The rain lashed down in horizontal sheets, making the courtyard beyond Kazuki's tower a slippery battlefield of crimson and mire. Lightning seamed the sky in strokes of divine wrath, casting all in flashes of stark, strobing light. I hung in limbo, my hellish energies pulsating in sympathetic harmony with the crackle of primal loyalties and treachery. The gaze of Azazel stabbed me like two knives hammered in hellish fire, his lips curling up in that accursed smile that spoke of annihilation lathed in bliss.
"Join me, Lucifer," he breathed, his voice a smooth warmth that cut through the din of rain like a lover's illicit caress. "Or stand by and see them fall—your fragile playthings shattered, reduced to pleading flesh."
The tower rose before us, a glittering shard of glass and steel spearing a tumultuous sky as Kazuki hid in his penthouse paradise, his coward's heart racing like a drumbeat of damnation. But darker agendas were brewing beyond the veil, great gears of destiny turning towards disaster. Akira, battered but unsurrendered, had just landed a crushing blow against Azazel's masked henchman, his katana slashing a diagonal wound across the devil's chest.
The man stumbled back, his cape billowing behind him like shattered wings, but Azazel simply raised a hand, nonchalant as a deity. A wall of dark energy burst from the ground, a writhing wall of blackness that vibrated with hot, wicked power, barring entrance against the tower like a black cloth of night. This twisted energy seethed with dark power, black tendrils writhing like tentacles across its surface, seeking sustenance in the very air.
The masked figure lurched forward, his goat-horned face twisted in agony. He tore the mask off with a grand gesture, his face chiseled by the hard lines of time and suffering—a face that struck like lightning. Honed jawline, eyes that were bottomless pits of malevolence, hair streaked with silver that merely cemented his predatory quality.
It was Kinard - Akira's father.
The man who had fathered him in the twilight of sin, the apparition from his past besmeared with blood and treachery. Yura's breath caught, her muscles coiled like a tightened bowstring, not in alarm but in pure, unadulterated horror—as his face was etched in nightmares, the monster she'd encountered in dark sleep, his caress the poison that still coursed in her very blood.
Akira's world broke apart in an instant.
"Dad?"
His legs gave away, his body buckling into the wet ground as he punched into the wet soil, with rain splashing into the mix with the tears he fought not to let fall. "H-how is this possible?! You. You're dead! You're buried beneath the ash of your own hell!" His massive shoulders rolled with each heavy breath as his ripped T-shirt had him looking like he had been ravaged by wild beasts, with rain dripping paths across his bare flesh like caressing fingers.
Kinard tipped his head, a wolfish grin spreading from the corner of his mouth, eyes aglow with dark mirth. He raked Akira from head to toe, sizing him up like a pampered piece of merchandise on auction block, his rough voice slithering like ice down the spines of those within his domain, laced with fatherly mockery and something much darker— possession.
He zeroed in on Yura next, his eyes roving over her curves hungrily, the blade of his dagger jutting accusingly, stabbing at her stomach. "Still holding on to my boy like some needy prostitute, bitch? I thought I had raised you better than to part your legs for revenge?"
Yura's face went white, but her eyes flared with a fire forged in pain and defiance, her body shaking not just with terror, but also with trauma she held in her fragile heart.
"Shut your filthy mouth, Kinard!"
Akira erupted into an upright motion, fueled by raw fury, his shout booming with the force of thunder. His devil-shaped sword twitched with hellfire power, the edge leveled directly at the center of his father's chest. Rain poured down the red mask, causing him to resemble a hellspawn conjured from the depths, his muscles bulging with effort beneath the straining fabric of his shirt.
A broad smile spreads across Kinard's face, his voice reeking with simulated dismay.
"Your manners are appalling, boy. Using your father's name in the third person? I swear, I've taught you better than that … or have I? Maybe I should put you in your proper position—with your head bowed and your palms pressed together in application for forgiveness like the whelp you are."
Akira's eyes clenched shut as the mask seemed to darken with his anger, which flared up as if ignited by a fire from the pits of hell. "You bastard!" he seethed. "You've made me remember—each of your disgusting lies, each drop of blood I've spilled. I now know all your filthy acts with Yura!"
He glanced over at Yuna. Despite her warning in her gaze of tearing him limb from limb, her stance was one of
Kinard's attention followed his stare, and he chuckled ominously in the dark. "Ah, you've gone and broken your promise, witch," he said. "I told you what would happen when you started messing around with fates." Yuna's lips curled back in a snarl as she crouched like a mountain lion waiting to strike, her fixed stare at Kinard looked like she wanted to tear him into pieces with her bare hands.
"Enough of words." Akira roared.
Akira gripped the katana tighter, veins rippling like ropes beneath his skin. A tempest charged forward as he swept the katana at a 90-degree angle, its whistling whistle a promise of death. Kinard parried it with ease, a dark blur of motion, but he followed it with a powerful kick to Akira's stomach. It collided like a sledgehammer, forcing the air out of Akira's body, but he didn't go down. Absolutely not. This street samurai wobbled for a microsecond before recovering, sliding the katana in a cross-pattern motion which would have gutted a normal man. Again, he dodged, a gleam of red forking through the rain, parrying while slicing with the other. Akira barely blocked it, but the blade bit through his arm, leaving a trail of crimson in its wake, which mingled with the rain.
