Dark: You weren't supposed to open a World.
Gilmuar almost answered. The floor under Sereon changed.
The axe moved in his hands.
He looked down and saw the same shoulder beneath its blade. The armor was broken. Blood ran from the wound. His weight still held Sereon to the floor.
Something cold touched the back of his coat.
Gilmuar tried to turn.
The point entered beneath his ribs.
At first, he felt only pressure. It pushed through the fabric, through skin, and stopped briefly against bone. He pulled the axe toward himself, trying to bring it between his body and whatever had reached him.
The shoulder beneath its blade remained on the ground.
Sereon's voice came beside his ear. Like a whisper.
Sereon: Dark is almost here.
Gilmuar's hand opened.
Suigōraku moved through him.
He felt the edge scrape the inside of a rib. The pain arrived suddenly, sharp enough to take the breath he had been gathering. He looked down as the point crossed his heart and came out through the front of his chest.
His axe struck the floor.
The sound reached him with extraordinary clarity.
Dark was a few steps away. He saw the blade emerge and drove himself forward, but Gravitas stretched between them. His sword cut through the weight. Another span replaced the one he broke.
Dark: GILMUAR!
Gilmuar put a hand around the blade.
Blood ran between his fingers. He tried to force Suigōraku downward with gravity, tried to break the wrist holding it behind him. His own Domain answered from too many places. The force he had kept away from everyone else came back through his center.
Sereon placed one hand on his shoulder.
He kept Gilmuar upright.
A faint smile reached his mouth.
Sereon: You thought you found the opening.
Gilmuar turned his head a little. He could see the edge of Sereon's face, close enough that blood from his own mouth touched the man's hand.
Gilmuar: I had you.
Sereon: You did.
Dark struck the distance between them again. Tier's Witness fired at Sereon's head, but the shot entered the body still lying beneath Gilmuar's axe. That body was real enough to take it. The man holding Gilmuar remained standing.
Sereon: Your axe was real. So was the pain. I didn't need you to imagine a victory.
Gilmuar's fingers slipped on the sword.
Sereon: I needed you to have one.
He looked toward the widening Domain.
Sereon: Dark gave up his attacks to protect Shinryu. You saw the place where Gravitas would help. Karyū opened the edge. Niren gave it something beyond you to claim.
Gilmuar could feel Kenzo still approaching.
Sereon: Your brother knows how to bypass a Domain. I gave him several places to arrive. He pulled them apart until he found you.
Dark broke another span.
Dark: GET YOUR HAND OFF HIM!
Sereon's smile barely changed.
Sereon: And you kept everything away from Shinryu while he did it.
Gilmuar tried to speak. Blood filled his mouth.
Sereon leaned a little closer.
Sereon: You fell for nothing. You spent your strength holding the body I could leave, and the law you trusted spent the rest.
Gilmuar looked toward Shinryu.
The changing sword was still bright.
Gilmuar: You didn't get to him.
Sereon's hand tightened on his shoulder.
Dark reached them.
Kyuketsu entered Sereon's neck. Dark seized the arm holding Suigōraku and broke it at the elbow. Sereon withdrew the sword as his body turned with the cut.
Gilmuar fell against Dark.
Gravitas folded inward.
The weight Gilmuar had held away from the avenue passed through its failing center. His body jerked in Dark's arms. The sphere vanished, leaving the broken square, the distant platform, and the sound of his breath struggling through blood.
Dark dropped to one knee.
Dark: No. Stay with me.
He put his hand over the wound. Ryo moved across his fingers. The cuts in Dark's own palm disappeared. Gilmuar's chest remained open.
Dark pushed more of it into him.
Dark: Take it. Come on, take it.
Gilmuar's eyes moved toward his hand. He had seen Dark return from injuries worse than this. For a moment he seemed to expect the same thing, trying to lift himself as though the pain would stop before he sat upright.
His body did not answer.
Gilmuar: I can't feel my legs.
Dark pressed his other hand against the back of Gilmuar's neck.
Dark: Don't try to move. Just hold on to me.
Gilmuar found his wrist.
Dark: AKII-
Akira arrived before Dark called her. She knelt opposite him and opened three rings around her fingers. The next breath in Gilmuar's throat slowed. She separated its beginning from its end and held both.
Akira: I have this moment. Tier, get here.
Tier was already descending.
A medical drone reached Gilmuar first. It opened beside Dark's hand and sent a narrow instrument through the torn fabric. Another drone brought blood. Tier landed hard enough to stumble, caught himself on one knee, and put two fingers against Gilmuar's neck.
Tier: Dark, lift your palm just enough for me.
Dark: Fix it.
Tier: Let me reach him.
Dark moved his hand. The instrument closed the bleeding vessels around the cut and pressed against the ruined heart. A mechanical pulse passed through Gilmuar's chest.
His body moved with it.
Leona came through Dantero's portal and saw the movement.
Leona: He's breathing.
Tier did not look up.
Tier: That's the support.
Leona knelt beside Gilmuar.
Leona: Gilmuar. Hey. Look at me.
His eyes found her.
Gilmuar: Leona?
Leona: Yeah. I'm right here.
She put a hand against his face. His skin was still warm. There was blood on his lower lip, and she wiped it away with the edge of her sleeve, annoyed for a moment that the fabric would not take it cleanly.
Leona: You've made a mess of yourself.
Gilmuar tried to answer. A cough broke the breath Akira was holding.
Akira's rings tightened.
Dark looked at her.
Dark: Go back before the cut.
Akira was already searching. She reached the instant before Suigōraku entered, found the body still standing beneath the expanded Domain, and tried to bring that instant forward.
The ring around her first finger split her skin.
Akira: The body was already losing its center.
Dark: Then go back before the Domain World.
She did. Her shoulders shook. She found Gilmuar with his axe in both hands and his strength still moving through Gravitas. That strength existed throughout the law he had held. She could catch his body at one instant. She could not bring all the spent force back into him with it.
