----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tekio's crimson eyes sparked in the gloom, illuminated by the very essence rising from him. Hazau paused for a moment, narrowed his eyes, and walked slowly, his arms wreathed in abyssal energy lighting up the suffocating cocoon.
— What do you think you can do? — Hazau laughed low, almost like an animal about to devour its prey. — Without Yara, you're just flesh and bone. You are on my ground, in my cocoon. Here, you are nothing.
Tekio raised his eyes and smiled. A subtle, heavy mockery that cut Hazau more than any sword could.
Deep within his soul, something was awakening. A silhouette emerged from the darkness: short white hair, white eyes that reflected nothing human. Its body was a dense, almost liquid shadow, but its arms wrapped around Tekio like an inevitable embrace. It wasn't Yara. Tekio knew. Hazau did too.
And then the energy exploded.
A crimson wave took over the cocoon, vibrant, overwhelming. Hazau immediately felt the difference. It wasn't the Abyss, it wasn't his essence, it wasn't anything he knew. It was something greater. Dense, as if the cosmos itself had taken root in Tekio's fragile body.
Hazau froze. For a fraction of a second, he remembered what he had seen before, when he had invaded the boy's mind—that woman dressed in black. He had thought it was Yara, but now he realized it wasn't. It wasn't her. It was something else. More bizarre. More terrifying. And it was inside Tekio.
The cocoon around them transformed. The ice walls vanished. The space was swallowed by a dark, ethereal plane, a heavy veil where time seemed not to exist. Hazau blinked, confused, and saw Tekio and… her.
— Coward… — Hazau snarled, trying to regain his composure. — Borrowing power from another. Always a parasite. Always weak.
He waited no longer. He advanced with the speed of Haruto's essence, ready to suppress any attempt by Tekio to connect to that entity. Tekio didn't even move. Hazau reached his navel with a hand full of energy.
And then everything flipped.
Again, he was sucked into that place. Only this time, the woman wasn't just a shadow. Her form was delineated, the silhouette almost complete, the features of a face still obscured, but clearer.
Hazau felt his heart race. His legs trembled. He, the Abyss, the predator, trembled like a lost child.
The pressure was immense. Almost unreal.
— This can't… this shouldn't be happening! — his mind screamed. — I tampered with his essential instability, that should have destroyed him! This shouldn't… shouldn't…
The woman raised her arm. A black aura opened like ethereal chains and pinned Hazau in the air, as if he were nothing but a cheap toy. He thrashed, howled, but his essence did not respond.
— This… this is his? — Hazau panted, eyes wide in pure terror. — No… no, no, NO!
The woman's voice sounded like muffled thunder, echoing in every corner of that space, cutting Hazau like invisible blades:
— Impure.
As stated last time.
Hazau screamed. A scream that was not just physical, but existential, coming from his very essence being crushed.
Outside, the three were still trying. Stella struck with beams of light, Dan with concentrated flames. But it was Amara who completely let go.
She punched the cocoon, her hands bloodied, her throat raw from screaming:
— TEKIO! REACT! I KNOW YOU HEAR ME! YOU ALWAYS HEAR ME! YOU ALWAYS COME BACK, SO COME BACK NOW! —
Tears mixed with the blood streaming from her broken fingers.
— You can't give up! You can't leave me here! You can't leave anyone! I… I NEED YOU! — her voice trembled, but did not stop. — If you die, Tekio…
Dan and Stella fell silent. Amara's despair was so raw, so real, that their own strength seemed useless next to that cry of love and terror.
And then it happened.
The instant Amara landed another desperate punch, the cocoon vibrated. A roar from within answered her blow. The sound was as if something was breaking inside.
— TEKIO! — she screamed, nearly fainting.
The silence that followed lasted only a second.
Then came the roar.
A scream. But it wasn't Tekio's. It was Hazau's.
From inside, his voice echoed in pure panic, in denial, as if he were being torn apart:
— N- NO! NO! NO! —
The trio stepped back, hearts racing. The ice trembled under their feet. Distant explosions from Mei and the princess's battle still shook the world, but now… it was here. Inside there.
Hazau was screaming.
And they all knew: something had changed.
Outside, Dan, Stella, and Amara felt the weight of the moment. Something in the air had changed—an energy almost palpable, sometimes like a ray of hope, sometimes like the omen of an eclipse. The environment trembled, and even without fully understanding, everyone knew: something was different.
They felt a sinister energy emanating from the cocoon.
