The cavern didn't breathe right anymore. Pillars split. Meltwater ran in crooked lines. Yua lay where Ryo set her—back to rock, cloak under her head, a hand placed over the wound to keep pressure.
He stood. Kyōrei waited.
No speeches this time. Just two people with differing ideologies and a room that was done watching.
Ryo rolled his shoulders once. Seishu slipped around bone—tight, clean, small. He set his feet. The blade felt simple in his hand, like it had always been there.
Kyōrei lowered his hood, scar catching pale light. Calm eyes. Blade low.
They moved.
Edge to edge—thin ring, then silence. Dust jumped in a circle around them. Their auras pressed the air into shape. Then they vanished and reappeared, boots scraping, steel talking in short lines.
Left—parry—turn.
Pressure dips—step in—cut to the ribs.
Block—slide—reset.
Clash.
Kyōrei's style: straight lines, no waste. Every step meant something.
Ryo's style: grounded. He let the floor do work. When Kyōrei tried to roll the ground under him, Ryo let it roll and fed it into his next cut.
Kyōrei tested first. He bent the air at Ryo's ankle. Ryo answered with a tight reposte—no flourish—just a clear no. Their edges kissed and broke apart.
"Still a boy," Kyōrei said, flat.
"Still enough," Ryo said, breath even.
They blurred again. Sparks tried, died. The frosting along Ryo's blade ate them as they were born. Kyōrei shaved cloth off Ryo's sleeve. Ryo drew a line on Kyōrei's hood and nicked skin. Neither stepped back.
Gōshin groaned from the shadow, half-frozen, half-burning. Neither looked.
Kyōrei's energy folded the room. Pebbles slid to his side. Stalactites hummed. He pressed in, blade drawing a short J that would open a throat if allowed. Ryo turned the J into a comma and pushed it away with a shoulder bump and a neat wrist.
"Boy of Earth," Kyōrei said, and meant it like a label. "You cling to ground."
"I stand," Ryo said. "You should try it."
Kyōrei smiled with his mouth, not his eyes. He moved. Ryo moved with him. Two shadows cutting lines into dust.
They vanished and clashed in the same heartbeat. Stone cracked. The cavern spat grit into their hair. Step, cut, step, deny. The rhythm got faster. Words got shorter.
"Law," Kyōrei said, steel fast.
"People," Ryo said, steel faster.
"Orders."
"Names."
"Clean deaths."
"Living ones."
Kyōrei feinted high, pressed low, then flipped his energy and tried to pin Ryo's shadow. Ryo set his back heel and let the pin slide into the floor. He fed that into a pivot and skimmed Kyōrei's forearm with his edge. A thin red line spoke for him.
Kyōrei adjusted grip. Respect without compliment. "You learned to stop showing off."
"I never showed off," Ryo said.
"Good. Don't start."
They struck together. The impact ripped a pillar wide. Rock fell. Ryo moved first—fast and plain—catching a slab with the flat of his blade and shunting it away from Yua without looking. Kyōrei watched where Ryo's eyes went and smiled like he'd learned a password.
The cavern gave up. Cracks opened. The ceiling complained loud. A gust of colder air poured through a new break in the wall.
Kyōrei flicked dust from his sleeve. "We finish this under a sky."
Ryo didn't answer. He went.
They cut their way out, steel opening stone. The tunnel flared to daylight—wrong, gray, heavy with ash. Serenia stood where cities go to die: windows punched out, signs torn, a market square drowned in soot. The Maw gate had left a wound like a bite.
The moment Ryo's boots hit street, something changed. Seishu under his feet steadied. The blade felt heavier and better for it. He knew these roads. He'd run them as a kid. He'd bled here. He'd laughed here.
Kyōrei stepped onto Serenia like he'd been waiting to get here all his life. His pressure spread wide and thin, mapping alleys and old routes. He glanced once at the cracked lantern above the ramen stall.
"Your friend." A small tilt of the blade. "He stood here."
Ryo's jaw set. "He still does."
Kyōrei's reply was a cut.
They vanished and collided across the square. Slate tiles leapt. A dead banner ripped loose and flew. Edges flashed, no show. Every clash changed the street. A step here broke a threshold; a parry there shaved a statue's cheek; a miss carved a bench clean in half.
Ryo kept it short. Elbow in, chin down, feet under. He met Kyōrei's speed by refusing to run faster than he could think. When Kyōrei tried to stretch the fight long, Ryo cut it into pieces and ate them.
"Why stand?" Kyōrei asked, voice steady inside a blur.
"So others can," Ryo said.
"How many?"
"As many as I can reach."
Kyōrei folded the air to shove Ryo toward a fallen cart. Ryo put a foot on the cart and used it like a step, coming down with a chop that would ruin anyone with pride. Kyōrei's pride had left years ago; he deflected without care and returned a low cut that tasted ribs. Ryo took the sting, tightened grip, kept moving.
The city answered them. A sign crashed. A cracked bell rolled and rang once, dull. Ash spiraled up on each shockwave and drifted down like dead snow.