Akira: I can hold him here. I can't return what he gave the Domain.
Dark stared at the wound.
Dark: Then take mine.
Tier's instruments found the soul trace beneath the mechanical pulse. It was still there, but fading despite the blood entering the body and the flesh closing around the heart.
Tier: Dark. Your restoration is answering you. It isn't taking hold in him.
Dark: I can see that.
He tried again anyway.
Cron landed beside Leona and pressed his hands against the ground. Loose stones stopped shifting beneath them. Dantero held the portal open while Kaelith brought the remaining medical case through.
Kaelith crouched beside Tier.
Kaelith: Tell me what you need.
Tier: Keep the instrument warm. Only the instrument.
She brought a small flame close enough to steady its failing mechanism. The rest of her fire remained against her skin. She watched Gilmuar's eyes instead of the wound.
Rykaou stood several steps back, searching for the familiar gravity.
Rykaou: Gilmuar. Give me something.
Gilmuar's fingers moved against Dark's wrist.
Rykaou felt it faintly.
Rykaou: There. Do that again.
Gilmuar tried. His hand tightened, then loosened.
Dark bent closer.
Dark: Keep that grip. Don't let go.
Gilmuar looked at him for a long moment. He could see the effort Dark was making to sound as though this were another injury they could argue about afterward.
Gilmuar: You look angry.
Dark: I am.
Gilmuar: At me?
Dark shook his head.
Dark: No.
Gilmuar's mouth shifted.
Gilmuar: Good. I don't have enough breath for both of you.
Leona pressed her lips together. She had wanted to hear him make a joke. Now that he had, she could not find any part of it funny.
Leona: Save it, then. I can be angry later.
Gilmuar's eyes went to the instrument moving his chest.
Gilmuar: Did Shinryu finish?
Across the square, Shinryu had almost separated the last silver line. Varek stood exactly where he had been, watching Dark on the ground.
Dark looked once, then returned to Gilmuar.
Dark: He's close.
Gilmuar tried to lift his head. Dark supported it.
Gilmuar: I held him.
Dark: You did.
Gilmuar: I really had him.
Dark closed his eyes for an instant.
Dark: I saw. You broke his arm. You put him on his knees.
Leona's thumb moved over Gilmuar's cheek.
Leona: You hit him hard enough that Tier's screen shook.
Tier kept one hand against the instrument in Gilmuar's chest.
Tier: Several times.
Gilmuar let his head rest against Dark again. The pride in his expression lasted only a moment before confusion returned. He could feel the people touching him. He could hear them. The rest of his body seemed farther away than it should have been.
Gilmuar: Dark.
Dark: I'm here.
Gilmuar: Don't let me fall.
Dark pulled him closer.
Dark: I won't.
Akira's second ring began closing. She put her other hand against it, holding the metal apart while blood ran down her finger.
Gilmuar watched her.
Gilmuar: You're hurting yourself.
Akira: I've done worse.
Gilmuar: That doesn't sound convincing.
Akira tried to smile.
Akira: It wasn't supposed to.
He looked back at Dark. Something in Dark's face made him remember the academy, a classroom ruined by an argument he had started, and the new student who kept appearing behind him.
Gilmuar: You remember what you called me?
Dark wiped blood from his mouth.
Dark: Gilmuar.
Gilmuar: That's what you were supposed to call me.
Dark's hand shook.
Dark: I remember.
Gilmuar: Gilmara.
Leona gave a small, broken sound. She remembered it too.
Gilmuar: I hated that.
Dark: You nearly broke the classroom in half.
Gilmuar: You were standing behind me again.
Dark tried to answer and could not. Gilmuar had always remembered the humiliating parts of that day with more affection than he admitted. Dark had spent years letting him demand another contest, another chance to prove strength mattered as much as speed.
Gilmuar's grip tightened once.
Gilmuar: I still wanted to catch you.
Dark: You can. You can try again tomorrow.
Gilmuar looked at him.
Gilmuar: Don't do that.
Dark: What?
Gilmuar took a little of the breath Akira held.
Gilmuar: Tell me something you think I'll believe.
Dark's mouth opened. Nothing useful came out.
Cron looked down at his hands against the stone. He had copied motions, powers, shapes of strength that should have been beyond him. He could copy the action of holding a center. He could not put Gilmuar back inside one that had already gone.
Cron: I'm sorry.
Gilmuar's eyes moved toward him.
Gilmuar: For what?
Cron could not answer without making the moment about himself.
Leona took Gilmuar's hand from Dark's wrist and held it between hers. Dark left his fingers around the back of Gilmuar's neck.
Leona: Kenzo's coming.
Gilmuar looked toward the sky.
The pressure that belonged to his brother was still there. It had always been easy for him to recognize, even when Kenzo tried to make it something unfamiliar during training.
Gilmuar: Tell him...
Dark leaned closer.
Gilmuar: Tell him I knew where the weight was.
Dark: I will.
Gilmuar's eyes returned to him.
Gilmuar: Don't let him come here alone.
Dark swallowed.
Dark: I'll be with him.
Gilmuar drew the breath Akira had been holding.
His gaze moved past Leona, past the monitors, toward a place none of them could see.
Gilmuar: Kenzo...
He tried to say something else.
The last ring closed.
Leona felt his fingers ease inside her hands. Dark kept supporting his head. Tier's instrument gave another mechanical pulse, moving the chest of a man whose soul trace had stopped answering it.
Rykaou looked at Tier.
Tier did not move.
The instrument pulsed again.
Leona watched Gilmuar's chest rise.
Leona: Tier.
Tier removed his hand from the controls.
The movement stopped.
Dark sat with Gilmuar against his arm. He had held him dying once before. He had spent years believing that being faster, stronger, and harder to kill would keep him from sitting in that position again.
His friend's hand lay open in Leona's.
Dark: Gilmuar.
