Greed rose like a bad memory. Kariya, somewhere in the debris, was bleeding out but breathing. And then she reassembled herself.
Kariya's eyes found the scene, and she felt a heat surge up the spine of her figure. Around her, the Echo shimmered, no longer an afterthought but a plan that had been executed with cold mathematics. The clone shimmered, winked, and the real form shifted; the Echo folded itself into her and, like sleight of hand, they switched corporeal roles. Where the body that had been impaled now was a shade, flickering with the afterimage of pain, the other, her living self, was whole in the place where earlier the spear had driven.
She punched Greed in the face. Her fist carried the Truewound this time, the concentrated tooth of her gift, and it landed with a volcanic sound. Greed rocked back, stunned for the first time by a bruise that wasn't easily cleaned or soaked up. The taste of oil and copper filled his mouth.
Something else struck the field: a serpent of flame, bright as a judged sunset, ripped through Greed with a force that felt like tectonics. It shoved into him like a plumbing failure in a building the size of a world. Ronan stepped through the portal, flame like a blade in his hands, and the battlefield gasp-heard-'round the ring broke like a held breath.
Marielle shattered her ice dome and screamed, relief and fury high in her voice. "Lucien! Ronan! You're back!" she bellowed, and the three exhaled at once into a single plan.
I ground my jaw. "We celebrate later!" I said, voice like stone. "I'll take Hels with Marielle!" I slid right, away from Verne, eyes hard. "Ronan, Verne, and Kariya take Greed! Don't let them adapt!"
Ronan nodded, flames licking his palms. Verne, still shaky but burning with guilt like a second fire, tightened his shields and rushed forward as the three of them converged on Greed.
Greed, wobbling but not lost, found himself between two faiths: the old, brutal hunger, and the joined force of those who would not be swallowed quietly. He sneered, teeth catching in the corner of his mouth as the field closed on him again, and the surge of dopamine, the terrible, growing rush demons fed on when the fight was good, rose in his chest like a crown.
Marielle nodded with an absence of ceremony. She sent Spirit into us like bread: with a pulse, and a refill. Energy threaded into my limbs and lit my muscles once more.
I moved like an apology in motion. I patched my breath to the fight. Marielle and I stepped together at Hels, our blades meeting a rhythm so old it felt like wind. For all my speed, I drew the demon's attention; Marielle played the second to that song line, water slipping through metal. Teasing Hels, I flipped a line of words at him.
"Beautiful trap you set," I said. "Almost had me on a string."
Hels smiled with the mouth of a man who never had to sleep. "A hen should thank the farmer for every day she lives," He offered, venomed and simple. Then we were teeth and steel again.
Hels moved like hunger given legs. He did not use the full measure of demonic trickery; he did not need to. He let the sport do the work for him.
His rapier flashed. I felt its point and slid under, slashing upward; I found a nick on Hels. Marielle joined in, and pure blades carved across the demon like two hands trying to lift him from the earth. Hels pulled a parrying dagger free to use both hands, and the fight multiplied.
"You lucky girl," Greed from across the battleground purred, amusement dripping from every syllable. "Blessed with tricks like your Echo. So useful. So entertaining."
"Shut up," Kariya spat. Her voice is jagged, but it's a weapon. The right arm still burned under raw skin, and she tasted iron on her tongue. She knew what people expected from her, fury, flashes, the show, but she couldn't let emotion ruin the calculus. Not now.
She and Ronan moved together like two parts of a machine. Ronan's flame-katana hummed warm and vicious in his hands; Kariya's Phantom Threads Here Echo is ready to split, and the Truewound slithering under her skin is coiled like a snare. They dashed, and Greed answered with a blink of posture, and then a shield folded up around him: gold, perfect, a sun-smear of defense that breathed light.
Ronan rocketed forward, fire-sword arcing like commitment. He slammed into the shield and squinted; the flame bit, but the plate held. "Damn it," he grunted, feeling the blunt truth: Greed's protections reconstituted in increments, and the gem devoured any power that spilled into the air.
Kariya moved through the gap; Greed's back was the target. She slammed a Truewound into his flank again, a fist of black-and-green law that should have buckled lesser things, and Greed stumbled. For the first time in the duel, the smile left his face. He turned on her, eyes narrower, teeth bared.
Kariya didn't wait. She slid into his blind angle and threads Phantom Threads through the space between his ribs. She punched with Ronan behind her, two impulses hitting the same center, and for the instant they thought they had him, but the gold shield reappeared, and her hand met sunlight-forged steel. Pain fanned up her arm; a smear of her blood marinated the shield's gleam.
