The Precipice of Destiny [END]

[The Bhalian Empire]

Jack unleashed his barrage like an artist painting frescoes across the heavens, humming absently as if his hands weren’t sculpting a new ice age. The entire street glazed over in an instant, the air turning sharp and silver. Hundreds of thousands of cobalt bolts roared from his palms in elegant, sweeping arcs — each one exploding into a towering spire of crystalline frost as it crashed toward Hitomi’s position.

“~Whew boy. Look at that firepower,” he chuckled, admiring the world-ending spectacle with boyish pride.

He let off another shot
And another.

Jack savored each detonation, watching columns of frozen vapor spiral skyward like ribbons of blue fire. He was enraptured — lost in the beauty of his own destruction. Soon, he couldn’t even see his target beneath the blizzard of his making.

But he didn't care.. “Mhn.. damn I'm good..”

After a while, he'd mostly forgotten who he was even fighting.

But then—
"Hm?"
The world… shifted.

It began as a subtle tremor in the air.
A pressure change so slight it could’ve been mistaken for a stray breeze.

He barely noticed it at first. He raised a hand to unleash another volley —when a deeper tremor rolled up from below. Not a sound, or a movement.. But something denser. “..what the?”

A silent pulse expanding outward in a perfect radius from beneath the ice where Hitomi had been entombed.

Jack’s pupils contracted to pinpoints. Every predatory instinct he had honed across centuries suddenly ignited at once, shrieking that whatever he had awakened was far, far beyond “danger.”

And yet something in him — arrogance, curiosity, thrill — pushed him on.

A low whistle slithered out through his grin.

“Okay— okay! So she’s got some fight in her,” he muttered, disbelief cracking through his voice as he offered her a patronizing slow clap. “Guess you’re gonna make me work for it, after all—”

Then he felt it.

This abominable, unfathomable swell of Naten pouring out of her body—one without shape, or form. Just sheer, overwhelming mass..

Jack’s senses, sharp enough to read the world in atoms, snapped into perfect, terrified clarity.. but he could not see whatever this force was. A realization that curled his stomach into knots and binds. “..Oh...”

For the first time since swearing loyalty to the Bhalian Crown.. Jack felt truly, meaningfully, vulnerable. “..shit.”

It happened so fast.. so suddenly.

Hitomi’s Divine Sword displayed no edge, nor shape, or mass. In truth, it did not manifest as any blade at all. Jack would sooner describe it as a vector of death; A direction in space in which life simply ceased to exist..

His body shattered into frost and dust as he teleported away on raw instinct, fleeing from annihilation by a margin thinner than he'd ever admit.

But the vector of death did not slow.

Unerring. Unabated.
The Divine Sword carved through the blackened clouds with impossible purpose, streaking toward its true target.

—------

“Stabilizers rerouting!”

“Reinforcing shields! Density at one-eighty and climbing!”

His officers shouted across the golden bridge of the imperial cruiser, arcane consoles flaring with sigils and distorted readings — but Delion did not answer. His focus was locked forward, one hand braced against the gilded observation console.

A towering crystalline screen pulsed before him, spinning with runes and scry-threads from the ship’s external cameras. And through veils of ice, collapsing debris, and violent storm currents, he watched the battle unfold.

The Frost Elf hung suspended in the air like a living constellation, spearheaded by spiraling arcs of cobalt light. Every strike he released cascaded downward in devastating eruptions of ice.

Delion’s lips curved — not fondly… but admiringly.

“Remarkable,” he mused, but Jack had been hand-picked by the Emperor for a reason.

The FrostJack's were living conduits of arctic divinity, and the boy was a prodigy among prodigies. Despite her prestige, Delion fully expected the human woman at the epicenter of that assault to have been overwhelmed by the magnitude of Jack's might.

But she was not.

Hitomi stood at the heart of devastation—defiant, and untouched. Buildings lay split and frozen around her, statues of the dead littering the streets, their final moments petrified forever in turquoise crystal.

“...”

But not her..

Delion's attention never left the screen; He watched Hitomi lift her head to the clouds and even through the distortions of Jack's assault, he could still see that sinister crimson glare– blistering through the frost like balefire.

Then Jack… hesitated.

On-screen, the Frost Elf's barrage halted suddenly. And silence fell upon this frozen wasteland like a curtain.

“What is this?” Delion growled, his brow furrowed in confusion. But then, the instruments aboard the Crimson Cloud designed to intercept incoming ordinances began to shriek.

“Commander!” Hailed an attending officer stationed behind a holographic screen. “Abnormal energy surge detected— readings exceeding all metrics and calibrations–!”

Delion’s gaze cut back to the screen just as the frost began to suddenly cling to Hitomi’s body, covering her in thin sheets of snow and ice.

..All save for her arm, which was practically quaking from the volume of Naten condensed at her palm. The pressure was dense to distort his view of her through the live feed. And then, something.. hit them.

—A colossal stroke of force erupted from Hitomi's arm. An impossibly dense vector of annihilation. The ground split beneath her feet. The street fractured open in a perfect line. The clouds above were torn, cleaved by a blade that held no shape or mass.

A screeching wail tore through the hull as Hitomi's assault carved through layers of enchanted steel and arcane engines of the Crimson Cloud like wet parchment.

“IMPACT! IMPACT ON THE LOWER DECKS!!”

Screams raced through the ship, from prow to stern as the entire vessel lurched sideways.

“Structural integrity at twenty percent — dropping — fifteen—!”

Walls decayed where the Sword had passed — not burned… not melted… but aged. As though centuries had passed in the span of a breath.

Sailors, officers, engineers — those caught on the line of the strike — did not scream. They did not even fall.

They simply separated.. sliding apart before dissolving into dust.

“Commander!!”