Leona turned her head toward him. She had never heard Dark say the name that way. It held no command and offered no reassurance. He was waiting for someone who had always answered it.
Nekros Zero stood beyond them with his scythe lowered. His optic checked the body, rejected the reading, and checked it again.
Nekros: The center is gone.
Dark lifted his head.
Nekros remembered the first room. He remembered Gilmuar falling and Dark crawling toward him. At the time, he had treated the reaction as evidence of human weakness. The years since had changed what that evidence meant, though he had no human expression with which to show it.
Nekros: I remember the first time.
Dark looked away from him.
Leona lowered Gilmuar's hand carefully. Cron folded part of his coat beneath the body while Akira drew her cloak under his head. They worked around one another without deciding who should do which part.
Tier closed the medical case. He left it beside Gilmuar.
Dantero's portal trembled.
Dantero: I can take him up.
Leona shook her head once, then looked at the square where Sereon stood.
Leona: Give me a second.
Sereon had corrected the damage to his neck. His armor remained broken where Gilmuar's axe had entered it. He did not need Suigōraku in his hand to watch them. The sword lay several steps away, and the reflection in its edge had gone dark under Shinryu's attention.
Sereon: He held longer than I expected.
Dark lowered Gilmuar onto the coat.
His eyes filled with black. Thin red rings formed at their centers. Horns broke through his hair. Obsidian spread along his neck and arms while claws pushed through his palms.
Vorax rose from his shoulder.
Vorax: Dark.
Dark stood.
Vorax: I can feel what you want.
Dark took Kyuketsu from the ground.
Dark: Then stay with me.
He crossed the square.
Sereon reached for Suigōraku. Dark hit him before his fingers closed around the hilt.
The blow carried Sereon through the lower floors of a tower. Dark followed, caught the correcting body, and struck again before the new skull settled around the brain. Flesh and armor broke against the wall.
Sereon spoke through the damage.
Sereon: You've left the others.
Dark seized his sword wrist.
Dark: They're with him.
He broke the wrist and drove Kyuketsu through Soul Ryūgu.
Sereon's voice came from the floor behind him.
Sereon: Look.
Dark saw Gilmuar standing in the doorway.
His coat was whole. His axe rested against his shoulder. Blood no longer marked his mouth.
Gilmuar: Dark. He's behind you.
Dark's body began turning.
He stopped it.
Dark: (Thinking) Leona has his hand. She hasn't let go.
He drove black flame through the doorway. The image remained long enough to smile, then broke into a shape that had never been Gilmuar.
Dark turned back to the body he held.
Dark: You don't get his voice.
Sereon's corrected hand closed around his wrist.
Sereon: I already did.
Dark struck him through another wall.
Sereon landed on his feet this time. Kyuketsu cut across his chest. He let the blade enter, stepped along it, and brought Suigōraku back to his hand through the broken stone.
The sword reached Dark's throat.
Dark caught the edge.
Blood crossed his fingers. Ryo corrected them around the metal.
Sereon looked at his hand.
Sereon: You're going to crush it.
Dark's fingers began closing.
A wound opened through his forearm before the force reached the blade.
Sereon: Gyuro Forty Four.
Dark stopped increasing the pressure.
Sereon: Hantaga No Gami.
The effect spread along his intent to strike. Flesh burst beneath the skin of his arm. Dark could feel the next eruption waiting in the force he was gathering through his shoulder.
Vorax wrapped the arm and took its weight.
Dark shortened the movement. He put Kyuketsu through Sereon's collar instead of swinging it and let his shadows carry the pressure holding Suigōraku down.
The eruptions stopped climbing.
Sereon watched him correct.
Sereon: You're learning while angry.
Dark: You killed him to get that anger.
Sereon tilted his head.
Sereon: I used what was already there.
Dark drove the sword farther.
Sereon: Gilmuar saw you protecting Shinryu. He came to give you something. Kenzo felt him, and came to give him something. Leona followed because she couldn't bear to watch from above.
Dark's hand closed around his throat.
Sereon: You're all on the same side. Each piece has another it refuses to lose.
He glanced toward the people lifting Gilmuar.
Sereon: A piece doesn't have to obey me. It only has to protect the one beside it.
Dark struck him against the wall.
Dark: You had to stop Varek moving.
Sereon's eyes returned to him.
Dark: You knew what he'd do if his hand worked. That's why you put the silver there.
Sereon's mouth formed a small smile.
Sereon: I didn't need him weak. I needed him standing where I put him.
Across the square, Shinryu drew the last silver line free.
Varek's hand rose.
The body around his wound was already complete. He did not test the arm a second time.
Sereon's smile disappeared as Varek entered the tower.
Varek: It works.
He closed his hand around Sereon's throat.
Hantaga No Gami burst through Varek's forearm. The opened tissue grew again around the force he had already fixed in his grip. He did not feed the effect another increase.
Dark felt the difference immediately. Sereon could shift the position Dark believed he held. He could not make Varek's hand forget the body inside it.
Varek turned his wrist.
Sereon's sword arm broke. Suigōraku struck the floor.
Varek: Shinryu. Keep that.
Shinryu lifted the blade with his changing sword and held it away from the people around Gilmuar.
Sereon's voice came from its surface anyway.
Sereon: You know that isn't all of me.
Varek looked down at the man in his hand.
Varek: I know where this much of you is.
He took him out of the capital.
Dark stood alone inside the broken tower. The stones that had been falling around Varek were still in the air. He turned toward the square and saw Shinryu holding Suigōraku beside his own blade.
Dark: Can he keep him?
Shinryu: If he gets him into Edrassan, Sereon will have difficulty finding a choice he likes.
Worlds passed beneath Varek.
Sereon's body broke and corrected inside his grip. Varek held the returning throat in the same position each time, giving him no room to complete a gesture. Ahead, the outer prisons of the Edrassan Empire appeared across the dark.
They had been built for beings who did not remain dead.
