He hoisted his sword, resting the flat of the blade casually against his right shoulder. In an instant, the edges of the steel erupted into twisting coils of white-hot flame, casting sinister, flickering shadows against the Academy's towering stone walls.
The suffocating wave of heat hit me a split second before the panic did. My lungs seized, the dry air instantly turning to ash in my throat. Gagging, I yanked the collar of my uniform up over my nose and mouth, violently coughing into the fabric.
"Miss me?" he grinned, tilting his head until his neck let out a loud, sickening crack. "Because I've been thinking about you brats all night. You and that lazy bastard Ayashi caused me a lot of trouble."
Beside me, Tsume was paralyzed in wide-eyed shock. He instinctively took a half-step backward, his hands frantically reaching for a weapon at his hip that wasn't there. We had left our swords back in the training yard. We were completely, hopelessly unarmed.
"Damn it…" Tsume whispered, his boots scraping the dirt as he kept backing up.
The roaring flames were rapidly obscuring my vision. I didn't know what was happening to my body, but it simply couldn't handle the oppressive, unnatural heat. Sweat poured down my face in buckets, my eyesight blurring worse by the second as my legs finally gave out. I collapsed hard onto my knees.
My mind raced, screaming at my muscles to move, to run, to shout for Sensei Ayashi—but my body refused to listen. How did he get in here? The Academy was supposed to be an impenetrable fortress.
The maniac noticed me drop and let out a dark chuckle. "Seems someone can't handle a little sauna," he taunted, before bursting into a fit of uncontrollable, malicious laughter.
Tsume dropped down beside me, frantically shaking my shoulder. "G-get up, Ryomen. Get the hell up damn it!" he hissed into my ear, stuttering in pure fear. He yanked at my uniform, desperately trying to haul me back to my feet, but my limbs were practically dead weight.
I couldn't do anything but helplessly listen to Tsume panic. The maniac's smirk twisted into something demonic as he fed more Boru into his blade, the white fire surging larger and larger until the air itself seemed to boil.
"Let's get the party started, shall we?" he grinned.
As the unbearable heat reached its absolute peak, my vision finally gave out, plunging into total darkness. I tipped forward, slipping from Tsume's grasp and collapsing face-first against the hot cobblestone with a heavy thud.
The darkness was absolute. The suffocating heat of the courtyard had vanished, replaced by an endless, freezing void. I was floating in a space devoid of sound, light, or gravity.
Then, a faint, silver pulse rippled through the blackness.
It wasn't a sound, but a feeling—a terrifying, suffocating spike of pure killing intent. Suddenly, the darkness shattered like glass, replaced by a hazy, semi-transparent overlay of the courtyard. It was like looking through a warped window.
I saw Tsume kneeling on the cobblestone, paralyzed by fear. I saw the blonde maniac raising his flaming sword high above his head, the white-hot fire violently compressing into a single, blinding line along the edge of the steel.
"Chap!" the maniac roared in this ghostly vision.
He swung the blade down. A massive, vertical crescent of concentrated fire erupted from the sword, tearing through the cobblestone and instantly incinerating both me and Tsume where we sat.
No! A fierce, desperate need to protect us—to not let us die like a bunch of cowards—flared in my chest.
I gasped, my eyes flying open as I was brutally ripped back into reality.
As I opened my eyes, something deep in my body violently snapped awake, it felt like a deep heat that was blooming in the center of my chest, right behind my sternum.
It felt like a moment of absolute clarity, like waking up after being asleep for my entire life. I felt connected to the universe in a way I never had felt before.
My blood felt warmer, almost electric as my veins pulsed with energy that most certainly wasn't there before.
The pressure in my lungs was heavy, as if I was breathing for the very first time. My heartbeat was loud, so loud I could hear it in my own ears like a mighty war drum for a few seconds, which terrified me.
The oppressive heat that I had felt earlier was completely gone. I could now easily breathe the fire in with no harm, but the physical world looked entirely different. Overlapping the space around me were faint, glowing phantom images moving just a few seconds ahead of reality.
A strange, thrumming energy gathered rapidly behind my eyes. I couldn't see my own face, but Tsume's terrified expression morphed into sheer bewilderment as he looked at me.
I looked up. The blonde maniac was standing exactly where he had been, raising his flaming sword high above his head. The white fire was compressing, mirroring the exact vision I had just seen in the void.