The Satoshi Academy campus had become almost unrecognisable, flames crawling across the roofs and licking through shattered classroom windows, thick black smoke rolling over the courtyard while the alarms screamed without pause.
Broken desks, scattered books, overturned chairs, and pieces of the school's walls covered the ground, mixed with blood that ran between the cracks in the pavement.
Bodies of students lay where they had fallen, some motionless beneath collapsed debris, others surrounded by the belongings they had dropped while desperately trying to escape.
Thankfully, a large portion of the student body had evacuated moments before the attack began, leaving the campus far emptier than it should have been, though the silence between the distant screams somehow made everything feel worse.
Near the centre of the destruction, Harold stumbled backward, his shoes scraping against the blood-slick floor as another attack slammed into him.
His arms shook from exhaustion, his uniform was torn in several places, and blood ran from the corner of his mouth before dripping onto his chest. He barely managed to raise his weapon before a kinetic strike tore past him, smashing into the wall behind his shoulder and sending chunks of concrete raining across the hallway.
Harold ducked, breathing heavily, his eyes struggling to remain focused as two figures advanced through the smoke.
The pair moved with terrifying coordination, never getting in each other's way, never needing to call out where the other would move next.
One carried the presence of someone who enjoyed the destruction around them, while the other remained eerily quiet, her movements controlled and almost mechanical.
Their masks hid everything except their eyes, the demon-shaped mask facing Harold while the dragon mask turned slightly toward the burning courtyard, watching the approaching emergency vehicles in the distance.
Neither seemed concerned about the growing number of sirens.
The black-haired figure eventually stepped away from the fight, resting his back against a cracked wall as though the destruction around him were nothing more than an inconvenience. His breathing remained steady, his posture loose, almost relaxed, despite the bodies surrounding his feet.
He glanced toward the blonde girl, seemingly amused by the situation, then looked toward the distant flashing lights as more police vehicles began arriving outside the academy gates.
"Is this the best you can do detective. Demon Mask, the backup is coming, and I want to kill them all if we're going to impress the master."
The blonde girl did not answer immediately, her attention remained fixed somewhere beyond the ruined corridor, her fingers tightening around the weapon attached to her arm.
The mention of their master seemed to mean little to her compared with the thought of the person she truly cared about, the person whose name had become an obsession powerful enough to eclipse everything else.
Her gaze eventually drifted back toward the wounded Harold, but there was no excitement in her eyes, only cold calculation.
"The master only cares about her senpai, so if that is her goal, I'll support her."
She stepped forward, her boots pressing into the bloody floor, leaving dark footprints behind her as she approached the injured people scattered across the corridor.
The black-haired man watched her for several seconds, his expression changing slightly when he noticed how little emotion crossed her face. To him, the two of them fought less like ordinary killers and more like something that had forgotten the rules everyone else lived by.
"What's with these two, they fight like monsters."
The blonde stopped and for a moment, the only sounds were the crackling flames, distant sirens, and the faint groaning of the building as another section of the ceiling collapsed somewhere nearby.
Her head slowly turned toward him, and she walked back without saying anything. Her hand reached up, fingers hooking beneath the edge of her mask, before she pulled it away from her face and allowed it to hang at her side.
The firelight revealed the true condition of her skin, unusual discoloration spreading across the left side of her face and down her arm, the result of the disease that had changed her appearance.
"That's because we are monsters, monsters you can't understand, and monsters you can't possibly hope to defeat."
The black-haired man stared at her for a moment, his previous amusement fading slightly. Before he could respond, the sound of hurried footsteps echoed through the ruined corridor, growing louder with every second.
A figure appeared through the smoke at the far end of the hallway, moving faster than anyone had any right to after seeing what awaited them. Mystic finally stepped onto the battlefield, his clothes carrying dust from the journey, his eyes immediately sweeping across the destruction.
He stopped, his gaze moved from the burning classrooms to the shattered windows, to the bodies scattered across the ground, then finally to Harold. His expression hardened, the playful irritation he normally carried at arriving late disappearing as he took in the state of the campus.