Varek: You will be measured.
Sereon looked toward them.
Varek: You will be cut. When you stand again, you will be measured again.
Sereon's mouth moved around blood.
Sereon: You've considered what to do with me.
Varek: I have resources. You have time to learn how many.
A second body began forming in the capital.
Varek felt it.
The body in his hand remained real. Another condition of Sereon was taking shape around the blood on Suigōraku's hilt, beside the hand Dark and Varek had broken.
Varek stopped short of the prisons.
Sereon had left more than a weapon behind.
Varek: You put a return under his axe.
Sereon: Gilmuar held it very firmly.
Varek crushed the body in his hand. He followed the second condition back toward the capital before it could finish.
Shinryu saw the new fingers form around Suigōraku.
He cut them away.
Another hand formed beside them. The sword's reflection showed him a body already standing, but Shinryu kept his changing blade across the place where the real flesh was still growing.
Shinryu: Dark!
Dark was already moving.
Varek arrived first.
He caught the new body by the face and drove it into the street. Kigen corrected beneath his palm. Varek lifted Suigōraku with his other hand and held both away from Shinryu.
Varek: Once.
Sereon's face returned inside his grip.
Varek: I carried a body while you had another place to return. I've seen it.
A blade struck Varek's arm.
Skirgash stood beside him with Hodyu raised. The eyes along its edge turned toward Akira, then toward the platform where Dantero had carried Gilmuar.
Skirgash: You keep walking past me.
Varek did not release Sereon.
Varek: You keep standing in front of him.
He struck Skirgash across the chest. The armor broke. Skirgash went backward through the remains of a wall and came out with Hodyu planted against the ground.
Skirgash: Domain World.
The sword's eyes opened.
Skirgash: Byugutakayu De Illustratoru!
The square changed.
Varek saw Gilmuar on the ground behind him, though Dantero had already carried the body upward. Akira appeared between Varek and Hodyu. The real Akira stood several steps to the left.
Varek's hand still held Sereon.
The body beneath it seemed to become Skirgash.
Nekros struck at the man beside Hodyu.
Nekros: Akira, get clear!
Akira ducked beneath the sword. Eiren froze the ground under its owner's feet. Lucen closed the space behind him, keeping the attack away from the platform.
Hodyu's eyes followed each movement.
Hodyu: I see you.
Varek watched the resistance in his own hand. He could feel Sereon's body there, whatever face the Domain gave it. He forced the pressure around that body inward and reached for Hodyu with his free arm.
Skirgash's blade cut into him.
The wound grew closed while Varek caught the wrist.
Varek: You've mistaken damage for interruption.
He broke the arm.
Nekros' scythe entered Skirgash's chest. Eiren held the fingers around Hodyu's hilt frozen. Akira caught the instant in which the sword would have turned toward Lucen.
On Tier's platform, Raith leaned into the monitor.
Raith: Wait. His shoulder.
Tier enlarged the image.
Raith: Sereon's shoulder broke first. Skirgash's answered it.
Varek tore the body away from Hodyu.
A crack crossed Skirgash's throat. It spread through the armor and the sword's open eyes. The body broke into hard pieces in his hands.
Hodyu's voice came from the falling fragments.
Hodyu: Skirgash?
Then it was gone.
The Domain vanished.
Varek looked down. Sereon no longer stood inside his hand. A silver impression of the throat remained against his palm. The real man stood several yards away, breathing evenly, with blood on his restored collar.
Sereon: Raith knew the stance. Nekros measured the body. Eiren took the heat from its blood. Akira held its time.
Raith's fingers tightened on the monitor.
Sereon: You all fought a battle you could verify.
Varek turned toward him.
Varek: And you used it to leave my hand.
Sereon: You noticed.
Varek crossed the distance.
Sereon spoke.
Sereon: Behind you.
Varek did not turn.
He reached Sereon's throat. At the same instant, pressure gathered under the platform where Gilmuar lay. Varek felt its weight moving through the body he held.
He arrested the pressure before it pulled the platform down.
Sereon's body shifted against his palm.
Dark struck it with Kyuketsu and kept the shift from completing.
Dark: Tier. He's tied himself to the platform.
Tier checked the ground.
Tier: I'm cutting it loose.
Varek held the connection still.
Varek: Do it. I'm not giving him the people above us to hold on to.
Kenzo arrived while Tier was severing that connection.
Bastion Override took him through the last false edge. He had pulled the repeated destinations apart until only the observation ground remained. Gilmuar's gravity no longer guided him. Tier's signal did.
He landed beside the monitors.
Gilmuar lay beyond them with his axe near his hand.
Kenzo walked past Tier without asking what had happened. He knelt and put a hand against his brother's shoulder.
The body had weight.
Nothing else answered him.
Kenzo: Gilmuar.
Leona stood nearby. Her hands were wet, though she had washed them twice.
Kenzo touched the torn fabric over his brother's chest.
Kenzo: He told me to stay outside.
Leona: He was trying to close it.
Kenzo looked at her.
Kenzo: I kept coming.
Leona's eyes lowered.
Kenzo: Did he hear me?
Dark's voice came through the channel.
Dark: He heard you.
Kenzo looked toward the square.
Dark: Varek. Give me a moment.
Varek held Sereon where he was.
Varek: Take it.
Dark reached the platform and stopped beside Kenzo. The obsidian on his arms had not withdrawn. Gilmuar's blood remained on the skin between it.
Kenzo watched that blood before looking at his face.
Kenzo: What did he say?
Dark knelt.
Dark: He said he knew where the weight was.
Kenzo's hand closed on Gilmuar's shoulder.
Dark: He asked me not to let you come here alone.
Kenzo looked back at his brother.
For years, Gilmuar had complained about Kenzo making him set the axe aside during training. He liked having something solid in his hands, something he could swing when a lesson became too irritating to endure. Kenzo had taken it anyway and made him hold the center without it.
