Sosuke's violent mana condensed in an instant. The air emptied of lightning, leaving only a tense stillness that pressed against the ruins. He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, eyes locked on Julius.
Julius rose, wiping blood from his nose. His palm hovered over his chest as the wound sealed itself with a faint, unnatural glow.
Sosuke struck first. His fist drove for Julius' stomach. Julius caught it with his palm, but pain surged through his body like a current. Lightning exploded from the contact, scattering sparks across the broken floor. Sosuke seized his head and pulled it down into his knee. Bone cracked. Then his fist crashed into Julius' chest, sending him tumbling.
Julius rolled, his boots grinding through dirt and debris before he stopped himself. The smile vanished from his face. His eyes lit with fury, glowing like molten glass. Twin beams lanced forward, slicing the air where Sosuke had stood. They missed, but the ground beneath him melted into a pool of slag.
The impact sent Sosuke falling into the ruined dungeon below. Dust swirled around him as rubble caved in from above.
Beams spiraled through the wreckage, streaks of white heat tearing through stone. They struck a barrier of lightning that pulsed from Sosuke's skin, shielding him on instinct. Julius broke through the defense and slashed, his claws raking across Sosuke's arm. Sparks burst from the wound. Sosuke caught Julius by the throat and slammed his fist into his cheek, sending him skidding back.
Julius didn't stop. He came again, cutting into Sosuke's side, shredding armor, leaving glowing lines of blood.
Sosuke pushed him away and summoned his katana, the blade plunging into the ground. Lightning erupted outward, crawling through the rain like veins of fire. It wrapped around Julius, burning his skin black before his healing smothered it. His body twitched under the voltage, then stilled. Flesh mended faster than the lightning could destroy it.
Sosuke vanished in a blur, his movement leaving a streak of white light. He reappeared beside Julius, fist driving straight through his stomach. Blood sprayed, splattering across the ruins and Sosuke's arm.
Julius looked down at the gaping wound, then up at Sosuke, smiling through the blood.
The blood spread outward, creeping like a living shadow. It swallowed the ground, the walls, everything. His chest closed around Sosuke's embedded arm. Then came the heat—his eyes flared, and beams tore through Sosuke's side.
Sosuke ripped his arm free, staggered back, and clutched his bleeding ribs. The wound barely closed, his healing slowing, faltering under the strain of his own power.
"There's nothing for me to evolve, Estrella," Julius said. His voice was low, the air trembling with it. "My powers have reached the pinnacle of a blight."
I'm inside his domain of blood. Sosuke thought it, a cold certainty. Staying means slow death. Running means he strikes before I clear ten paces. He will outlast any attrition. He always does.
Pain lanced through him. Sosuke collapsed, taste of iron already in his mouth. "What the hell."
"You're hemorrhaging all over my castle," Julius said, voice smooth as oil. He smiled and nodded as if praising an artist. "Though I appreciate the assistance." He plucked Sosuke's blood from the air and shaped it into a spear that hovered above the stone.
Sosuke tried to push up. Muscle protested. The spear drove through his chest and flung him backward. He skidded, hand braced on his katana, breath tearing at his ribs. He glared up through raining blood and dust.
Come on, be creative, he thought. I can see the mana build before he moves, but I still fail to predict where the pain will land. His control sits on a different plane.
He grabbed the spear. Pain screamed through his shoulder as he wrenched it free. Rain and sweat and blood rolled down his face. He spat and wiped his brow.
I have to ration what I heal, he realized. At this rate I'll burn myself out.
His pupils widened. The star eyes. The piece he had overlooked the entire time. He had been too folded into raw technique. His vision had another function.
Vines exploded from the floor and wrapped around his legs. Julius advanced, heat pouring from his eyes. Flames stitched through the air. Sosuke tore free, ducking beneath the blaze.
The way his mana flows is precise, Sosuke thought. Not a drop wasted. Not a single leak. Calculated to the last pulse.
Julius slammed the ground. A wave of blood spikes launched, a forest of red needles. Lightning met them and shattered the shafts into glittering shards. Sosuke surged forward, fist driving through Julius' chest and into a pool of thick, coagulated blood.
Julius slid from the domain like a thing pruning itself free of mud. He reappeared behind Sosuke in a wet, fluid motion.
Sosuke condensed lightning around his form. Electricity hummed like a held breath. Julius charged with a sword of living blood. The blade screamed as it struck, but the current tore it apart. Sparks threw themselves into the air.
Sosuke laughed, a raw sound. "I can see it."
His star pupils were not only for sensing. They guided him, whispered probable lines of attack. His brain followed, reacting with a speed that felt like an extra limb. The world snapped into sharper possibility. The fight felt less chaotic and more like a sequence he could choose through.
"I can read your next move," he said and rushed. His katana flashed, finding seams in Julius' guard. Steel drove into the king's gut. Lightning poured through the wound and shuddered through the Blight king's bones. Julius coughed blood and willed it into an arrow. The projectile burst toward Sosuke's throat.
Sosuke caught it in midflight. He twisted, flinging the blood-arrow back while it arced with stolen electricity. It struck Julius clean in the throat. Flesh tore. He roared.
