Acolyte's Quest: Traversing Mirror Anchor [End]

[Zero Venkage]

"Lethal force? Or you wanna 'save' this weapon?"

He asked while adjusting his grip on his katana. He could already feel the answer clawing at the back of his mind, demanding release.

He bared his teeth in a grin.

“Let’s avoid unnecessary casualty. I wanna be able to sleep tonight.“

This armored assailant wasn’t the first hitman sent to take Zero’s head from the Arceneaux Corporation. His journey to the mystic city of Uran had more than half a dozen of well armed mercenaries from Leviathan Order on his trail. Gwendolyn and Alphonse stepped out themselves to give zero and his unexpected Diamond Dust allies a run for their money, but they disappeared just as mysteriously as they arrived. Their determination often put their goals above the needs and safety of individuals caught between them and their goals, so this attack had the potential to become deadly very quickly.

The current around Zeik changed when he summoned his Animus, the stoic demeanor he sported a moment before, clad in bandages, melted away into a carnal bloodlust Zero last witnessed in the depths of The Crucible. Zero thought the man was too pragmatic now to fall back into old habits, but it seemed they truly died hard. It amused hi in the moment, in their time together Zeik often spoke of the sanctity of life with reverence in his heart, but the same man could snuff out an opponent without a second thought. Though friends and rivals on the battlefield, sporting a bond forged in the depths of a legendary arena, Zeik’s regard for life often tempered Zero’s indifference. With 10 years since their last meeting, Zero often reflected on Zeik’s worldly musings, pragmatic and humane, for guidance when his own caprice held devastating consequences for anyone caught in its path. If Zeik wanted to flex his replenished strength, Zero wouldn’t hold him back.

The circular blade exploded from beneath the sea and careened directly towards them, but Zero took a lightning fast Saltare handspring to avoid its razor sharp approach, turning while propped on one arm and resting in a handstand His body coursed with electricity, keeping an eye on the cybernetic armor within the deadly disc. Zero paid no mind to its construction or integration with the individual inside, it made no difference to him if it were sapient or cyborg if it launched an attack on them, he and Zeik came on a mission of goodwill for Vescrutia and the forces that would stand against them had a hell of a fight coming up.

[Zeik]

The air in the underground facility crackled with a tension thick enough to choke on. Zeik's aura shifted, a ripple through the unseen, bending both mind and matter to the presence of his Animus. This weapon should have been a shock to Zk—any mystic brandishing a new blade could warrant a second glance—but this was different. This weapon wasn’t simply new to Zk’s eyes. It was new to the very soil of Vescrutia itself.

After their devastating defeat at Arcturus, the Trinity had splintered, each seeking their own means to reconcile with failure. This weapon, the Animus, was one of those answers. Unlike the crude craftsmanship of steel and iron, it was something far more primal, more personal. It was not forged by hammer and fire but woven from the very fabric of Zeik’s essence—his soul made manifest.

Zeik was a name whispered with reverence and fear. A divine protector, a seer whose wisdom guided nations, whose strength laid waste to tyrants. But there was something beneath that revered exterior, something darker. And now, as he stood with the Animus in his grasp, that darkness no longer lingered in the shadows—it radiated from him, unshackled.

His usual stoicism had cracked, replaced by a wild glint in his eye. A hunger. A wrathful intoxication that bled into the very air. Those who witnessed it, even from afar, could feel its pull—a force that demanded submission or defiance, but never indifference.

The saw blades whirred towards him in a deadly spiral. He did not flinch. Instead, he did something unexpected. With a single motion, he tore at his own weapon, splitting it into two identical blades. Their tips dragged against the hardened stone beneath him, leaving behind trails of searing energy. His stance abandoned the precision of Iaido, the practiced grace of the warrior he had once been. Now, he moved with something more primal, more instinctual.

Then, he roared.