After one of those days, Gilmuar had sat at the table with both arms trembling so badly he could barely lift his food. He had refused to admit it until Kenzo moved the bowl closer.
Gilmuar: I can reach it.
Kenzo: Then reach it.
Gilmuar: I hate you.
Kenzo: Eat.
The memory came with the heat of the meal and the sound of the bowl scraping wood. Kenzo looked at the hand lying beside the axe. It would never shake over another meal.
He stood.
Dark rose with him.
Kenzo: How much of him is real?
Dark looked toward Sereon in Varek's grip.
Dark: Enough to hurt.
Kenzo: Good.
Cron came nearer.
Cron: Kenzo.
Kenzo glanced at him.
Cron: We're going with you.
Kenzo looked from Cron to Tier, then to the others gathering behind them.
Kenzo: Then don't take turns.
He left the platform.
Sereon saw him arrive.
Kenzo's hand opened beside his face.
Kenzo: Explosive Gravity.
The explosion erased Sereon's head.
Varek released the correcting body only long enough for Kenzo to seize its shoulder. Dark caught Suigōraku as it returned toward the new hand forming around the hilt.
Kenzo brought his palm beside the place where the head had been.
Kenzo: Again.
Another explosion took the forming skull.
He stepped closer, almost face to face with the body, refusing to give it the space in which most fighters waited for an opponent to recover. Kigen brought forward another condition. Kenzo's hand was already there.
Sereon spoke from the air beside him.
Sereon: Your brother heard you coming.
Kenzo did not look toward the voice.
Kenzo: I heard him stop answering.
He caught the real body by its restoring jaw and drove it through the street.
The floor broke in layers beneath them. Dark followed, keeping Kyuketsu across Suigōraku. Varek remained above the hollow, stripping the pressure from the platform while Tier marked every connection he severed.
Kenzo landed beside Sereon.
He put his hand a few inches from the corrected face.
Kenzo: Gravity.
Sereon's body rose against his palm.
Kenzo: Explosive Gravity!
The blast took the head and both shoulders. It did not spread into the buildings around them. Kenzo dragged its force back around the returning body, detonating it again as Kigen presented another intact state.
Dark felt the heat of the repeated explosions across his face.
Dark: Kenzo. His hand's coming through the floor.
Kenzo stamped.
The hand flattened into the stone. He reached down, took Sereon by the wrist, and pulled the whole body into the hollow.
Kenzo: There.
Suigōraku's reflection filled the wall.
Hundreds of Sereons stood inside it. Each looked at Kenzo with the same calm expression. Several stepped into the hollow, carrying the weight and resistance of bodies rather than empty images.
Kenzo looked around.
Sereon: You wanted to come close. Choose.
Kenzo's mouth spread into the expression the others remembered from his first arrival. The anticipation was there. The joy was absent.
Kenzo: You think a crowd makes this harder for me?
He opened both hands.
Gravity caught every body in the hollow. The copies struck the floor, the walls, one another. Some corrected their positions. Others appeared farther away, then found the weight waiting there too.
Kenzo walked among them.
He put a palm beside one face and erased it. He passed the falling body and destroyed the next before its sword came up. A third reached his back. Kenzo took hold of its weight without turning and brought it over his shoulder into the two ahead of him.
Three explosions crossed the hollow.
Kaelith landed beside Dark.
Kaelith: He isn't waiting for an exchange.
Dark: He never was.
Kenzo caught another Sereon by the throat.
Kenzo: I don't want a duel with you.
He destroyed the head in his hand.
Kenzo: I want you gone.
The real Sereon stepped out of a reflection above him. Kenzo felt the change in weight and took hold of it.
Kenzo: Gravitas.
The air tightened.
Sereon's sword stopped inches from his neck. Every direction around the real body curved toward the point Kenzo had placed in its chest.
Dark entered from the side.
Kyuketsu crossed Soul Ryūgu. Kenzo turned the weight beneath the cut, forcing Sereon's corrected condition to return against the same blade.
Sereon: You've put the center inside me.
Kenzo: You noticed.
He brought his hand beside Sereon's face.
Kenzo: Explosive Gravitas.
The center detonated.
Sereon's body broke from within. The force caught the condition Kigen tried to present next and tore through it too. Soul Ryūgu scattered against the walls. Suigōraku fell.
Dark pinned the sword with his foot.
Kenzo stood over the returning body.
Kenzo: That was the first thing I should've done.
A line of Karyū formed beside Dark's ankle. Tier's Witness fired down into it before it could settle.
Tier landed at the edge of the hollow in his Field Frame.
Tier: You can regret things later. Keep his chest facing up.
Kenzo looked at him.
Tier had sensor dust across both hands and a dark monitor beside his shoulder. His glasses were cracked. He removed them, folded them once, and put them away.
Tier: I'm bringing the orbital weapon over this World.
Sereon's eye formed among the blood.
Sereon: You've found the right sky this time?
Tier looked down at him.
Tier: Dantero.
Dantero opened a vast aperture above the hollow. On its far side, an orbital structure turned through cold darkness. Rings unfolded around a central emitter, changing their alignment until the machine faced the broken square.
Dantero's arms shook under the size of the opening.
Dantero: If anyone bends the sky while I'm holding this, I'm billing the lot of you.
Kenzo looked up, then returned his attention to Sereon.
Kenzo: Keep it still.
Tier: That was going to be my request.
The Witness fired into Sereon's forming hand. Kaelith burned a reflection growing behind Tier. Rykaou landed in the hollow and struck a body Dark's eyes had missed, driving it into Kenzo's gravity.
Rykaou: This one's carrying his weight!
Kenzo seized it.
Sereon's voice reached them from every wall.
Sereon: You've hit each other already.
Dark saw Rykaou fall beneath Kenzo's hand. Tier saw the orbital weapon fire before he gave it permission. Kaelith saw her flame enter Dark's back.
