The sky was still burning.
Even as Kazakare fell from the heavens under the force of the Seven's combined strike, the clouds above them swirled with crimson rage. His body crashed into the heart of Odessyus's eastern district, exploding in a wave of fire and glyphs. Towers shattered. Stone melted. The very ground trembled.
But it wasn't over.
The flames didn't die.
They rose.
The black fire twisted around the wreckage, gathering in midair, spiraling upward like smoke given purpose. From within it came a pulse — not of life, but of raw, hungry fury. And then the fire screamed.
Kazakare rose again.
Only now… he wasn't even close to human.
His form cracked open like a burning chrysalis. Bones pushed through flesh, splitting into twisted blades. Glyphs, glowing with corrupted energy, burned across his armor like scars that bled light. His wings, once shaped like flame, had become jagged obsidian constructs, dripping with molten power. His voice was gone. In its place was something older. Something primal. A roar that shook the horizon.
Susan stumbled backward. "He's… ascended."
"No," Neolin whispered from the tower, watching through the glyph mirror. "He's fallen so deep, the only thing left is power."
Kazakare's final form hovered above the broken city, his glyphs rotating like rings around a dying star. Each flicker of his power distorted the world — stone curved unnaturally, time stuttered, and shadows moved in the wrong direction. It wasn't magic anymore. It was collapse.
The Seven regrouped near the central plaza, where the last defensive glyph circle still flickered with light.
"We hit him with everything we had," Tom panted. "And he got back up stronger."
"His form's beyond any known glyph system," Susan said. "We're fighting something that shouldn't even exist."
Peter blinked across the broken rooftops, scouting. "We still fight."
"But how?" Kitty asked, her wings faltering.
Before anyone could answer, Kazakare struck.
In one blink of time, he moved. The space around him cracked. He was on the ground, then in the air, then everywhere at once. His strikes weren't attacks — they were eruptions. Fire twisted into void. Glyphs fractured mid-cast. He launched a spear of burning ruin straight through a barricade, and three support glyph-knights were vaporized instantly.
Jack screamed as he was flung through the air, his ribs cracking against a tower wall. Susan raised a wall, but it shattered under Kazakare's glare alone. Peter blinked left — and was caught mid-phase, slammed into the earth by a whip of red fire.
"Fall," Kazakare roared, his voice now a chorus of broken syllables. "Burn. Break."
Tom charged forward with fire coiling around his fists, unleashing a roaring inferno directly into Kazakare's chest. For a moment, it looked like he connected. But then the fire reversed — turned inside out — and Tom was thrown backward, bleeding from the mouth.
Frank stood in front of Kitty, shielding her from the next strike, his glyph blade glowing but shaking. "We can't win like this."
Kitty stood beside him. "Then we don't fight to win. We fight to stop him. No matter what it takes."
Kazakare landed in the plaza. The glyph circle cracked. The sky turned black.
Jack rose from the rubble, blood trailing from his mouth. His eyes were dim — until he looked up and saw Susan shielding a group of injured children.
And something inside him snapped.
He screamed — not in pain, but in fury. In refusal.
Black flames burst from his chest. His glyph markings darkened, flared, then tore open into new shapes. His eyes turned gold. Not glowing — blazing. A second pair of shadowed wings burst from his back, not of light, not of fire — but of living shadow. The air bent around him.
"Jack?" Kitty whispered, backing away.
He didn't respond. He moved.
One second he was ten feet away — the next, he was inside Kazakare's reach, blades drawn, cutting. Kazakare reeled back as Jack struck again, and again — moving like a phantom. The shadow demon form pulsed around him, warping his every step. The world seemed to forget where he was — until he hit.
Kazakare staggered.
The others watched in awe.
"His demon is awakened," Susan gasped. "Not controlled — unleashed."
But Jack was burning through himself. The longer he fought, the more the shadows pulled on him, tried to drag him deeper.
Frank ran to his side. "You can't hold this!"
"I don't need to," Jack snarled. "Just hit him. End it!"
Kazakare roared and struck Jack with a blast of ruinous flame. Jack flew across the plaza, crashing hard, his demon wings shattering into black mist.
He didn't rise.
Tom, Susan, Peter, and Kitty regrouped, circling Kazakare, who now limped slightly, his glyphs flickering.
"He's weakened," Susan said.
"But we're all dying," Tom muttered.
Kitty looked at Frank. "Then you have to do it."
Frank stared at her, blinking. "Do what?"
"Finish this."
Frank's blade shook. He looked down at his own hands — bruised, burned, exhausted. "I can't."
"Yes," Kitty said, stepping closer. "You can."
And then something stirred in Frank's chest.
A memory.
No… more than that.
A voice.
"Return what was taken."
He remembered the page.
He remembered the glyph that wasn't drawn — but remembered.
He closed his eyes.
And a light burst from within him.
His glyph markings turned blue — not cold, but deep, ancient. His blade reshaped in his hand — longer, thinner, inscribed with lines of memory itself. His eyes opened, glowing with white-gold flame.
Kazakare turned.
Frank stepped forward.
"No more running," he said. "No more wars."
He moved like wind. Like light. Like everything he had ever trained for had led to this single step.
He clashed with Kazakare.
One blow. Two.
The third struck through Kazakare's wing, tearing it off.
The fourth shattered his glyph barrier.
The fifth — a rising strike fueled by the memory of Marcus, of his friends, of Odessyus — pierced Kazakare's chest.
The corrupted glyphs exploded outward, screaming.
Kazakare fell.
His body hit the plaza like a collapsing tower.
Silence.
Then ash.
Then wind.
Frank fell to his knees.
Kitty ran to him, holding him upright. "You did it. You did it."
Susan stumbled over, pulling Peter from the rubble. Tom limped, carrying Jack's half-conscious form.
Neolin's voice echoed over the relay.
"The Blood Moon has faded."
The sky — for the first time in what felt like years — turned blue.
The war was over.
And the Seven stood… barely.
But they stood.
Because even after the fall of fire… the last flame had not gone out.