The alley.
It was narrow enough that Hoshimi could touch both walls with his elbows, dark enough that the gray afternoon light barely reached its depths, long enough that escape in either direction was difficult.
He pressed his back against the cold brick, his chest heaving, his hand still pressed against the healing wound in his abdomen. The bleeding had slowed, but the pain remained. His violet eyes swept the narrow space.
Kira was trembling, but her eyes were clear, focused, watching the entrance with an intensity that bordered on desperate. The skin at the base of her neck had already opened, soaking up the sunlight from the sky above.
Edward and Lucy were gone. Hoshimi couldn't spare the attention to worry about them. Couldn't spare the mana to search for their signatures. They would survive or they wouldn't, and either way, it was out of his hands.
Footsteps.
Soft. Deliberate. The footsteps of someone who knew exactly where she was going and felt no need to hurry.
Jiyeon appeared at the alley's mouth.
She stood there for a moment, her gray eyes sweeping the narrow space with that same unsettling stillness, that same absolute calm. The flour from their earlier exchange still dusted her dark hair, her black clothes, her pale skin. The wound on her shoulder had closed, but the blood remained, a dark stain that spread across her collar like a blooming flower.
The narrow walls. The dead end. The girl on the crate. The Shaw girl behind her. And Hoshimi, standing in the center, his sword in his hand, his face blank, his violet eyes fixed on hers.
[There's no way this isn't a trap. But he definitely knows that I know this. Is there a trap at the entrance?]
Snap.
The sonic needle caught Jiyeon in the leg, punching through her pants, through the thin layer of muscle. She grunted, her momentum disrupted, her reach falling short.
Hoshimi pushed off from the wall. His legs were steady. His hands were steady. The pain in his abdomen had faded to a dull ache, manageable, ignorable. He dashed towards her with his sword in his hands, the blade had a heavenly glow, as it pulsed with an unknown heartbeat.
Before he had managed to move.
She moved.
Slashing her fingers in a wide arc, her speed so fast that her attack had managed to draw blood.
Crimson.
A large gash opened up on his chest.
"NOW!"
Kira had been hiding around the corner, for a moment when she had been distracted, an opportunity that she could take.
She bit down onto her leg–the wound that Neila's attack had damaged– her teeth digging into her skin.
Then she exhaled.
The carbon monoxide had gotten into her wound.
His chest burned where Jiyeon's fingers had carved their path, a searing line of agony that pulsed with every heartbeat. Blood soaked through his shirt, hot and wet, plastering the fabric to his skin.
A weapon.
Jiyeon's eyes widened.
Her leg buckled beneath her, the wounded muscle refusing to obey, and in that fraction of a second, that splinter of hesitation.
[I can't heal my leg, or the carbon monoxide will spread faster around my body]
His hand was already moving, already reaching, already closing around the back of Kira's neck.
She didn't resist.
Her body went rigid beneath his touch, her blue eyes wide with terror and trust and something that looked almost like relief. Like she'd been waiting for him to use her.
"Breathe," he commanded.
His fingers dug into the soft tissue of her throat, not hard enough to crush, but hard enough to direct. The skin at the base of her neck had already opened, that raw, fleshy valve drinking in the gray afternoon light, converting it, transforming it into something deadly.
Hoshimi pressed Kira's face against Jiyeon's.
Kira exhaled.
The carbon monoxide poured from her lungs in an invisible tide, flooding the narrow space between them, seeking the path of least resistance. Jiyeon's mouth was open, her breathing rapid from exertion, her body screaming for oxygen.
She tried to hold her breath.
She inhaled.
Her gray eyes went wide.
Nothing happened. The alley was silent except for the distant wail of sirens and the ragged chorus of their breathing. Jiyeon's hand was still raised, her fingers still curled into the shape of a strike, her body still poised for violence.
Then her pupils dilated.
All at once, like a camera aperture snapping open to admit too much light. Her gray eyes became black pools, bottomless and empty, and something behind them flickered.