It wasn’t just a battle cry. It was a declaration, a force of will that sent shivers through the very filaments of Vescrutia’s naten. The scattered energy that permeated all things responded, converging, twisting, condensing into a sphere so dense it seemed to distort the air around it.

He wanted her to strike. He wanted her to test the unyielding force he had become. And as the saw blades neared, he slashed into the sphere, releasing a herculean wave of power.

It wasn’t an attack.

It was an immovable object.

And she was running straight into it.

[The Arceneaux Family]

Terra’s liquid saw blade whizzed past Zero and crashed directly into Zeik’s mystic wall. Her saw blade ground aging the shield, sending charged shrapnel flying all around them. Feeling no give in its presence, she bounced off it, her feet sliding back into the shallow waters of the strait. She granted, her cybernetic effort filled the chilling winds between them all. The water vapor steamed off her body, glistening in the growing twilight. The joints and exhaust off her suit lit up with a sinister crimson light and the mists around her increased to a small cloud as they emitted a white gas as they hissed, relieving some sort of pressure.

She took note of the two blades brandished by Zeik and Zero’s empty palms, planted on the ground. With the pike in her possession, she might have held an advantage over one of them but the shield before them proved immovable so far. The only way forward would be with the proper strategy.

“Take this!”

She crossed her arms in front of her first and the growing gas condensed into some razor sharp petals around her, forming a pleated cloak across her shoulders and down her back. The next moment, she forced her hands forward at her opponents and the petals took off in flight above her head and arcing over the mystic, immovable shield that impeded her previously. These petals were made of a special, condensed energy and amplified by her Arc Tek suit, responding to her intention and flying like tiny bullets raining down on her opponents. The petals were charged with her Naten and crafted to be razor sharp, cutting through the air with a sinister whine. If they hit their mark, they’d rip them to shreds and turn them into mincemeat easily.

[Zero Venkage]

“No thanks,” Zero said, stepping out of his handstand into a cartwheel weaving a number of hand seals as he rose back to his feet. He placed himself directly behind Zeik with his hands coated in purple electricity. He paused for just a moment, taking note of a strange change in the current flowing around their opponent. It looked familiar, similar to his own while still retaining a certain cybernetic quality about it. It gave him pause, prompting a little extra caution on his and his friend’s behalf, giving his electricity clad fists an extra layer. Not that he was in a highly trying situation, but he was able to use a bit of sweat to coat his electrical force in Mistral, enchanting it with a more formidable quality to defend against this familiar quality of the energy of their opponent.

He paid his observation no serious mind before unfurling his interlocked fingers in the air above his and Zeik’s head and pulling them down in an arc to their sides. The purple electricity made a powerful snap and unleashed a tight net of shimmering lightning weaving itself a mesh cage around them. The gauge of the net was tight enough to catch the petal barrage raining down upon them and its size large enough to encompass the mystic shield Zeik cast, in case he and his spirit blades had another use for them. The two together were resourceful and dynamic, forming a synergy Zero only hoped to achieve with others since The Fall. Since then, he’d been a largely solo act in most combat situations with a few very select exceptions, so he missed the synergy he found in this moment.

“Let’s push it, Zeik,” he said at his friend’s back. The change in current still unnerved him slightly and Zero didn’t want to see what else their opponents could have in store. God forbid they break out some summon and really put a damper on their party.

[Zeik]

Zeik’s presence pulsed in a strange, rhythmic cadence—his eyes flickering between unhinged fury and a cold, dissociative concern. His movements followed a pattern, predictable at first, only breaking rhythm when he found Zk had returned. With each pass, the intervals grew less steady, the fury dimming, replaced by an unsettling detachment.

Something felt off. He could feel it in his bones, a whisper of wrongness threading through his movements. His gaze flicked to his swords, then to the wall of naten he commanded—a construct he once wielded with precision, now behaving in ways beyond his intention. A fleeting thought passed through his mind: "Why do I feel this way?"

Then, Zk’s voice cut through his haze. "

Let’s push it."