The bridge convulsed again, a deep metallic groan as the floor continued to crumble beneath Delion's boots. “COMMANDER! T-THE SHIP IS COMING APART!!”

His officers screamed, "ORDERS, SIR!!" but their voices were distant now, swallowed beneath the thunderous chorus of tearing metal and rupturing enchantments.

Delion’s jaw was slacked in disbelief.

He had seen his share of disasters — experienced a rich tapestry of warfare and combat within his homeland, as well as beyond. But nothing prepared him for this— the sight of his own warship being divorced from itself in a single, indifferent stroke..

By a human woman.. a single, human

“NO!!” Panic tore through him.. ugly and primal. “NO. NO—NOT LIKE THIS!!”

He sprinted across the collapsing bridge, pushing fallen officers aside and brutalizing any foolish enough to stand in his way.

“THIS WILL NOT BE MY END!! NOT BY HER!”

He slammed his hand against the emergency release. Metal screamed open as the escape pod chamber revealed itself amid smoke and falling debris.

The ship lurched.
The world twisted.
Fires erupted everywhere.

Outside the fractured window, Qiyoto rushed up toward them — a sprawling city of ancient beauty doomed to be crushed under the decaying corpse of the Crimson Cloud.

“Jack…!” Delion hissed through his teeth as he forced the pod open. “By all the Zenith, you had better kill that thing..”

He threw himself into the pod just as the forward half of the Crimson Cloud sheared away and plummeted toward the city.

———

Down on the ground—close to Hitomi’s crater—frost swirled, reconstituting into Jack’s tall, wiry frame. He stepped gently onto the icy, ruined cobblestones, brushing residual sweat from his brow.

His mouth spread into a half-mad grin.

“Well..” he exhaled, glancing up at the two halves of the Crimson Cloud falling like celestial corpses. “I’ll be damned.”

He flashed Hitomi a look—equal parts fascinated, impressed, and amused.

“I’m really starting to think you’re stronger than I gave you credit for.”

He cracked his neck.

“..Delion called you the strongest human he’d ever seen.. I know he doesn't get out much, but I'm starting to believe him.”

Then his smirk sharpened, arrogance sliding back into place like a familiar glove.

“Which works for me—” he pointed at her with a lazy flick of cold radiating off his fingers,“— cause that means this fight might actually be fun. Although, I'm pretttty sure that last stunt wore you out, right?” He said, cupping his chin as if suddenly caught in deep thought. “Annnd you already lost an arm.. Uhh, hmm.. actually, how much longer do you think you can keep this up?”

[The Yaarou Clan]

--Deep beneath Qiyoto--

As the city shook and trembled beneath the pangs of war, the Yaarou’s underground bunkers held firm.

They had been carved far below the city’s roots by the AION Sentinels—cyclopean chambers of stone and alloy, layered with enchantments meant to ward against calamities on a global scale, long before even a pebble might be shaken loose from the vaulted walls. The Hyperions themselves had lent their designs for these subterranean sanctums, conceived for moments exactly like this: a city-wide invasion, where the Xhi’on could defend her home without the burden of civilian blood.

Thousands of civilians filled the outer halls in hushed clusters, shepherded by ranks of Kurotori soldiers who stood like statues carved from onyx. They harbored no fear, no uncertainty—only absolute focus. None of them spoke, despite the seismic booms reverberating from the world above. That quiet confidence settled over the frightened masses like a balm, easing panic into something manageable. No one screamed. No one fled.

Instead, all attention flowed inward.

Toward the heart of the bunker, where the Elders of the Yaarou Clan stood before a suspended aperture of light—an arcane window conjured by the Xhi’on herself.

Through it, the surface was rendered in perfect clarity.. and they watched as the Crimson Cloud crashed from above.

The impossibly vast leviathan of steel and divinity was cleaved into perfectly symmetrical halves as it plummeted toward Qiyoto in ruin. Fire roared from its wounds. Entire decks sheared away, venting debris, soldiers, and screams into the open sky. Thousands of lives vanished in silence as gravity claimed the remains.

Elder Jhun stood with his hands folded within his sleeves, posture rigid despite another tremor passing faintly through the chamber. His eyes were sharp, rimmed with exhaustion—wearied by countless hours spent among peers and predecessors, all of them scheming to prevent moments like this.

Beside him stood Ayune’. And where Jhun was restraint, Ayune’ was quiet intensity. Her ceremonial mantle hung loose at her shoulders, fingers resting lightly against the hilt of a blade she had not drawn in three hundred years. And as she watched the Crimson Cloud crumble in rujns, her hand left the weapon altogether.

But her gaze never shifted from the projection.

Neither of them spoke.
They did not need to.

Hayate’s absence lingered between them like a wound that had not yet learned how to bleed. And yet—an unspoken, sullen truth pressed against them both: the weight of his death felt diminished by what they were witnessing. A thought neither wished to claim.
Other figures stood gathered around the luminous aperture—sages and high oracles of the Yaarou Clan. Elders still, though not members of the Xhi’on’s inner council. Each had pledged their life to the guidance and continuity of the Clan.

Elder Sevrin stood hunched among them, blind eyes bound beneath a sigil-etched veil. His hexcraft granted him sight beyond sight—visions woven from minds, futures, and unseen planes. Despite his grizzled demeanor and well-known reservations regarding the Xhi’on’s methods, even he stood aghast at what unfolded before him, whispering half-formed mantras beneath his breath.

At his side stood Elder Rho. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Still built like a warrior who had not yet surrendered the battlefield. And Despite the silver threaded through his locs, he was the youngest among them. He stood pale and rigid, confidence unraveling with every passing second of the live projection.

And between them both was Elder Keiko—master of blood sorcery, keeper of rites unspoken beyond these halls. She looked.. young, impossibly so considering her age. This was a tribute to her mastery of Shokotsu. Her head was shaven, crowned instead with etched sigils, seals, and living scripts. Crimson eyes—bright and deep—studied not only the battle, but the faces of those watching it.

