Manifestation battles are peculiar things.

  When it’s human vs. monster, things are loud—raw mani slung as fire, storms and claws.

  Ghouls rely on biological weaponry—corrupted blood, twisted muscle, enhanced reflexes, cursed fangs bred from Rift exposure. Their tactics are brutal, straightforward. Efficient.

  Demurges, once they breach into demonhood and above, fight like broken gods—using Dark Magic to rend the world into a wasteland. They’re an event, not an opponent.

  But human vs. human?

  That’s different. That’s warfare on a metaphysical level.

  A battle of intent and will—chant vs. gesture vs. sheer belief. Each move is part performance, part philosophy. A clash of intention. Of will, belief, and understanding. Every spell is a sentence. Every movement a declaration. Chants form rules, hand signs shape outcomes, and concepts bleed into the world like dreams being forcibly made real.

  And when multiple cores collide in the same space?

  Let’s just say the outcomes can be… unpredictable.

  ———

  The nine didn’t speak it aloud, but the consensus passed between them like a thunderclap in still air.

  Kill her. Now.

  No one said it.

  But the moment Ashara purred her “Miss me?”—dangling lazily on that rusted billboard, her black hair haloed by the moon, her marked katana lazily spinning in her fingers—intent ignited like a chain of falling dominoes.

  Crimline moved first.

  Her Ballistic Eidolon swarmed forward—a dozen spectral rifles spiraling around her body, each one lighting up with distinct glow-rings. Red for burn tags. Blue for force. Violet for disintegration.

  “Deadlock Symphony.”

  The street lit up in a web of overlapping kill-zones. Bullets curved, split, and patterned into flower-like formations meant to carve space from existence.

  Ashara dropped.

  Not fell. Not leaped.

  Dropped—like gravity was her plaything.

  She landed in front of Waxjaw, the concrete cracking beneath her.

  Then she vanished. No sound, no chant.

  And Waxjaw’s head hit the ground, cleanly severed.

  He died with his eyes wide in shock.

  Crimline’s eyes widened as she watched his body convulse and sputter blood as it stumbled and fell to the ground.

  Cherry moved next—“Barrier Cycle: Snap-Torque Bloom!”—her hands dancing through layered signs as pink rings formed around the battlefield, trying to seal Ashara in with pressure-lock fields.

  Ashara didn’t blink.

  She vaulted into a half-collapsed building, her body folding into motion like liquid. The floors beneath her cracked as she sprinted up a stairwell, slicing straight through the supporting beams behind her.

  The building groaned, then collapsed behind her like a wall of thunder.

  Backbeat’s clones warped in, chanting in broken syllables to form sonic pressure walls, aiming to corner her.

  Ashara didn’t go through. She went under—sliding beneath crumbling debris and uppercutting one clone into a rebar spike, then flinging herself sideways through another rotted apartment wall.

  Tai’s flame swelled from a rooftop. “Mirror Spiral: Ember Cage!” he chanted, flame sigils forming as he dropped a field of roaring fire.

  Ashara kicked off a clothesline, flipped over him, and caught him mid-air.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  Her blade moved once.

  Tai’s body landed on the rooftop, cleanly bisected from the shoulder down. A line of smoke trailed from the slash like it wanted to stay for dramatic effect.

  Ashara twirled her blade and sighed.

  “Didn’t mean to start the party early,” she said, cracking her neck. “But I’m not one for waiting rooms.”

  Crimline didn’t blink. And summoned more rifles to her side.

  Crestlock Vale stepped forward.

  Backbeat’s tempo shifted.

  Cherry’s tune stopped humming.

  And Anaya?

  Anaya’s Violet Burn ignited across her arms and eyes, heat surging as she clicked her tongue.

  “Round two, bitch.”

  Mina’s threads surged from every direction, a whirlwind of shimmering filament slicing through air and debris alike.

  “Third Bind: Heaven’s Crossweave!” she chanted.

  The threads collided midair and formed a spinning, crisscrossing web of violent motion, crashing into the side of a crumbling apartment complex. Glass shattered and beams buckled, the top floor collapsing from the force alone as dust exploded outward in a cloud. Ashara darted back, narrowly avoiding a sweep that could’ve flayed skin from bone.

  But the moment her sneakers hit the asphalt, a prism of color flared in her periphery.

  “Collapsing Petal Array!” Cherry’s voice echoed, clear and measured.

