The world shrank to a single sound.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Each drop falling from my chin struck the dark marble at my feet, spreading into crimson stains that seemed endless.
I lay sprawled right in the center of the throne platform, my back resting against the cold, hard seat. My vision drifted in and out of darkness, as if I were looking through blood-stained glass.
The pain in my stomach was a constant, burning, suffocating weight, as if a white-hot iron rod had been driven inside me and left there. When I took a deep breath, it radiated through my entire torso, making my fingers curl with weakness.
I tried to push myself up, digging my palms into the carved armrests of the throne. The stone was smooth, worn down by years of hands that were never mine, but my arms trembled so violently that my elbows buckled on their own. There was no strength to lift my own weight.
I gave up and slid back down, the air escaping my lungs in a hoarse sigh.
The silence lasted for what felt like hours.
Then, thunder rumbles so loudly that it vibrated through the room's foundations, rattling the shards of stained glass scattered across the floor. It was followed by the soft, unmistakable sound of rain pattering against the exposed stones of the broken ceiling, trickling down the cracked pillars. A few drops reached me, cold against my skin which burned from heat and exertion.
"Does it still rain on this planet?" I murmured softly, almost to myself.
The question slipped out unbidden, bringing with it the image of Orin's cracked earth, the dried-up rivers of the Forge, and the dust that has covered houses for generations. How can something so small and gentle still exist, when everything we know is being crushed and burned?
The world endures enough pain to drown continents... and yet it still finds a way to cry.
Another clap of thunder exploded closer, so bright that it flooded the entire room with silver light for an instant, revealing every single crack in the walls.
And in that flash of light, he appeared.
Tsukumo stood right there, at the entrance of the hall. Rainwater cascaded down his broad, bare shoulders, tracing ancient scars, pooling at the tip of his chin and falling in threads that gleamed like silver. The shallow cut I opened on his neck still had not closed; the water mixed with the dark red blood, flowing down his chest without leaving a dry patch. His posture was still firm, but devoid of that arrogant rigidity from before.
"When strong beings like us fight," he said, his voice carrying a weight that made the air feel thicker. "It is not just the weather that will change around us. Storms are born where deserts once lay, mountains collapse, and seas shift their bounds. The geography of this world can be rewritten forever before the final blow is struck."
He took a step forward, his bare feet making little more than a muffled thud against the wet marble.
"You felt it, didn't you? When the wind and that darkness became one inside you?"
I managed to raise my head enough to look him in the eye. My eyes burned, and I knew they were bloodshot, perhaps tinted with the same black stains that dyed my aura just a moment ago.
"Do you think I'm strong now?" The question came out hoarse, and I spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor between us.
Tsukumo lets out a short laugh, unlike any I had heard from him until then. There is no contempt, no mockery. It sounded almost... relieved.
"A short while ago, you entered that place where the body forgets its limits, where thought does not hinder movement," he nodded, as if watching the scene replay before his eyes. "A state of flow so intense that even I had to stop and pay attention, and that gleam in your eyes, that aura of yours..."
He lightly touched the cut on his neck, glanced at the blood left on his finger, and then looked back at me. For the first time, I didn't see a god staring down at an insect. I saw a warrior who had finally found someone who didn't break on the first impact.
"It was that state that gave you what you needed to bypass my defense," he continued, his voice low and clear. "That was what made me bleed—something no one has managed to do in four hundred years. I no longer see you as a nuisance, nor as a toy to pass the time. Now I see you as a real threat, Suki de Lavinsk."
His words fell upon me like the rain itself: cold, unexpected, and heavy.
The copper taste of darkness flooded my mouth again—the power that bubbled up from my soul, tore through the air, and made me laugh in a way I didn't recognize. The memory of it still burned deep in my chest, whispering that if I let it take over completely, no one will ever have to fear Tsukumo again.
But I could also picture exactly how the dark Suki inside me must be feeling right now.
Disappointed.
I have to hold back more, I thought, digging my fingernails into the cold stone of the throne until they ached.
This power... it can't use me. I have to use it.
The rain beat down harder now, and the thunder that followed rumbled from within the very mountain where the castle was anchored. The last thread of strength left in me burned like hot coals in my leg muscles.