None of those things had happened yet.
Dark felt his body beginning to withdraw from Kaelith. He stopped and looked at the hand she had placed against the wall.
Dark: Kaelith. Keep burning.
Kaelith's eyes returned to him.
Kaelith: I haven't hit you.
Dark: I know.
Rykaou touched his own chest, felt it whole, and drove his palm into the body Kenzo held.
Rykaou: I'm still standing!
Tier cut the false firing report from his monitor.
Tier: Orbital weapon is armed. It has not fired.
Kenzo took hold of every position in which Sereon had shown them an injury.
Kenzo: Domain World.
The hollow expanded.
Dark felt the old law of Gravitas arrive in a form that no longer depended on one body standing at its center. Kenzo appointed weight throughout the field, fixing Sereon's manifestations to positions they could not exchange without passing through him.
Kenzo: GRAVITAS.
The false bodies fell.
Kenzo looked at the one that resisted.
Kenzo: Axis of Absolute Weight!
The pressure entered Sereon from every direction.
His repaired bones broke. Kigen corrected them. Kenzo gave the corrected condition the same weight as the one before it.
Sereon's expression changed.
Kenzo stepped close enough to put his hand beside the face again.
Kenzo: Supremacy Over All Beneath.
Everything Sereon had placed below the Domain's law became subject to it.
The blood. The armor. The bodies that had felt real. The pressure hidden under the floor. The moments his words had tried to give them before the actions occurred.
Kenzo forced them into separate positions and held them there.
Tier watched his display clear.
Tier: Dark. Move your blade out of his chest.
Dark pulled Kyuketsu free.
Tier: Kenzo. Don't let the body change its height.
Kenzo's hand remained beside Sereon's face.
Kenzo: It isn't going anywhere.
Tier lifted two fingers toward the orbital structure.
Tier: Full penetration.
The weapon fired.
A white line entered the hollow.
It struck Sereon through the chest and continued downward, piercing the floor, the deep structures beneath the capital, and the layers below them. The World opened around the line. For a moment Dark could see another sky through the hole under Sereon.
Kenzo held the target in place through the impact.
The real body disappeared.
The force of the shot passed through the World and into the emptiness beyond its far boundary. The light remained in the hollow for a moment after the weapon stopped firing.
Dantero let the aperture contract.
His knees hit the stone.
Dantero: There. That'll ruin anyone's afternoon.
Tier ignored him. He watched three faint readings remain where the body had been.
Tier: Kenzo, keep the law up.
Kenzo did.
One reading vanished under Gravitas. Another tried to form beside Suigōraku. Dark drove black flame across it.
The third appeared beneath the broken collar of Soul Ryūgu.
Sereon returned there.
His face formed first. For a moment, the calm was gone from it. Then his mouth settled, and he looked at Tier.
Sereon: You built that for a World.
Tier: I built it for something that thought a World was cover.
The Witness fired into the returning body. Kigen changed the condition again, but there were fewer places for it to use.
Tier marked the remaining one.
Tier: That shot cost him a return. Don't give him time to place another.
Above them, Leona watched the white line fade from the sky.
She had stayed beside Gilmuar while the others descended. Cron had helped her pull the coat straight beneath him. Lara's bell lay near the axe, where Leona had set it so her hands could work.
She looked toward the True Emperors.
Leona: You saw that.
Enra turned toward her.
Leona: Tier's magicless. He built something to do what he couldn't. Gilmuar went down there because he thought he could help. All of them are doing something.
Water rose around her shoulders.
Leona: You can stop Sereon.
Enra: I can.
Leona: Then do it.
Enra remained where he was.
Enra: I have chosen to stay here.
Leona looked at him for several seconds. There had been people in her life she could argue into acting. There had been people she could shame. Enra's stillness gave her neither possibility.
She turned toward Raiku.
Leona: How long would it take you?
Raiku looked at Gilmuar, then at her.
Raiku: Less time than this conversation.
Leona's breath caught.
Leona: Then why are we still having it?
Raiku did not descend.
Sukojo stood beside him, watching Kenzo's Domain hold the hollow. He could see the bodies Sereon had made, each crushed under a law that knew how to catch them. He could see Sereon using the people on the platform whenever Varek came close enough to take him.
Leona returned to Gilmuar.
Sukojo looked down at his own hand.
Raiku: You have enough to choose.
Sukojo: I know.
He left.
In the hollow, Sereon had forced a narrow part of his arm beyond Kenzo's hold. Two fingers turned toward the platform.
Dark saw them.
Dark: Kenzo, the hand!
Kenzo crushed the wrist. The pressure had already left it.
Rykaou turned toward the sky.
Rykaou: Something's under Gilmuar!
Leona felt the floor move.
Tier threw a barrier around her before she could stand. Cron took Gilmuar by the shoulders and pulled him away from the opening while Leona held his legs.
Kenzo felt his brother's body shift above him.
He began to turn.
Sereon spoke.
Sereon: He's falling.
Kenzo saw Gilmuar leave Cron's hands.
He knew the gravity around the platform. He could feel Cron still holding the body. The image nevertheless reached a part of him that had not yet accepted what lay up there.
His Domain loosened for an instant.
Suigōraku's edge rose behind him.
Varek caught it.
The sword cut through his palm. The flesh grew around the grip he had already fixed.
Varek: Keep your World open.
Kenzo turned back.
Varek tore the reflected blade apart and crushed the pressure beneath the platform. He pulled the silver connection toward the real Sereon.
Sereon's chest opened along a thin line.
Another cut crossed his wrist. Another divided his head.
The body held together for one more instant, then came apart.
Sukojo landed beside Varek.
He had moved one finger.
Dark raised Kyuketsu toward him.
Dark: Why are you here?
Sukojo looked at the pieces Kigen was trying to bring together.
Sukojo: He keeps speaking as though I've agreed to stand where he put me.
A head began forming.
Sukojo cut it open.