  Seven glowing barriers shot up in a flowerlike ring, encasing the entrance of a hollowed-out office building Ashara had been dodging into. Each barrier glowed a different hue—pink, violet, blue, white—compressing inward slowly like a timed vice. Energy crackled between them, searing the ground and warping the air with intense pressure.

  Ashara skidded to a stop, breathing hard, her hoodie singed at the edges.

  “Tch—,” she muttered.

  The Collapsing Petal Array pulsed, and even from a distance she felt the gravitational pull between the layered walls. Getting caught in that would either trap her or detonate her into mulch.

  Ashara pushed herself forward again, her feet glowing faintly with reverse-mani pressure as she skimmed low to the ground, skidding between the tail end of Mina’s threads and Cherry’s barriers. The pavement cracked behind her where the threads collided with one of the prism walls, shattering the corner in a brilliant burst of glass and colored light.

  She shot forward and used the blast’s recoil to flip midair. Her blade extended mid-spin and slashed downward—a arc slicing through a loose bundle of Mina’s threads. The threads hissed as they frayed and snapped. Mina recoiled slightly, eyes narrowing.

  Ashara hit the ground, twisted, and then lunged toward Cherry, flipping once and landing a knee into her ribs before pushing off again into the ruined scaffolding nearby. Cherry stumbled back, coughing, barely holding the structure of the barrier dome.

  Crimline, watching from a nearby rooftop, narrowed her eyes. She tracked Ashara’s movements—precise, unrelenting, efficient.

  And then it hit her.

  She’s avoiding the barriers.

  She’s avoiding the threads.

  She might not have anti-barrier or domain techniques.

  That changed things.

  Crimline adjusted her stance, her fingers ghosting over the triggers of her hovering rifles.

  If Ashara couldn’t escape once caught…

  Then all they had to do was corner her long enough to seal her in.

  Ashara, still panting and circling, grinned through bloodied lips.

  They were starting to figure it out.

  That just meant she had to get nastier, faster.

  Crimline didn’t chant.

  She just motioned again—

  And three Eidolon rifles fired at Ashara’s back from opposite vectors, bullets laced with metaphysical detachment, designed to erase memory on impact.

  Ashara spun.

  In one heartbeat she was airborne again, her katana carving arcs through steel and air, redirecting bullets, slicing Mina’s threads, deflecting barrier rings, and tearing the corner off the entire building behind her.

  Chunks of concrete and steel shattered mid-air, raining into the alleyway like war debris.

  She flipped between Latch Baby’s distorted illusions—barely dodging a pulse meant to shut down the nervous system—and slammed her foot into Backbeat’s throat, sending her and two clones crashing through a billboard and into an empty city bus.

  Anaya wasn’t just watching anymore—she was reading.

  Ashara’s movements were fluid, yes, but not random. She kept switching hands, sometimes mid-swing, sometimes mid-dash, she never held it in both hands. And each cut—each arc of her katana—wasn’t just about damage.

  It was channeling something.

  “She’s using the sword as a medium,” Anaya muttered under her breath, violet flames curling around her fingers. “That’s how she’s casting.”

  She clenched her jaw. Losing Tai burned like acid through her chest, but she couldn’t afford to mourn. Not now. The Den had lost someone too—Waxjaw’s body still in the wreckage three blocks back. Both sides were bleeding.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  And Ashara—no, The Butcher—wasn’t even S Rank. Just A+.

  But it was enough to shred every B-rank like wet paper.

  They had to press her.

  Anaya and Crimline collided into Ashara at the same time, crashing through the reinforced wall of a high-rise office like meteor strikes wrapped in fire and force.

  Glass and concrete exploded outward as they slammed her into the side of a server bank. Anaya roared as she ignited her full combustion step, fists glowing violet as she delivered three tight, brutal punches to Ashara’s ribs, each one crashing like steel dropped from orbit.

  Ashara grinned, blood trailing down her lip.

  Then pivoted—headbutting Anaya in the chin, staggering her back.

  Crimline didn’t pause. Her Eidolon rifles circled her like hungry ghosts, moving with precise psychic command as they unleashed a tri-directional firestorm of focused mani-shells—point-blank.

  BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

  Ashara’s katana whipped out in a flash, slicing clean through the first shell with an unnatural hum that left cracks in the air itself. The other two shells clipped her—one tearing across her shoulder, splashing sizzling blood, the other burning a deep gouge along her hip. She hissed, but kept her momentum, twisting her body low and lashing out with a sweeping kick that took Crimline’s legs out from under her.

  Crimline crashed hard into a row of desks, which splintered like balsa wood under the impact, her rifles recalibrating around her with eerie composure.

