Mist clung to the ruined clearing like old breath. Trees leaned inward, bark ripped and blackened, roots clawing up through churned soil. Minerva lay beneath one such root-tangle, pale, breath steady under Lila's palm. Aria stood in front of them with her shoulders squared, sparks crawling her forearms. Kai rolled his wrists once, then set his staff across his back—hands empty, eyes bright.
The scroll spun once in Si Lung's fingers and came to rest between two knuckles. He looked almost bored, like a street fighter dangling a coin. "If you can't protect it," he said, "you don't deserve it."
Kai didn't waste a word. "Lila—stay with her."
"I'm not moving," Lila said, voice tight. Her water aura slipped into Minerva, cool as river silk. The pulse evened. Lila released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and dragged her gaze back up. Two squads. One prize. No exits that weren't teeth.
Rin stepped forward and drew Tetsuba without the slightest scrape. The blade's curve drank the light. His right eye ringed itself in faint red: the Viatra, Chun's cursed sight. On the other side of the clearing, Urahara flexed his fingers and a square of light clicked into place over his palm. James Vonn—gold chain glinting under his trainee uniform—popped a beat with his tongue that made dust shiver off a stump. Sidney stood a little behind Urahara, sleeves clutched to her chest—eyes watery, breath small. A tremble ran through her, then her pupils narrowed to pinpoints, and the tremble stopped.
Two squads. Two rhythms.
"Watch her," Kai repeated to Lila, then lifted his hands.
"Show me you're worth the chase," Si said, stowing the scroll at his sash.
They moved at the same time. The clearing snapped awake.
Rin's first cut—Kairo Style: Petal Draw—split Vonn's opening volley of pebbled bullets as if momentum had seams, not mass. Urahara patched with a light panel at Rin's hip; the blade slid off at an angle. Rin flowed with it and stepped into a second cut that aimed not at light but at the invisible point holding Urahara's tiny lattice together.
The net buckled. Urahara's expression didn't change, but his eyes did. He'd mapped a dozen movement trees; Rin chopped through the trunk.
"Two on one," Vonn called, grinning easily. His beat settled in—boom, ksshh—low hum prickling under it. "Dance with us, ghost."
Rin didn't look at him. "Lead better."
Vonn's brows lifted. "Okay." The bassline thickened; each kick hardened dirt under Rin's feet by a hair, just enough to steal a step if you weren't counting. Vonn was counting. Urahara flicked a new charm; a thin ring of light formed under Rin's boots.
Rin did something impolite. He slid Tetsuba back into its sheath.
Urahara lunged with a binding tag. Vonn loaded a drop heavy enough to turn shins to glass. Sidney's breath drew in; mist thickened at the edges.
Rin's thumb flicked. The blade left and returned.
Kairo Style: Moon Draw.
One anchor in the ring winked out. The circle died. The sleep-curtain Sidney had been calling slid along dirt instead of around a throat, and Vonn's bass drop slammed into nothing so hard his teeth clicked.
"Mark the draw," Urahara said mildly. "He deletes locks."
"Copy," Vonn said, shaking out his wrists and grinning wider. "We go wide."
They did. Urahara refracted himself into three clean copies and a blur; Vonn shifted tempo, laying a subsonic hum that gnawed breath on the off-beats Rin had used.
The next volley found meat—just a scratch across Rin's shoulder, but blood all the same. Vonn tapped his chest twice, and the sound popped like a whip. "Gotcha."
Rin's red ring brightened a shade. He didn't look angry. He looked awake.
Aria pushed into Sidney's fog, and the forest fell away.
Tiles gleamed under bare feet—cold, perfect, hateful. Frostglass masks stared from a ring of braziers that burned with fire and ice at once. He stood in the center of it all in a white coat with a straight collar and a face that never forgot how to judge.
"Artemis," Aria said, voice low, and hated herself for how small it sounded.
"You dishonor your bloodline," her father's voice replied, each word a clean incision. "You mistake noise for flame."
"I'm not done," she said, and the sparks that had skittered along her skin in the clearing crawled like molasses here, thick and reluctant.