"Hngh…."
Jiyeon's body convulsed. Her gray eyes went wide, then wider, the pupils dilating as the carbon monoxide flooded her lungs, her bloodstream, her brain. Her hands came up, clawing at Hoshimi's wrist, her nails drawing blood, but his grip held. His fingers stayed locked around her throat, pressing her down, keeping her in place.
Three seconds. Four. Five.
Jiyeon's struggles weakened. Her blows became slaps, then brushes, then nothing at all. Her gray eyes, those unsettling, all-seeing eyes, began to glaze over, the focus fading, the clarity dimming.
Then she moved.
Not with her hands. Not with her feet. With her entire body, a convulsive, full-body spasm that generated more force than should have been possible from someone who was actively suffocating. Her knee drove into Hoshimi's injured abdomen, directly into the wound she'd created minutes ago.
White-hot agony exploded through his core, blotting out thought and breath and everything except the raw, animal awareness of wrongness. His grip on her throat loosened. His vision went white at the edges. His body tried to curl around the injury, tried to protect itself from further damage, and in that moment of instinctive self-preservation, she pulled free.
Jiyeon rolled away from them, her movements clumsy, uncoordinated. She came up on one knee, her hand pressed against her chest, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. Her face was pale, her lips tinged with blue, her gray eyes wide with something that might have been fear or might have been the first stages of hypoxia.
[Damn it, I can't breathe]
"You—" Her voice was hoarse, barely audible. "Unbelievable."
She coughed. A wet, rattling sound that spoke of damaged lungs and failing circulation. Blood speckled her lips, dark and thick, almost black in the dim light. Her body was deteriorating. The carbon monoxide was doing its work, binding to her hemoglobin, starving her tissues of oxygen, shutting down her organs one by one.
But she wasn't dead yet.
Jiyeon's gray eyes found Kira.
The girl was still kneeling where she'd been, her hands pressed against the grimy alley floor, her chest heaving, her face pale. She lunged.
Toward Kira. Her movements were slow, clumsy, nothing like the impossible speed she'd shown before. But she was still fast. Still dangerous. Still a predator who had been wounded and was now desperate.
The alley exploded into light.
Not the violent orange of the explosions that had torn through the city. Not the holy radiance of Hoshimi's blade. This was something else. Something else. Something that belonged to temples and incense and the quiet moments before death.
Golden.
The light coalesced into a barrier between Jiyeon and Kira. A wall of shimmering radiance that caught the gray afternoon and transformed it into something sacred. Jiyeon's hand struck it and stopped, her momentum arrested, her fingers pressing against a surface that yielded not at all.
"What---"
"Zenith of Lust."
The voice came from above.
A man stood on the rooftop overlooking the alley.
He was old. Not in the way of years, but in the way of decay. His skin was smooth, unnaturally so, pulled taut across bone structure that had been sculpted by surgeons and magic and the desperate refusal to accept mortality. His hair was dark, slicked back, gleaming with oils that couldn't quite hide its artificiality. His eyes were the color of old gold, tarnished and fading.
He wore silk. Black, embroidered with patterns that shifted when Hoshimi tried to focus on them. His hands were gloved in white, pristine despite the ash and dust that coated everything else. And behind him, half-hidden in the shadows of the rooftop, a boy waited.
Young. Beautiful. His face blank as fresh paper.
"Eternal Damnation."
Wei smiled.
It was not a kind smile.
The world dissolved into color.
Too much color. Saturated greens, impossibly deep blues, flowers that seemed to shimmer like stained glass under a sun that feels just slightly too close. The air was warm, gentle, fragrant… almost intoxicating.
Rolling hills rippled with bioluminescent grass. Trees breathed softly, their bark pulsed like veins beneath skin.
Everything was alive.
Kira collapsed onto the ground, drawing her knees closer to her body.
Her eyes didn't shut.
They wouldn't shut.
There was too much.
Too much for her to handle.