  Ashara pivoted off the ground mid-air, sneakers glowing with mani compression. She spun into Anaya, catching her full in the chest with a flying kick—

  But Anaya grabbed her ankle mid-kick, planted her feet, and spun violently, flinging Ashara into a concrete pillar with explosive force.

  CRACK.

  The pillar snapped clean in half, and Ashara’s body hit the ground in a rough tumble, skidding through broken tile and rebar as dust rained from the ceiling.

  And then—

  “Cavalier Expanse.”

  The voice came calm, commanding.

  Crestlock Vale entered the fray, stepping forward like a knight arriving late to court. The air behind him split open, and armored horsemen made of jet-black smoke and warped steel thundered into existence—each wielding jagged lances and twisted shields that pulsed with corrupted chivalry.

  From his own stance, Vale drew his lance, its edges humming with dangerous energy.

  Ashara rose slowly, rolling her shoulder as blood trickled from her temple, lips curling in a feral grin.

  “Oh, this’s gettin’ good.”

  One of the spectral cavaliers charged first, bricks breaking beneath the hooves of the ghostly mount. Ashara spun into it, her blade cleaving through both rider and steed, and while they dissolved, she didn’t escape unscathed—a splinter of energy raked across her side, making her stumble.

  Anaya surged in from behind—violet flames roaring from her fists—and Ashara ducked, letting the flames roll overhead, before flipping and landing a glancing slash across Anaya’s ribs. The hit didn’t cut her skin, but the feeling it carried made Anaya recoil. Only her armor was sliced open.

  Anaya was surprised one of Ashara’s slashes didn’t just simply cut her in half. The blade had cut her but the attack seem to target her armor.

  Crimline re-entered with full aggression, rifles blasting at tight angles, but Ashara used a fallen piece of concrete as cover, then vaulted off it straight toward Vale—blade clashing against his lance in a shower of sparks.

  He held her off, barely, their blows colliding in the wreckage of a conference room. Each clash made the walls groan.

  Ashara dipped beneath one of his swings and swung the sword while in her left hand at his gut, shredding his armor. Then she twisted and with a ferocious burst of strength, she knocked him clean through a window—glass and frame exploding outward as he was launched through the next building’s side, leaving a smoking trail of debris in his wake.

  The sound was deafening.

  The building wobbled, a side already weakened by combat now groaning as its infrastructure started to collapse from the damage. The mounted cavaliers flickered and sputtered with their master’s absence, some disintegrating mid-gallop.

  Ashara wiped blood from her lip and laughed.

  “You guys came in with some pretty techniques—” she exhaled, spinning her blade in a lazy circle, “but all that flash don’t mean much when you’re already halfway in the grave.”

  Crimline, pulled herself from the rubble with gritted teeth.

  Then Ashara disappeared. As Anaya came in with a flaming punch.

  Glass shattered again—Ashara reappeared behind Crimline, slamming her shoulder into the Judicator and driving her through the far wall and into the next building.

  The building collapsed two floors down.

  Then another.

  Ashara burst out of the crumbling building in a spray of glass and dust, the collapsing wall behind her groaning like a dying beast. The moon light slashed through the smoke, painting her torn pink Hello Kitty hoodie in fractured rays of blue and ash. Her sneakers skidded across the pavement, trailing sparks as her body twisted midair to avoid the first barrier pulse—a spiraling geometric seal hurled by Latch Baby like a skipping stone of doom.

  The barrier slammed into the street behind her and detonated with a metallic hum, leaving a smoking crater the size of a truck.

  Ashara’s chest heaved. Her ribs ached.

  She hadn’t even fully landed before the next attack came.

  Above her, Crestlock Vale reappeared on the rooftop across the street, his two remaining shadow knights flanking him. Their dark armor shimmered with an oil-slick sheen. Each raised a javelin forged of blackened reality, hurling them like thunderbolts.

  The first javelin struck the side of a nearby high-rise, splintering half a floor clean off, the building trembling in protest. The second hit a parking garage, blowing out the lower level, causing cars to rain down in a twisted, fiery collapse.

  Ashara ducked and twisted, barely avoiding a third that slammed into the sidewalk next to her and ripped open the earth, sending a shockwave that tore apart streetlights and flipped a parked bus.

  And still—Crimline was firing.

  Her Eidolon rifles barked relentlessly from three angles, converging in a triangle formation that closed tighter with each blast. Bullets carved glowing trails through the air, pinging off mailboxes and ricocheting off reinforced glass windows. Ashara twisted, used the overturned bus as partial cover, but the hail never stopped.