The words struck Zeik’s mind like a commandment, and his body responded without hesitation. It wasn’t thought. It wasn’t instinct. It was something deeper, something tethering him to Zk’s will. His muscles tensed, then surged. Faster. Faster than he had ever moved , like his mind was merely an observer and his body was the Arbiter, a will greater than his own. His hands snapped forward, hurling his Animus—twin, ethereal blades pulsing in a brilliant blue, cutting through the darkness like streaks of lightning. Their glow casting fleeting shadows, silhouettes of his own form sprinting beneath them, mirroring his deadly intent

They struck his naten wall—and it yielded, not like stone, but like water. His so-called immovable force parted for his weapons with an unnatural fluidity. And then, it wailed.

A low, guttural moan rumbled from the wall’s depths, something ancient and tormented. The sound shuddered through the battlefield, rattling the ground like the tremors of an approaching calamity. The cry masked Zeik’s movement, his form vanishing into the haze of its echo. He moved like a specter, weaving through the edges of combat, his presence a whisper, his intent an inevitability. The pulse of his Animus illuminated his path in bursts, fleeting flashes of ghostly blue.

And then—he was behind her. A fair distance, but close enough. Yet at her back stood something just as terrifying as the wrathful Vesta she faced.

An ethereal being, featureless and humanoid, its body catching the glow of his Animus embedded in its chest, pulsing like a heart of molten sapphire, spinning like a turbine. The creature , in a perfect mimicry of Zeik, drew twin swords from its core, as if sculpting weapons from its very essence.

The behemoth, towering into the sky, its blade arcing downwards with the weight of an executioner’s final stroke. This was no mere attack—it was certainty, a judgment etched into the battlefield itself. The very space where his opponent stood was already condemned, the air vibrating with the promise of absolute annihilation. The ground shuddered beneath the monstrous force of its descent. A single swing, and everything within reach would be atomized, wiped from existence as effortlessly as breath vanishes into the cold.

Zeik waited. Silent. Motionless. Only his eyes moved, tracking her every shift, every flicker of movement or hesitation in his target’s stance. The storm roared around them spiraling from the presence of his Spirit of Fire, a force so vast that its very breath twisted the winds into cyclones.

"Check?"

[The Arceneaux Family]

“Not even.”

Within the dining hall, at the head of the table lined in crimson, seated by the Arceneaux patriarchs and their beloved children, Alphonse kept a close eye on Terra’s vitals through an interface installed directly into the back of his palm, a more robust and powerful version than the one gifted to his dear wife. Through it, had a in intricate understanding of the stress levels of his second daughter, its readings transmitted directly to him from the suit. Each of his children and his wife had some personalized Arc Tek to communicate with one another, but those who saw the battlefield in the name of the Family were gifted special deployments. He felt her blood pressure spike as she assailed the pair with her crystal spines, but she hadn’t realized Zeik took her back after his and Zero’s coordinated defense. Her training with the suit at that level stood no chance against the Destroyers of Arcturus. Luckily, she didn’t need to.

“Time to rest, baby. Let papa take over.”

Alphonse’s fingers twitched while he spoke with lightning fast precision, his veins sparked to life, and the joints and channels in Terra’s armor did so in kind. Under the weight of the monstrous spirit bearing down on her, his reflexes took over and activated the Arc Override Protocol for his dear beloved daughter without her even noticing. Terra’s body was flooded with a caustic mix of endorphins, adrenaline, Sheeraz, and Naten that gave control of the Arc Tek to her father at a moment’s notice, unlocking a mechanical potential she’d need years more practice to unlock herself, but a technical savant like Alphonse could cultivate from any of his creations. A flick of his wrist sent the suit, with its glowing visor and seething joints, lunged straight forward with mindless disregard, scorching the frozen earth beneath them and barely escaping the oppression of the Spirit’s weight bearing down on her.