Akira pressed forward, striking for the heart with his full and unadulterated strength—the thrust of his sword bending the very air around it. Kinard parried it with his single dagger, and the impact resonated through Akira, sending jolts that shattered the concrete beneath his feet. Kinard slipped his free hand into Akira's wet and sodden locks, pulling him in by the scalp as their faces crept mere inches apart, their breath tangling in the wet air of the storm.
Kinard's smile curled up, offering promise of intimacy and possession, as if speaking from behind his own open lips in hushed, dark domination.
"A son can never exceed his father, boy. You'll always be in the shadows—ineffective, unsatisfying, and mine to shatter."
And then he kneed him in the guts, the strength of it sending Akira flying backward as if he were a puppet on a string, hitting the ground in a heap beside Yura, both of them twisting in a heap of limbs and muck. Their bodies were pressed together as they landed, Yura's curves mashing into Kinard's rigid planes, an inexplicable and unwelcome spark of heat blossoming in the midst of the agony that welled through Akira as her hand instinctively latched onto his leg, her fingers sinking into his flesh in an attempt to hold tight.
A glimmer–the tide turned, despair seeping into me like icy tendrils creeping up my spine. They'd lost—outnumbered, outmatched. And then, a blinding light burst through the storm, as if divine fury itself descended upon the battlefield. A figure, wreathed in black robes that clung to a massive, chiseled body, with a black mask hiding a fearsome visage. Horns twisted like devil's horns sprouted from the sides, but then, deliberately, the masked figure reached back to rip the mask away, and sharp features, eyes aglow with an infernal light, stared back into mine.
Vernon.
Shock waves went through all of us. Akira whispered, his voice rough from shock, one elbow thrust under him, "Vernon? Brothers. you're here?"
Vernon stepped forward, his tread shaking the ground with every crunch, his energy a whirlpool that rang in the air. Kinard smiled, shock and perverse joy mixing together, his deep voice thundering like an earthquake. "What a wonderful coincidence! I shall have both of my precious sons to grace me tonight—a family affair that reeks of bloodshed."
His response was icing cold, and he formed his gigantic blade while closing in on Kinard. The greatsword was monstrosally huge and adorned with runes that spelled doom.
"This coincidence is going to be your downfall, Father. Tonight, I'll carve your heart right from your chest and give it to the void."
His monologue ended with him charging into action with the speed of the wind and his massive blade sweeping towards Kinard's very center.
Kinard ducked, daggers crossing to deflect the blow—a collision that rattled the foundations of the tower, sparks crackling like fireworked lights in the rain.
"My accursed son has abilities now?" Kinard gasped, shock etching his features, though he struck swiftly, his daggers weaving like snakes. The brutal battle escalated to legend.
Vernon was a giant of anger, massive sword slicing in sweeping, thunder-like arcs, forcing Kinard to leap and dodge like a shadow. The rain pummeled their bodies, clothes pasted against rippling muscles, each impact a chorus of grunting and crunching metal. Kinard fought back, his daggers flashing scarlet, so close that one brushed Vernon's thigh, drawing blood that vaporized in the chill, coppery and intoxicating.
Vernon bellowed, thunder enough to shake the skies, spinning his sword in a 360-degree whirlwind, close enough to sever Kinard's head clean. Kinard dodged it, rolling underneath, then unleashing an brutal uppercut dagger strike, which Vernon nearly parried, then kicked him backward across the puddled mud.
"Look, dear friend. Blood relations are stronger than any chain—distorted, and erotic with pain," Azazel said, watching me with amusement in his eyes.
Yura, bloody and savage, fired AZIMIS again, and a fireball hurtled towards Kinard, but he sidestepped and deflected it with a burst of explosion-filled night air. Yuna spun chains of illumination to assault him, while Akira stood up and charged with Vernon in a brotherly attack, their katana and greatsword slicing in a deadly rhythm that pushed Kinard to his edge.
Blow struck: Vernon's sword bit into Kinard's arm, gashing it as the blood spouted in a high arc, spattering Vernon's face. It was as if he were feral, primal. Kinard struck back with the two short daggers. The blades bit into Vernon's chest. The fabric ripped as the hard flesh shone through: wet and slippery with sweat.
Breathing was so heavy in these two. They clinched in a grappling hug—a embracebordering on the familial. A hug of hate. Muscles strained. The heat began.
Akira moved to flank him, his Japanese sword slicing low, but Kinard spun with impossible quickness, deflecting both brothers with a speed that would be laughable if it hadn't happened.
"You believe you can slay me?" Kinard spat, the roar of his voice a melodrama bolstered by the crashing thunder. " You both twin, neither can defeat me...My dear sons."
"Then I'll break this myth, old man!" Vernon roared.
The battle was intensifying, the rain-soaked night an action-packed background scene—whose fall would come first? When Kinard leapt high, daggers at the ready for the killing blow, another darkness began stirring in the tower, maybe Vernon was not alone in his hatred.