"You were never chosen. Some blood runs cold. Yours never ran at all."
Sidney's voice threaded through the courtyard—soft, pleasant. "Let it hurt. Pain gives the dream a spine."
Aria's jaw shook. She wanted to launch herself at the phantom and break every tooth in his mouth, and she could not lift her foot.
In the clearing, Sidney's real body stood very still, eyes half-lidded, one hand extended, palm up like she was catching rain. Lila had an angle on her—a sliver of profile through roots. The fog eddied around Aria like curtains closing.
A red ring burned through it.
Rin didn't even look in Aria's direction; his head tipped a fraction, and the ring around his right iris widened into a band of ember.
"Genmugan," he said, and the word barely left his mouth.
The courtyard shattered. Masks fell to glass dust. The man in the white coat vaporized into smoke. Sidney cried out once and folded, breath seizing as her own weave curled back on her like ribs turned inward. She didn't fall asleep; she lost—the difference mattered.
Aria crashed back to her knees in mud. The breath she'd lost came roaring home—hot, shamed, furious, free. She swiped tears off her cheeks with the back of her wrist and stood on legs that felt real again, sparks snapping fast and bright.
"Not real," she said through her teeth. "Not him. Not anymore."
Sidney stared mindlessly up into branches, breath shallow. The first person who looked toward her was not Urahara, not Vonn, but Lila from under the roots, hand half-raised like she might throw a shield and half-raised like she might throw a blanket.
"Don't," Aria said without looking back. "I've got her lane, you've got Minerva."
"I can do both," Lila muttered, but she pulled her hand back to Minerva's sternum, water aura settling again into a steady tide.
Si Lung's expression didn't change when Rin broke the dream. He didn't look. He was watching Kai. There are moments even in a fight where everything slows—not because magic bends time, but because both bodies are honest for a beat and honesty is rare.
They met in that honesty. Si's Tiger Fang Intercept popped twice off Kai's guard, heel shaving angle; Kai let the line ride up his wrist bone and answered with Bodhi Palm up the arm—five quick pulses that taught nerves how to listen.
Si grunted, planted, and whipped a shin through the air—Dragon Whip Kick—the sound like a sail cracking. Kai bent with it and collapsed the distance with a Hanuman Step, stamping the earth and letting the Surya Spiral catch up to his spine, torque seeking a root to rip. Mountain Heart Breath solidified Si's core; the uproot missed by the width of a rib. Si's elbow dropped like a comet. Kai caught with clasped hands, rolled into his space, and touched three stars into the ribs that had held a breath too long.
"WA-TAAAAH!" Si barked, grinning, and vanished in a curve of Serpent Weave to reappear at Kai's blind side with Tempest Heel dropping like a guillotine. Kai caught on the forearm, boots cutting a crescent in the loam. Enlightened Senses shifted his perception a notch to the side; the air felt granular for a heartbeat. He pivoted around the planted leg and pressed Agni Mudra into the lat, not to hurt, but to ruin angles.
They separated and smiled because both had meant to do something the other had already read.
Rin bled a thin line down his bicep now. Urahara's light had learned him; Vonn's rhythm had mapped the way he liked to step. The following construct didn't come from in front or behind; it rose under him—light lines reenforcing dirt with an alchemical sheen. Vonn's sub-bass pushed just as Urahara tilted a prism, and for two counts Rin stood where someone else had decided he should.
That was when the blood vessel in his right eye popped. It didn't gout; it bled slow, then faster, then the white flooded red until the iris looked like a coal in a bed of ember.
The air sharpened.
Urahara stopped moving for a beat—not in fear or fatigue, but because a math problem had just changed variables without warning. Vonn's bass hiccupped. Sidney, still on the ground, flinched toward the sound like a person who had lived too long with a monster at the door.
Stage Two—Shōen no Me.
The Viatra was never just hawk sight. At the first stage, it reads momentum. At the second, it reads will—the way a trap wants to lock, the hinge a lie swings on, the silence hiding inside a drum. Rin's blade had weight; his gaze had more.