For a long moment, no one spoke. Not until Sevrin broke the silence at last. “This… was folly,” he said quietly. “Unmitigated folly.”

The projection shifted as the sundered halves of the warship peeled further apart, trailing flame and debris toward the city outskirts.

Keiko’s hands clasped tighter behind her back. Her expression did not soften. “Was it?”

“She chose to meet them alone,” Sevrin snapped. “Against counsel. Against doctrine. Against reason.”

“Her first invasion,” Rho added. “And she answers it with singularity. No regard for the implications of failure.”

Their gazes drifted—not to the falling ship—but to the lone figure beneath it. Hitomi Yaarou stood amid ruin, one arm gone, posture unbowed. Even through the projection, her presence distorted the air around her.

“A shame.. The most powerful Xhi’on in recorded history,” Sevrin continued. “And still—a child.”

"Yes, because she is a child,” Keiko corrected calmly, “An Eighteen year old who has slain a Mazoku Executioner… and cleaved a Bhalian imperial flagship from the sky.”

That stilled them.

Rho and Sevrin exchanged uneasy glances, reverence warring with dread.

The projection flared as the Crimson Cloud finally gave way, its remains vanishing in burning silence beyond the city’s edge. A ripple passed through the sanctum—not fear, but something colder.

Reverence.

“You would be wise to temper your words, Elders,” Jhun said at last, his voice steady but heavy. His gaze lifted to Sevrin and Rho. “Hayate shared your resolve.” His tone trembled, somber. “Our Xhi’on has done well to cinder doubt from her people. Us included. Try not to tarnish what she has built.”

“Tuh, God and worms,” Rho whispered, almost unwillingly. The phrase lingered like blasphemy. “And which are we exactly?”

Sevrin exhaled slowly. “Such arrogance,” he murmured, “is only tolerated because of her power. This… Endless Art.”

His veiled gaze never left the window. “She has yet to win this battle,” he said. “I will not be seduced by her hubris so soon—as it seems you have, Jhun.” He turned his blindfolded eyes toward him. “It is clear our Xhi’on requires counsel. And your failure to deliver it may have doomed us all.”

“Careful,” Keiko warned softly, the weight in her voice sufficient.

Jhun did not respond.The projection shifted again—showing the Frost Elf reforming near Hitomi, the battle far from finished.

The Elder's expressions hardened.
But Sevrin was not done.

“Her raw power has won her every battle, every contest.. without the slightest effort.” he said, gripping his cane until the wood splintered beneath his fingers. “And every victory has taught her the same lesson.” His voice trembled with conviction. “That the world will break—if she wills it.”

“And yet,” Ayune’ said quietly, “she fights and bleeds to protect it. To protect us. You.”

“For now,” Rho replied, arms crossed.

To which Sevrin nodded. “And what happens when we draw her ire? As Hayate did? What then?”

He turned away, no longer able—or willing—to remain among them. His hexcraft would allow him to witness the battle wherever he went.

“How long,” he said as he departed, “will we allow our Xhi’on to lead us headstrong into damnation?”

—--

“Well..” Jack exhaled, glancing up at the two halves of the Crimson Cloud falling like celestial corpses. “I’ll be damned.”

He flashed Hitomi a look—equal parts fascinated, impressed, and amused.

“I’m really starting to think you’re stronger than I gave you credit for.”

Hitomi did not answer him right away.

She stood amid the ruin—one arm missing, frost crawling up her skin like lace—and watched longingly as the Crimson Cloud fell to its death.

Fires blossomed along its exposed ribs. Engines failed in cascading detonations, each explosion lighting the clouds like a dying constellation.

She watched it all– following it with her eyes until it vanished behind the skyline.

Then she looked at Jack who appeared only a few feet away from her. His presence dropped the temperature even more so, but her expression held no strain. No exhaustion..

Just irritation.

Hitomi looked at him the way one may have looked at an unexpected mess left on the floor, and exhaled through her nose. She honestly thought Jack would've been caught in the wave of the attack, or at the very least he would’ve fled with his life.

“Ugh..”

But no. He survived.. prolonging this annoyance.

“..means this fight might actually be fun. Although, I'm pretttty sure that last stunt wore you out, right?” Jack said, cupping his chin as if suddenly caught in deep thought. “Annnd you already lost an arm.. Uhh, hmm.. actually, how much longer do you think you can keep this up?”

“Wore me out?” she echoed softly. “..you're funny.”

The frost creeping along her cheek halted. Then it receded entirely, flaking away as her Naten began to rise and smoulder. It was then, the crimson glow in her eyes sharpened—as if she'd suddenly noticed something.. concerning.

She flexed her remaining fingers once. Slowly..

“Hm..” For the first time since.. she could remember, Hitomi's W'rayths were not at her side.

They were gone.. all of them. The Divine Sword technique had drawn them all into a single, decisive vector. She could still feel them, but only barely. They were docile.. exhausted. Recovering, but slowly. Hitomi turned her head, testing the air around herself. The cold bit more sharply now as the frost returned to her skin.

“..well.” She murmured, absorbing the realization without the faintest expression.

Then—almost amused:
“Heh, fine.”

She smiled, closing her fist and shifting her stance. Her posture lowered, her weight settled into her hips as her remaining hand extended outward like a blade toward the playful frost Elf.

“..we can play for a while.” She said with a small lilt in her voice as her boots shifted through the slush. “And I won't need my arm. Trust me, it'll be more fun this way.”

[The Bhalian Empire]

Jack barked a laugh — sharp, incredulous, almost delighted.

“Ha! You're serious aren't ya?!”