Kenzo seized the returning torso and detonated Gravitas inside it. Sukojo let him work, then cut the next condition before Sereon could complete a hand.
Sereon's voice came from the stone.
Sereon: I offered you Dark's power.
Sukojo: You offered to hand it to me.
He crouched beside the forming face.
Sukojo: I noticed the difference.
Sereon's lungs returned around a breath. Sukojo opened them before the breath left. His heart formed. The cut crossed it. Kigen corrected the body again, and Sukojo's finger moved.
He died and returned too quickly for the sound in his throat to become a scream.
Dark watched.
Part of him wanted Sukojo to keep doing it until nothing remained capable of feeling anything. He thought of Gilmuar asking not to fall and hated that the thought made him want to count each return.
Vorax tightened around his arm.
Dark kept Kyuketsu ready.
Sukojo stopped cutting.
Sereon drew one full breath.
Sukojo: How many?
Sereon looked up at him.
Sereon: You stopped before I lost count.
Sukojo's mouth moved into a small grin.
Sukojo: Good. You can still pay attention.
Sereon's hand closed around Suigōraku as the sword returned. He drove it through Sukojo's stomach.
Sukojo looked down at the blade.
Then he stepped farther onto it.
His hand reached Sereon's throat.
Sukojo: I didn't come down here because your little explanation frightened me.
He pulled Sereon close.
Sukojo: I came down because I wanted to.
Dark and Kenzo moved from opposite sides. Sereon placed Sukojo where Kenzo expected the real body to be.
Dark saw the markings on the wrong chest.
Dark: Kenzo. Markings.
Kenzo changed the weight before his hand reached Sukojo. The false position tore away from the real one.
Sereon raised two fingers against Sukojo's wrist.
Sereon: Reversed Gyuro One Hundred.
Pressure gathered in the hollow.
Sereon: Shūen Kōsō!
Gravitas appeared around them in the shape Gilmuar had opened.
Gilmuar stood beneath his axe. He looked toward Dark.
Gilmuar: One second.
Dark felt his foot move.
He drove black flame into the real floor before it took him toward the voice.
Kenzo heard Gilmuar call his name from beyond the boundary he had failed to cross. He closed his eyes, found the real body inside Sukojo's hand, and tightened Supremacy Over All Beneath around it.
Kenzo: Don't use his voice.
The false Domain broke.
Sukojo's grip remained.
Sukojo: You showed me an empty World.
Sereon struggled to draw air.
Sukojo: I've been thinking about one all morning.
He drove him into the stone.
Tier's restraints unfolded around the marked position. They entered the ground at the places where Kigen had tried to present another condition and held those places together.
Tier: Dark, keep his chest down. Kenzo, leave the wrist to me.
Kenzo did not release it immediately.
Tier looked at him.
Tier: I'm not asking you to stop hurting him. I need your hand free to hold the law.
Kenzo moved his grip to Sereon's shoulder. The restraints closed around the wrist.
The Witness fired into a point beneath Sereon's thumb.
Rykaou turned.
Rykaou: Two more! Dark, don't put your left foot down!
Dark held the step.
Dark: Under me?
Rykaou: One under your heel. The other's moving toward Lucen!
Eiren froze the first point inside the stone.
Eiren: Dark, move now. I have yours.
Lucen closed the space around the second.
Lucen: This one isn't moving anymore.
Rykaou stepped past both and struck Sereon under the jaw. His senses followed the resistance through the correcting body.
Rykaou: He's still here. That's the weight.
Kaelith burned the reflection forming behind Sereon's head. The heat crossed his face, exposing the repaired flesh beneath the shattered armor.
Kaelith: Tier, your mark's visible.
Tier placed a second restraint.
Leona descended through Dantero's portal with Cron at her side. She had left Lara's bell beside Gilmuar's axe. Her hands were clean now, but she could still feel the blood beneath her nails.
Sereon watched her approach.
Sereon: You came down after all.
Water closed around his restored fingers and drew them away from Suigōraku.
Leona: I'm holding your hand still.
She pressed the water tighter.
Leona: That's why I'm here.
Sereon tried to turn the wrist. Kenzo's law caught the movement. Tier's restraint took the force it would have sent into the ground.
Leona looked at the broken collar of Soul Ryūgu.
Leona: He worked until he could do it without Kenzo standing beside him.
Kenzo glanced at her.
Leona: Some nights he came back so tired he barely spoke. Then somebody asked about training and he'd spend an hour explaining what he was going to do differently.
Sereon: I saw how much he'd learned.
Leona struck him across the face.
The water kept his head turned toward her.
Leona: You saw who he wanted to help.
A point formed near her foot.
Pre Iris warned Tier before it fired. He pulled Leona back. The Witness erased the point, and Cron copied the motion of Kenzo's gravity to hold the next one beneath the floor.
Cron: I have it. Leona, keep your water on the wrist.
She did.
No one stopped working to let her speak.
Tier tightened the restraint around Sereon's correcting body.
Tier: My displays agreed when Gilmuar saw the opening. You made three different systems give him the same answer.
Sereon looked at him.
Tier: I've kept the recordings.
Sereon: To learn from them?
Tier's gun fired through his shoulder.
Tier: Yes.
Nekros stepped close enough to place the scythe against the gap in Soul Ryūgu. His instruments watched Kigen change the body beneath it.
Nekros: I killed Gilmuar once.
Dark's grip tightened on Kyuketsu.
Nekros: I treated what happened afterward as a weakness I could use.
Sereon's eyes moved toward him.
Nekros: You used it too.
Sereon: Your reason for standing here is different from theirs.
Nekros: It is.
He kept the scythe where it was.
Nekros: I still choose where I stand.
Shinryu came beside Varek and placed his changing blade across Suigōraku. Its reflections went dark, but Sereon's voice remained in the hollow.
Shinryu: The sword is contained. Keep watching him. His words haven't stopped.
