[Malachi Novastia]
Dread.
If I could describe the woman who appeared in a single word, it would be dread.
Stiffer was unraveling before my eyes, a mess of rage and delusion. His sanity flickered like a dying torch.
For a moment, I had believed we could win. I had believed that perhaps, against all odds, there was still a chance.
But the moment Calista set foot upon the battlefield, that fragile hope burned away, leaving only the echo of dread to fill its hollow.
Stiffer ground his teeth, his fury so dense it seemed to warp the air.
"Careful, Mucro," he hissed, his eyes wide. "That woman can warp your mind, twist your memories, alter the bones of reality itself."
"When I tried to steal her ability," he spat, "she… she made the event false."
Mucro said nothing. Her silence was worse than any threat.
She merely raised her long odachi, its edge glinting like a verdict, and in a blink she was beside Calista.
Cole moved first. Faster. He shoved Calista back, instinctive, desperate, pure protection.
I thrust my hand forward and summoned the void, a barrier of nothingness drawn from the deep black beneath all worlds.
A perfect wall of absence. It should have swallowed her attack whole.
But it didn't.
Her blade slid through the void like flame through silk, and agony ignited across my face as her strike cut deep into my cheek.
I staggered, tasting blood, disbelief clouding my thoughts.
Then she lunged again.
I met her with my sword, sparks splitting the air, but her weapon twisted reality itself, reshaping my defense into an illusion.
The blade sank into my stomach, as if every effort I made to resist only confirmed my weakness.
"It's useless, little one."
Her voice was low and cold, scarily intimate, and slithered through the air, each word carrying a dreadful certainty.
"Your attempts to live only guide you closer to my blade. The more you fight, the more the world remembers how fragile you are."
The sound of her tone froze me more than pain ever could.
It was not cruelty, it was inevitability, spoken through the voice of one who had seen eternity break and decided to imitate it.
Stiffer roared and charged, his fist swinging with monstrous force. Cole intercepted, his arm trembling under the blow.
Even so, the backlash rippled outward, tearing across my skin like razors made of sound.
Monsters. All of them. The difference between us was cosmic, degrading. I was a candle flung into a storm.
I stumbled back, my vision flickering. The clash splintered into two separate wars before my eyes.
Stiffer and Calista, each hit like a calamity. His fists split heaven and earth, yet her mere presence bent them back to her will.
Purple fire whirled outward, consuming the field, but it was not flame that made her terrifying.
It was her voice.
With every whisper, reality obeyed. A strike that missed became one that landed.
A wound that should have killed her instead never existed at all.
Her words reshaped truth, and every declaration she made became scripture.
Mucro and Cole fought on the other side, blood against steel, chaos against precision.
Cole's blood twisted in the air, forming crimson whips that lashed like serpents, while the shadows at his feet surged upward in a writhing tide.
Winds howled red, their cutting edges singing destruction.
Yet Mucro advanced. Step by step. Each step a sermon in slaughter.
Her odachi cleaved through storm and shadow alike.
Every motion was deliberate, ritualistic, each strike carrying the reverence of a prayer and the inevitability of a guillotine.
Her eyes never blinked. They did not even shimmer with effort.
I felt it then, my own vessel shuddering, my form cracking from the strain.
The shell I wore trembled as if about to collapse, and my soul burned, forced to bind it back together.
If this continued, I would be torn from the mortal plane entirely. I could already feel the pull, the slow, inevitable drag toward reforming in the outer layers of existence.
Still, I refused to fall. I refused to call to her.
My elder sister was watching. I could feel it, the quiet weight of her gaze, her judgment pressing on the edges of my mind.
She was waiting for me to beg.
I would not.
I turned inward. I called to the deepest part of me, my Regalia, the cursed inheritance that never answered without ruin.
I let it wake.
Then it happened. Cole convulsed, his body jerking violently as if an unseen hand crushed his heart.
Crimson light burst from his chest. He gasped once, a sound between a sob and a death cry.
Calista caught him, pulling him into her arms as if she could rewrite the story.
She couldn't.
Mucro was already there. Her odachi plunged deep into Calista's side, carving through her violet flames.
Blood sprayed across the sand, fire flickered, and for a heartbeat, the battlefield fell utterly silent.
My heart pounded like thunder in a tomb.
I screamed, the word tearing from my throat like a curse.
"Lover God of Desire and Lust: Amor!"
Light descended. A thousand hues of violet and gold poured down, divine and blinding.
She appeared, Kivana. My salvation and my ruin. Her hand closed over mine, warm, soft, absolute.
For a moment, she was perfection given form, her beauty sharpened into something unbearable.
She smiled, lips brushing my ear as her voice cut the air.
"Lover's Drill."
The words were divine execution.
Stiffer's head vanished in a storm of violet. His body followed, dissolving into mist that rose toward a heaven he would never reach.
Mucro watched him fall.
Then she knelt beside his body, her odachi tracing a cross through the spreading blood.
"Do not worry, my love," she whispered, her voice trembling, tender, yet steeped in something far darker. "I will set them free. As you have left us, so too shall they."
I turned to Kivana, breath shuddering. "Do you think I can win?"
Her fingers touched my cheek, soft and fatal. "Splurge, Little Darkness."
My blade moved, no longer my own. My body fought as though possessed, deflecting Mucro's strikes with grace that wasn't mine.
Mucro met me blow for blow. Her eyes blazed like black stars. Each word she spoke was colder than any blade.
"Every soul I have slain still whispers in my ear. You will join them soon. You will scream my name into the dark."
The battlefield trembled as our fight warped across moments. Our strikes rang through time itself, echoing across histories both past and yet to come.
Then the world intervened.
Time itself froze us, collapsing every possibility into a single, enforced instant. Reality reasserted itself, locking the sequence of events that must lead to what will come.
The world would not allow us to destroy its continuity.
When it released us, I staggered. My body faltered, blood spilling from wounds that no healing could mend. Her sword tore through me again, impaling my chest.
Kivana's voice broke. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "My mana… is gone."
The words sealed my end. My body cracked, veins dry, blood leaking from my eyes.
And through it all, Mucro smiled. Her voice was quiet, resolute, terrible.
"And that," she said, the sound reverberating like a death knell, "is the death of you."