The final cards emerged—red, black, shimmering with unstable Essence. His arms opened wide, body trembling with strain.
"DIE—REN KUROSE!"
He hurled them. All of them.
Dozens, hundreds—shaped like fangs, wings, slicing stars. The air around them twisted as Trickstarr unleashed a maelstrom of unlimited slashes, the entire battlefield becoming a blender of diamond-light blades.
SWIP-SWIP-SWIP-SWIP-SWIP—!
Each card cut everything it touched. Street signs, poles, cars, walls—all shredded.
But Ren—
Didn't stop.
He moved through the onslaught, deflecting each strike in a blur of sword arcs and angled dodges, letting the attacks glance off by fractions. His mind was clear. His will was fire.
A single flash through chaos.
And then—
Trickstarr staggered.
Blood burst from his mouth.
The pain from the earlier hits—those impossible criticals—finally caught up.
His knees buckled. His arms dropped.
And in that breathless opening—
Ren vanished.
And appeared.
Above him. Sword raised. The light around him surged—silver flames crackling along the blade's channels. His Essence had reached its peak, his focus absolute.
Trickstarr's wide eyes flicked up—raw with disbelief.
"W-wait—"
Ren stared down through him like light through glass.
"Time to end this," he growled.
Time slowed.
This is it—
Ren roared as he brought the sword down in a final, perfect arc.
The strike carried all of him.
His rage.
His pain.
His vow to protect what still remained.
And it landed.
KA-BOOOOOOOM—
The shockwave didn't just explode. It sank into the earth. It ripped the crater wider in all directions. Pavement rose in fractured slabs. A tower in the distance groaned—and then fell.
The night lit with white fire.
Trickstarr was blasted from the ground, launched across Tokyo's broken battlefield like the very joke he had made of others. His body cut through concrete, twisted steel, and memory. He slammed through what remained of a station overpass and finally fell, unmoving, into a pit of shattered foundations.
His transformation shattered with him.
Cards exploded into the wind like autumn leaves in a storm. His coat was gone. The magic symbols etched into his skin flickered—then died. His half-exposed face bled freely now, a mockery of the proud jester he had been. One eye swollen shut, the other glassy.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't even speak.
Only breathe—shallow, pained gasps.
Ren stood in the center of the crater, sword lowered, smoke trailing from the glowing edge. His legs trembled. But he stood. He still stood.
The silence spoke for him.
It was over.
Minutes passed.
Or maybe only seconds.
Trickstarr, helpless in the rubble, groaned—blood bubbling from his lip. His arm twitched, but he couldn't even lift it. He was in the same state he had once left Ren in—shattered in a pit, motionless, nothing left to give.
Footsteps crunched.
Ren appeared over him, casting a long shadow in the broken light.
Trickstarr looked up through one half-open eye.
"...Here to finish it?" Trickstarr croaked, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. He coughed violently, a wet, sickening sound that echoed across the ruined rooftop. "Do it."
Ren stood still, the wind tousling his blood-matted hair. His sword hung low in his hand, cracked and glowing faintly—its light guttering like the last breath of a dying star.
His chest rose and fell, slow. Tired. He didn't answer immediately.
The city below was quiet. Not peacefully. Not solemnly. Quiet the way a battlefield is quiet once everything that can scream, has.
"…How do I stop it?" Ren finally asked, voice hoarse.
Trickstarr's laugh was jagged, bubbling with blood and madness. "Stop it?" he wheezed. "Look around, Ren Kurose."
He raised a trembling hand, gesturing at the broken skyline.
"It's already stopped."
Ash rained from the sky like snowfall. The giant sakura tree that had once blazed across Tokyo's heart was now a charred skeleton. Roads were split like veins. Cars lay upturned. Homes swallowed by flame or silence. Corpses. Stone. Smoke. The air itself seemed bruised.
"All your fighting. And still—look at it," Trickstarr rasped, baring crimson teeth. "This is what it looks like when it stops."
He coughed again, clutching his ribs. "You did this. You let it happen. Your sensei. His wife too, gone probably. Your parents—oh, right. Already dead."
He leaned forward, spitting red onto the broken cement. His smile widened.
"Everyone that ever got close to you. Already dead."
Ren's fingers closed around the hilt of his sword. Tight. His arms trembled—not from fatigue, but from everything else.
"I know what you want to do," Trickstarr said, voice softening with mock sincerity. "You should do it. Come on, Ren. Be the hero you want to be."
Ren's breath hitched.
He raised the sword—an inch.
Then stopped.
His fingers uncurled, slow. The sword clattered against the stone. A dry, metallic sound that felt heavier than thunder.
Trickstarr flinched. His laughter faltered.
"…What are you doing?" he muttered.
Ren stared down at him, breathing hard. His eyes weren't kind. But they weren't angry, either. They were… tired. Resolved.
"You lost," Ren said quietly.
"What?" Trickstarr blinked.
"You lost." Ren's voice didn't rise. "This—all of this—was supposed to break me. But you failed."
Trickstarr's expression twisted, wounded and furious. His fingers clawed weakly at the shattered ground.
"I hate you," he hissed.
Ren didn't blink.
"I hate that look. That hope. That strength. That goddamn light in your eyes." Trickstarr's voice cracked like splintered glass. "Why won't it just die like everything else?!"
The silence that followed wasn't empty—it was full. Full of ash. Of ghosts. Of everything that couldn't be undone.
Ren didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
And Trickstarr screamed—raw, defiant, broken.
"I HATE YOUUUUUU!"
His voice shattered what little stillness remained. It echoed across the bones of Tokyo—across collapsed steel, scorched earth, and the bleeding sky. It tore through the quiet like a curse.
Then silence again.
Ren stood there—motionless, breath shallow—while Trickstarr lay in a heap among the rubble, coughing blood into dust.
One was standing.
One wasn't.
And that was enough.