Leon touched Kumigano's body and used his spell.
The moment the spell left his fingertips, Kumigano's entire body dissolved from the floor as if it had never existed, swallowed whole by the darkness pooling beneath Leon's feet.
*Swish*
Then the ground split.
A single black line tore open across the stone floor directly in front of him, wide and deliberate, as though something on the other side had dragged a blade through the fabric of the world itself.
*Crack — Crack — Crack — Crack*
The line fractured outward into jagged cracks that spiderwebbed across the cold floor. From deep within those fractures, a red light began seeping upward, not the warm red of fire, but something angrier, like the glow of something that had been burning for centuries and had long since forgotten how to stop.