Akira opened a ring around the next movement of Sereon's hand. Blood had dried on her fingers from Gilmuar. She looked at the moment she was holding and refused the second one Sereon placed beside it.
Akira: I have the wrist before it moves. Tier, close your restraint now.
Tier did.
Sereon's fingers corrected inside the cuff.
The cuff remained.
Varek stepped through the group.
Dark looked at him.
Dark: Can you take all of it this time?
Varek studied the body, the sword beneath Shinryu's blade, and the few remaining positions Tier had marked.
Varek: I can take what he has left.
He knelt and closed his hand around Sereon's throat.
The pressure in the hollow settled.
Sereon tried to move his sword hand. Leona's water held the fingers apart. He tried to change the body inside Varek's grip. Tier's restraints forced the next condition back into the same position.
He spoke.
Sereon: Dark has let go.
Dark kept Kyuketsu through his chest.
Dark: No.
The false release appeared in every reflective surface around them. Dark saw his own hand open. He felt the relief of finally stepping back.
His real hand remained on the sword.
Kenzo held the law over it.
Kenzo: He hasn't.
Sereon looked at him.
The calm in his face held, but the next movement failed. Varek lifted him from the stone. Sukojo cut the condition Kigen tried to place beyond Tier's mark.
Shinryu gathered Suigōraku inside the changing light of his own blade.
Shinryu: Varek. The sword comes with you.
Varek took it.
Sereon's body corrected one more time inside his grip.
Varek: You will not leave another part of yourself beside them.
He opened the distance to Edrassan.
Leona watched Sereon's face.
Leona: He knew you hadn't reached Shinryu.
Sereon looked at her.
Leona: You told him it was for nothing. He knew what he'd done anyway.
Sereon did not answer.
For the first time since Gilmuar entered the square, there was no other body taking shape, no pressure gathering beneath the platform, and no hand already moving inside a reflection.
Tier checked the readings.
Tier: He's contained.
Varek began the crossing.
Sereon closed his eyes and inhaled.
Dark felt the breath enter the body beneath Kyuketsu. It was small, taken through a throat Varek had nearly crushed. Sereon did not pull against the grip.
Sereon exhaled faintly.
Sereon: Good grief, you really are a pain in the ass Dark.
Sereon: They have watched you bleed.
Sereon pointed towards the True Emperors and Raiku.
Sereon: They have the power to stop me. They understand what every moment of hesitation will cost. And still, they choose to watch.
Sereon: Another wound. Another desperate plea. Someone else paying for their patience.
Sereon: You may call me a monster. You honestly could be correct. Your perspectives vary from my own.
Sereon: I chose what I have done. I will answer for it without asking you to call it holy.
Sereon: I expect the same of them.
Sereon: If their power gives them the right to judge, it gives them the responsibility to act.
Sereon: I will not accept a world where a title makes silence sacred.
Sereon: Remember their faces.
Sereon: I intend to teach them that standing above a tragedy does not place them outside it.
The voice reached the hollow from the restrained body, from the darkened sword, and from places in the stone where no reflection remained.
Dark drove Kyuketsu farther through him.
Varek closed his hand.
Sereon's neck broke.
The voice continued.
Sereon: The All Gyuro 90.
Raith stood on the platform.
His hand struck Tier's monitor hard enough to turn it.
Raith: What did he say?
The readings changed.
Karyū's point returned beneath the street. Niren answered from beyond the hollow. Hantaga No Gami reached for the energy in Varek's grip and the force keeping Akira's instant open. Shō steadied the body as Kigen corrected it.
Other numbered pressures joined them.
Tier's restraints held for one more instant, then began answering techniques they had not been placed to contain.
Tier: Raith!
Raith stared at the pattern.
Raith: That isn't Gyuro Ninety.
Dark looked up.
Raith: All of them. He's bringing all of them into one act!
He had stood inside an All Gyuro of his own. He knew the strain of making separate compression techniques answer together. He had never heard Sereon name one. The pattern rising from the hollow was not the one he knew. But what he also could not understand is the fact that Sereon is capable of releasing mass destruction and the full power of if not all, most of his Gyuro techniques without the full incantation.
Gyuros scale alongside either the power of the incantation, yet Sereon has never uttered any of them, he simply called them out.
Raith put a hand against the monitor.
Raith: Varek, don't carry that into Edrassan! VARREEKK!!!
Varek had already felt the distance open into the wrong condition. Taking Sereon through it would give the joined Gyuro the structures of his Empire to cross.
He turned.
The force rose from his hand and struck upward.
Shinryu put his blade between Leona, Cron, and the first pressure that reached them. Lucen opened the space above the platform long enough for Tier to pull it clear. Eiren froze the collapsing ground beneath Akira so she could release her instant without falling into it.
Kenzo's Domain held around the hollow.
Kenzo: Stay below me!
He took the weight of the first wave.
Explosive Gravitas detonated against it. The wave broke, joined itself through Niren, and continued beyond the part he had destroyed.
Sukojo cut through another section.
The severed force passed his hand.
It crossed the sky.
Tier's farthest monitors went dark.
A boundary too distant for anyone in the capital to see was struck across its breadth. Raith felt the Sphere answer. The pressure did not stop there.
A fracture entered the space beyond it.
Varek still held Sereon.
Dark stood beside him with Kyuketsu through the correcting body. The throat returned around the words that had already been spoken, and Sereon opened his eyes.
His face was calm again.
Raith looked toward the fracture.
Raith: He did that with the name.
Tier turned to him.
Raith: He hasn't recited the incantation.
Sereon drew another breath.
Dark heard it.
He pulled Kyuketsu free and raised the blade toward the mouth forming inside Varek's grip. Shinryu stepped out from behind the people he had sheltered. Kenzo brought the full law of his World down around the body.
The fracture continued into the next Sphere.
Sereon began to speak.
To Be Continued.
End of Arc 4 Chapter 19.