The forest roared.
Magic scorched the sky above the Northern Hollow, splitting trees and tearing through the stone circle like divine judgment. Sirius Wolverine moved through chaos, his coat torn, his face bloodied, but his eyes—his eyes were burning with purpose.
Athena was below. Buried beneath the ruins. Her life-force pulsing, weak and rhythmic, tethered to some ancient mechanism sealed under the stones. Sirius felt it in his marrow.
But between him and the professor stood the Fingers of the Night.
Reave, the Sixth Finger, hurled a nova of searing flame that swallowed half the clearing. Sirius threw up a sigil wall, but the impact forced him to his knees.
Lira, the Eighth, drifted above like a wraith, singing verses of decay that made the air tremble and the trees weep.
Crow charged next, a tower of living shadow and metal. His fists broke through rock like it was paper.
And at the center of it all stood Fourth Finger, composed, unreadable. Her echo gauntlets shimmered with mirrored light, hungry to mimic and annihilate.
Rurie ducked under a blast, rolling toward Sirius.
"We're running out of time!" she shouted, blood trickling from her temple.
Sirius snarled. "Then we cut time in half."
She smirked through the pain. "Say the words."
Sirius took a breath. The spell was ancient. Forbidden. A pact sealed in a dream, long before either of them understood what it would mean.
His hand gripped hers.
"Rurie. Shift."
She didn't hesitate.
Her body cracked with purple flame as sigils unfurled across her skin. Runes etched into her soul activated with a hum that bent the air. Then she vanished—not as death, but as transcendence.
In a burst of searing light, Rurie became steel—her body compressed, condensed, twisted into an obsidian-forged sword with violet veins. Floating, humming, alive.
The blade flew to Sirius's hand.
The moment he touched her, the world slowed.
Everything faded—flames, screams, pressure—and for a heartbeat, there was only him and the soul-bound blade that pulsed with Rurie's spirit.
"Let's kill them all," she whispered inside his mind.
Sirius moved.
He flashed forward, appearing behind Reave in an instant. One slash—clean, pure—split through flame and flesh alike. Reave didn't even have time to scream. His body collapsed, twitching, unconscious or worse.
Lira sang louder, panicked.
Sirius didn't stop.
He leapt into the air, twisting, and unleashed a sweeping arc of violet energy from the blade. It sliced through Lira's spectral form, disrupting her spell. She screamed, recoiling into mist and vanishing.
Crow lunged with a roar.
Sirius met him head-on.
Their clash split the ground. Claws met cursed steel. Sirius struck once, twice, thrice—every swing of the Rurie-blade carved deeper into the shadow-armor that wrapped the brute. The final blow sent Crow flying backward into a tree, the impact snapping it like a matchstick.
Only one remained.
Fourth Finger.
She stood unmoved. Calm. Calculating.
"You've bonded with the Soulblade," she said. "Interesting. You're still unworthy."
Sirius pointed the blade at her. "We'll see."
The Fourth Finger raised her hands.
Ten echo sigils bloomed around her in a spiral formation—exact replicas of Sirius's earlier slashes. She snapped her fingers.
The sigils attacked.
The sky became a storm of copied strikes, violet arcs and black-fire lashes that mimicked Rurie's style perfectly.
Sirius slashed through the first wave. Danced through the second. But they kept multiplying. A fractal assault—his own swordplay twisted and sent back at him with deadly precision.
He growled, backpedaling, blade clashing with the perfect distortions of his own techniques.
"She's copying me," Rurie said inside his mind. "She's copying us."
"She'll make a mistake."
"No. We will."
And then, Sirius faltered.
One mirrored slash cut deep into his side, and another shattered the stone beneath his feet. He staggered. Blood splattered the ground.
The Fourth Finger walked toward him slowly.
"You never understood, Sirius Wolverine," she said coldly. "Power isn't what you carry. It's what you control. You've always let yours leak."
Sirius fell to one knee.
Around him, the remaining Fingers began to re-emerge from shadow, rallied by her confidence.
"You should've died in Eltavar. Just like the rest."
She raised her hand for the final spell.
And that was when something inside him snapped.
Not rage.
Not desperation.
Release.
The seal broke.
The darkness inside Sirius—his true inheritance—flooded to the surface.
The black flame.
It erupted from his chest in a silent explosion, swallowing light. The clearing dimmed. The sky itself recoiled. Even the other Fingers stumbled back, shielding their faces as the air turned cold, empty, wrong.
Sirius stood.
But he was no longer the same.
The whites of his eyes had gone black, and from his shoulders extended wisps of formless shadow that flickered like wings torn from a dying god.
The Rurie-blade pulsed, nearly overwhelmed. "Sirius—what is this?!"
He didn't answer.
He moved.
Faster than thought.
One moment, he was still.
The next, he was behind the Fourth Finger.
His strike was nearly invisible. No flash. No sound. Just absence—a voidline that carved through her barrier, through her echo spells, through her control.
The Fourth Finger screamed as her gauntlets shattered into dust, her left arm split open by the sheer weight of null-space.
"WHAT DID YOU UNLEASH?" she shrieked, falling back.
Sirius didn't stop.
Every step he took burned the earth. The divine darkness didn't just destroy—it devoured. A force from before light, before time.
Crow charged again. Sirius didn't even face him. A pulse of dark will exploded outward, disintegrating Crow's armor and sending him tumbling, unconscious.
Reave's body twitched—he was crawling away now, suddenly aware he had no place in this battlefield.
Lira was gone, disappeared into wind.
Only the Fourth remained.
She was panting, her pride stripped away. Her face was pale. Blood coated her.
Sirius stood over her, blade pointed downward.
He could end it now.
But Athena—Athena needed him.
Rurie's voice, strained but calm, echoed in his thoughts. "We got her. Let her live. For now."
Sirius's grip trembled. The darkness whispered: Kill. End. Break.
But he pulled back.
The black flames around him shrank, dimmed, and retracted—leaving only scorched ground in their wake. His form returned to normal, though his eyes still held a sliver of the void.
He turned.
Athena was floating—barely alive, bound in glowing chains powered by the now-cracked stone circle.
He reached her, slicing through the runes with a quiet command.
The chains shattered.
She fell.
He caught her.
Her breathing was shallow. Her eyes fluttered open.
"Sirius...?"
"I'm here," he whispered, kneeling with her in his arms. "We're done. You're safe."
Behind him, the Fourth Finger disappeared into shadow, limping away in silence.
The battle was over.
But the cost was heavy.
Rurie reformed beside him, her body flickering into solid shape. She was exhausted, pale, trembling. But she knelt beside Sirius and Athena, pressing a hand to Athena's chest, pouring stabilizing magic into her.
"She'll live," she said softly. "Barely."
Sirius exhaled.
Then he looked at his hands.
Still black-stained. Still trembling with the memory of that power.
"What… was that?" Rurie asked, staring at him, voice uncertain.
Sirius didn't speak for a long time.
Then:
"My magic… it's not light. It's not fire. It's not elemental."
Rurie nodded slowly.
"It's divine," he continued. "But not like theirs. It's something older."
He looked up at the scorched sky.
"It's what came before the gods."