Round Two started with glass and blood.
Rin's lungs burned. His shirt hung in ribbons, one sleeve almost gone. A cut at his flank leaked hot down his hip, slow but steady. His fingers throbbed on Yoru Oni's grip.
He popped the Wonder vial from his sash with his thumb, bit the cork, spat it, and drank.
Cold fire slid down his throat. The worst tears along his ribs seized, then began to knit—pain sharpening from "about to split" to "just hold." Blood slowed from pour to seep. His breathing eased a hair.
One dose. That's all you get. Don't waste it.
Across from him, Finn Lancaster uncapped not one but four vials from his belt.
He tossed them back like shots.
Clear. Red. Gold. Ink-dark.
Veins lit under his skin in different colors, chasing each other up his forearms and neck. Aura wind tightened around him, pulling dust into little spirals at his boots. His shoulders broadened with a visible clench of muscle.
"Ahh," Finn exhaled, steam ghosting in the air. "Now we're talking."
The crowd felt the spike. A low wave rolled the bowl.
"Britannia stacking buffs again—"
"He's insane—"
"Look at that wind—"
Up in the Halo tunnel, Aria hissed. "Four? That's stupid."
Kai watched the field, jaw set. "Or desperate."
William, behind them, didn't look away. "Watch his stamina bar. It's not free."
Rin rolled his neck until something cracked back into place. His eyes were already Viatra-red, both irises webbed with thin vermilion lines. The first stage held—edges sharp, world threaded in faint option-lines.
Finn leveled Arthur's Bane with one hand, the big claymore humming in the wind.
"Round two, Black Clan," he said, grin sharp. "Try not to blink."
He moved.
The sound hit a half-beat before the body did. A thunderclap of step and displaced air.
Rin barely got Yoru Oni up.
CLANG.
The thrust hit his guard like a battering ram. The steel impact rang; the wind behind it punched. Dust blew out from their boots in a ring. Rin's arms shook; his heels ploughed twin black gouges backward across the tile.
Then Finn vanished.
No, not vanished—broke angle. Wind wrapped his waist and ankles, flinging him past Rin's line.
"Martial Muti—Galahad Rush."
Claymore flashed from the blind side, a low, ripping cut.
Rin twisted, too slow.
Steel kissed his side. Coat and shirt shredded. A hot line opened under the ribs. Blood sprayed in a red comma.
He bit down on the sound. Let the Viatra eat it.
Fast. Faster than before. Potions + wind—
Finn rode the follow-through up into a spin, boots light, cloak flaring.
"Lancelot Spiral!"
The next cut came down from above, weight and wind stacked.
Rin stepped in instead of back, caught it near the hilt. The impact drove him to one knee. Stone cracked under him, radiating from his kneecap.
His arms jolted. Hands went numb for a breath.
Finn laughed right over him. "Come on, shadow-boy, is this the clan that scared Germania?"
Rin shoved up on sheer will, teeth bared. Viatra lines crawled brighter over the world, reading options—and watching them collapse under Lancaster's speed.
Claymore snapped sideways, flat-first. A backhand like a steel beam.
It tanked Rin across the field.
He hit the Britannian facade shoulder-first. Plaster exploded. Brick groaned. His body went half-through a wall and stuck there, dust showering around him.
The bowl roared.
"That one hurt—"
"RIN—!"
Halo tunnel—Lila slapped the rail. "Ow, that's his bad side—"
Aria stared, fists tight. "Get up, dummy."
Rin peeled himself out of the wall.
Something in his shoulder grated. Blood ran freely again down his side, hot through the half-closed cut the potion had just fixed. His knuckles were scraped raw; Yoru Oni still in his hand.
He dropped to the rubble, boots crunching broken stone. The Britannian side towered over him—gothic pillars, banners, faux-stained glass now cracked like spiderwebs.
Finn was already there.
"Tristan Arc."
Claymore swept in low and rising—a quarter-circle meant to carve the hip and then the ribs. Wind dragged debris along with it, the floor scraping bare where the blade hadn't even touched.
Rin blocked. Barely.
Steel shrieked. The force drove him up the steps of a mock cathedral entrance, each footfall breaking another stone.
His arms burned. The cut at his side sang with every breath.
He's faster. Stronger. And I'm bleeding out.
Finn grinned up at him, hair whipping in the gale his aura threw.
"This is the difference between a pretty little squad schoolboy and a knight of Britannia," he called. "You should have stayed in the tunnel, Black Eyes."
He stepped.
Wind folded around him like a sling.
He was suddenly inside Rin's guard.
The pommel of Arthur's Bane slammed into Rin's jaw. Teeth clicked. White stars burst behind his eyes. Then an elbow followed, digging into his sternum. Air left his lungs in a short, ugly grunt.
Rin staggered.
The next cut was clean and cruel.
"Mordred Fang."
Point-first thrust—no flourish. It traced across his chest, just shallow enough to obey the mercy laws, just deep enough to flood his front in red.
Crowd: half-roar, half-gasp.
Rin's back hit a stone pillar. Blood painted it in a crooked handprint.
His heart hammered. Vision tunneled at the edges.
I'm getting walked down. In front of everyone. Again.
Viatra lines jittered, too bright.
A memory tried to surface—his mother's hand, warm on his hair, whispering, you and your brothers are meant for more than dying in someone else's story—but Finn didn't give him time to see it.
Arthur's Bane crashed in again. Rin slipped just enough; the blade chewed a groove in the pillar instead of his skull. Stone screamed. Dust rained.
Finn didn't even look bothered. The potions sang in his veins, wind Muti polishing every step.
"You're tough, I'll give you that," he said, breath only a little harder. "Let me see those eyes work at real speed, hm?"