  Cherry, panting, hovered just behind a collapsed pharmacy sign, her hand pressed against her chest as she launched another multi-layered barrier—a violet one this time, shaped like a cracked lotus.

  She was burning out. Ashara could feel it. The girl’s mani signature stuttered with every pulse.

  Meanwhile, Backbeat had ducked into the smoking entrance of a corner deli, her clones splintering off across the block, ushering civilians away, shielding them with projected doubles. She wasn’t part of the frontline—but she was saving lives with quick commands and sudden illusions.

  And Mina?

  Mina stood crouched near the busted frame of a bank window, her threads unspooling like veins across the sidewalk, coiling into jagged snares.

  She didn’t move yet.

  She was waiting.

  Backbeat, Cherry and Mina were B-Ranks, and they knew better than to jump into a high-speed melee unprepared.

  But if Ashara faltered even for a moment—they were ready to strike.

  The city block had transformed into a nightmare.

  A bank window shattered with a scream as a family inside tried to flee.

  A hot dog cart exploded in a burst of condiments and metal.

  Flaming cars littered the road, one overturned and melting into the curb. Cherry screamed into her comms for back up. Mina’s threads struggled to keep up with the collapse, dragging civilians out by the limbs. Latch Baby laughed through the chaos, skipping after bodies like it was a game.

  Ashara’s breath came in ragged bursts as she rolled behind a dented taxi, the hood already peppered with bullet holes. Though when the car was now nothing more than a translucent outline… she was gone.

  Ashara reappeared in the middle of a strip mall, calm as a heartbeat.

  She looked around.

  People. Screaming. Running.

  Her blade lifted in her right hand.

  She waved it once.

  And dozens of people collapsed.

  Not all at once.

  Just… piece by piece.

  Clean, silent lines appeared across their bodies—vertical, horizontal, diagonal—as if the air itself had cut them. They fell in halves, in quarters, unaware they’d died until they were already separated from themselves.

  Backbeat turned too late.

  Her clones flickered in front of her, but they were fine. They stood between her and Ashara.

  And then she looked down.

  Her chest split open.

  Her mouth fell slack. Her clones remained untouched.

  She and half the crowd around her had been precisely bisected—human-only, nothing else. No walls. No floors. No objects. Just people.

  Ashara tilted her head.

  That smile again.

  Something cruel. Something beautiful.

  Death makes the world quiet.

  And somehow, in that silence, thoughts drift.

  Like noticing how strange it was—how nothing else had been touched.

  Just them.

  Just the people.

  And Backbeat’s last thought, right before everything went dark, was: That she wouldn’t see the new episode with her little sister tomorrow.

  They fought their way into Times Square, the heart of the city that never sleeps—now a burning arena of carnage.

  Billboards flickered with broken data. Tourist kiosks were reduced to rubble. What was once a neon jungle now glowed with the wild light of combat-born mani.

  Ashara vaulted off a crumbling LED screen, spinning in midair and deflecting a shot from Crimline’s Eidolon with her blade, the momentum carrying her into a three-point landing atop a crushed yellow cab. She grinned, surrounded by a blur of fire, shadows, and steel.

  Then—

  A shadow galloped through the smoke.

  Crestlock Vale’s voice echoed like a knight pronouncing sentence:

  “We duel beneath the shade of no gods.”

  From the darkness came his Cavalier Expanse—Their lances dragging through the concrete as their war cries twisted into corrupted fanfare.

  They came in waves, tearing down city blocks. One slammed into a Starbucks, obliterating the windows and seating. Another galloped through a bus stop, hurling the shattered bench like a javelin. Their movement created black streaks across the asphalt, slicing light itself away.

  Ashara flipped over a charging cavalier, grabbing a bystander and tossing him into the knight, before landing on a pile of crushed food carts. She used their metal siding to deflect a slash, spun off a lamp post, and launched into a car’s side mirror to springboard between two oncoming knights.

  A feint to the left—

  A twist—

  And her blade took Crestlock Vale’s arm.

  It came off clean, just below the shoulder. He screamed—not from pain, but from betrayal of form. His knights shrieked in sync as their formation fractured.

  Then—

  Latch Baby.

  Their twisted form skittered across the wall of a building, giggling through the broken doll-sound of a music box hum. They launched forward, claws drenched in whispering energy, striking Ashara’s side. She winced and answered with a brutal spinning kick, knocking Latch back into the side of a hot dog stand.