Frost spiraled tighter around his limbs as his grin widened, teeth flashing pale blue in the cold. The air around him whined and shrieked as the temperature plummeted another thirty degrees, then another, crystallizing the air around and above him into cold, jagged, amorphous tools of destruction..

"Y’know,” he went on, voice carried by the shriek of pressure and cold, “most people start bargaining right about now. Or screamin’. Or at least look a little worried—” he jerked his chin toward her missing arm, grin pulling crooked, “—considerin’ your situation and all.”

He chuckled under his breath.

“But not you, huh? Yeah, I mean.. if you were anything else, I’d call you really confident, or maybe a lil' arrogant … but humans are usually just stupid. And yeah, you’re stronger than most of them—” his shoulders rolled as ice creaked along his spine, “—but this? Heh, yeah this is stupid.”

He said, cracking his neck. “Not that I care though.” His smile sharpened. “Shit, I say go for it! Let's see how long that confidence lasts when I'm not holding back.”

Jack didn’t hesitate. With a smile, he waved his arm in Hitomi's direction and unleashed a vicious storm of perforating daggers, spears, blades, and crescents of ice in overlapping waves. They were innumerable. Countless and vicious. The street howled as this arctic storm dismantled the terrain even more, gashing massive trenches and craters beneath its wake and flash-freezing debris in midair.

Jack could barely contain his excitement. He wanted to do his best to prolong the sensation, the thrill of fighting something worth his time. The clash and resistance of someone else's will against his own. He had a habit of overkill, so despite his claim of not holding back, he certainly wanted to draw this out..

But once he took a second to peer through the chaos, and take note of the damage he'd dealt, his smile faded entirely.

Hitomi was gone.

Not shattered, or frozen..
Not buried beneath tons of cold, blistering dust.

Just gone.

Immediately, Jack's eyes sharpened into razors as his enchanted senses pulled his frigid toward the timber of a soft crack behind him.

And his jovial countenance melted away to that of a frenzied predator.

Jack twisted sharply, firing on instinct— Another flick of his wrist generated another lacerating tidal wave of blistering cold. But still, Jack's violence found no purchase. No screams. Only fleeting echoes..

Then another.
And another..

His snarl deepened as he persisted, but to no avail.

Another sound, another blast. Another empty strike.. a cycle he'd quickly grown tired of.

It was then that his eyes snapped sideways just in time to catch her silhouette; her visage, materializing into view several paces away in the scathing snow storm. She was unmarked. Untouched. And balanced on the balls of her feet, posture loose, almost lazy —as if she'd been merely stepping aside rather than crossing the battlefield.

Jack’s jaw tightened.

“How the hell is she doing that?” He thought to himself. Her movements were imperceptible, but Jack could tell this was no feat of speed. She left no tracks, and his ears barely registered any of her movement at all. Not even an accelerated heart beat.

Was this Teleportation? An illusion perhaps? No.. His senses would be able to discern either method. This was something else.

Jouto..

The same technique she'd deployed against Kuran at the Onyx Trench. It enabled her ilk to traverse vast distances with only a single step. Like every high ranking member of the Bhalian Infantry, Jack was given a detailed dossier on Hitomi's combat data. But in his hubris, he barely glanced through it. He only vaguely recognized the unique skill, but he remained unbothered in the end. He'd already determined a proper counter.

“Cute trick,” Jack sneered, forcing mockery back into his voice. “What, you just gonna keep runnin’ around ‘til you freeze to death? ’Cause if that’s the plan, we can skip the foreplay.."

Jack smiled as his gaze began to glow with a frigid blue light. That subtle gesture flooded the area with even more power as the storm thickened; denser, angrier, compressing into lethal, merciless cold.

Oxygen grew thin as Jack plunged temperatures to a subarctic, quantum low.

[The Yaarou Clan]

The storm did not merely intensify.

It collapsed upon her.

Wind detonated outward in concentric walls, howling like a living thing as the temperature plunged into an abyss where breath itself became a liability. Snow did not fall — it scoured. Ice did not form — it assembled, knitting itself midair into screaming lattices of crystalline razors that shredded visibility and depth alike. The world vanished behind a white maelstrom so dense it felt less like weather and more like being buried alive inside a moving glacier.

Hitomi’s fur lined pelt flash-froze against her skin.

The air tore the breath from her lungs in a violent gasp as her diaphragm seized. Her lips split instantly, numb before pain could even register. Sound vanished beneath the storm’s roaring compression — even her own heartbeat felt distant, muffled beneath this crushing cold.

There was no room for speech.
No room for bravado.

Only instinct.

Her foot struck the ground once—and reality folded.

Space snapped forward violently as she tore herself free from the storm’s immediate kill-zone, using Jouto to reappear far beyond the frozen avenues of Qiyoto in a plume of fractured snow and displaced air. The city’s distant silhouette shuddered behind her, already being swallowed by the dwarfing storm of ice and death.

She staggered upon landing, falling to a knee in the numbing snow.

Pain surged through nerves that had been moments from locking solid. Her muscles trembled violently, microfractures spiderwebbing through overstressed fibers, circulation struggling to reassert itself through near-frozen flesh.

“…hn.”

Her teeth chattered once — sharply — before she clenched her jaw shut. And drew a slow, freezing cold breath.

In the following moment, steam began to roll from her pores as she used Shokotsu to repair her body.

Heat flooded outward in disciplined waves, knitting torn tissue, restoring blood flow through constricted vessels, and forcing life back into limbs that had nearly gone inert. In moments sensation returned like needles of fire, and the frost crackled and peeled away from her arms and calves in brittle sheets.

It worked.

“FUCK!”

But the drain hit her immediately.

A deep, hollow pull — like oxygen being siphoned from her core.

Her Naten was still rebuilding from utilizing the Divine Sword. She could feel the lag, the slow climb of reserves that had not yet recovered enough to tolerate prolonged strain.