Suddenly, Hazau was thrown against the wall. It was as if the woman inhabiting Tekio's essence had dissected him, inspected him, and then spat him out in disgust for the filth and mixture of his essence. Rejected, despised, humiliated. Hazau could barely believe what he was seeing.
— How...? — he murmured, his voice full of denial and terror. — This isn't Yara... and it's not borrowed power either.
He shook his head, confused, as he stumbled to his feet. He thought, almost in despair: Don't tell me... that this is really his.
Now, what illuminated the cocoon was no longer the distortions of the Abyss, but Tekio's hands, imbued with an intense, pulsating, living crimson energy. Hazau could feel, through his own essence, that woman tearing his soul from within him. Fear spread through the Regent of the Abyss's body.
But he did not give up. He tried to summon something, anything, to regain control.
Inside Tekio, Yara watched, imprisoned, unable to help. But her gaze was one of recognition: an experienced warrior who knew that underestimating Tekio was like signing her own death warrant. Hazau would discover this in the worst way. She knew that this boy, though without her powers now, carried something Hazau could never comprehend.
A strength that only true warriors would recognize. The strength forged in real war, among loss, blood, and tears.
The strength of a true warrior.
Hazau, in desperation, tried to summon Amina, the mistress of poisons, sending snakes that would devour Tekio alive. But before he could finish, a roar echoed:
BOOM!
Tekio advanced and struck Hazau simultaneously with both arms in the stomach. The impact made black blood gush from Hazau's mouth.
— My body... I felt real pain? — he murmured, incredulous.
And it didn't stop. Tekio continued the rain of punches, brutal, incessant, each blow reverberating inside and outside the cocoon. Dan, Stella, and Amara watched in shock, feeling the force of each blow without knowing what was really happening.
Hazau felt the pressure. For the first time, Tekio's punches weren't just attacks; they were a suffocating wave of crimson energy crushing his essence, severing the connection to the Abyss. He realized, with growing terror: this boy was the natural enemy of the Abyss. A child born to exterminate all of it. A danger no plan could contain.
It was as if every blow, every contact, disconnected the link Hazau had with the portal, as if Tekio was reducing Hazau to a mere human.
Each punch came accompanied by kicks, displacements, impacts against the ice dome. Each blow destroyed Hazau's position, turning the cramped environment into a field of destruction, illuminated only by the crimson beams of Tekio's energy flow.
— This boy... without Yara... with a power of his own... is he really the weakest of all? — Hazau muttered, astonished, reconsidering all his strategies. The arrogance from before was replaced by panic.
The cocoon began to yield under the pressure, a crack opening, leaping outward. For the first time, the friends could see a part of the ice prison break.
Tekio did not stop. He grabbed Hazau by the neck and spun him around the ice dome, punching him at unthinkable angles. A massacre. Hazau was disfigured, with no chance to react. He tried to absorb energy from the dome to recover strength, but Tekio's blows destroyed not only his body, but the very connection to the Abyss.
Tekio struck without any mercy, held Hazau by the skull and dragged him along the walls of the dome, disfiguring his face even more.
Tekio threw Hazau against the initial wall. A brief pause, enough for Hazau to try to react, summoning a deadly ice blade. But Tekio, in a flash, was in front of him again. Right fist wrapped in concentrated energy, a technique learned from Aisha, the energy slingshot he had used months before against Umbrafago. The energy flow from his entire body converged into his fist all at once. Amplified by a technique that increased the power of each blow even more.
Hazau saw, in a flash, the silhouette of the black woman once more. Before he could perceive the impact, Tekio's cry cut the air:
— CRIMSON ECLIPSE!
His fist pierced Hazau's stomach against the wall. Organs destroyed, flesh torn, but Tekio did not stop—his energy still pulsed, about to burst through the cocoon wall itself.
Tekio roared like an untamed beast. Hazau felt real pain, like a human devoid of the Abyss, and for an instant he perceived something impossible: if he was the Regent of the Abyss, Tekio was the regent of the cosmos, of humanity, of the spirit that never bends. Each punch pierced not only his body, but his reason, his essence. He was nothing before that boy.
And then, the final roar.
BOOM!
The cocoon yielded from the inside out, exploding with Tekio's force. Hazau was thrown like an uncontrolled projectile, colliding against structures, losing parts of his body, while the crimson energy still burned the air around him.