A flick of his index called a number of the airborne scales from her previous assault to coil around her body like a barbed spike screaming through the howling, frozen winds at the end of the world. Terra’s body itself was indistinguishable, clad in a sinister crimson glow, almost like its ether was smoking away as it pierced through the gales of Aeon, a blight in the eye of this frigid storm. The winds curled around the mysterious, scaled, armor pike barreling toward Zero.

[Zero Venkage]

Zero watched Zeik disappear like a ghost out of his shocking shield. His woven web crackled against the bombardment of the charged petals, dissolving them into a fine mist around him. The bombardment seemed to slow down, giving Zero a split moment to shift gears behind his partner’s advancing pressure. Before he disappeared, Zero felt Zeik’s aura swell, his focus change, and the current around him bend inward on itself, oppressing their opponent with his deadly intent. Zero clapped his hands together firmly, drawing the woven cage of electricity directly toward his palms in a flash, firm fingers pressed together like a blade, crackling with purple lightning.

“Whoa,” he said, looking past his glowing hands and seeing the force of a massive spirit bearing down on their cybernetic opponent, a new development in the repertoire of his friend appearing in grand fashion. It put a sinister smile on Zero’s face seeing the force Zeik brought to meet this challenge after the state he picked him up in, and the electric blade coating his hands condensed into a dense purple light in response to it, a second clap turned that purple bright silvery-white, losing its electric fervor for a gentle, focused glow emanating directly from his palm and stretching up to his fingertips. With their opponent crushed under the weight of Zeik’s spirit, Zero would deliver the final blow and tear whatever was left of it in two.

But that’s not what happened.

The current around them shifted in the blink of an eye and the cybernetic assailant’s familiar energy burned away into a destructive current of seething energy burning away into the frozen air around them, scorching the sand beneath them and jettisoning itself into a death spiral bearing down on Zero and escaping the impact zone of Zeik’s spiritual pressure. The air bent and burnt around the deadly lunge of the cyborg combatant and gave Zero just enough time to lean forward and reach for his pockets with his opposite hands. He swung both his arms upward, stretching the blades of light from his palms, carving deep into the sand on either side beneath them and clashing with the spiraling creature at their cross cut. The spiral’s core landed squarely where the blades of light made an x in the frozen air, but a dark feeling, the weighted current of the almost formless pike of dark intent pushing Zero back with its smoky aura, and taking the light of one of his blades with it.

He fell into a back roll, just as the recoil of the cyber spiral whisked past him, holding on to the lighted blade at his right, but feeling a familiar weight pulling on his left, smothering the Vermeil light. His lightning fast reflexes and natural agility allowed him to bear the brunt of the full bodied strike and keep his composure, but the instant change in current and aura worried him, the heft smothering his left hand made him uneasy, but he couldn’t exactly place why in the short moment he watched the spiral slide past him.

“Zeik!” Zero screamed letting another slash loose with his right palm from his left side like unsheathing a katana, gripping his left tight as the smoky, crimson energy snuffed out its Vermeil light. A curved wave of silvery-white light assailed the back of the cyber spiral, carving out the frozen ground and slicing through the howling winds, leaving a pathway between them in a silent vacuum before the gales picked back up and blustered toward their mechanical opponent, the frozen winds shifted toward the item of their ire.

The shift in current immediately worried Zero, the corrosive energy that smothered the eminence of his Cordo, its familiar feeling weighing on his body, his mind, it all brought him back to a moment he couldn’t place, but still very familiar here at the End of the World. The Lucis Acolytes charged him with finding Iden and the Traversing Mirror, but this mechanical creature before him gave him far more trouble he bargained for, even in roping in the battle mage beside him for insurance. Iden was described as a lush land where peace abounded, vegetation like nowhere else on Vescrutia, creatures who knew no strife all in one place, somehow housed beneath or within or on the other side of this frozen wasteland. The Arceneaux Corporation knew something else was here as well, which is why they erected a barrier to keep anyone off the island, but this combatant, more machine than human now, a scourge on the world standing between them and their goal, compounding the speedster’s unease. But his unease was buried under his excitement, this rush he hadn’t felt in years, this feeling that he edged into during his battle with the gorgon but hadn’t been able to rest into fully.