  But before hitting the ground, Latch released a scream-pulse, a frequency that twisted metal and muscle. Ashara staggered, clutching her side where blood poured—just enough to leave a trail.

  Then came Mina, sliding down from a crushed billboard. Threads lashed out, creating barriers and pathways midair. Anaya, fire laced with vengeance, landed beside her.

  “She uses the sword to cast. We get it away from her, she falls apart,” Anaya ordered, her tone iron.

  Mina nodded, breath tight. “Let’s make it hurt.”

  Together, they struck—

  Anaya came in with a feint of flame to the face. Ashara ducked and her form blurred as she rebounded off a crumbling wall, her katana slashing in a lazy arc that tore through a trash can, a bus stop sign, and the reinforced chest plate of Mina’s armor.

  Mina grunted, threads reeling back as her feet skidded across the asphalt. The strike hadn’t cut her skin—but it carved through two layers of her outer plating like it was made of wax.

  “You’re slippery,” Ashara smirked, her katana spinning in her left hand as she advanced.

  Mina surged forward, threads twisting into bladed cords, slashing in whip-like arcs.

  Ashara dipped under the first and deflected the second with her blade, but the third caught her on the shoulder, tearing her hoodie further and spraying a glint of blood. She hissed, but pressed on—closing the gap before Mina could reset.

  Anaya moved in to intercept.

  Ashara’s kick slammed into Anaya’s ribs, throwing her through a storefront window that spiderwebbed on impact as she hit the other side of the store.

  With a gleeful smile she turned back to Mina with a sweeping slice from the katana—skimming her thigh, cutting through armor and into the skin beneath.

  Mina yelped but stayed on her feet, threads acting like stilts to pull her back up—

  Until Ashara switched it to her right.

  For a brief moment, as Ashara lunged in, Mina froze.

  The moment it entered Ashara’s right grip, it was like reality warped around the strike. Mina’s knees buckled, her body locked in instinctual panic—her threads stalling in mid-air.

  Ashara slashed, and it was only pure reflex that let Mina pull her head back in time. She stumbled—barely conscious of the fact she used Unconscious Movement—just long enough for Anaya to arrive.

  Violet combustion flared, a flicker of flame arcing through the air like a comet.

  Ashara saw it and ducked, smirking.

  Exactly what Anaya wanted.

  Mina, recovering just enough, lashed out with a burst of threads and snared Ashara’s ankle, jerking her balance just a hair.

  “NOW!”

  Anaya rocketed forward, flames wrapping her knees like twin thrusters, and slammed her leg up into Ashara’s exposed gut—right under the ribs. The force of the compressed combustion stunned Ashara.

  Mina’s threads caught her ankle. Anaya then blasted her back with a flaming violet uppercut, and Mina lassoed the sword, yanking it clean from Ashara’s grip.

  “Ohhh, now you’re getting serious.” Ashara hissed—then Anaya drop kicked her through a window across the street, sending her crashing into the store in a rain of glass and fire.

  Cherry stumbled, hands trembling as she reached Anaya and Mina. Both were gasping, bruised, and bloodied.

  “I got you,” Cherry whispered. “Rest for a second.”

  She snapped her fingers and encased them in a soft pink barrier dome, circular and tight, designed to suppress external mani flow and give their cores time to recover.

  Anaya surged forward again, her chest rising and falling with uneven breath. She dashed through the open street, embers flickering at her heels. She crossed the gap standing to the side, glass crunching beneath her boots as she entered the shattered floor.

  “This ends now—”

  “STOP!”

  Cherry’s voice cracked.

  Then Mina’s joined in—“Anaya—NO!”

  Anaya froze.

  The air around her felt like something had died before she entered.

  She turned—just in time.

  The pink barrier dome behind her shimmered perfectly fine.

  Cherry and Mina stood there—frozen.

  Eyes wide.

  Then—

  Just… cleanly severed. In three pieces.

  They fell.

  Both of them, sliced from top to waist, and then from waist to legs, in perfect thirds.

  Blood sprayed outward in graceful arcs.

  Split organs spilled—wet, red, steaming in the cold night air.

  Mina’s lungs collapsed halfway through the fall.

  Cherry’s lips moved, like she was still trying to say “run.”

  But no sound came.

  The dome flickered out.

  Only the six neatly severed body segments remained, steam rising gently from them. No burn marks. No splash. No broken surroundings.

  Just them.

  Cut.

  Anaya stared, her own breath halting.

  The world around her fell silent.

  She couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t blink.

  The cleanness of it made it worse. There had been no flash, no signal, no show.

  Just an invisible line of death.