The battlefield trembled under the final crescendo of the first semifinal, the air thick with dust, ozone, and the metallic tang of blood. Stun seized Eris's outstretched hand in one fluid motion.
With a ferocious twist of her hips and a burst of raw strength, she hurled him forward like a living missile.
Stun rocketed toward Riku, fingers splayed, decay energy rippling in black-green waves from his palms.
The attack would have rotted Riku's face to bone in an instant, but Riku dropped low at the last heartbeat, the decay shearing only air and a few strands of hair.
Riku's sneaky counter kick had snapped upward with precision, boot heel smashing into Stun's jaw.
The kick had spun Stun around and sideways, launching him in a helpless arc toward the reinforced wall.
Riku exploded after him.
He wove through the storm of retaliatory decay bursts in sharp, unpredictable zigzags, boots skidding and pivoting across cracked stone, each near-miss leaving a faint line of afterimages that was made of light trailing behind him like comet tails.
A feral smirk carved across his face as he closed the gap.
He reached Stun just as the boy slammed back-first into the arena wall, breath exploding from his lungs.
Without pause Riku launched upward, twisting midair, and drove a blinding white fast kick into Stun's sternum.
Light energy flared on contact, a miniature supernova that blasted Stun skyward in a smoking spiral.
Before Stun could even crest his arc, Riku was already above him, having kicked off thin air itself with a pulse of shimmering force.
He descended like judgment; heel wrapped in radiant energy and hammered Stun back toward the ground.
The impact then cratered the floor, spiderwebbing that went cracked outward in a semi perfect circle, dust billowing in a choking plume.
From the sidelines Rajin had now closed the distance in a blur of crackling Blood.
Rajin then arrived just as Stun bounced from the crater, dazed and bleeding from the mouth.
Rajin then spun into a vicious tornado kick, leg whipping around in a helix of blue-white blood that caught Stun flush across the face.
Bone crunched. Stun hurtled sideways again, straight toward the wall for the third time; yet Riku had anticipated the trajectory perfectly.
He was already there, waiting with predatory patience.
The moment Stun collided with the barrier, Riku's fists became a storm.
Left, right, left, right; hooks, jabs, body shots; each punch detonated with concentrated light that burned through clothing and seared flesh.
The barrage was merciless, a machine-gun rhythm that pinned Stun to the wall and rattled his skull inside its helmet of bone.
Riku finished with a fast-rising uppercut that lifted Stun clear off his feet, light exploding from the point of impact like a firework, sending him airborne once more.
Suddenly a glint of white-hot danger flashed in Riku's peripheral vision.
Riku swiftly dropped into a low crouch on pure instinct as Eris's twin bone swords scythed overhead in a horizontal blur, the air itself screaming where the cursed edges passed.
Shards of severed light was now scattered like glass.
Riku rolled forward beneath the arc and surged upright inside Eris's guard.
Movements of his motion was incarnate, sidestepping, and circling Eris so rapidly that residual images of himself lingered in the air; ghostly silhouettes of every feint and pivot overlapping in a flickering ring around her.
Eris's eyes widened behind the mask of bone, tracking the real Riku only by the pressure of his killing intent.
Riku then struck; a lightning-fast roundhouse aimed to cave in the side of her head.
Eris barely reacted in time, crossing her bone swords in an X that caught his shin with a bone-jarring clash.
Sparks of light and decaying energy erupted between them.
Using the block as leverage, Eris pivoted hard, wrenching him off balance and hurling Riku hard with terrifying strength.
He flew in a flat spin, crashing chest-first into Rajin, who had been rushing to support.
The two light-wielders tumbled across the ground in a tangle of limbs and crackling energy.
Dust settled around them.
Rajin shoved Riku off with a grunt, both rising quickly, but Riku paid him no mind.
He stood alone in the settling haze, rolling his shoulders once, twice.
A low scoff escaped his throat; not mockery, but recognition of the thrill finally igniting something deeper.
He began to bounce lightly on the balls of his feet, knees loose, fists opening and closing at his sides.
Each small hop sent faint ripples of light radiating outward across the ground like droplets hitting still water.
His breathing started to slow, deepened.
Veins of pure white light began to crawl up his arms, glowing beneath the skin, spreading across his chest and neck in branching, luminous rivers.
The air around him warped and shimmered as if superheated.
Cracks of red light split open along his irises, pupils narrowing to pinpricks of molten gold. The stadium lights dimmed by comparison.
Every remaining fragment of light in the arena bent toward him, drawn inexorably into the growing corona that now cloaked his body.
His hair lifted as though caught in an unseen storm, strands igniting one by one until they blazed like molten silver.
Riku's smirk then vanished, replaced by something colder, sharper, absolute focus.
The new form he had never revealed before, the one he had locked away until this exact moment, was awakening.
And the battlefield held its breath.