The rain had not stopped since Ayane's return.
The sky above was split by jagged streaks of lightning, thunder rolling endlessly like war drums. The land held its breath, nature itself recoiling from the convergence of two catastrophes.
Ayane stood in the heart of a ruined city, her cloak scorched by her own flames, golden eyes locked forward with unwavering purpose. Across from her, high atop the shattered arch of a crumbling cathedral, stood Kagetsu—the Eternal Jester, the Harlequin of the Abyss.
When their eyes met for the first time in centuries, the world did not tremble.
It froze.
He didn't laugh. He didn't mock her. The ever-present grin carved into his porcelain mask betrayed nothing of his thoughts. His slicked-back white hair, untouched by wind or water, shimmered faintly in the flickering stormlight. There was no joy in him. No wrath. Just acknowledgment.
"You're the last desperate card they could play," Kagetsu said, his voice like silk dragged across broken glass. "The final hope of a dying world."
His tone was cold—bored, almost. But there was a tension in the air, the kind that comes before the breaking of something sacred.
"You should join me," he continued, stepping off the arch as if gravity were optional. He landed silently in the mud before her. "Why waste what you are on them? The gods who sealed you? The mortals who forgot you?"
Ayane's gaze didn't waver.
"I didn't come to reason with a monster," she said. "I came to finish what I should have done long ago."
Kagetsu tilted his head slightly, as if disappointed but unsurprised.
"Then you will die."
And that was the end of their conversation.
The first strike was hers—a pillar of divine fire erupting beneath him, reducing the cathedral to molten rubble. Embers rained like falling stars. But Kagetsu walked through it unscathed.
Then came his counter.
A flick of his hand twisted space itself, a wave of cursed energy slicing through reality. Ayane dodged just in time, becoming smoke and reappearing behind him. She thrust her dagger—forged from the fang of a dead god—toward his back.
He caught it between two fingers.
"Still predictable," he murmured.
She released a burst of radiant fire, but he vanished before it landed, reappearing above her with his fist glowing black. The blow struck the ground beside her, carving a crater into the earth that swallowed buildings.
Their battle was no longer contained to the ruins. Magic twisted the sky. Time itself shuddered beneath them. Every strike Ayane threw was lethal. Every move Kagetsu made was measured, efficient, inhumanly fast.
He wasn't fighting her.
He was showing her how outmatched she was.
And yet she endured.
For every wound she took, she returned fire. For every curse he summoned, she met it with holy rage. They tore through dimensions, shattered divine wards, and sent ancient beings fleeing into the void.
But slowly, inevitably, her strength waned.
Ayane gasped for air, burned and bloodied. Her fire began to flicker. Her dagger, chipped. Her limbs trembled.
Kagetsu stepped forward, untouched.
"You burned bright," he said, walking through her final wall of flames. "But your flame was always meant to die."
She raised her blade again, even as her body gave out.
"I'd rather die fighting than kneel."
He placed his hand on her chest.
The final strike wasn't violent.
It was absolute.
Her body flew across the square, landing with a lifeless thud in the ashes. She coughed blood, blinking through the rain.
Kagetsu stood over her. No joy. No cruelty.
Only silence.
"You were the only one I thought might last longer," he said, not in triumph—almost in disappointment.
She tried to speak, but no words came.
He turned and disappeared into the mist.
He didn't kill her.
Not yet.
He wanted the world to see her fall. To know that even Ayane—the forbidden hope—was not enough.
And somewhere above, the rain stopped.
The silence that followed was not peaceful.
It was a warning.
To Be Continued...