Another rush. Rin parried high; wind peeled off the edge and slapped him sideways into the arch. His shoulder lit on fire.
If I keep trading like this, I die. Choose, Rin.
He dropped low, boots skidding on dust. Yoru Oni sat in his hand like it weighed nothing and everything.
The Viatra's vermilion lines crowded the air, mapping out Finn's next five choices.
All of them ended with him on the floor.
His fingers tightened.
"...Fine," he breathed.
He stepped off the straight path.
Soul sank down, deeper than the pain, deeper than the noise, into the cold well he was saving for someone else.
The shadow at his feet thickened.
"Soul Bloom—Kagebana."
The black lotus sigil unfurled under his boots, petals of moving dark rotating in opposite time to the world.
Heat bled out of the air. Colors dulled at the edges. The crowd's roar stretched, thinning into something distant, like sound underwater.
Finn felt it. His grin faltered a millimeter.
"What—"
Rin's aura didn't flare up. It fell in.
It poured into his shadow, into Yoru Oni, into the space just behind his pupils.
Both Viatra irises went from bright blood to deep, liquid garnet. A thin trickle cut down from each lower lid—fresh tears of red.
Stage Two clicked.
Threads snapped tight.
The world slowed.
Finn lunged, potion-boosted, wind-wrapped, a blur to almost anyone else.
To Rin, he was a series of lines.
Here. Here. Not there. Never there.
His shadow rose on the blade.
"Shadow Muti—Kage Lace."
Darkness climbed Yoru Oni's edge like ink up a brush, wrapping the steel in a thin, rippling second skin. The air around the sword bent, just slightly, like heat above a road.
Arthur's Bane came in with another Galahad Rush. Rin tilted his guard a hair and met it.
CLANG.
The sound hit lower—like two bells under water. Sparks flew—but they were weird now, gold and black mixing, skating along the blades and then vanishing into shadow.
Wind slammed off Finn's claymore, looking to shove as before.
It hit the lotus instead.
The petals flexed, drank some of the force, and spat the rest out sideways. Dust sprayed down the steps, carving fresh lines in the stone.
Rin didn't move an inch.
He looked Finn dead in the eyes.
"Round two," he said softly. "For real, this time."
He moved.
Shadow and boy blurred into one line.
Finn swung—Tristan Arc again, adjusted for the new tempo. Rin was already under it, sliding, Yoru Oni kissing the underside of the claymore to turn it.
Steel shrieked. The wind riding the edge tore a gash through the stone railing behind him, blowing a chunk clean skyward. Pebbles rained over the first rows; a few spectators flinched back, laughing breathless.
Rin kept walking forward.
Dark-laced blade flicked.
Finn hissed. A thin red line opened on his thigh, just above the greave. He hadn't seen the cut.
The crowd felt the jump.
"Did he hit him—?"
"What was—"
"Shit, he tagged Lancaster—!"
Rin didn't give the arena time to understand.
He stepped—Shadow Dash, a seam-snap variant of Aria's Valkyrie Dash rewritten in darkness. One frame he was on the step; the next he kinks ninety degrees along a shadow seam and appears on Finn's blind shoulder.
Arthur's Bane whipped around in a gust, fast enough to tear banners loose from their rings.
It met Yoru Oni halfway.
Steel bit shadow-skin—scree—then slid.
Finn's wrists jarred. The angle he wanted stole itself. Rin rode the bleed, blade sliding along, and touched Finn's forearm with a tiny, precise tap.
"Darkpoint."
Nerves lit. Finn's fingers spasmed. His grip nearly slipped.
Pain flashed in his eyes for the first time.
He snapped a kick, shin whistling for Rin's ribs. Rin folded his hip, took it on the meat instead of bone. It hurt. He didn't care.
You bled me. I bled you. Keep moving.
They tore off the steps back into open field, Kagebana petals trailing like a moving sigil beneath Rin. Every footfall cracked a tile. Every clash of steel sheared stone, carved walls, or punched holes in the mock Chun and Britannia skyline.
To the bulk of the crowd, they were blurs now—two streaks, one flickering with pale wind, one dragging a smear of shadow. The only anchors were the explosions of impact: sparks, shockwaves, pieces of arena coughing into the air.
Skybox—Rage leaned forward, eyes gleaming. "Now that's a duel."
Johnny's tone stayed even, but his fingers tapped the rail. "Black Clan eyesight plus Bloom. Finn picked the wrong round for potion greed."
Back on the ground, Finn pushed harder.
Wind screamed up around him, full-body now, streaming his hair and cloak straight back.
"Martial Muti—Gawain Break!"
He came in from above, claymore a chopping guillotine, wind stacked so thick around the edge the air itself looked carved.
Rin stepped in.
Kagebana petals spun faster. His shadow reached up like a hand.
Yoru Oni met the falling blade in a cross-guard.
For a second, it was like watching two trains hit.
The boom hammered the bowl. The Chun towers on one half of the field leaned. The Britannian facade behind them shed stone in big chunks, falling like dead teeth.
Rin's boots dug trenches backwards.
Finn's arms shook—just a little.
He saw it. The first crack.
Rin smiled, blood still sliding from his earlier cuts, Viatra glowing like twin wounds.
"Keep stacking," he said. "I'll still be here when it runs out."
Finn bared his teeth and shoved.
"Don't get cocky, gutter shade!"
He kicked off the locked blades, vaulted, and snapped a spin mid-air, cloaked in wind, angling to come down on Rin's neck.
Rin let Yoru Oni fall from his hand.
Gasps. "He—dropped it—?"
He stepped into the spin, bare hand snapping to Finn's wrist, the other driving up at the pommel.
The claymore flew.
At the same time, Rin's fingers closed on the hilt in open air.
He caught Arthur's Bane.
Finn's eyes went wide. He landed hard