The subterranean air didn't just vibrate; it groaned. Every time Zainab Virel swung her arms, the moisture she condensed from the humid subway air became a physical bludgeon. The shockwaves of her Heavy Water colliding with Magals' body sent ripples of dust and concrete raining from the ceiling, felt by the 10th and 1st Divisions miles away.
"Captain!" Temi Nova shouted, her voice barely audible over the roar of the collapsing tunnel. Beside her, Kiki had phased into her ghost-like state to avoid falling debris, while Mira Ice desperately froze the overhead supports to prevent the entire subway from burying them alive. Maris and Aris, moved in sync dodging incoming, rocks
, using a plasma gun to clear a path for the team
But at the junction, Zainab was alone in a storm of her own making.
Magals didn't move. He stood with his arms crossed, a dark smirk etched onto his face as Zainab liquefied her body, turning into a high-pressure stream of water that circled him like a cyclone.
"You're fast, snack," Magals rumbled. "But speed is just movement through space. And space... belongs to me."
Magals threw a casual punch. He didn't aim for the water; he punched the air itself.
The Law of Inviolability allowed him to strike through the fabric of the dimension. The force didn't travel through the air; it manifested inside Zainab's liquid form.
Zainab gasped as the pressure spike forced her back into a human state. She coughed up blood, her eyes wide. She had avoided a direct hit by turning to mist at the last second, but the internal vibration had rattled her organs.
"Molecular Cohesion: Abyssal Chains!" Zainab screamed.
She slammed her palms onto the wet ground. Thousands of gallons of water erupted from the subway drains, instantly turning into Heavy Water. The liquid wrapped around Magals' legs and torso, its density increasing until each strand weighed ten thousand tons. The ground beneath Magals finally shattered, his boots sinking into the reinforced concrete.
"Now... die!" Zainab materialized a Hydro-Kinetic Blade between her hands, the water vibrating so fast it hummed at a frequency that turned the nearby air into ozone. She lunged, aiming for the his
Chest .
Magals didn't struggle against the chains. He simply looked at the incoming blade. "Reverse."
Zainab's arm jerked violently. The kinetic energy of her own strike didn't hit Magals; it flowed backward through her arm. Her shoulder popped with a sickening sound as her own momentum tried to tear her limb off.
She gritted her teeth, refusing to let go. In a feat of pure willpower, she dissolved her arm into water to nullify the bone-shattering force and reformed it a second later.
"Persistent," Magals noted. He didn't wait for her next move. He moved at Light Speed—a blur of bruised slate and dark energy.
He appeared in front of her before the light of her own eyes could register his movement. He pointed a single finger at her chest. "Energy Beam."
A spike of pure, concentrated dark energy erupted. Zainab instinctively turned her entire torso into a hollow whirlpool. The beam passed through the center of her body, vaporizing a subway car behind her into molten slag, but the heat alone was enough to scald her internal liquid.
Zainab knew she couldn't win a battle of strength. She had to use "Mystery."
She triggered the Blood-Mist Mirage.
The subway junction filled with a thick, red-tinted fog. To Magals, the world became a hall of mirrors. He saw a dozen Zainabs, all of them radiating the same heavy moisture, all of them lunging with kinetic blades.
"Childish," Magals laughed. He swung a wide, horizontal fist, the force of his arm clearing the air in a 360-degree arc.
But Zainab wasn't in the mist.
She had used the moisture in Magals' own breath—the trace amounts of water inside his massive lungs—to create the illusion. While he attacked the empty air, the real Zainab was directly beneath him, her body merged with the water-logged floor.
She erupted upward, her hands placed directly on his chest—in order to destroy he's core .
"MOLECULAR COLLAPSE!"
She didn't hit him. She attempted to use her power to pull the water out of his Zethrian cells, to dehydrate his very essence.
Magals' eyes widened for a split second. A hiss of steam escaped his skin as he felt his own biology being tugged by her mountain-level pressure. , his Instant Regeneration kicked in, his skin knitting and hydrating as fast as she could drain it.
"Interesting," Magals whispered, his voice dropping into a register of genuine malice. "You actually made me feel... thirsty."
He grabbed her wrists. His grip was absolute. Zainab tried to turn into water to slip away, but Magals' hands glowed with a dark light. He was "punching" the space her molecules occupied, pinning her in human form.
"But a snack that bites back," Magals said, pulling her closer until they were eye-to-eye, "is a snack that needs to be broken."
He raised his free hand, the air around it swirling into a terrifying vortex of energy.
Miles away, the 10th Division stopped in their tracks. The ground beneath Elias's boots buckled.
"That's her," Mira Ice whispered, her hands trembling as she felt the temperature in the tunnel rise from Magals' energy. "The Captain is using everything."
Meanwhile the 10th
"We're too slow!" Jaxen yelled, lightning flickering wildly around his body. "If we don't get there in five minutes, there won't be a 5th Division Captain left to save."
Elias looked at the ceiling, his silver eyes glowing with a cold, predatory light. He could feel the "Void" Elena Voss had described. It was a hunger that was
swallowing Zainab's light bit by bit.