I dug my heels into the cracked marble, and the energy of the earth roared beneath my skin. Green veins sprouted from my wrists, climbed up my forearms, and hardened my bones like basalt rock. Every step I took echoed with a hard, metallic thud, as if I were no longer made of flesh and bone, but of the very mountain this castle was built upon. The ground trembled with every strike of my boots, fine cracks tearing open behind me, following my trail like obedient shadows.
Tsukumo did not retreat. He simply squared his shoulders, bent his knees, and rotated his torso—the posture of someone who knows every angle of a fight and already expects what is coming. His golden eyes did not miss a single movement; I had his undivided attention.
I lunged.
The wind howled past my ears, the distance between us shrinking in the blink of an eye. My right fist flew forward, charged with all the energy the earth had given me. But before the impact landed, the fingers of my left hand moved rapidly, almost imperceptibly—two light taps in the air, as if merely pointing.
Beneath his feet, a solid granite support pillar, as thick as a truck, let out a guttural groan. Stone roots ruptured the floor, and the pillar shot straight at Tsukumo with absurd velocity.
He only had time to widen his eyes.
The pillar caught him dead center on the side of his torso, shattering into an explosion of shrapnel. The force of the impact threw him mere millimeters off his own punch, and that was the opening I needed. My fist slammed with everything I had right into the middle of his face.
CRACK!
The sound echoed as if a boulder had split in half. Tsukumo's head snapped violently back, his nose fracturing beneath my strike, and his entire body sank into the marble as if it were clay. The ground caved in a ten-meter radius around us, deep fissures racing across the walls while crystal chandeliers plummeted from the ceiling.
I didn't wait for him to recover. While his foot was still moving to kick toward my legs, I rolled to the side; the tip of his boot whizzed a hairsbreadth from my ear, slicing the air.
Tsukumo launched himself back up with an absurd burst of momentum, acting as if he hadn't just taken tons of stone and a punch to the face. Blood poured from his nostrils and mouth, but he was smiling, his teeth stained red, his eyes sparking with excitement. He advanced like an avalanche, his right fist coated in a purple aura so dense it warped the surrounding air.
This time, I didn't even need to raise my hands. Once again, I moved my fingers, and another pillar—this one thinner, but just as resilient—erupted from beside the throne, flying straight to intercept him mid-charge.
THUD!
The collision between fist and granite unleashed a shockwave that forced him back, the pillar turning to dust the instant it struck.
He stomped his foot to brake, carving deep ruts into the floor, and swept away the thick dust with a sharp, impatient wave of his arms. He spun on his heel, scanning the entire hall in a full 360-degree sweep. I wasn't where he expected me to be.
It was only when he tilted his face up, looking toward the cracked ceiling and the gaping hole we had torn open above us, that he realized too late.
I dropped from above, channeling a kick infused with the energy of the earth.
The blow came down like a divine sledgehammer, catching him right on the shoulder and driving him back down. This time, the floor didn't just crack; it gave way entirely. The support beams collapsed with a metallic groan, the stone slabs shattered into an avalanche of debris, and we were both swallowed by the darkness, plummeting floor after floor amidst the deafening roar of splitting rock.
My feet slammed hard into his broad chest mid-fall. I used his own body as a springboard, digging my heels into his tensed muscles to gain momentum. The instant I launched myself upward, I stretched both arms fully toward the sky, fingers splayed to grab the air itself.
The thousands of marble slabs, granite beams, and remnants of the ceiling frozen in mid-air, suspended as if gravity had forgotten they existed. Not a single grain of dust moved. The only motion was the rain, slicing white threads through the frozen wreckage, and the brilliant emerald-green glow of the veins pulsing beneath my skin.
Below me, Tsukumo was still falling. His golden eyes widened slightly—not out of fear, but astonishment—and the last thing he saw before being swallowed was that entire wall of rock, stone, and iron hovering above him, like a mountain I had ripped from the earth just to hold it there.
I lowered my arms smoothly, like someone guiding a current.
"Fall," I whispered, and the command surged through every green vein until it reached the air.
