The sky was sealed shut.
The ground still smoldered from the last sequence of blows.
In the center of a torn avenue, amidst the rubble of buildings and twisted cars, Mei Nuhay clenched her fists, her chest heaving. Before her, Dante in Akira's body rose to his feet, the dust swirling around him as if the world bowed to his presence.
His aura was different.
Sharper. Darker.
More… perfect.
— Akira's body… is malleable, — said Dante, rolling his shoulders as if growing accustomed to the new form. — Flexible enough to channel what I need. And strong enough to withstand me.
Mei bit her lip, her golden eyes narrowed. Her heart beat with a strange weight.
— This isn't just control… You're comfortable in there.
— Of course. — Dante smiled. — You never understood the value of this boy's raw potential. I did. And I will use him to the bone.
Mei took two steps forward. The fiery aura around her pulsed like a second heart.
— He's the one holding me back… you know?
Dante arched an eyebrow.
— Holding you back?
— If I let the hatred consume me now, you'd already be in pieces. — She cracked her neck. — But he's in there. I can feel it. And out of respect for him…
A short, violent pause.
— …I'm going to destroy you slowly.
Dante did not reply.
He merely advanced.
The shock was brutal.
Mei summoned two pillars of flame that erupted from the asphalt and spun around her body like living blades. Dante appeared within the fire, untouched, using a dark shadow-shifting technique of Akira's, his silhouette flickering between the flashes like an impossible presence.
Mei spun in the air and used Stellar Pulse.
Three, five, ten attacks in less than a second.
The flames exploded in waves each time her fist made contact.
Dante blocked with superhuman precision, using a fusion of Akira's defenses with his own manipulation of negative energy and Aether. Tendrils of darkness coiled around Mei's arms, trying to bind her. She smiled and burned them alive.
— Still playing games? — he asked, swinging his leg in a wide arc and releasing an oblique blast of cutting shadows.
Mei dodged, but one of the black blades sliced her flank. She fell, rolling on the asphalt, blood and smoke streaming from the wound.
She spat blood. — This is getting personal.
Dante spread his arms. The sky trembled.
The Veil.
"But already?" Mei thought.
A fabric of pure darkness began to form behind him, like a misshapen wing, tearing itself from reality. The portal to the abyss beneath the city roared softly, almost like a living creature.
Mei smelled the energy: dense, intoxicating, unstoppable.
She reacted.
Two flaming spheres materialized around her shoulders. She launched the first like a shooting star. The second spun through the air, leaving a trail of living energy and splitting into multiple fragments—mini explosions orbiting Dante like meteors.
"I have to cancel this."
The Veil did not open; it was never meant to open, only to distract.
A black wave shot from Dante's palm straight toward Mei's heart.
The deformed wings defended against the flames while the attack was being formed.
She couldn't dodge in time.
Her body froze. Every nerve seemed to shut down. Her fire vanished for two eternal seconds.
Two seconds.
It was enough.
Dante appeared before her, punching her stomach with brutal force. Mei was thrown backward, crashing through three buildings. The structures collapsed behind her, concrete turning to dust.
Organs ruptured, bones cracked.
Silence.
Until she laughed.
From within the rubble, she laughed as if it were the best thing in the world.
— So that's it…! — Her voice echoed through the ruins. — All that just to stop me for two seconds??
Dante took a deep breath.
— Shut up, Mei.
— No!
She flew out of the rubble, her body still regenerating, bones snapping, muscles reknitting in mid-air.
— You're in my friend's body, trying to destroy everything he stands for. And even so… — She spun, conjuring a new attack. — I'm still holding back.
Dante felt something forming.
— Creative strategy. However, allow me to teach you a little about creativity. Learn, Cheating King.
Spiral flames fused with a whirlwind of solar energy. It was an improvised technique. An incinerating turbo, with layers of spiritual energy pressed together like gears.
She called it "Blood Aurora."
He tried to summon dark abilities, but the light was too strong, and the pressure pulled at him.
Dante was caught in the impact. His body spun in the air, part of Akira's skin being forcibly torn away by the heat explosions. But he too smiled.
— What a beautiful technique.
— I'm beautiful. — Mei winked. — You should know that.
They collided again. Hand-to-hand. The blows now held no finesse. It was pure brutality, rage masked with intelligence. Dante summoned shadow spears; Mei shaped her fists into flaming weapons forged by imagination—claws, hammers, blades. Every attack was a concept.
They were at the limit.
Beneath the city, the Abyssal Portal pulsed with even greater force.
The ground shook.
Dante knew: the Veil needed time to be summoned again.
And pretending wouldn't be effective anymore; he needed a perfect moment.
For if he hit her… if he hit her again… she wouldn't come back whole.
And Mei knew it.
— You know what I like about you, Dante? — she said, blood trickling from her nose.
— What?
She spat the blood and smiled, her teeth stained red.
— You force me to be more creative.
— I killed your kin, possessed your friend's body. And you smile at me?
I know that behind that smile, you are nervous, Mei Nuhay.
— Nah, you'd have a point if this were our last fight. But in this one, I'm smiling because I know I'm going to win.
She spread her arms.
The flames danced around her.
And then, she created something new.
Many meters away.
The silence was dense.