Stunned barely described Julius for a heartbeat. Then the earth split and wrapped itself around his arm. Roots and hardened branches fused into a massive axe.
The axe fell. It cleaved through sinew and metal. Sosuke's arm split in two with a sound like breaking glass. He dropped, one hand suddenly gone. A white-hot pain swallowed him.
Lightning ripped from his other hand and knocked Julius away. Sosuke crumpled, clutching the stump. Heat burned his skin. The world narrowed to pain and the hiss of rain.
Julius laughed, brittle and cruel. "Maybe I'll take your eyes when you die," he said. The laugh had no joy in it, only something colder. Blood rose like tidewater at his boots.
Sosuke planted his palm on the stone. Mana poured through his shoulder and into the ground. The blast threw him up and away from the blood domain. He arced through rain and flying debris. Streams of blood followed, slicing the air, but his lightning barbed them aside in time.
He landed, chest heaving, one arm held to the wound. The pain was a living thing. The stump felt like a new weight to measure. His breaths were short and sharp.
I can predict, he thought. I can see the lines before he draws them. But prediction is not enough. Power can still crush my foresight when it is done without restraint. He has endurance I can't match.
Sosuke's eyes widened. A spark of something deeper flickered within them; resolve, revelation, and the faint shimmer of violet stars.
Julius trudged through the broken ruins, each step heavy with fury. The rain had dulled to a whisper, replaced by howling wind that dragged the scent of smoke and iron across the air. "Where are you, Estrella?!" His voice cracked through the storm. "Maybe I'll kill your friends now. One by one."
"You won't."
The reply cut through the wind. Sosuke stood amid the rubble, lightning scars glowing faintly across his skin. In his palm, a sphere of black mana churned like a dying star. The world seemed to hold its breath. "Right now," he said quietly, "you'll feel darkness for the first time in your shit existence."
He dropped the sphere. It hit the ground softly, a sound no louder than a raindrop. Then the world inverted. The floor melted into ink, the castle devoured by a sea of shadow.
Julius looked down, claws tensing. "Dark magic…? How did you—"
Sosuke tapped his temple. "Star Eyes visualize mana down to the atom. If I can read the pattern of Blight portals, what's stopping me from remaking them?"
The last words echoed as his body dissolved into black vapor.
A shadow rippled beneath Julius. Sosuke erupted upward, his arm glowing white-hot with lightning, slicing across Julius' spine. Flesh and armor split in a violent flash. Julius spun, claws raking through empty air.
Sosuke was already gone, below him, above him, everywhere. Lightning cracked. He appeared again and slammed into Julius, driving him into the ground hard enough to shatter the stone.
He seized Julius by the throat. Power flooded his veins, violet light surging up through the storm. "This ends now!"
Thunder screamed from the clouds. Bolts rained down, striking both of them in a blinding storm. Julius writhed, skin searing, eyes wide with agony. He tried to heal, but the pace of his regeneration could barely outmatch the speed of destruction. The ground turned molten beneath them.
Then the lightning stopped. Smoke filled the silence.
Julius raised his head slowly, eyes glowing with fury. His heat vision tore through the haze and ripped open Sosuke's chest. Sosuke stumbled backward, blood soaking his armor. He could barely breathe.
But he lifted a trembling hand. The ground responded. Vines erupted upward, wrapping Julius in living chains. They lifted him into the storm, impaling his body and painting the greenery crimson.
Sosuke seized control of the blood itself. It rose from the soil, shaped into arrows that screamed through the air and pinned Julius to the writhing tree. The king roared and tore himself free, crashing back to the ground. Arrows remained embedded, jutting from his skin like the spines of a dying beast.
Sosuke's lungs fought for air. His body trembled. His vision blurred.
I can't let him heal. If he stands for even one minute longer, I lose.
He clenched his fist. The katana returned to his hand, glowing brighter than ever, its edge burning violet against the storm. He lunged forward, lightning trailing behind him like the tail of a comet.
Steel met claws. Sparks flared. The two forces ground against each other, pressure so immense the wind itself distorted.
"I'll kill you!" Sosuke shouted. Lightning detonated at the impact point, driving the blade forward. It carved through Julius' hand, tearing it apart, then struck his throat.
Julius screamed. "You cannot kill me! I am the king! The rightful ruler of this world!" His voice broke, no longer grand, just desperate.
Sosuke's muscles strained to their limit, his body trembling with pain. Every vein screamed for release. I have to protect them. Rin. Everyone.
He pushed.
The blade ripped through Julius' neck in a single, violent arc.
A spray of blood burst like rain. A head hit the ground with a wet thud. Julius' body stumbled, one step, two, then collapsed. The head lay staring upward, eyes wide in disbelief, lips parted in a final murmur. "I couldn't have lost… This cannot be…"
Silence swallowed the battlefield.
Sosuke dropped to his knees. His thigh was bleeding out, his breathing ragged and shallow. He stared at the headless corpse, chest rising and falling unevenly.
Then, without warning, he laughed; a broken, trembling laugh that turned into sobs. Rain mingled with his tears.
He tilted his head toward the storming sky, voice cracking.
Then he screamed, long and raw, until thunder drowned it out.