Nanami felt a cold sweat break out across his neck, entirely ignoring the suffocating temperature of the room. The cursed energy rolling off this newcomer was sickening. It was dense, heavy, and undeniably lethal.
This is wrong, Nanami thought, his grip tightening on his weapon until his knuckles turned white. The water curse had vast energy, yes. But it was raw. Unfocused. This thing... this is on a completely different level.
Next to him, Megumi's hands trembled. He forced them up anyway, locking his fingers together to form a shadow puppet. His instincts screamed at him to run. Dagon was a joke compared to this, Megumi realized, his breathing shallow and panicked. Just standing near him feels like my skin is catching fire.
Naobito didn't say a word. The old man just planted his feet wide, shifting his balance to compensate for his missing limb. The casual arrogance he usually carried was entirely gone. It was replaced by the grim, quiet focus of a veteran who knew he was staring absolute death in the face.
Without a single command, all three battered sorcerers dropped into defensive stances.
Jogo finally lifted his head. He didn't yell. He didn't rush them. He just looked at the three humans with a quiet, burning hatred that made the air itself ripple and distort.
"Dagon," the curse muttered, his voice sounding like grinding rocks.
Nanami exhaled a shaky breath, raising his blade to chest height. There was no walking away from this.
...
Ren ducked. A spinning heel sheared the air where his ear had just been, the wind pressure stinging his cheek like a whip.
He didn't pause. Stepping into the opening, Ren drove Nightfall straight at the assassin's sternum.
The scarred face remained entirely slack. Without a flinch, a bare, calloused palm slapped the flat of the Special Grade blade aside. Toji slid smoothly inside Ren's guard. An elbow blurred toward Ren's throat. Ren snapped his free forearm up to meet it.
Bone met bone, the collision shattering the asphalt beneath their boots. They broke apart, only to violently clash again. Ren thrust at a blind spot, but Toji's shoulder was already rolling to deflect it. An instant later, a strike aimed for Ren's temple missed by a fraction of an inch, his muscle memory folding his body backward just in time to save his skull.
Then, the concrete under their feet began to bake.
Even up on the street, Ren tasted it—dry sulfur and burning dust rolling up from the pitch-black subway entrance. A blistering, suffocating heat washed over the pavement, carrying a heavy, sickly pressure that made the air itself vibrate.
Ren's eyes darted toward the stairs.
Toji didn't flinch at the sudden disturbance. His blank eyes only tracked the momentary flicker of Ren's gaze.
A fist slammed into Ren's floating ribs. The impact emptied his lungs instantly and launched him backward. He skidded across the road, heels gouging two long, smoking trenches into the pavement before he finally ground to a halt.
Ren spat a mouthful of copper onto the asphalt. The blistering heat radiating from the subway stairs was impossible to ignore.
"Fuck," he hissed, his grip white-knuckling the hilt of his katana. "This walking volcano always picks the absolute worst time to make an entrance."
He glared at Toji, who was already resetting his stance. Ren's mind scrambled for a way out. Nanami, Megumi, and Naobito were running on fumes. Against Jogo, they wouldn't last five seconds. Ren had to get down there, but the dead assassin blocking his path wasn't going to just let him walk away.
Down in the station, the air was thick enough to choke on. Megumi couldn't even blink; the ambient heat was literally drying out his eyes.
Jogo didn't step forward. The curse simply vanished.
Megumi's breath hitched. He spun around, his shadows warping across the tiles, but he was far too slow. Jogo was already behind them.
The curse raised a single, blackened hand and casually rested his fingers against Nanami's shoulder. The fabric of the Grade 1 sorcerer's suit instantly began to smoke, the edges glowing bright orange as they curled into ash.
Nanami froze. He tried to swing his blunt cleaver, but his muscles were completely spent. Death had already arrived.
Then, the air pressure in the station inverted.
It wasn't a blast of fire or a surge of cursed energy. It was pure, unadulterated kinetic force. A dark blur tore through the heavy air, moving so fast the heat haze snapped out of its way. Just a millisecond before Jogo could ignite his flames, a heavy boot planted squarely into the side of the curse's head.
The impact sounded like a train derailing.
Jogo was ripped away from Nanami. The Disaster Curse went flying across the platform, smashing violently through a row of metal turnstiles before slamming into a thick concrete pillar. The wall cratered inward, burying Jogo under a massive shower of debris.
Megumi stumbled back, throwing an arm up to shield his face from the flying dust. Nanami dropped to one knee, coughing violently as he quickly patted out the burning embers on his shoulder.
Through the settling cloud of crushed rock, the slow, deliberate click of heavy boots echoed across the broken tiles.
Megumi squinted. A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the flickering orange light.
It was Maki.
Her dark uniform was dusted with concrete, her grip locked around the shaft of her polearm. Her cold, furious gaze was fixed on the collapsed pillar across the room.
Her knuckles popped as she squeezed her weapon. The jagged, permanent burn scars beneath her collar seemed to pull tight. The last time she stood in front of this specific curse, he had nearly burned her and Ren alive.
Maki exhaled a sharp, irritated breath, the heavy blade of her polearm scraping against the broken tile.
Maki stopped, and a slow, dark smile spread across her face.
"Well, well, well," Maki said, resting her weapon on her shoulder. "Look who it is. It must be fate that I found you here."
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