White smoke still rose from the cracks in the ground. The roots twisted slowly, charred and dying, as the city exhaled a painful sigh of relief. Dan and Stella walked side by side, breathless, toward the crater where Hazau had fallen.
The rubble still trembled. The enemy's body was half-buried, motionless, trapped under stones and remnants of charred wood.
Stella raised her arm, summoning an ethereal blade.
— We can't take any risks.
Dan nodded, his eyes still dim with spent light.
— Let's end this.
But the instant Stella advanced—a presence.
Too late.
A crack in the air. Like a tree splitting in half. Hazau appeared behind them, emerging from the shadows with his arms transfigured into twisted claws. His body still smoldered in places, but his eyes blazed with hatred and hunger.
— YOU WERE SO EASY TO FOOL!
With brutal force, he threw Stella back with a cutting punch to the stomach, sending her sliding across the ground almost to the city's edge. Dan turned, but Hazau was already upon him, pushing him back with rapid, brutal charges.
The ground cracked under their feet.
They were on the precipice.
The abyss opened wide behind them, swallowing everything in darkness. Here, Hazau could not regenerate. There were no roots. No city. Only the end.
— Look at this… — Hazau snarled, pressing Dan into the ground with his foot. — So powerful, yet so careless. I will drag you down with me… and be reborn from each of your corpses!
Dan spat blood but did not retreat. His eyes shone once more.
— …You're already dead, Hazau. You just haven't realized it yet.
Stella appeared behind him, ethereal chains snaking through the air like white lightning. They bound Hazau's arms the instant he raised his fists to crush Dan.
— Now, Dan! — she shouted.
Dan concentrated energy in his palm.
But Hazau roared, spreading his arms with force and breaking Dan's guard, striking him in the stomach. He turned, stretched the vines from his own chest, and drove them into Stella's shoulder. She screamed, being pulled toward him.
He slammed her forcefully against a wall.
Hazau rose slowly before them, his body torn apart, but his eyes seethed. Black vines snaked over his open torso, trying to stitch themselves together with agonizing slowness. Here, on the city's edge—his regeneration was strange, faltering.
Dan and Stella were wounded. Covered in cuts, breathing heavily, energy drained. But they were still standing.
— You are persistent… — Hazau snarled, spitting dark blood. — But this ends here.
He charged. Like an animal.
And the fight began anew.
Hazau summoned blade-like thorns, firing dozens of them. Dan spun, conjuring a flaming barrier, while Stella weaved through the projectiles with her chains of light. Each of their blows seemed to scratch a god. But he kept coming. Always.
Hazau was winning.
He kicked Dan against a shattered pillar, cracking it with the impact. A second later, he launched roots from the ground that seized Stella's feet and yanked her upward—her throat nearly crushed in the air.
— Your lights will go out… — murmured Hazau, already preparing the final blow.
But then Dan understood.
He saw the roots hesitate. Thin. Weak. Some breaking in the wind.
— Stella… he's weaker here!
Stella, even while choking, whispered:
— He… can't regenerate far from the city.
She created a sword of light and severed the roots, freeing herself. She landed on her feet, knees trembling, but alive.
— We have to push him to the edge. Take him to the brink…
Hazau roared, sensing the plan being born in their eyes. He grew more aggressive. More savage.
The clash became insane.
Dan activated his aura. White fire enveloped his body like a living comet. He crashed into Hazau with such force that the ground exploded into flames. Every punch shook the nearby buildings. Stella matched him, launching chains like spears, pulling Hazau, binding him, trying to force every step.
Hazau wounded Dan with a thorn to the shoulder. Tore into Stella's side with an explosive root.
A massive flood of thorny vines manifested, cutting Dan in multiple places and launching projectiles at Stella.
But they forced him backward.
More.
More.
To the very edge.
The abyss yawned behind him.
Hazau tried to drive roots into the stone… but there wasn't enough earth. He slipped. Staggered. Dan leaped, his fist aflame.
— NOW!
Hazau laughed, insane, and pulled Dan down with him by the waist—both of them fell.
The fall was a tempest.
In mid-air, Dan concentrated all that remained.
— You will never come back…
His fist shone like a sun. A roar erupted from his throat, a mix of pain and fury.
— BURN, DAMNED ROOTS!
The blow struck Hazau's chest like a piercing comet. The spiritual fire consumed Hazau—vines, flesh, demon—Hazau's screams vanishing into the howling wind.
His body tumbled down, burning in white light, into the darkness of the abyss that opened below the city.
But Dan kept falling.
— DAN!! — Stella screamed, kneeling at the edge.
She stretched out her arm with all her might, chains surging forth like serpents of energy—two of them crossed the sky in a spiral, sought Dan in the void, and seized him by the waist at the very last second.
The impact nearly tore her arms from their sockets, but she held on.
With tears in her eyes, she pulled.
Slowly.
Millimeter by millimeter.
Until Dan climbed back up, wounded, his body burning, but alive.
He fell to his knees before her, and the two remained there.
Wordless.
The wind blew black ashes away into the distance.
Hazau was dead.
— Is it over? — Stella whispered.
Dan looked toward the edge.
— It's over now.
But both knew: the true war was yet to come.
But at least… one root had been torn out.
To be continued…