It tasted like iron and annoyance. But the crack from earlier, the memory of the crack, hummed in her gut like a promise. She knew, bone-deep, that the thing could fracture. It just takes the right vector.
Verne appeared where Greed's attention flicked, a sentinel arriving like a second wind, and he lunged. Greed blocked with brute angles; his arms met Verne's with a clang. Kariya uppercut into Greed's chin, and the demon launched into the air like an animal thrown by a fist. Dust exploded; stones sang their own little mortuary hymn as he slammed down.
Kariya launched after him. Ronan rocketed up in tandem, the flames at his heels singing like wings. Greed's shield bloomed again, an automatic reflex that ate space and time, and Kariya slammed into it first. The gold tastes like nothing on her fist; it is sound and silence and wrong.
Greed turned to Ronan, face-to-face, the spark and the hunger measuring each other. Greed wound his wrist for the blade-stab.
Ronan didn't breathe. He focuses between the eyes, that narrow, impossible center. He fired a spiritual bullet, a second skill that flares like a cry from the place behind his brow. The beam tore through the air and carved a thin white hole in Greed's wrist. Greed jerked back as though the jewel itself had been punctured.
"Die a thousand times, Greed." Ronan's katana sliced the air in a clean arc. Greed summoned his golden shield, but Kariya appeared behind him, slamming her fist into the shield once more. The blade caught Greed horizontally, a blade that severs tide and bone. The demon's torso cleaved; his body fell in two, flesh smoking, and for a mad, brief second, their triumph feels like a bell ringing.
The field went quiet for the breath it took to notice dust move.
Spirit moted, Ronan's flame-ash and Kariya's purple threads, whirled, attracted by the void. They gathered, glittering and obedient, and then began to descend in an almost tender choreography. Light inverted into a shape, and Kariya's mind froze as the dust refocused, the glowing powder knitting flesh like embroidery. Where Greed's corpse hit stone, a new figure stumbled up, gasping, blinking, Greed, restored, laughing as if the ground had taught him the best jokes.
"This isn't fun," he sighed, flicked hair from his forehead, and smiled that malicious, hungry smile. Dopamine floods him, the battle high. He dashed at them like a spear made of shadow.
Kariya felt the tilt in the air: something fundamental about the fight is cheating. They have just learned why airborne energy is a trap. Greed's gem is a vacuum for spirit in the atmosphere; anything poured into the open only fattens him. The particles that reassembled him were proof. They had given him a resurrection.
"We can't feed him the air," Kariya said, short and sharp, breath cutting. "Stop putting energy into the atmosphere."
Ronan's face hardened. He throttles his flame back, pulls the heat inward until it changes character, from pyromancy into raw augury of muscle, strengthening tendons and coiling his katana strike with literal weight instead of loose, showy flame.
Kariya killed the spark in her threads; the purple lightning doesn't leap into space. Instead, it hums close, a powered coil around her tendons. She used the Echo to augment her kinetic output rather than throw static into the world. Her split was not a showy clone anymore; it was now a body-bend used to reframe direction.
Greed thrust his arm blade at Kariya, a spear-slice of dark metal. She grabbed the shaft, feeling the pulse of something alive and wrong under the surface. He counterstruck, the other arm hammered down toward her head.
Ronan lunges, a foot smashing into Greed's ribs. The demon went skidding for dozens of meters on his side and rights himself in a vile, practiced way. Kariya augmented her legs with a taut violet aura and closed the gap like a coiled spring. Greed tried to stab, Kariya was inches above ground with a quick flip, and she split into two: the Echo dropped one angle while the real Kariya became the other. The move buys her time and space; Greed's blade rips through ghost and air.
Ronan reappears behind the ghostspace, and his fist slams into Greed's jaw. He knocks the demon back; Greed lands and finds the world is not a mirror; it resists. He smiles, a little less sure now.
Greed spread his arms like an altar and clapped in front of him. A shockwave detonated, wind that wanted to be teeth, and it slammed into Ronan and Kariya. Verne is a step late to the geometry, and for an instant, they thought the pulse would fracture them.
Verne threw aegis shields around them like a living barricade: two plates, a pair, light knitted into stops. The shockwave hit and rolled off. The shields throbbed and ticked like a living thing startled. They held, and Ronan breathed a raw laugh for a second.