“...”

She turned slightly, eyes narrowing toward the horizon.. toward the encroaching storm.

She watched it churn across the landscape like a living continent of arctic pressure, smothering everything in its path in crystal. Even from this distance she could feel the temperature drop crawling toward her like a living tempest.

If it were to remain in Qiyoto, she feared even the bunkers would begin to strain.. and that was unacceptable.

“...”

Her decision crystallized instantly. Hitomi would never admit that she.. may have underestimated her foe. But her tightening grimace conveyed as much. Jack may not have been a Mazoku Executioner, but he was a living force of nature.

“Clever bastards..” She thought to herself. It was clear now that the war council of Bhalia harbored more tactical minds than Hitomi anticipated. Instead of asserting their power with another Mazoku in a battle of brutality, the Empire deployed a specialist. An Assassin. A different type of foe than the Executioners she craved, but one no less versed in the art of death.

Hitomi lifted her remaining hand— fingers curling slightly inward before her gaze returned to the encroaching storm. “Fuck it.. This should be far enough..”

And she spoke. The word left her lips in a dead language, foreign to all ignorant of ancient Yaarou lore.

“Ashen Crown.. Silent Harvest.”

The syllables vibrated in the air.
Loud — but heavy.

The space around her palm began to glow — not bright, but dense, like a miniature sun compressed beneath invisible pressure. Heat bloomed outward in a tight radius, forcing frost to hiss and recoil from her skin and the ground beneath her feet. Steam spiraled violently as the impossible cold was pushed back by something that did not belong to this world.

Reality itself seemed to flinch.
The air warped like heated glass.

Her breathing slowed, deliberate, controlled — lips moving faintly as the chant continued beneath the storm’s distant roar.

“Tethered Stars.. shackled and tarnsihed..”

The warmth intensified. Deeper. Hungrier.. until it gnawed at the flesh on her hand.

Each word caused a throb in space as an unnatural pressure mounted in her bones.

The cost began stacking visibly now.

She winced from the pain. Her muscles were burning; fatigue drumming tremors into her joints and bones, all while her hand blistered with otherworldly heat.

She glanced back over her shoulder..

The storm had grown closer — vast, rotating walls of annihilating snow advancing like a crawling sky. Within it, faint distortions hinted at Jack’s accelerating pursuit. He had felt the surge of Naten. Of course he had.. It was her original plan to draw him away from Qiyoto, but he was closing in faster than she’d anticipated..

Her Naten intensified— the nucleus of heat in her palm flaring stronger, compressing tighter. The air around her hand bent violently now, colors smearing subtly as space strained under the accumulating force.

She knew she could end this with the spell, but the full incantation still needed time. Hitomi grimaced, shifting into a defensive stance as she prepared herself. She was still building Naten, so using Jouto again was simply out of the question. Hitomi had to improvise until she finished the chant.. Which was.. less than ideal given her condition.. and competition.

———————

Deep beneath Qiyoto, the Sanctum trembled again — a low, distant groan echoing through the vaulted stone as if the city itself were holding its breath.

The aperture of light still hovered at the chamber’s heart, its radiant surface rippling with live-feed distortions as the storm above devoured the horizon.

Dunes of snow had swallowed the streets, while arctic winds eroded what remained..

Within the gathered circle of oracles and elders, unease fractured into competing interpretations.

“Is she withdrawing?” Elder Rho regarded, his voice tight with disbelief. “Tch.. Her Hexcraft must be spent.”

He scoffed, crossing his arms across his massive chest. “Not even she can sustain such output indefinitely..

But the oldest among them did not echo that belief.

Jhun’s hands tightened subtly within his sleeves.
Servrin went rigid.

Ayune’s fingers stilled at her side, breath caught halfway through an inhale.

They did not look vindicated..
They looked afraid.

Servrin’s blindfolded head tilted slightly, as if listening to a sound no one else could hear.

“..No,” he whispered. “That is not retreat.” His cane struck the ground once, sharply. “This is a biblical display of idiocy.”

Jhun’s gaze remained locked on the aperture, jaw set. The distant glow forming around Hitomi’s hand reflected faintly in his narrowed eyes. “She has begun an incantation,” He said quietly.

Ayune swallowed. “A forbidden one.”

Servrin’s lips pulled thin. “Kesshō no Mawaru,” he said, the words tasting like poison.

Elder Rho stiffened. He was unfamiliar with the name — yet he felt the weight of it regardless.

Servrin’s voice hardened, sharpened by something close to spite.

“It is a doomsday spell created by the Stormbringer during the War of Tribes.” His grip tightened on his cane until the wood creaked. “Is she mad? Does she intend to annihilate herself along with the city she claims to protect?” He mellowed as his blind gaze angled toward Jhun.

“You speak endlessly of your faith in your Xhi’on Where is that now? As she stands, primed to invoke extinction itself.” His tone curdled. “Youth. Arrogance. Delusion wearing divinity’s mask.. How would she even know such a spell?”

Silence.

Then Jhun answered. “She has bonded to the Tome of Moirai.”

The chamber went dead still.

Even the distant tremors seemed to fade beneath the gravity of the words.

Servrin froze. His breath stalled completely.
“..The Tome,” he repeated faintly.

The ancient codex was not merely forbidden — it was mythologized as a living archive of fate-bound knowledge, a record of spells deliberately erased from history because no civilization had survived their unchecked use.

Even Elder Keiko—who had until now vindicated nearly every one of Hitomi’s decisions— visibly paled. “She—” She swallowed. “She bound herself to it?”

Jhun nodded weakly.

Servrin said nothing for several heartbeats. When he finally exhaled, it was slow and unsteady. “.. Then she truly walks toward godhood,” he murmured. “Or annihilation. She cannot truly know what she trifles with.. Even for her, I fear the power of the Seven Folded Spear lies beyond her comprehension.”