That entire mass, hundreds of tons of material, plummeted all at once, homing in on him as if it possessed a will of its own. Tsukumo only had time to cross his forearms in front of his face, grit his teeth, and brace every fiber of his body.
The impact was dull and muffled.
CRUUUMB!!!!
A thick cloud of dust and gray smoke erupted from the spot where he vanished, rising quickly despite the heavy rain trying to wash it away.
I hung suspended there, floating dozens of meters in the air, while the storm swelled intentionally around me. The rain beat down harder now, cold and cutting, washing away the blood drying on my skin, bringing a sharp but clean pain that made me exhale slowly as I recovered my breath. The Earth Transformation ran like warm energy beneath it all, sustaining me, stitching over my exhaustion with raw power drawn from the mountain.
The green stripes marking my skin glowed intensely in the gloom. As I moved my fingers, they looked like living roots, expanding and retracting to the rhythm of my heartbeat. When I extended my hands to the sides, beyond the castle walls, I felt the earth beneath the foundations roar in response; far below, on the slopes where the fortress anchored its roots into the living rock, the stone began to shift.
Across the entire outer perimeter, thick columns of basalt and sandstone sprouted from the rain-soaked soil, twisting like ancient tree trunks, ready to obey the next movement of my fingers.
This alone won't stop him, I thought, the certainty chilling my chest before I even saw any movement.
The wreckage below began to shake violently. Pieces of rock rolled to the sides, and a fine crack opened in the center of the pile where he lay buried. I didn't wait to see what was coming. I snapped both hands downward, commanding the earth to respond at once.
Entire slabs of basalt intertwined with petrified roots erupted from the edges of the hole, fusing into a single shield as thick as a fortress wall, completely sealing the top of the crater. It was a barrier meant to withstand natural disasters—my best shield, swift and solid.
But it wasn't enough.
A guttural roar echoed beneath me. I felt every fiber of that structure stretch to its absolute limit; the roots groaned, the basalt cracked into white webs, and then—
CRAC!!!
He blasted through it all as if it were damp cardboard. A thick hand shattered the center, followed by an arm, and then his entire body rocketed upward, his clenched fist aiming directly at my face before I could even shift my stance.
The impact to my jaw was so brutal that my brain rattled inside my skull. The surrounding area instantly flashed dry; every single drop of rain falling there was blown away by the shockwave, vanishing for long seconds as if sucked right out of reality.
Before the world could start spinning again, I heard his voice thunder, loaded with a fury and determination that made the air itself vibrate.
"THIS SHIT WON'T TAKE ME DOWN!"
He drove his fist upward with everything he had, and I was launched into the sky like a weightless ragdoll—an inverted projectile accelerated with enough force to tear through the clouds. The pressure compressing my body was crushing; my muscles pinned to my bones, my lungs unable to inflate, arms and legs paralyzed. I couldn't contract a single finger.
With the residual consciousness I had left, I mentally commanded the swap.
The green lines running across my skin extinguished one by one as I invoked the wind. Sharp white energy bubbled up from within, enveloping me in a turbulent cocoon. I spun my heels in the air, slicing through the oppressive pressure like a razor, and stopped abruptly, hovering above the storm as my hair whipped against my face.
I opened my mouth to breathe, and two loose, blood-stained teeth slipped out, tumbling into the darkness below. I spat a crimson stream that the rain immediately washed away.
"It's impossible..." I muttered, stunned. "Nothing I have works on him."
I saw Tsukumo ascending after me, cutting through the rain like a black arrow, never losing speed for a single moment.
I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. I didn't have Kazekiba with me, but I knew every angle, every cut she would make. I opened my palms flat, fingers relaxed, and began to move them—first slowly, then with growing agility, as if gripping the hilt of an imaginary blade. The movements flowed like an aerial dance—a diagonal slash, a horizontal cleave, a third spinning my entire body, charting trajectories that no physical weapon could ever follow.
From every movement of my palms, blades of compressed air erupted—thin, brilliant, as sharp as tempered steel, loaded with the full potency of Stage 2 Wind. Dozens of them flew toward him, tearing through the clouds and carving ruts into the falling rain.
