"You're the one blocking my way."
The moment her words fell, her figure dissolved.
Not movement.
Not speed.
Absence.
Like smoke scattered by an unseen current.
Yare yare.
Another one of those tricks.
Three silver needles appeared soundlessly behind Joren's head, forming a perfect triangular kill zone less than a hand's width from his skull.
No wind displacement.
No vibration.
No warning.
The apex of silent assassination.
"Ora."
A low murmur.
Two fingers materialized in midair.
Star Platinum's fingertips clamped down.
Crack.
The alloy needles — engineered to pierce Kevlar and bone — crumbled into metallic dust.
A faint sound escaped the darkness.
"…Eh."
The woman reappeared atop a streetlamp twenty meters away, balanced barefoot on the curved metal housing.
Her white kimono fluttered in the wind like a ghost's shroud.
A flicker of surprise crossed her flawless face.
Her perfected Silent Technique had been intercepted.
"Is it your… guardian spirit?"
She slowly licked her scarlet lips.
Her killing intent deepened.
"Interesting."
Her mouth opened.
Dozens of poisoned needles erupted outward in a silent storm.
Every angle calculated.
Every escape route sealed.
Star Platinum manifested behind Joren.
"Ora ora ora ora ora ora ora ora ora!"
Metal rang like rain striking iron.
Clang clang clang clang clang—
Each needle was shattered mid-flight.
In the microscopic interval between blows—
she vanished again.
This time she materialized to Joren's left.
Her fingers snapped forward.
Her nails elongated instantly into gleaming blue talons, coated in necrotic toxin.
They drove straight for his heart.
Faster than human reaction.
But her opponent was not human.
Star Platinum's fist arrived first.
Bang.
Impact thundered through her abdomen.
"Pff—!"
Blood and fragments of tissue burst from her mouth.
Her body folded in on itself like a broken shrimp, flying backward through two advertising boards before embedding in a brick wall.
Silence.
Was it over?
No.
Her life force was fading—
—but something darker began rising in its place.
"Giggle… giggle…"
She lifted her head from the crater in the wall.
Her neck twisted back into alignment with a wet grinding sound.
The hole in her abdomen writhed and sealed.
Black sigil-like patterns spread beneath her skin like parasitic vines.
"The power… of the sun…"
Her voice thickened, viscous and distorted.
"But… you've tasted my poison… haven't you?"
Joren glanced at his left forearm.
A nearly invisible needle protruded from his skin.
Cold numbness crawled along his veins like frost.
Ugh.
What a troublesome woman.
"Soon," she rasped, crawling free from the wall, bones snapping back into place,
"your guardian spirit will rot with you."
Her grin widened grotesquely.
"Then I will offer you to the Beast… and you will know eternity."
Her words stopped.
Golden light ignited at Joren's fingertips.
Her pupils shrank.
That aura—
warm, sacred, radiant like the solar core—
the natural enemy of death and shadow.
The source of her ancient fear.
"Eternity?"
Golden ripples flowed across Joren's arm.
The toxin evaporated instantly, purified into harmless residue.
His turquoise eyes lifted, emotionless.
"Before discussing eternity…"
"…you should worry about whether you'll turn to ash."
He vanished.
"What?!"
Her smile had not yet turned into horror.
The next instant—
he stood before her.
A hand blazing with solar radiance pressed against her face.
"For something that isn't even human…"
His voice fell like divine judgment.
"Even death is a blessing."
"Yamabuki-iro Ripple Dash!!"
"No—!!!"
A scream tore through the street.
Golden fire erupted from her eyes, mouth, ears, and pores.
Her reborn "immortal" flesh liquefied under solar energy.
The Beast's dark vitality shriveled like frost beneath sunrise.
Two seconds.
Her body collapsed into incandescent ash.
Only an empty kimono drifted to the ground.
And a scatter of black dust carried away by the night wind.
Joren withdrew his hand and brushed nonexistent dust from his coat.
He glanced at the abandoned kimono.
Then lifted his gaze, piercing the darkness toward a distant observer.
Fisk Tower — Top Floor
Kingpin crushed the cigar in his hand.
Tobacco and ash sifted between his fingers.
On the screen before him, the last grains of black ash dispersed into nothing.
Another failure.
One of Madam Gao's elite undead assassins — Sadako of the Silent Death — purified in seconds.
She had not even wounded the boy.
"This," Kingpin growled,
"is your 'deadlier poison'?"
Madam Gao remained kneeling, but her composed elegance had fractured.
"…Qi…"
She murmured like a zealot witnessing revelation.
"It truly is qi…"
"Such purity… such solar vitality… and he channels it without a vessel…"
"Answer me!" Kingpin thundered.
Gao did not react.
She rose abruptly, arms spreading, eyes fever-bright.
"Fisk, you don't understand."
"What we face is not an enemy."
"What we face is the threshold of divinity."
Her voice trembled with fanatic awe.
"If we seize it… if we decipher it…"
"…the Hand — no, the world itself — will be reborn."
"I've had enough of your madness!" Kingpin roared.
"Your war is turning my city into hell! Your weapons are worthless!"
Madam Gao's gaze sharpened into something inhuman.
"Hell? Yes."
"But not enough."
She turned away.
"Inform Shingen."
Her voice became a ritual decree.
"Release the Beast."
"I want this city to serve as the final sacrifice… for the birth of the gods."