Here at the End of the World, the familiar, smothering energy awakened a taste for battle that made his mouth water.

[Zeik]

He stood close to his enemy—a human woman clad in some form of mechanized armor, her breath heavy, her stance faltering. Zeik was certain she had exhausted every option. The weight of the Spirit of Fire bore down on her like a divine punishment, its towering presence paralyzing her in place. She couldn't move. Couldn’t breathe. All she could do was watch, frozen between moments, as judgment loomed.

The spirit stood tall behind Zeik, a translucent titan of bluish flame, humanoid in shape, but faceless—alien in its eerie elegance. Its form flickered like glass caught in firelight, constantly shifting but never breaking. The smooth, featureless surface of its face reflected nothing, yet implied everything: indifference, finality, annihilation.

As the blade in Zeik’s hand drew back, poised to cleave the cliffside in two, the earth trembled with anticipation. The spirit mirrored his motion—both blade and flame ready to fall in tandem.

Then—


A flare.

A single pulse of naten erupted from the girl’s core, like a star collapsing inward before exploding outward in defiance. It wasn’t subtle—it was feral, and it caught Zeik off guard. He, whose senses were honed to the slightest ripple in energy, knew instantly: this power wasn’t hers. Not entirely. Something in that suit had ignited her potential, pushed her past her natural limits. And it was working.

The blade struck the ground a heartbeat too late.

The collision shattered the earth. Fragments of frozen rock launched into the sky like meteorites, and rivers of blue flame surged across the battlefield. The explosion devoured everything in a radius of devastation.

From the heart of the inferno, he emerged—slowly, deliberately. His eyes pulsed with the iridescent glow of Origin Vision, a divine hue that shimmered between colors not found in nature. With this sight, he no longer saw the world as he was—but as it could be, as it was meant to be. Each motion, each trajectory, every arc of energy—laid bare before him like scripture.

He weaved his Ava, Using the language of the Helgahn Vudao's mudra—a graceful fury of limbs, symbols, and strikes. “How did she escape?” he muttered under his breath, eyes scanning the battlefield faster than thought. With Origin Vision, even time seemed to slow. And in that stillness, he saw the truth.

The suit. It was feeding her—not just energy, but purpose. Movement. Precision. Memory. It was letting her transcend herself.


She became a blur. Moving with impossible speed, slamming into Zero and intercepting his X-slash mid-swing. Zeik’s gaze snapped to the weapon she carried: a pike, humming with a resonance that made his spine crawl.

Zeik!” Zero screamed letting another slash loose with his right palm from his left side like unsheathing a katana, gripping his left tight as the smoky, crimson energy snuffed out its Vermeil light

And in that instant, Zeik understood. His voice rose like a storm. “It’s the same essense… they're working with Horsemen?!”

His fury surged. The Spirit of Fire answered in kind. The twin swords it held dissolved back into its burning core, joined by Zeik’s own blades. The core at its chest spun faster, radiating blinding light and heat, until the air shimmered and cracked.

Zeik bounced lightly on his heels—left, then right. A rhythmic sway. A boxer’s breath before the flurry. His tempo built quickly, and he began to strike the air with sharp, deliberate fists.

The spirit mirrored his every move—flawlessly. Behind him, the towering flame-beast shadowboxed in sync, its steps thunderous, each impact sending tremors across the frozen terrain. Every punch hurled by the spirit dragged the atmosphere with it, compressing air into violent spears of wind.

To anyone watching, the spirit's movement was mesmerizing—both graceful and terrifying. Its form a mix of wonder while every motion hinted at ruin. Each punch was a thunderclap, folding space with pressure, sending high-velocity bursts of frigid wind slicing across the landscape like artillery shells.