They struck him dead on—shoulder, chest, arms, thighs. I saw the flesh slice open, fine lines of blood welling up... but he didn't stop. He didn't yield a single inch. He just kept ascending straight up, as if those strikes were mere insect bites, as if the very nature of wind held no authority over him. The purple aura around him absorbed the edge of the cuts before they could bite deep, and his expression remained unchanged; only that fierce, stubborn tenacity grew.
Not even at Stage 2 Wind...
Panic hammered against my ribs, my fingers trembling involuntarily.
What do I do now?
When he was mere meters away, his left fist came shooting toward my chest, faster than I could process. I dove to the side at the absolute last second. The tips of his fingers passed a hairsbreadth from my face, and the force of the movement violently churned the air around me, disrupting the vortexes I had prepared and completely derailing my own offensive.
My balance returned slowly.
I looked up, and there he was, hovering, arms crossed over his broad chest, his skin glistening with droplets that no longer ran down. We were above the ceiling of the storm, where the rain could not reach—only Ruitan's heavy, purple sky stretching out into infinity.
There was no mockery in his stance, only a quiet disappointment, like someone watching an apprentice squander a lesson.
"You're beginning to disappoint me again, Suki," he said, his voice crystal clear without needing to shout, carrying a trace of weariness.
I clenched my fists tightly until my nails dug into my palms, letting the sharp sting pierce through my frustration.
"Don't think this is going to discourage me, Tsukumo," I answered, steady despite the taste of copper in my mouth. "I will use everything I have to stop you."
He let out a short laugh—devoid of joy, devoid of anger, almost pitying.
"If this is all you have... it truly is a shame."
His golden eyes pierced through me, direct as an arrow.
"Understand this once and for all, Suki: it doesn't just depend on your powers."
The words hung in the empty air, and a strange, curious confusion took hold of my mind.
What does he mean?
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, before I could hold the question back.
"I mean that raw strength is worth just as much as these gifts you treat as crutches."
"And right now, the way you use them... they are useless."
It was like a sudden snap inside my head, and all at once, the memories flooded back, as clear as if they had happened yesterday. Me in the tournament, and in the Black Forest—without any transformation, with no wind to carry me and no earth to anchor me.
Nothing but aching muscles, razor-sharp reflexes, and the sheer will not to fall. The packed dirt beneath my feet, the cold sweat on the back of my neck, the absolute certainty that every single strike depended entirely on me, not on something I summoned from the outside.
Running between massive trees, fighting beasts with my bare hands, learning to read an opponent's movement before he even raised his arm.
He's right, I thought, and the realization made me feel light, even as gravity began to tighten its grip once more.
I got used to letting my powers do the heavy lifting.
I forgot who I am beneath them.
I looked down at my hands—the faint scars on my knuckles, the thick calluses at the base of my fingers and palms, the physical proof of my training.
Silver had recently insisted that I master the transformations, but he had never stopped forcing me to lift weights no normal person could match, to run until my lungs burned, to perfect every single evasion as if it were the only thing that existed.
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with cold, crisp air, and mentally released the command.
The white wind energy enveloping my body bled away slowly, like water draining through a fissure.
The sensation of ethereal weightlessness vanished all at once. I felt the true, heavy mass of my bones, my flesh, my light armor, and the crushing exhaustion I had been masking.
The air no longer supported me on its own; I had to adjust my posture instantly, using the tension of my abdominal and leg muscles to keep myself suspended by sheer technique and personal strength.
It hurt a bit, it was uncomfortable... but I felt every single inch of my body like never before.
I raised my face to meet his, and a quiet smile tugged at the corner of my lips.
"You're right, Tsukumo," I said, my voice sounding more solid, more mine.
"You made me remember something I had almost buried beneath everything I've learned."
I shifted into my fighting stance—left foot forward, knees bent, weight distributed evenly, fists raised to chin height. Nothing flashy, just perfectly balanced to take a blow and return it in equal measure.
"Raw strength only fails... when it's not enough."
I clenched my fists with absolute resolve, feeling the throb of my cuts and bruises. This time, I didn't care to numb them.
Now, I was ready.
Tsukumo smiled.
"Finally."
And then, we both disappeared.