He stepped. Not fast; inevitable. The first cut didn't aim at Urahara's copy; it aimed at a gap the copy would need to move through if it wanted to strike. The copy died before it existed. The second cut didn't aim at sound; it traced a hairline seam in the wave itself and split it. Silence hit the clearing like weather.
"Not possible," Vonn breathed. "He cut—sound."
Urahara's hands moved faster. He wasn't panicking; he was iterating. Five charms flared and connected in a pentagon; plates of light folded along the lines into a rotating halo. It wasn't a shield. It was a lens that would bend the next strike back into its owner.
Rin swung anyway.
The plate caught and turned—and Tetsuba's edge was somewhere else when the light finished its trick. Urahara's hand opened and closed on air. He felt, for the first time, the sensation of a plan being removed from his fingers while he still held it.
"You're wasting motion," Rin said, voice almost curious. "Every wasted motion is a death."
He didn't mean it theatrically. He meant it like a blacksmith telling you to stop lifting your elbow in a way that'll ruin your shoulder in five years.
Vonn's jaw set. He wasn't the type to quit in a corner. "We tighten," he said. He bit off a roll of hi-hats and let it run under his breath while the bass laid big squares. The ground took the shape of his rhythm. "Superstar mode."
Urahara lifted one hand, and the halo transformed into a series of mirrors. Rin's reflection multiplied; a dozen Rins came in from a dozen angles and for a heartbeat even the Viatra wanted to choose.
Sidney twitched on the ground, rolling onto one side. Her eyes were unfocused, but she still heard that tone in Vonn's voice and moaned, "Don't."
Aria planted her feet between Sidney and anyone with a weapon and said to no one in particular, "Don't."
Lila whispered, "Please," and didn't specify whether she meant the forest, god, or a grandmother who once told her a story about boys with red eyes that burned their futures looking at the wrong thing.
Rin lowered his chin a fraction. The red didn't blaze now; it hummed. He stripped aura signatures like clothes off a rack. Eleven lies. Two truths.
He stepped into the angle between them and cut once at the illusion that had to replace the man he wanted and once through the sound Vonn had built to make that illusion feel like weight. Light shattered. Silence boomed. Urahara's prism cracked like ice and shattered into pieces. Vonn hissed as a shallow cut bouqueted on his forearm and stole the heft from his next clap.
Urahara's face finally changed. Not fear. Acceptance. He tracked Sidney on the ground, tracked Lila's blue glow, tracked Minerva's steady chest, tracked Aria's stance, and weighed the moment against whatever came next.
"Si," he said. "Give it up."
Si didn't take his eyes off Kai. You can tell a lot about a person by what they watch when someone says surrender. Si watched the hands, the hips, and the heel that digs at the moment of the step.
"Next time," Si said, and there was no heat in it. He popped his heel once and let his aura bleed off so the ground could stop complaining. He tapped where the scroll had hung at his sash and snorted once. "Don't carry it like a tourist."
"Try keeping it," Kai said, and for a strange instant, they both wanted to laugh like children after a race in the street. The laugh didn't come. There would be more fights. Laughter belonged later.
Si reached, pulled the scroll free, and threw it across the dirt in a small, clean arc. It slid to a stop against Rin's boot. Rin stooped, lifted it, and the red in his eye thinned to a ring again. He didn't wipe the blood. He didn't look at Urahara, Vonn, or Sidney. He pivoted to his people like a compass clicking north.
"Move," he said.
"Wait," Lila said, and the entire forest seemed to look at her because she never said that word like a command. "Sidney's breathing weird, and Minerva's not waking, and Aria looks like—" She didn't finish, because Aria shot her a look that said, brutally, say one more word about me and I will actually cry.
"I'm fine," Aria said, hoarse. Sparks danced anyway. "She's stable?" She jerked her chin at Minerva.
"She's stable," Lila said, sounding like she hoped the forest had to obey grammar.
Rin tucked the scroll into his cloak, eyes still rimmed in red but cooler now. "We're done."
