"So be it," he said.
He released the dark magic.
The darkness answered him completely.
It did not gather slowly or build with ceremony. It arrived all at once, pouring out of him like something that had been waiting behind a door held shut by will alone, black particles swirling across his skin and clothing and rising off his shoulders in slow churning coils. The light around him changed. Not dimmed exactly, but altered, as though the air nearest to him had decided to keep its distance.
Kyomei drank it in. The blade darkened past its usual black until it seemed less like a physical object and more like an absence cut into the shape of a sword.
"Finally," Morosuke muttered, and the satisfaction in his voice was genuine, the satisfaction of a man who had been waiting to fight the real version of his enemy and had grown tired of the warmup.
