Time... breaks.
The black no-dachi, a blade of pure entropy, falls. It is a whisper of an ending, a promise of oblivion, and it is aimed at my defenseless, exhausted body. I am on my knees, my energy spent, my daggers on the cold concrete. I am a target, and I have no way to move.
Yogawa is too far, his own magic spent. Erima's arrow is not fast enough. Hachiro is a golden comet of pure, focused rage, his fist cocked for the General's head-his momentum carries him away from me.
"MIZUKI!"
Kizawa's scream is not a warning. It is a sound of pure, primal panic. He is the only one in motion, but he is moving towards the General, just as he was ordered. He is fifty meters away, a blur of blue and steel. He cannot possibly intercept the blade. He cannot stop his own charge, turn, and get to me in time.
It is impossible.
I watch the black sword descend, and in that fractured, eternal moment, I see Kizawa break the laws of motion.
He does not try to run back. He does not stop. He is moving forward, but his body twists in mid-air. He is a blur of blue light, a desperate, impossible gamble. He does not have time to reach me. He only has time to act.
With a final, desperate roar, he throws his left-hand katana.
It is not a precise, calculated throw. It is a frantic, full-bodied hurl, imbued with every last scrap of his speed and energy. The silver blade spins end-over-end, a shining, desperate shield.
The black no-dachi of Kuro-Kiri collides with Kizawa's spinning katana. CLANG. The sound is a deafening, discordant shriek of metal, a sound of divine steel meeting utter despair. Kizawa's katana, a masterwork of spirit-forged steel, holds for a single, agonizing microsecond. Then it shatters. The blade of entropy explodes Kizawa's sword into a thousand useless, glittering shards.
But it is enough. The throw, the impact, it alters the trajectory of the General's blade. It is no longer aimed at my heart or my head. But it is still falling.
I feel a searing, unimaginable cold. The blade sinks deep into my left shoulder, just below the collarbone, biting through my kimono, through muscle, and grating against bone. I scream. It is a wet, choked sound. The world explodes into a universe of pure, agonizing wrongness.
And in that same, shared instant- "ORA ORA ORAAA!" Hachiro's fist, glowing with the force of a small sun, impacts the General's head. Kuro-Kiri is still on one knee, his core destroyed by my 'Phoenix Lance'. His final, desperate attack on me cost him his last moment of defense. Hachiro's attack is not just a punch. It is an execution. "Iron Fist: METEOR BREAKER!" The impact is not loud. It is a sound that is felt. A deep, sickening thud that shakes the entire foundry. The General's head, the swirling void of fog and crimson light, simply... caves in. It implodes.
For a long second, there is absolute silence. Kuro-Kiri, the Black Fog General, remains on one knee. He is a statue of shattered shadow-armor. Then, slowly, he begins to disintegrate. He does not explode. He does not fade. He unravels. The fog that makes his form, the darkness that holds him together, it all just... dissolves. It turns to harmless, inert dust, catching the faint light of the foundry's high windows. His massive, broken no-dachi dissolves with him, the part embedded in my shoulder vanishing into nothingness. The armor clatters to the ground, an empty, smoking husk. And then... he is gone. The oppressive weight on our souls, the crushing despair, the chilling miasma-it all vanishes, lifted as if it is a physical blanket. The battle is over.
I am on my hands and knees, gasping. The world is spinning. "Mizuki! You are hit!" Erima's voice is high and thin with panic. She is at my side, her hands hovering over my shoulder, afraid to touch the wound. "Gods, Mizuki, it's..."
I look down. It is not a cut. It is not bleeding, not really. Where the blade entered, my red and black kimono is... gone. Eaten away. And my skin... my skin is a festering, black-gray patch of dead flesh that is visibly, sickeningly, spreading. It is a patch of entropy. The wound is not bleeding. It is un-making me. "It's... cold," I whisper, my teeth chattering. My arm is numb, a useless, heavy weight.
"Do not... just sit there... you idiot." Kizawa's voice. He is on the ground, ten feet away. He is lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. His right-hand katana is on the ground beside him. His left hand is... empty. "You are supposed to... dodge," he pants, a grim smile twisting his lips. He is covered in sweat, his blue hair plastered to his forehead.
"Kizawa!" I try to move, but my vision blurs, and I collapse onto my side. The darkness from the wound is already spreading, spider-webbing veins of black crawling up my neck and down my chest. "It is... in me," I gasp, a new kind of terror, cold and absolute, seizing me.