Urahara pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a finger that shook only a little. He didn't argue. "We're done," he echoed and looked down at Sidney. Her lashes fluttered. He crouched, not touching, just near enough to be there when she surfaced. "Breathe," he said—soft in a way that didn't match his coat or his math.
Vonn wiped blood off his arm with the back of his wrist and cracked a tired grin. "Man's a metronome with a razor. Respect."
Si rolled his shoulders, his aura stored, and his humor gone to ground. "Next time," he said to Kai again, without the joke this time. He didn't look at Rin's eye. He didn't need to.
Kai slung Sun across his back, forearms bruised and beginning to sing. He could feel the shape of Si's heel in his bones—the angle, the timing, the joy. "Next time."
A high bough above the clearing held one more pair of eyes, unseen. Crimson aura veiled her outline; the glow it shed ate light instead of giving it.
"So," the watcher murmured, lips quirking. "The Black Phantom's heir. The monk's golden flame. The water girl who hides impact with jokes." She let out a breath that sounded like she already knew the ending and loved it anyway. "The Red Prophet will be very interested."
She turned, and the bough was empty.
The forest exhaled. Minerva's breath met it and didn't falter. Lila let herself sag an inch before she realized Rin was already moving, and she popped back upright on principle.
"Through the center," Kai said, like he'd already chosen this road hours ago. "Then out."
"Through the part where all the beasts are bigger?" Lila said faintly.
"Through the part where all the answers are closer," Rin said. He didn't say, and there was no one herding us. He didn't have to. Urahara heard it anyway.
Aria flexed her fingers, and a small roll of sparks made her knuckles look like they were wearing rings. "I'm not done," she repeated, not to the world or to the man in the white coat or to the girl on the ground or to anyone but herself.
"None of us are," Kai said.
They began to move—Lila easing Minerva into a sling of water that looked like nothing but held like trust; Aria on the right, eyes bright; Kai left, loose but ready; Rin ahead by a step, not because he wanted to be first but because the Viatra drew lines the rest of them couldn't see.
Behind them, Urahara stood and offered Sidney a hand without looking like he cared what anyone thought about it. She took it. Vonn stretched and winced, finding a beat so soft that only he could hear it and followed it out. Si didn't look back.
The clearing they left behind was a map of what each of them believed: panels soldered into dust, sound cut into silence, footmarks that said I will meet you again when I can breathe more than once between obligations. The altar's cracked face didn't watch them as they went. The roots seemed to, a little.
They crossed the line where the last fight's heat ended and the Black Forest's colder breath began. Moss softened. Branches lowered. The path to the center didn't turn so much as accept them.
"Rin," Lila said after a while, because no one else would. "Your eye—how long can you...?"
"Long enough," he said.
"For what?"
"To get us through what matters."
Aria snorted once—not unkind. "You could also try 'I'm fine.'"
He glanced at her. The corner of his mouth did a thing that wasn't quite a smile. "I could."
"Then do it."
"I'm fine."
"Great," Lila said, relieved like a person who knows that was a lie but appreciated the effort. She hitched Minerva closer. "If anyone asks, this is a spa walk."
Kai laughed in a low, surprised way that made Lila's spine ease for the first time all day. "A spa walk," he said, like he was memorizing how that joke sounded in her voice so he could repeat it to himself later when no one was watching.
The forest didn't stop watching. But for a long handful of steps, it didn't push.
They didn't look back.
Somewhere behind them, a light tactician reeled in calculations he would run again tonight by candlelight. A soundmaker tuned bruised ribs to a rhythm he'd turn into a song and pretend was about something else. A dreamcaster held both sides of herself in the same body and remained intact. A fighter who had only his hands to his name flexed them and smiled like someone who finally had an opponent who could hear the same drum.
And ahead—under bigger boughs and older rock—the forest's center waited with whatever it had always meant by mercy.
Team Kai walked toward it with a scroll in a cloak and a warning spent and a thousand unsaid things, and the air around them felt, for the first time in hours, like it could carry words without making them into blades.