Ashara rested her back against the cracked pillar of the Jones’s Clothing store, breathing through her teeth. Right hand still extended until she dropped it to her side.
Dust drifted down like lazy snow, caught in the faint red glow of the emergency lights. The racks were scorched, toppled, and torn. A mannequin lay face-down.
She hummed quietly, blood running in slow ribbons from her side and shoulder, soaking into the fabric of her messed up and torn oversized pink Hello Kitty hoodie. The cartoon face on her chest was half-burned, the other half stained with soot and blood. The sleeves were shredded, one barely hanging on by the seam, and a gash along the stomach.
But her grin didn’t fade.
Her Desire whispered through her veins, steady as ever. A selfish encasement of will—simple, absolute. She had locked herself out of countless other paths, maybe even stronger ones, but it didn’t matter. She liked it this way. Clarity over chaos.
Right hand for the living. Left hand for everything else. Sundering Creed. No chants. No wasted thought. No hesitation. Just instinct and the clean division of all things.
Every cut a truth. Every strike already decided the moment she moved. And if that meant her future narrowed to a single edge, then so be it.
She tilted her head back against the pillar, lips curling wider despite the blood still dripping from her chin.
From the scream outside, she knew the colorful-haired girl and whoever was dumb enough to share her dome, were gone. Sliced into art.
“If the little Indian with the short cut had stepped in a bit closer…” she mused aloud, chuckling. “Could’ve had a trio.”
Oh well.
She’d just have to cut her up another way.
Her body ached, legs tight with tension, her vision slightly pulsing with overuse of mani. The aches were deep and sharp, and her internal reserve was burning fast, but her smile only grew.
Because pain, for her, wasn’t a stop sign.
It was a song cue.
But one thing Ashara miscalculated—
Was human anger.
And the terrifying resolve born of vengeance.
—
The moment Ashara stood up, the world went white-violet.
Jones’s Clothing Store exploded into a blooming inferno of violet flames, the force shredding the walls, flinging racks and signage in all directions.
Before she could process the heat, a hand grabbed her throat—
Searing. Blistering. Unyielding.
Anaya’s face was pure rage, her eyes glowing like collapsing stars.
She dragged Ashara through three buildings in a straight, burning line—shattering brick, glass, metal—until she slammed her into the pavement of the street, creating a crater on impact.
Ashara coughed violently.
Then—
CRACK.
CRACK.
CRACK.
Fist after superheated fist, each blow wrapped in condensed violet mani, struck her ribs, her chest, her face.
The heat cracked the air. The concrete beneath them glowed red.
Onlookers—civilians watched from behind cars and distant windows as shockwaves pulsed out from the crater, knocking some to their knees.
Ashara smiled through it all. Teeth stained red. Eye swollen. Vision dancing.
“Well…” she thought through the haze, “I guess I should be thankful that my technique is overwhelmingly better.”
Then—
She snapped forward, headbutting Anaya, stunning her mid-punch.
Before Anaya could regain control, Ashara surged her mani in reverse, flooding her nervous system with disruptive pulses that amplified impact recovery.
It worked.
Her legs snapped around Anaya’s neck like a trap, and with a twist of her hips and back, she flipped her, throwing Anaya bodily into the ground.
BOOM.
Anaya reacted mid-fall, compressing energy into her knuckles and slamming her fist into Ashara’s gut just as she landed.
Ashara shot backward like a ragdoll, crashing into a nearby digital billboard. The screen shattered on impact, sparks raining down like urban stardust.
She slid to a stop against a support beam.
Blood poured from her lips now.
She didn’t stop smiling.
Anaya stood at the edge of the crater, chest heaving. Her flames hissed and swirled around her, licking at her boots, burning the air.
But she couldn’t deny it now.
Ashara’s Selfish Encasement was better.
Not cleaner. Not purer.
Just… more perfectly attuned to herself.
It really was the foundation, wasn’t it?
Anaya’s jaw clenched.
This level…
This sick, smiling girl—
It reminded her of Savannah.
That relentless, don’t-die-no-matter-what monster behavior.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
And that pissed her off even more.
Anaya surged forward once again, her violet flames crackling violently across her arms and shoulders. Her body burned, not just with heat, but from the inside out—overclocking her Selfish Encasement to push past every limit.
But just as her fist cocked back—
The sky broke open in thunder.
A symphony of bullets tore across the air.
Crimline had stopped holding back.
Her expression was carved in rage, and her Core Attribute—Ballistic Eidolon—unleashed in its true form.
The surrounding air warped. Her spectral rifles grew in size, twisting into high-caliber forms etched with glowing script. Two of the massive cannons fused directly into her arms—mechanical runes latching onto her shoulders like war tattoos. Her eyes, normally veiled and calculating, now blazed with wrath.
She had set a condition. A transcendent targeting protocol—a rare evolution of standard Manifestion techniques. Not a Supreme Skill in name, but its output matched one.
“Target Parameter: All Females. Age 18 to 25. In a 75 meter radius of Crimline”
The moment it was locked, the bullets changed. They passed harmlessly through buildings, walls, barriers—even people—unless they matched the condition.
Now every woman in the age bracket was in the crosshairs.
The streets screamed.
Anaya instinctively jumped away, twisting through a shattered car window as a line of death passed behind her. The air crackled where her chest had just been. She spun mid-roll and saw the bullets curve toward her—not bounce—curve, adapting to their condition.