They broke a line of stalls. Chopsticks flew. Ryo's blade flicked three from the air without meaning to and lost all three. Kyōrei's eyes flicked to the movement and back. "Hands are honest," he said.
"Good," Ryo said. "Then listen."
He stepped in close, cut short, drove Kyōrei back two paces, and claimed the middle of the square. Not with power. With placement. A boy who knew where the street slanted. A fighter who didn't need the city to love him—only to hold him.
Kyōrei nodded once. "You stand better than you cut."
"Then stop running," Ryo said.
They went quiet. They moved.
Kyōrei drew a thin line that asked to be admired. Ryo refused. He hit the line out of the air and turned it into a bad joke. Kyōrei laughed once, low, not mocking. The next cut came meaner. Ryo's edge met it meaner still, pulled the weight, and laid it down where it couldn't hurt anything he cared about.
They blink-stepped past a fallen arch. Kyōrei drove a thrust at Ryo's throat. Ryo tucked, shaved it away with a neat angle, and grabbed a shard of his own fear, crushed it, and threw it behind him. He didn't need it.
"Do you hate me yet?" Kyōrei asked.
"No."
"Good."
"I don't have time."
Kyōrei's blade flared white where light touched it. Ryo's edge kept its plain color and still shone. They traded—four, five, six cuts that lived and died in a second—and then both halted, heels plowing lines in ash.
Their auras hit and collapsed the air between them. A dust-ring spread out and slapped ruined walls. Windows shattered late. The bell rolled again and rang twice, annoyed.
Kyōrei shook his wrist once and flexed fingers. The nick Ryo put there earlier had found bone. He acknowledged it with a glance and forgot it.
"Your captain will make you choose," Kyōrei said, drawing breath. "He'll call it a mission."
Ryo nodded, small. "I'll make my own."
"And if it costs her?"
"It won't."
"You can't guarantee that."
"I don't need to. I'll be there."
Kyōrei's mouth went flat. "Promises break."
Ryo's stare didn't move. "Not this one."
Kyōrei surged. The square lit with steel. Ryo went with him. They erased distance, re-made it, erased it again. The ground cracked gridlines under their boots. A storefront collapsed. A rain of paper fell—old notices, old sales, the names of people who wouldn't be back to read them.
Cut-high, check. Cut-low, deny. Guard, tap, slip. They attacked with a grace that was ruthless. They were learning each other at speed.
Kyōrei lanced a thrust at Ryo's hip, then kicked at the ankle he'd wanted gone since the cavern. Ryo stepped into the kick and let it buy him a loop around Kyōrei's guard; he snapped his edge up and took fabric near the ribs. Red bloomed. Kyōrei rewarded honest pain by giving a better cut in return—diagonal across Ryo's shoulder, shallow and humiliating. Ryo bore it like a bill and kept going.
"Still a boy," Kyōrei said again, almost fond.
"Still standing," Ryo said.
They broke apart to breathe. The city crackled. The sky sat heavy and gray.
Ryo looked once toward the cavern mouth—toward the patch where Yua lay out of sight. He did it fast and honest. Kyōrei watched the glance land and measured what it cost Ryo to look away.
"You carry too many," Kyōrei said.
"I know."
"You'll drown."
"Then I'll learn to breathe."
Kyōrei didn't argue. He closed the gap with the kind of cut that ends lessons. Ryo took it on the flat and didn't die. He put Kyōrei's blade away from his heart and gave it back to him as a straight answer.
They got louder. Their boots tore trenches. A monument cracked at the knees. A shutter spun like a coin before going still. Vanish, clash, vanish, clash—breath chopped into fast words.
"Law."
"People."
"Chain."
"Hand."
"Honor."
"Her."
Kyōrei hit harder. Ryo hit sharper. The ground shook like an old animal. Even the ash got tired of falling.
They cut a street into two. On the left: the ramen stall, burned out. On the right: the school gate, bent. Ryo set his back to the middle. Kyōrei stood in front. The wind finally found them and pushed ash down the lane.
"Last chance," Kyōrei said. "Follow me. Break clean."
Ryo set the Higanju low, point steady. "I'm not breaking. I'm holding."
Kyōrei's eyes softened in a way that made him look younger and more dangerous at once. "Then hold."
They moved at the same time.
He came with a downward line that would numb both arms. Ryo met it early, before it got heavy, and cut into the wrist. Kyōrei rolled. Their blades slid. The hiss sounded like a fuse.
They stepped back, just one step each.
Silence fell hard. Everything waited.
Ryo lifted his chin a hair. Blood ran, warm and annoying. He ignored it. His eyes didn't shake.
Kyōrei's hood shadowed his scar. Blade at his side. Breath steady.
The city held them in a ruined frame, ash drifting, a bell silent at last.
Two figures. Two edges. One street.
As the city lay in desalination, two blades, two views, but one truth to be decided by the point of a blade.
🌀 End Of Chapter Eleven