Zeik didn’t stop. His own strikes were commands. His spirit answered with destruction.

The compressed gusts roared through the battlefield, kicking up stone, ripping into ice, and hammering toward the fleeing girl with unrelenting force. Wherever she ran, the storm followed—each blow from the spirit like a natural disaster trying to take form. He didn’t need to find her, if she hid. He would simply strip the land bare until there was nowhere left to run.

And still, the Spirit of Fire struck.

Again and again and again.

[The Arceneaux Family]

From his remote position, behind the ethereal visor of his Arc Tek connection with his second daughter, Alphonse curled his fingers like a puppeteer, moving the tech ingrained in his body, his soul with a self actualized dexterity. Every flick and twitch of his digits corresponded to some deep mechanic of the suit paired to Terra's body, it was his to command so long as the AOP was engaged. When he first developed it, he knew the technology could be a potent tool, one that could be used against him if his interest weren't protected, but even in the interest of providing a home for his people in Shangri La, the AOP remained a tool he reserved for the Arceneaux Corporation's exclusive use.

At the head of the table, face hidden behind a glowing display cast ahead of his eyes from tech embedded in his temples, his eyes dashed back and forth to respond to the show of force from pair of the Trinity, two of the three sole survivors of the Fall of Arcturus, revealing themselves to the world once more. Terra's body twitched like a macabre marionette above the scorched, icy sand at the End of the World being burnt and blown away by their confrontation. Alphonse smirked while the energy in Zero's hand burned away, he brandished the power of the Tarnished Pike for the first time since its creation and it worked like a charm, the crimson energy that heralded a shift in paradigm for Vescrutia coming to fruition right before his eyes, through the eyes of his second daughter.

"My family, your sister's is the first page in a new chapter for the Arceneaux," he said to his family in attendance, his wife opposite him at the end of their extended table, clenching his fists and swinging his arms wide as if opening a symphony only he could conduct. He turned his palms up, and Terra's body swung the Tarnished Pike, seething in crimson-black smoke, to parry the blazing fast strike carving through the frosted, scorched earth. Alphonse waved his arm far across his body and rose his other palm to the sky, Terra's body twirled the pike about either side of her body in a ghoulish figure eight, in perfect sync with the strikes of the blazing giant Zeik summoned to his side. Each movement of Terra's seethed the crimson-grey energy from each of the joints, spewing it out like tiny geysers, bursting with primordial force from deep beneath the planet's crust. The path that her initial dive carved already scorched away a lot of the snow in its wake, Zeik's barrage with his Scion of Fire melted much of the ice from the surface, and Zero carved directly into the ground with each strike. The flaming strikes changed the climate, melting away the layers of permafrost caked into the foundation of the island they called their battlefield. Though the immense power ignited even the air around them, the burning energy around the Tarnished Pike subdued each fiery blow just as they reached the body of the wielder. Floating above the center of the island at the End of the World, Terra, puppeted by her dear, adoring father, rejected the pressure of Zero and Zeik with a force like only one other they had ever encountered before.

Alphonse, at the head of his table, also began to glow with a crimson-grey energy dancing across his shoulders, in and out of his fingertips, and glowing behind his eyes. His wild ambition seared across the massive room that held the extended table where his family gathered, waiting begin dinner with the sister returning from the Gate of Iden. He continued to conduct Terra's dance between the flaming strikes of Zeik's burning scion while the venting energy from her cybernetic suit polluted the warming air of the frozen island. The energy growing around him turned the heads of his children lining his table one by one, prompted by the growing aura of doom emanating from him. Were they worried as they sat in silence, watching him puppet their second sister in mortal combat? Or were they in awe at the ease in which he conducted his affairs, just like clockwork for the family business? Whatever the case, Alphonse and Terra drew closer to their goal with every searing, seething sweep of the Tarnished Pike.