Jhun’s voice lowered further. “This is not the first time she has cast the spell.”

Several heads turned sharply.

Keiko stared at him. “You’re saying she’s survived it before?”

“Barely,” Jhun replied. “And she was at full strength. And the spell was incomplete. Now…” His eyes flicked back to the projection. “..her Naten is depleted from the excessive use of her Hexcraft. Which means she is likely invoking the full incantation.”

Servrin stiffened. “The complete rite?”

Ayune’s brow furrowed. “That would consume less initial Naten from the caster,” she said slowly, “and would release the spell’s true magnitude.”

“However,” Servin added, stabbing the ground with his cane.

“..it requires time,” Ayune added quietly. And all of them looked back to the aperture.

The storm had grown monstrous now — a spiraling cathedral of ice advancing across the landscape like an extinction front. And from within its churning heart—

A shape burst free.

Jack erupted from the storm like a blistering comet of frost, trailing spirals of compressed cold as he tore through the air at impossible velocity. His silhouette flickered violently through the distortion, posture wild, unrestrained — not disciplined pursuit, but predatory exhilaration.

Even through the projection, his expression was visible.

Wide.
Feral.
Ecstatic.

Like a shark in blood infested waters..

Ayune’s fingers curled slowly. “..time she does not have.” she said.

The storm howled behind Jack as he accelerated.. and every soul in witness felt choked by both fear and crippling anticipation.

[The Bhalian Empire]

Jack was practically frothing at the mouth after locating where Hitomi had disappeared to.

But up until, he'd been growing.. agitated with how this battle had progressed.

That technique of hers — this Jouto, made her maddeningly elusive. Space folded. Angles lied. Distance became suggestion. But his senses had never been fooled. Not once. EVERY disappearance, every spatial slip, his azure gaze traced her across the frozen wasteland with unerring precision.

He was winning this battle. That much was evicent.. but her refusal to die, let alone stand and fight, was becoming.. inconvenient.

It was not until Hitomi’s Naten began to visibly burn through the storm that he found her again. Several miles away, churning against the arctic gale, and warping the cold into steaming distortions.

“Oooh, so that’s it..” Jack muttered, teeth peeling into a feral grin as wind tore past his face. “Are you cooking something up for me like a good girl?”

It was a trap.

He tasted the idea like blood on his tongue. And the realization didn’t slow him — if anything, it excited him.

“Good,” he laughed, as the atmosphere swelled around him. “I love surprises!!”

Then, the frozen sky split as Jack hurled forward like a living missile, shock rings bursting behind him in cascading booms. Frost and ice shredded against his skin as his gaze fixated on her silhouette through the blinding visage of the storm.

He could feel the blizzard weakening her; the vicious cold gnawing at her endurance, bleeding warmth from her muscles, slowing micro-movements, and tightening joints. Her reaction time would degrade first — not enough for civilians to notice, but enough for a predator like him to exploit.

Jack accelerated. So much so that his form dissolved into slivers of dust and light, before he reappeared inches from Hitomi in the blink of an eye.. “~FOUUND YOU!!~”

And he coiled all of his momentum into a single annihilating kick.

A roundhouse that detonated toward her skull like an arc of blistering of light. However, impossibly so, Hitomi managed to lift shoulder and remaining arm just in time to avoid decapitation. But blocked or not, the impact from his strike roared through air like rolling thunder.

A concussive fissure ripped outward as Hitomi's body was hurled across the frozen expanse like debris caught in a hurricane, so violently that ice and stone were liquefied beneath her wild trajectory.

“Ohh– there it is!” Jack mocked, watching as his target's body carved through the horizon. And he smiled a little deeper after hearing the faint, delicious snap of bone beneath the impact.

He definitely made contact that time; no invisible shields, or last second evasive maneuver. Nope, actual contact. But even still.. he could tell the full force of his kick had not landed.

“Hmph.. I still kinda whiffed a bit, though.”

Something resisted him; the heat emanating from her arm seemed to have dampened the killing pressure of his blow just enough to prolong her life. He could feel it.. literally steaming from his leg after making contact, and he could visually see the blackened singe marks along on his pants.

Jack’s grin sharpened into something hungry. “Heh.. fiesty till the end. I knew I liked you.”

He said with a smile. “But you can't cheat me forever. Fiesty or not, a caged rat is still a rat.”

And again, he vanished.

The air collapsed in his wake as he reappeared directly in the path of her body still tumbling through the debris. She keenly caught her footing with acrobatic precision, but Jack wouldn't allow her a moment of reprieve.

The second her foot touched the ground, Jack surged forward with onslaught of fists and kicks so fast they blurred into overlapping afterimages. His elbows ripped inward, his knees lashed upward, and his knuckles roared with harrowing pressure. Each strike carried enough force to pound diamond to dust.

She couldn’t evade him outright at this range— Jack's agility was monstrous— so her body responded with surgical precision, and years of discipline reserved for only the highest of martial artists.

Her forearm did most of the work; redirecting impacts, while she rotated her hips to bleed their force. Her knees intercepted angles and her elbow snapped against incoming wrists. Despite Jack's unrelenting assault, Hitomi's movements weren’t defensive — they were corrective, constantly destabilizing his balance, stealing fractions of leverage wherever possible.

Anticipating. Compensating.

It was a dance of brutality against control; Ice and stone shredded beneath their footwork as shockwaves chewed the terrain into ruin.

And through it all—

Her lips never stopped moving.. Citing some low, rhythmic chant through clenched teeth, breath fogging against the storm as syllables folded into one another. Jack couldn’t understand a word of it — only the intent vibrating beneath the sound — and the ignorance scraped against his nerves.