"Not for long!" Yogawa slides in on his knees, his grimoire already open. He is a mess-blood still caked under his nose from his earlier exertion-but his hands are steady. "Do not move, Mizuki. This is going to sting." He places his hand over the wound, not quite touching. "Vitae-Restitue! Cleanse and Mend!" A soft, green light glows from his palm. It touches the black, necrotic flesh. And it fizzles. The healing magic... just dies. It hits the blackness and vanishes, like water on a super-heated plate. Yogawa's eyes go wide. "What...?" He tries again, pouring more power into it. "Vitae-Restitue!" The green light flares, and this time, the wound reacts. The black veins pulse, and a tendril of dark energy lashes out, striking Yogawa's hand. He screams and recoils, clutching his hand. A black, frost-like pattern is spreading across his fingers. "It... it's fighting back!" he yells, his voice cracking. "It's... it's eating the magic! This is not a wound! It is a curse! A curse of entropy!"
"It is... un-making me," I whisper, the cold reaching my chest. My heart stutters. "No," Erima says, her voice a low, fierce growl. She rips a strip of cloth from her own uniform, ignoring Yogawa's protests. "If magic will not work, we do it the old way. We need to stop the spread. We need... a tourniquet." "It is not... poison, Erima!" Yogawa shouts, frantically flipping through his grimoire. "You cannot stop it like that!"
"We have to try something!" she screams back, her hands shaking so badly she can barely tie the knot on my bicep.
"She is right, Grumpy." Hachiro is there now, his knuckles split and bleeding from his final punch. His usual, idiotic grin is gone, replaced by a terrifying, cold calm. "This is not a problem we can punch. What do we do?"
"I... I do not know!" Yogawa cries, his composure completely shattered. "There is nothing in here about... about un-making! This is General-level magic! This is... this is divine in its horror! We... we cannot fix this!"
"Get... her... to the old woman," Kizawa pants from the ground. He is struggling to sit up, his face pale. "Your grandmother, Mizuki. She... she will know..." "Kizawa, do not talk," Erima orders, her eyes flashing between me and him.
The cold is in my lungs. It is getting hard to breathe. "It... it hurts," I whisper, and I hate how small my voice sounds. "I know, Mii-chan," Kizawa says. He has crawled over to me. He is right beside me, his one good hand grabbing my own. His hand is warm. "Just... hold on. You are not allowed... to die. I forbid it." "Look at... you," I choke out, a tear freezing on my cheek. "You... you lost... your sword." "It is just steel," he says, his grip tightening. "I can... get more. Cannot... get a new you."
His words... they strike something deep. A memory. My grandfather, his hands warm on my head after a hard day of training. "The phoenix is not about the fire that takes, little bird. It is about the life that gives. It is the ultimate expression of 'self'. To burn, to die, and to give that fire to create something new. To... rebirth."
To give that fire... I look at the spreading darkness on my skin. The entropy. The un-making. And I look at Kizawa, his face a mask of pale, desperate fear. "He is... wrong," I whisper. "Who is wrong?" Kizawa asks, leaning in. "Yogawa." I take a ragged breath. The world is fading to a gray pinprick. "He... he said... he cannot fix this." "Mizuki, do not talk, save your strength-" "He cannot fix it... because... this is not his job."
I use the last of my strength to move my one good arm. My right arm. I lay my hand on the black, festering wound on my left shoulder. "Mizuki, no! Do not touch it!" Erima screams. But the moment my hand makes contact, I feel it. The entropy, the void, the cold... it leeches at my palm. It is hungry.
"I know," I whisper. "This is... my fight." I close my eyes. I am not the 'Phoenix Lance' anymore. I am not a weapon. I am... a phoenix. I am not pushing out. I am giving. My hair, a dull, lifeless silver, begins to glow. It is not the wild, electric silver-and-gold of my battle-mode. It is a soft, warm, pure golden light. It is the color of a sunrise, the color of hope, the color of a candle in the dark. It flows from my hair, down my neck, into my right arm.
I am not fighting the entropy. I am... displacing it. I am pouring my own life, my own light, my own warmth, into the void the General's blade created. The black, necrotic veins... stop spreading. They hesitate. And then, slowly, agonizingly slowly, they begin to recede. "It is... it is working!" Yogawa breathes, his eyes wide with disbelief. "She is... she is re-writing the wound! She is filling the 'un-made' parts of herself... with her own soul! Mizuki, that is... suicide! You are draining your own life force!"
"Shut up... and let her work," Kizawa snarls, his hand still holding mine. The pain is... I cannot even describe it. It is the feeling of being frozen and burned alive at the same time. It is the feeling of dying and being born in the same, terrible instant. My life force pours out of me. The black veins recede, millimeter by millimeter. The gray, dead flesh is replaced by new, raw, pink skin. The light in my hair begins to dim. The cold is... gone. But a new feeling is replacing it. A vast, empty, tiredness. I have... nothing left. I have given everything. The last black vein vanishes from my neck. The wound on my shoulder is... gone. It is just... new skin. Raw, and tender, but... whole. My hand falls from my shoulder. My hair fades back to its normal, dull silver. "Mizuki...?" Kizawa's voice sounds... so far away. "I... I did it," I whisper. And the world goes black.