Outside, Dan, Stella, and Amara felt the impact reverberate. Terror gave way to a mix of shock, disbelief, and hope. Something had changed forever. Tekio had revealed himself as a force not even the Abyss could subdue.
The silence that followed was heavy, laden with tension and reverence for the boy's newly discovered power.
The light of the afternoon sun pierced the flaming sky, corrupted by the abyssal energy gushing from the tree and the portal. The air was dense, pulsating, vibrating with the impact of the battle that had just crumbled—and in the center of it all, Tekio emerged.
The dome opened like a shattered cocoon, revealing the young man's body wreathed in a living crimson aura, as if the fire of existence itself burned within.
He walked in slow, firm steps, like a predator that had just scented its prey's fear.
His body was wounded, blood streamed down his arms, but his eyes… his eyes remained straight, focused, impenetrable.
That unknown energy enveloped him in harmony—it did not consume him, it chose him.
It was as if the entire cosmos whispered in his favor: "Continue."
Amara broke into a wide smile, tears of relief streaming.
Dan and Stella smiled too—a smile of liberation, of a thousand battles won in their hearts.
Tekio, the friend who minutes ago was condemned to death, was now there.
Alive.
Triumphant.
A miracle forged by force.
But there was something different about him.
Tekio's gaze was no longer that of a boy fighting for survival—it was that of a man who knew what needed to be done.
Even aware of his friends' presence, he did not turn.
He knew that without them he would never have found the focus to unleash this strength, but in that moment, the duty was his alone.
Hazau, on the other hand, was the living image of ruin.
His body tried to regenerate, but failed miserably—flesh and bone mixed grotesquely.
Half a face, half a skull.
And, even unrecognizable, fear dripped from his expression like poison.
Hazau, the Regent of the Abyss, was afraid.
Amara took a step forward, about to call Tekio—
But he disappeared.
Without a lightning flash.
Without sound.
Just emptiness.
Then, an impact echoed.
A dry, visceral sound.
Tekio had landed right in front of Hazau—the force of the landing made the ground tremble.
The monster shuddered.
Hazau choked, trying to say something, but fear made him stammer, emit misshapen grunts.
He began to crawl, desperate, like a worm fleeing the light.
Dan, Stella, and Amara ran to the spot, watching from above.
The scene was almost silent, except for the sound of Tekio's slow steps behind Hazau.
Each step seemed a funeral bell.
Hazau crawled in panic, avoiding looking back, until he felt something worse than Tekio's presence.
Shadows.
Her.
The woman.
That black entity that pursued him.
She was everywhere—tearing his soul with her gaze, spitting disdain upon his impure essence.
Hazau turned his neck in despair, panting, trying to flee from something that was inside him.
But, when he stopped, he realized.
Tekio was there.
In silence.
Standing.
Gaze fixed.
Hazau tried to recompose himself, stretch his arms, murmur words, but his body did not respond.
He tried to throw stones, branches, anything.
Nothing.
Tekio did not move—he didn't need to.
His mere presence crushed Hazau more than any blow.
Behind him, Amara, Stella, and Dan emerged from the rubble, attentive.
Hazau looked at them—and something glinted in his mutilated eyes.
Even weak, he still wanted to hurt what Tekio loved.
With the last remnant of power, Hazau stretched out his hand.
Branches began to move, distorting the ground into tentacles ready to attack his friends.
But before they could rise—
CRAACK.
Tekio brought his hand down upon Hazau's, crushing it against the ground with such absurd force the bone turned to powder.
The scream that followed was inhumanly sharp, tearing the air.
Black blood gushed, splattering Tekio's feet.
— You will have power over no one else. — he said, his voice cold, low.
— You will not kill. You will not subjugate. Your reign as regent is over…
Tekio raised his gaze.
— …before the weakest.
Hazau writhed in hatred and shame.
He was being humiliated.
By a boy.
By a human.
Tekio clenched his fist and brought it down again.
The ground cracked.
Hazau's face deformed with the impact.
Another blow.
Another roar.
Hazau was thrown forward, hitting a twisted root, where his body contorted in spasms.
The group watched in silence.
The scene was brutal.
Dan, Stella, and Amara remembered the scene where Tekio lost himself in fury.
Where he pursued Karmore to kill him.
The crimson energy and the blood had returned and they didn't know if it was still just Tekio there.
Until.
He turned his face, blood streaming down his chin—and smiled.
A simple, sincere smile, full of life.
— Thanks for the support, guys.
And in that instant, Dan, Stella, and Amara understood.