“Tch — stop whispering!!” he snarled, stepping forward with a savage haymaker into her guard that drove Hitomi backwards through the snow on her heels.

He groaned.. agitation curling his nose, and scratching his mind with the same repetitive thought.

This human bitch should already be dead..

But the Naten pulsating from her arm shielded her from the cold and empowered her physical ability. Without whatever this spell was she'd been relying on, her flesh would have been petrified long ago from simply being this close to him.. Instead, he watched her take a new defensive stance.. and continued with her incessant chant.

But just as Jack was about to lose his cool, a defiant smile lifted his lips to his ears.

“Uh oh..” He taunted. “..Somebody's ticker is getting a lil' overworked.” Jack said, pointing at Hitomi's chest.

He could hear her heart thunder inside her chest at a reckless, unsustainable pace. Blood cascading through veins constricted by the cold. Microfractures accumulating. Breath shortening between syllables.

Human limits approaching fast..

“Need a break?” Jack teased before he was upon her again, but this time his barrage had intensified. His arms had physically grown in stature. Now, his every blow carved trenches into the ice beneath them, and generated shockwaves erupting with each near-miss she forced. She remained poised for the moment, but Jack persisted until her footing betrayed her for the smallest possible fraction of a second.

Fatigue was setting in.. so now, he just needed to wait for a window. A moment where the human body betrayed the mind…and then he saw it.

She slipped.

Just for a moment, trying to counter one of his punches, her footing faltered. And Jack’s pupils dilated like a predator catching motion in the dark.

His body responded before thought.

Ice erupted from his own flesh in a jagged, murderous bloom— crystalline thorn jutting outward like spears from every inch of his body. They impaled her mid-motion; her wrist, stomach, chest, thigh lifting her off balance as blood misted into the freezing air.

She groaned in pain, halting her chant— though not entirely breaking its flow. She was as persistent as rot.. but it mattered not.

“~Gotcha.” Jack muttered as his jaw unhinged with a wet, monstrous crack before unleashing a gargantuan beam of compressed Naten from his throat at pointblank range. It was so massive, so otherworldly that it blotted everything in an ivory glow before flattening the heavens and the earth in beneath a shattering boom.

[The Yaarou Clan]

Hitomi’s body lifted off the ground as crystalline spears burst from Jack’s flesh and punched into her wrist, ribs, stomach, and thigh—driving the breath from her lungs in a silent scream.

Blood sprayed out of her and scattered through the blizzard like shattered rubies.

..you.

The surmounting pain was unbearable, but to be honest, her suffering was the least of her concerns.

..idiot.

Hitomi was fuming.. absolutely furious she allowed herself to be caught off guard by a foe she didn't respect. By this fucking weakling.

How did this fucking happen?

She instinctively twisted her body just enough to avoid lethal damage from Jack's ambush. But fatigue was crushing her.. Exhaustion compounded with blood loss and depleted energy had created a metaphorical pit Hitomi couldn't see a way out of.

And to make matters even worse, she couldn't feel her hand anymore..

No..

Jack's lethal surprise had severed the nerves responsible for motor control in her remaining arm. The realization caused her heartbeat to thunder erratically in her ears, struggling to keep its pace against the crushing cold and rapid hemorrhaging. And then, the dizziness clawed at the edges of her awareness.. but she couldn't die here.

Hitomi clenched her teeth hard enough to crack enamel and swallowed the pain.

She needed to finish the rite, but the frost gathering along her wounds had reached her nervous system. And suddenly, she felt herself losing consciousness.

“…Tch,” she hissed weakly, breath trembling. It was.. so cold. So unbearably cold, Hitomi could feel her bones begin to freeze, splinter and crack beneath the grip of the harrowing storm.

Her eyes dragged upward through the stinging blur and saw Jack unhinge his jaw to grotesque metrics, compressing monstrous volumes of glacial energy behind his teeth. And no matter how hard she tried, her body wouldn't react fast enough beneath the freezing temperatures.

“I.. c-can't.” Her teeth chattered.

For the first time since the battle began, fear had begun to surface through the cracks. An all encompassing, suffocating fear. Hitomi said nothing, and her expression gave even less.. but within she was lamenting every decision she'd made up until now. Cursing her weakness, her pride.. her arrogance. She could hear the Elders laughing now; vindicated in their archaic wisdom by watching Hitomi choke to death on her own hubris. She never listened to them, no matter how much they implored and begged.

And now she was going to die for it..

“...”

Hitomi didn't look away.

She refused to submit any inkling of weakness, even in the face of death. She watched a cathedral of annihilating arctic pressure erupt from Jack’s unhinged maw. And the sound it made did not belong to this world. It was a sharp, mind numbing frequency that resonated throughout all of Edo.

Her vision tunneled as the approaching blast swallowed all peripheral light, literally blinding her defiant gaze. She accepted death.. or at least, she deluded herself into believing she did. A frayed attempt at maintaining control of her destiny, as she always had. But at the final moment, the terror of death hit her like a wave of fire.

“..I..”

Billions of thoughts flushed her brain numb, all in concert behind a single notion.. “I.. don't wanna die.”

Terror forced tears from her eyes, only for them to crystalize and crack along her cheeks amidst the freezing winds. But beyond just that, it unearthed something feral within her. Desperation. Hitomi rarely found herself backed into a corner, but whenever she was, she always managed to overcome through sheer tenacity and ambition alone.

“..just.. please..”

But this time seemed different.

She knew she could not stop Jack's assault. Not at this range..

The arctic blast generated an unearthly howl upon collision with its target—ripping into Hitomi with unbelievable power. However, if Jack's eyes could peer through the ivory haze he'd created, he would see his glacial beam of death hadn't quite reached her body. Hitomi's W'rayths had returned.

