The cross-shaped slash of pure light and devouring darkness did not roar; it unmade. The space it traveled through simply ceased to be, leaving a temporary scar of void in the air. It struck the microscopic crack in Nox's reality-warping shield with the precision of a divine scalpel.
CRRRACK-KABOOM!
The sound was not of shattering glass, but of reality itself screaming in protest. The shimmering barrier exploded outwards in a storm of fragmented spatial energy. Nox was thrown back, a genuine cry of pain and shock torn from her lips as the backlash seared her essence. A thin line of iridescent blood, like liquid stardust, traced a path from her shoulder to her hip. The invincible Devil was bleeding.
"You… you wound me?" Her voice was a mixture of fury and disbelief. The starlight in her eyes swirled into a violent nebula of rage. "A mere mortal… a flickering candle daring to burn a sun!"
She ceased to be playful. The air around her thickened, the pressure escalating from suffocating to outright tectonic. The very stone of the ancient foundations began to compress, pulverizing under the weight of her unleashed aura.
"Authority of Night: 1st Form — Starlight Oblivion."
She didn't gesture. She simply willed it. Pinpricks of light, each one a condensed point of annihilating energy, manifested throughout the corridor—hundreds, then thousands of them. They weren't projectiles; they were fixed points of erasure. Where they appeared, matter vanished. And they were all centered on Kenta.
Kenta's mind, already frayed from the strain of the twin blades, screamed at him to retreat. But his body, moving on a vow deeper than conscious thought, was already in motion.
"Twin Serpents' Style: 2nd Form — Coiling Vortex."
He became a whirlwind. Hikari no Ha wove a defensive net of incandescent light, deflecting and parrying the starlight points that sought to erase him. But for every ten he deflected, Yami no Hikari would lash out, its devouring nature actively consuming the points of light, swallowing the oblivion itself. It was a desperate, beautiful, and horrifying dance. He was a phantom of light and shadow, spinning through a galaxy of death, his every movement tearing his body apart from the inside.
He could feel it—the warm blood now flowing freely from his nose, his ears, even the corners of his eyes. His vision was tunneling, the edges darkening. The world was becoming a narrow, blurry slide show of flashing lights and encroaching darkness. He was running on fumes, on sheer, spiteful will.
"Your struggle is pathetic!" Nox's voice echoed, distorted, as if from the end of a long tunnel. "You are a corpse that hasn't realized it's dead!"
"Authority of Night: 2nd Form — Eventide Labyrinth."
The world twisted. The corridor elongated to an impossible length, then folded in on itself. Mirrors of solidified shadow sprang up around him, each one reflecting a different, terrifying outcome: his body shredded by starlight; Sarah, lifeless in her inn room; himself, consumed by Yami no Hikari's rage. It was a psychological assault designed to break his concentration, to feed the dark blade's inherent despair.
And it almost worked. A wave of debilitating hopelessness washed over him. The dark blade in his hand sang a siren song of surrender. 'Just let go,' it whispered. 'The pain will end.'
It would be so easy.
Then, a single, clear image cut through the mental fog. Sarah's face, not broken in pain, but lit with wonder as she felt her first spark of mana. A spark he had helped ignite.
No.
The word was not spoken. It was a foundational truth that reset his crumbling world.
"Hikari no Ha: Final Form — Dawn's Unbreaking Vow."
He abandoned all defense. He poured every last shred of his consciousness, his Ki, his very soul, into the Blade of Light. Hikari no Ha erupted with a radiance that challenged the concept of darkness itself. It was not an attack, but a declaration. A vow made manifest. The light did not burn; it asserted. It pushed back against the twisted space of the Eventide Labyrinth, not by destroying it, but by re-establishing a domain of unwavering truth around him.
The shadow mirrors shattered.
For a single, crystallized moment, the path to Nox was clear.
He was barely conscious. He could no longer feel his legs. His grip on the blades was maintained by muscle memory alone. He had one last move. One final card to play, a technique he had never dared to use, born from the harmony he was still struggling to master.
He crossed the trembling blades before him, light and dark screeching in protest at their forced union.
"Twin Serpents' Forbidden Form—"
His voice was a ghost of a whisper, lost in the cacophony of power.
"—Duality's End."
He didn't lunge. He vanished, and in the same instant, he was everywhere along the path to Nox. It was not an afterimage technique. It was as if he had occupied every point in that line of space simultaneously. And at every single one of those points, both blades struck at once.
It was not one attack, but a thousand. A barrage of light and dark that hit Nox's now-unshielded form from every conceivable angle, a simultaneous event of creation and destruction.
A scream, raw and shattering, tore from Nox's throat. Iridescent blood bloomed in the air like a grisly flower. She was hurled backward, crashing through three stone pillars before slamming into the far wall with a sickening crunch of stone and bone.
Kenta landed on one knee. The vortex of energy around him snuffed out instantly. The world swam, tilting on its axis. Hikari no Ha's light dimmed to a faint ember. Yami no Hikari fell silent, its hunger sated for the moment by the torrent of energy it had just unleashed.
He tried to stand. His body refused.
He saw Nox, across the ruined chamber, struggling to push herself up from the rubble. She was grievously wounded, her perfect form broken and bleeding, her eyes wide with a mixture of agony and incandescent rage. But she was alive. And he had nothing left.
The darkness at the edge of his vision finally rushed in, a warm, welcoming tide. The last thing he felt was the cold stone of the floor against his cheek. The last thing he heard was the enraged, trembling shriek of the wounded Devil, promising annihilation.
Then, nothing.