Smoke curled around his shoulders while flames reflected in his eyes, and somewhere behind him, another explosion shook the building hard enough to send fragments of glass raining from the ceiling.
"Shit, I might be late to the fight."
Mystic hurried toward Harold, stepping around broken furniture and bodies without taking his eyes off the injured officer.
When he reached him, he crouched down, noticing the bruising across Harold's face, the blood soaking through his clothes, and the way one of his arms trembled whenever he tried to move it.
Harold looked like he had been thrown through half the school, and judging from the destruction around them, Mystic could only imagine how much worse the fight had been before he arrived.
"Sir, are you okay, what happened?"
Harold lifted his head slowly, forcing himself upright while keeping one hand against the wall. His breathing was rough, but his eyes remained locked on the two figures standing farther down the corridor.
He had spent enough time fighting them to understand how dangerous they were, and seeing Mystic walk directly into their path only made his expression tighten.
"They attacked the school, looking for their master's senpai, and that senpai is you."
Mystic's eyes shifted toward the two masked figures as both of them reacted immediately.
The black-haired man straightened away from the wall, while the blonde's fingers tightened around her weapon. Neither had expected their target to walk into the battlefield so quickly, especially not after everything they had done to draw him out.
The flames behind Mystic illuminated his silhouette, making him appear almost completely surrounded, yet he showed no hesitation as he stared back at them.
The black-haired figure began walking toward him, stepping over a fallen student without even looking down. Each footstep echoed through the damaged hallway, slow and deliberate, while the blonde followed several paces behind him.
Their murderous intent filled the corridor, heavy enough to make the air feel colder, but Mystic remained still, his own presence beginning to rise in response.
"So you're master's senpai, come with us, I don't want to hurt you."
Mystic's lips curled upward. He could feel the hostility rolling from them, but instead of backing away, his fingers slowly curled into fists.
Images flashed through his mind, Hina's death, the memories of the killer, the pain surrounding his family, and the anger that had been building inside him with every loop. The mention of the master did not frighten him, it only confirmed that the people standing before him were connected to everything he had been trying to uncover.
"No, I'd rather kill you."
His voice was quiet, almost casual, but the smile that followed carried none of his usual humour. Mystic stepped forward, his shoes crunching over broken glass, while the two killers stopped several metres away. The air between them seemed to tighten, three predators standing in the middle of a burning school, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
Harold pushed himself away from the wall, ignoring the pain shooting through his body.
He knew Mystic was about to attack, but there was something he needed to understand first, something that could mean the difference between surviving the next few seconds and becoming another body on the floor. Harold glanced toward the dragon mask, then toward the demon mask, committing their positions to memory before finally speaking.
"Before you fight, Mystic, know who they are, Dragon Mask is Karma, he uses kinetic arms and gauntlets, and Demon Mask is Elijah, she uses kinetic legs and gauntlets."
Mystic's eyes narrowed.
Now that Harold had given him their names and abilities, every movement became easier to read. Karma's stance favoured his upper body, his gauntlets carrying the machinery responsible for the violent kinetic attacks Harold had barely survived.
Elijah stood differently, her weight centred through her legs, every subtle shift suggesting explosive speed. Their masks no longer felt mysterious, they were targets, and Mystic could finally begin calculating how to bring them down.
Harold reached toward the nearest wounded person and carefully pulled them away from the centre of the corridor, dragging them behind a partially collapsed wall for cover.
His muscles screamed with every movement, but he refused to stop, even when blood dripped from his fingers onto the floor.
Once the injured person was safely out of the immediate line of fire, Harold looked back at Mystic, then toward Karma and Elijah, his expression carrying the exhaustion of someone who had already lost once and still refused to surrender.
Mystic stepped forward, the flames reflecting across his face as the distant sirens grew louder. Around him, Satoshi Academy continued burning, smoke filling the sky while emergency lights flashed beyond the ruined gates.
Karma raised his kinetic gauntlets, Elijah lowered her stance, and the floor beneath all three began to tremble from the pressure building inside the corridor. Mystic tightened his fists, his smile disappearing as his eyes locked onto them.
"It doesn't matter; I won't give up."