[Zero Venkage]

Zero watched his strike arc through the ground and hit its target, or get damn near to it before being parried with their opponent's weapon, though it seemed to be a direct hit. The vicious slice bounced off the burning rod without recoiling them in the least bit. The currents around them were erratic and vacuous, swirling inward while the airspace around them carved in two with his strike. It unnerved Zero, but only pushed him to marvel at their martial prowess leagues higher than they arrived with. He knew the Arceneaux Corporation held myriad secrets in their catalog, but this creation reached a new plateau, one that Zero reveled in the opportunity to break.

And in that instant, Zeik understood. His voice rose like a storm. “It’s the same essense… they're working with Horsemen?!”

"I guess I won't be sleeping tonight!"

Zero responded in kind to Zeik turning up the heat quite literally around them, turning the frozen sand into a bleached desert in a moment. The heat emanated by Zeik's spirit fired up Zero, washing over him and sending his determination skyrocketing and building beads of sweat on his brow. The heat of battle he hadn't tasted in so long reignited a bright light within his left palm that smothered the crimson-grey energy that their opponent left him with ,overcoming its stifling effects with a renewed resolve and a fire ignited in his heart. His Anthem kicked up a lively current of wind around him to provide some protection from the intense heat, but it was a small moderating influence in the intense heat evaporating the permafrost from beneath their feet, revealing dried, slowly scorching sands. Unfortunately, it seemed more and more likely with every passing moment that taking this opponent out alive grew less likely, as they had no opportunity to pull their punches with the agent of a timeless evil.

The flaming strikes from Zeik and his fiery spirit rained on the Arceneaux Assassin like shooting stars, a dance of flaming shrapnel pelting their target from afar. With them already occupied, dancing in defense with Zeik's blazing spirit, Zero dashed to the side to flank their opponent, making a special mudra with his glowing hands. His blazing speed and the movement of the supercharged wind around him left a glassy trail behind him in an instant, placing him perpendicular to his friend's assault with both hands glowing a bright silvery white, grasping a mass of energy between them that was dancing wildly from either side of his palms. He slid to a stop donning a stance he adopted from the Obius Paryi, reaching for a sheathed katana at his hip with his eyes trained on the pike spinning assassin. These techniques adpoted from the Hellgates and adapted into a dance only a Venkage could perform focused on the speed of the draw and inspired Zero's own personal weapon crafted from his force of will, his Cordo. In the moment another disciple of a timeless evil reared his head, Zero felt inspired to put his all into one strike and fell this opponent. With the assassin distracted by the constant onslaught, they'd have no time to prepare for this enchanted strike, not with his laser focus and lightning fast strikes.

Zero pulled his hand from the invisible sheath at his side and cut upwards at the assassin again, but this time taking the light energy from both his hands. For a fraction of a fraction of a moment, he shimmered in the light beneath the shooting meteors, filling the air with golden orange haze. The shimmering aura around him, along with the sweat he'd accrued, drew itself into the blade of light now stretching toward the Arceneaux assassin like a beam of light.

Mistral Art: Clearing Strike!

The swing of his glowing hand became a shimmering blade long enough to carve the island itself in two, an arc of light shrouded in Mistral that Zero aimed to cut through not only the assassin, their suit, their weapon, and the corrosive energy of the Horsemen that was pouring from them.

In the blink of an eye, Zero's slash rose a wave crashing over his shoulders that stretched as tall as Zeik's burning spirit and rushed over half the coast of the island, carved a trench into the Strait of Aeon opposite him. The ground they stood on was scarred, the heat stressed sand ripped open a depression wide enough to swallow their opponent whole after taking the brunt of the strike. With his creativity piqued, Zero watched for the aftermath, looking for the assailant to fall to the ground, their body, the pike, their armor all torn in two with his enchanted strike. He thought there was no escaping it, not while Zeik had them pinned down with oppressive firepower. The two of them gave a one-two punch sure to down this unknown threat, even with the weight of the Horsemen behind them.

They survived The Fall of Arcturus, they could survive this.