Ashara laughed, diving between burning signs and skidding across a collapsed bench, trying to reclaim her sword from a piece of broken rebar. But the onslaught forced her to move away from her weapon. Young girls blood filled the street as she dipped and dodged. She gritted her teeth and waved her left hand, slicing bullets out of the air before flipping backwards over a wrecked SUV.
Crimline’s expression shifted with surprise. Though she kept firing, not wanting to give Ashara any moment of relief. She also needed to push her in a certain direction.
Ashara’s movements danced between insane and prophetic, each twist just barely missing the rounds that vaporized women off the street. The screams echoed with her laughter.
Crestlock Vale charged through the chaos like a black comet, his shadowy knights riding beside him, trampling cars, obliterating concrete with lance sweeps and spectral gallops. The four knights of the Cavalier Expanse rode with him, each dragging the battlefield closer to annihilation.
He wasn’t fighting for glory anymore.
He was fighting to end the blasphemy Ashara represented.
She pivoted, ducked under a cavalier’s lance, ran up the wall of a destroyed restaurant and dove straight past one of the knights—then twisted her left arm outward. Swinging it back and forth again and again.
“Pop.Pop.Pop.Pop. Bye bye little horsies.”
The four knights shattered, their forms torn in half, then again, and again, until nothing but a smear of shadow remained. The technique didn’t just kill them—it unmade their visual anchor.
Vale’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“How—”
Ashara was already sprinting toward him.
He roared, raising his lance high, and swung in a grand arc.
She ducked, sliding beneath the steel with millimeter precision,
And as she passed—
Her right hand flashed a T sign in the air.
A small flick of the wrist.
He turned to track her—
But then his senses overloaded. His mouth opened. His body remained still—
Then his vision fractured.
First into four.
Then eight.
Then sixteen.
Then thirty-two.
Until his head and upper chest slipped apart, cubed and clean.
He never finished his last thought.
The city roared. Flames surged. Bullets still fell. Causing a storm of screams and red smoke.
But no one noticed Crestlock Vale had died.
Not until the moment they felt his aura drop, vanishing like a prayer left unanswered.
Ashara slipped away through the back of a burning building, the edges of her hoodie catching fire as she exhaled sharply. Her breath was ragged, blood leaking freely from her wounds now.
She turned a corner.
And ran right into Latch Baby.
He was standing dead center of a ruined hallway, head tilted, arms slack.
His cracked toy gas mask glinted in the firelight, and though she couldn’t see his mouth—
She could tell.
He was smiling.
His fingers lifted slowly, forming a grotesque hand sign—both thumbs touching, palms out, fingers warped into jagged arcs like a cradle being held open.
The hallway darkened.
Then the world shifted as they entered his Domain.
“Crib of Hollow Lullabies.”
Reality itself pulled inward.
The burning hallway became a dreamlike cradle, floating in a twilight void. Walls flickered between cribs, silk curtains, and broken carousel horses. The air was thick, soft, and wrong.
Latch Baby’s voice emerged—gentle, melodic, and horrifyingly sweet.
“Sleep now… let the floor become your blanket…”
Ashara grinned, blood in her teeth.
Her voice cracked, but her smirk didn’t. “Cute… but I rather my board be your canvas.”
——
Savannah and Lucenzo were already mid-flight—well, more like mid-argument—when the skyline lit up violet and a column of smoke carved itself into the clouds.
Their shouting had stopped. Or rather, Savannah’s cursing had stopped. Briefly.
Lucenzo was the first to check his comms, already calling it in, though he knew he didn’t need to. Alerts were pinging across the network like wildfire.
“Multiple E.R.O. squads incapacitated.”
“Civilian casualties confirmed.”
“Manifestation-class conflict in progress.”
And from what he heard?
Unit V-27’s B-ranks were gone.
“I told you to stay back,” Lucenzo growled, landing on the edge of a rooftop, trying to intercept her. “You’re not even cleared for—”
But Savannah was already gone, leaping off the balcony, wind swirling under her feet.
He cursed, watching her fall like a cannonball.
Part of him had hoped she was doing this for justice, to protect people.
But no.
She just wanted to put her hands on something and not worry about the consequences.
——
High above, perched on the back of the monstrous bird, the two figures watched through the haze.
The one with purple eyes exhaled with annoyance, arms crossed.
“Well… if they join, she’ll definitely die.”
His voice was dry, but amused.
He tilted his head slightly, watching Savannah crash through a neon-lit dome and keep moving like nothing touched her.
“The girl recovered way quicker than I thought she would.”
The other figure, still and composed, adjusted the white blindfold around his eyes—just enough to let a faint, radiant glow seep through the cloth.
“Yeah… just be careful. They’re both formidable. Even if she’s weakened.”
The purple-eyed one scoffed, ink flickering around his fingertips. “You think they’ll be a challenge for me?”
“Anything can happen in battle,” the blindfolded figure replied.
“Would they be an issue for you?”
That earned a short laugh. Their dreads swayed in the wind, slow and deliberate.
“Of course not.”
Then silence. The skyline trembled from a distant blast. A building crumbled into dust.
“I’d hurry,” the blindfolded one said. “Before they kill her.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The man stretched, cracked his knuckles. “Meet back in ten?”
The blindfolded figure smirked faintly. “Depends on who else shows up.”
“Hehe… that’s true.”
And with that—
The purple-eyed one jumped down, diving straight toward the city, coat flaring in the wind.
To greet the chaos below.