It wasn't Tekio taken by blind fury.
It was the Tekio who had learned to master the storm.
The friend they loved… and who would now protect them from everything.
Even from the Abyss.
Hazau's body was a walking ruin. Pulsing, exposed organs, a torn and almost unrecognizable face, limbs broken or severed—he crawled, incapable, without confidence. But fury still burned within him. He did not accept it. He could not believe he was losing in that manner, impotent, without even being able to fight back. He, the Regent of the Abyss, a god of eternal power, was reduced to bloody, broken flesh. Without the Abyss to sustain him, he was just a mortal, vulnerable and fragile.
And yet, the rage grew.
In Hazau's mind, defeat was inconceivable. But there was something else corroding his understanding—that woman. That woman inside Tekio. A force similar to the Abyss, but older, more devastating, more alive. Why had she joined the humans? Why did she reside in that boy? Each thought brought more despair. Each question had no answer. Only the bitter taste of defeat.
When he raised his eyes, nearly blind, he saw Tekio and his friends smiling among themselves. Alive. Firm. United. The impossible had become real before him. And Hazau wondered, for the first time, something he would never admit aloud:
— Is this... being human? Truly?
To feel pain. To be humiliated. And yet, to smile. For an instant, even the Regent of the Abyss forgot his own power.
Then, a presence cut the silence. Without sound, without warning. Like a ghost—like a Shinobi.
— You are finished, Hazau.
The voice cut through the air, cold and laden with disdain. Dan, Stella, and Amara froze. The weight of the presence made the air almost solid. Tekio turned slowly, his eyes boring into that being who, after greeting Hazau, turned to him with the same deadly calm.
The rotten, black smile of corruption. Dante.
And there he was, in the body of their dear friend, Akira. The sight pierced everyone's chests like invisible blades.
Dante rose slowly, his body relaxed, his smile provocative. Tekio did not wait. He advanced like a crimson lightning bolt, the ground trembling under his steps. But Dante merely raised his hands, redirecting the attack with deadly elegance—and Tekio was thrown back, hitting the wall with force, blood streaming down his forehead.
— Not bad... you've grown a bit, boy — said Dante, his voice laden with sarcasm.
Amara felt hatred boil in her veins. The man who had taken everything from her was there, mocking their suffering, using Akira's body. Dan and Stella trembled, but tried to recompose themselves. Hatred hung in the air—and Dante absorbed it, smiling, delighting in every particle of it.
— Kill him, Dante! — Hazau roared, sitting in his own blood. — This boy is a problem! A mistake of creation! Finish him, now!
Dante turned, unhurried. Eyes half-closed, expression neutral and cold.
— I will kill Tekio... and all of them — he said. — But first... I need something.
The atmosphere became suffocating. The ground seemed to vibrate, the walls echoed. Dante's presence, once suppressed by the Shinobi art inherited from Akira, was now fully unleashed, crushing the air with the force of imminent death.
He stared at Hazau, boredom and contempt impregnating every word:
— I expected you to be capable of handling mere children, Hazau. But not even all the power of the Abyss was a match... pathetic.
Hazau tried to protest:
— It was Tekio! He... he severed the connections!
But Dante merely smiled. The empty, merciless gaze confirmed what Hazau feared:
— You were observing, weren't you? Then why didn't you help? What are you plotting, damn you?
Without an answer, Dante turned to Tekio's group. Concentrating energy at his fingertips, the black claws of flame began to swirl in the air—the same attack that had once incapacitated Tekio. The energy formed unpredictable trajectories, aiming for tendons, joints, throats, hearts. A dance of pure destruction.
And then hell descended.
Dan and Stella leaped forward, trying to protect Tekio and Amara. The claws collided with flames and light in a deafening roar. An explosion of black flames burst across the field, throwing everyone back. Dust and smoke covered the field, making everything unrecognizable.
Hazau looked at Dante, wordless, only distrust and fear. Finally, he murmured, swallowing blood:
— Humans... so docile... — his voice failed, remembering Tekio and the friends. — But so sneaky... and cruel. — He murmured, looking at the human demon before him.
The contrast was notable.
Dante smiled, wide, monstrous.
— Now it's just us, Hazau — he said, his voice reverberating through the void like thunder. — Veil of the Abyss.
The air seemed to compress. Every being present felt the weight of Dante's presence, and all knew that, in that instant, he was plotting something dangerous and lethal.
To be continued…
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------