Kariya threaded her Phantom Threads again, part of the combo; the echo went wide, hitting Greed's side while she tries to pin and rake. He dodged, devilish machine, and maneuvered between them with a sinusoidal grace. His hand swept, and a slash of void arced toward their defenses. It hit Verne's aegis, and the sound of it breaking was a white, metallic scream. The shields shattered into sparking fragments; they slammed into the ground like broken stars. Verne's face was a map of disbelief: the shields were now back on a cooldown.
"No—" Verne hissed, the word a prayer and a threat.
Kariya pivoted, silent calculation running like water in her skull. Phantom Threads struck again; the echo blitzed the shield from the other side. Greed's reflexes reappeared: the golden membrane blinked into existence and swallowed the echo's strike like a beast swallowing a song. Ronan moved in, staff snapping a wide arc and connecting with Greed's stomach. The force is true and blunt; it pushed him. Kariya banged into the shield and landed an impact that sounded like a gun.
It broke.
Her fist punched through the golden membrane, and it fractured, splintering away in a chime. Greed staggered like a puppet whose strings were jerked; for once, he was truly staggered.
Kariya and the Echo synchronized and hammered into him. Two punches in the stomach, a double impact that sent Greed flying. Stone erupted where he landed. They followed. Kariya charged her Truewound, feeling its terrible countdown: one second to full bloom. Her lungs counted the heartbeats.
Greed smiled, and then the world sprinkled little knives. Tiny black blades appeared, each etched with runes. They leaped like insects, a swarm of little death. Kariya saw them functionally, an engineer seeing a wiring hazard. She and Verne dodged, and Ronan turned his body into a wind that catches some blades and detours them. He took one in the shoulder, a white-hot sting that he covered with a curse and a howl, but the strike didn't stop his motion.
Kariya tasted the warmth of her Truewound, wanting completion. Half a second. Another half and it would be the meat of the damage.
"Hold him!" she barked, voice a snapped wire.
"On it!" Ronan roared back, heat coiling like a wound. Verne hunted for a seam.
Greed, recovered enough to laugh, watched the trio with the serenity of someone who knew the answer to life and how to keep it. His gem pulsed blackly as his mouth curved into that patient grin. The battlefield felt like a coin balanced on its edge; they all knew who the coin favored if anyone dropped a single soul into the air.
Kariya breathed the moment in, calculation, timing, muscle memory, and the echo of the earlier crack in the shield vibrated in the back of her mind. They have learned how he ate the skies; they have learned to bite into his seams. They are bruised, but they are not yet broken.
She thought, ragged and hot and bright: Keep it close. Burn from the inside. Teeth, not breath.
Greed snarled, and the fight folded into motion again — a map re-drawn in blood and lightning and the stubborn hard geometry of people who refuse the obvious end.
Kariya saw it before anyone else: Ronan's eyes went white, he sank to his knees, a siphon curled from Ronan's golden orange spirit and ran straight to greed. It was a drain. The stolen dagger that lodged in Ronan's shoulder had been a siphon, and greed was feeding off of him.
Kariya could not watch his soul be sucked away. She moved like a meteor of courage.
"Ronan!" She cried and left the protection of Verne's aegis. She tore forward and, with claws of spirit that flamed like truth, she did a thing no one expected: she tore Greed's right hand clean from its socket. Her Truewound Claws made the wound honest and final. Greed's hand flew, a thrown planet of ruin.
Greed did not scream. He smiled in the way of coinage.
"You think ripping a glove off a god will do anything?" He said, lifting his spare hand to Kariya's face, "Have you ever heard of the absolute currency? Destruction energy?" The void flashed then, not a beam but a smear of night that took and burned. The flash found Kariya and should have matched her existence with a void scar. But something moved farther than the dead thing: Ronan pushed in between, as if a man could be a wall.
Kariya flew to the ground as a cloud of smoke rose. Waving clear her vision, her eyes lay upon a horrible view. What was left of Ronan answered that physics with a terrible surrender. The beam struck him. For a single impossible second, he remained upright, the right side of him was a statue of bone and ruin, his head was gone as if someone had carved him in motion and not finished the sculpting. Then the body collapsed. The hall was filled with screaming.
Greed's laugh came out slow and pleased. He picked his hand up, and with a trick like a magician and a theft that felt obscene, cupped his face and let a shadow mist unfurl over it. Where the mist cleared, a face had changed: hair shorter, eyes different, features twisted into an imitation. Greed had stolen not only power but persona. He wore Ronan's face like a souvenir.
Kariya, coughing dust, spat words that were blood and denial. "You bastard!" She said. "You can't take him. You can't—"
Greed only smiled more softly and turned back into the fun of the battle.