She had regenerated just enough of her Naten for them to regain their form, as well as their autonomy. And they wasted no time at all intercepting Jack's blast, deflecting the continuous stream away from Hitomi's exhilarated expression.

She felt them instantly — thin, exhausted, barely coherent. Their forms trembled under the crushing pressure, burning themselves apart to buy her seconds.

Only seconds. And she didn't waste a single one of them.

Her fingers flexed uselessly around the unstable core of the spell; despite her efforts, she could not cast through shattered nerves and splintered bones. But Hitomi wouldn't be so easily deterred.

“Veil.. Unravel, and collapse.”

She spoke again in that deadened language and each syllable pulled forth unimaginable power from beyond the realms. So much so that it thickened the air and distorted space around them as Hitomi redirected the energy from her battered arm, into a murderous crimson gleam in her eyes.

“Twin Meteors.”

Then, power poured out of them.

A massive beam of apocalyptic energy tore free from her gaze, carrying with it more heat and pressure than Edo had ever seen. The sky inverted, colors smeared into violent spectrums as the resulting shockwave expanded in a perfect, merciless ring.

The Kesshō no Mawaru was a spell that siphoned the entropy of collapsing realms beyond the veil and unleashed them upon a target. It was more or less a doomsday attack; a kamikaze level decision.. intended to be utilized no different than a nuclear weapon. But Hitomi had done her homework, and knew that no technique was beyond her control.

It took some time, but she discerned from studying the Tome of Morai that reciting the full incantation of the spell not only relieved the burden of Naten, but it allowed the caster far more control of the output.

And by using her eyes as a conduit instead of her hands, she'd be able to magnify the attack by quantum leaps.

Jack never stood a chance; There was no struggle. No final scream. No defiance.

His beam of arctic energy met Hitomi's incoming laser, and the glacial attack vanished as if it had never existed at all. Jack's body followed an instant later; Ice, flesh, will, and arrogance—peeled apart at the atomic level and scattered across the wisps of his now fading storm.

Those arctic winds were swallowed by the beam as it continued onward into orbit, burning a straight line through the clouds before vanishing into the starlit sky. And in moments, the crushing cold had begun to fade as steam rose from the ground.

The land had been melted smooth for miles in every direction.

Hitomi had won.. But the spell had taken its toll.

Hitomi fell to the ground lifeless. Her skin blackened and split by third-degree burns peeling across her torso, legs, face, and back.

—

Far away, beneath reinforced bunkers and trembling wards, the citizens of Qiyoto watched their Xhion defend her city. And upon seeing her eviscerate the Bhalian elemental, they exhaled breaths they hadn’t realized they were holding.

The Elders watched with far more somber dispositions; some of them cringing or recoiling from what they'd witnessed.

“..my god..” Ayune whispered. Quietly approaching the still images of Hitomi's smoldering body. “Is she?”

Silence answered her. Silence and uneven breathing. That is, until the artificial voice of an AION sentinel echoed through the bunkers surrounding intercoms. “All hostile Bhalian forces have been eliminated. Proceeding with retrieval efforts.”

Immediately, a palpable wave of relief swept through the bunkers. Cheers and shouts echoing the chamber walls in reverence of their mighty Xhi’on. But it was not long before those returned to somber silence.. as every pair of eyes watched Hitomi's smoldering body lie still and ruined.

Elder Servin spoke after a long, haggard breath. “She has done it..” he said quietly. Turning slowly to address his peers. “Qiyoto is saved.”

“At what cost?” Ayune almost whimpered, to which Sevrin barely reacted. “Have we.. have we lost her?”

”I..” Jhun was barely able to form a sentence. And many of his peers shared his shock and awe. All but Sevrin.. Who seemed far less impacted by the implications of what he'd seen.

“The Kesshō no Mawaru draws energy from dying realms; not even the caster is safe from its might.” Sevrin responded. “A fact she would know undoubtedly from studying the Tome. Perhaps.. this is for the best.”

His words drew splintered glances from his surrounding Elders. “What– what did you say?” Jhun snapped quietly, his voice still sunken from what he'd witnessed. But Sevrin merely tugged at his beard, concealing what seemed to be a smile before he took his leave from the council chamber.

Elder Jhun quickly snapped out of his shock and looked to one of the nearby Kurotori soldiers stationed to protect them. “Y-YOU! Why are you still standing here when your Xhi’on is dying?!!”

He roared, suddenly mad with urgency. But then Ayune calmly tugged on his shoulder and drew his attention back to the visual of the surface. In seconds Hitomi was surrounded by hundreds of Kurotori soldiers, carefully retrieving her from the battlefield.

[The Yaarou Clan]

The blast zone was still smoking when the Kurotori units arrived.

What had once been land was now a glassed scar stretching to the horizon—stone fused smooth, snow erased, the air itself shimmering with leftover heat. Instruments screamed warnings as the soldiers advanced, boots crunching over vitrified ground that had been earth only moments before.

“Thermal levels stabilizing,” one voice reported over comms. “No hostile signatures. Repeating—no hostiles.”

At the center of it all lay Hitomi.

Or what remained of her.

Her body was barely recognizable beneath the burns—skin charred and blistered, armor reduced to metal slabs fused against flesh. Her left arm was gone entirely, cauterized at the elbow. And her eyes were hollowed out.. empty.

And yet—

Her chest rose.

Shallow. Uneven. But alive.

”The Xhi’on has been secured.” the squad leader said. “She’s breathing. I repeat—she’s alive.”

Medical drones were deployed first, hovering cautiously, bathing Hitomi in stabilizing fields that immediately began healing her internal wounds.

Only then did the soldiers move in.

They lifted her with reverence, not speed, sliding her onto a containment stretcher reinforced with Naten dampeners. Every alarm on the rig flared red as her vitals wavered.

“Get her airborne,” the leader ordered. “Now.”