All across Fire Country, weapons started flying.
Swords ripped themselves out of sheaths. Spears shook loose from weapon racks. Even old blades hanging on walls tore free and shot into the sky. In a matter of seconds, streams of steel were pouring toward the sea from every direction.
People froze where they stood.
Some reached out on instinct, only to watch their weapons slip away before their fingers could close around them.
"What is this?!"
"My sword—!"
"It's Kairos!"
Panic spread quickly. It was one thing to hear rumors that he could control blades. It was another to feel your own weapon leave your hand and answer someone else's call.
If he could take your blade that easily, he could just as easily turn it back on you.
That thought alone was enough to send a chill through the entire country.
Out at sea, Kairos lifted one hand.
The incoming weapons gathered around him at once, circling in layer after layer until they filled the sky around his body. They moved cleanly, without clashing or tangling, as if each one already knew exactly where it belonged.
Across from him, Kuzan stood atop the frozen sea.
Between them hung two overwhelming forces: the iceberg he had raised and the storm of blades Kairos now commanded.
The sky darkened under their scale. Even the sea below seemed to lose its color.
Kuzan looked at Kairos for a long moment before speaking.
"You really are troublesome."
There was no laziness left in his voice now.
Kairos looked up at him from below the iceberg.
"Admiral Kuzan."
A faint smile touched his lips.
"Let's keep going."
Then he brought his hand down.
The ten thousand weapons fell.
Not in disorder, not like debris caught in a storm, but with terrifying focus, all of them diving at once toward Kuzan like a sky full of executioner's blades.
Kuzan moved at the same time.
The iceberg under his feet shifted violently. Ice surged upward, twisted, and formed a massive arm that came smashing down into the storm of steel.
The collision shook the sea.
Frozen blades shattered and dropped. Chunks of the giant hand exploded outward. The air filled with splintered ice and broken steel, but neither side gave way.
The weapons kept moving, weaving through openings, slamming into the iceberg from every direction. Under Kairos' control, they were unnaturally precise. Each impact carved away another section of ice.
But Kuzan's cold spread through the whole battlefield. The longer the clash went on, the more the freezing air wore the weapons down. Some slowed. Some froze. Some cracked apart before they could reach him.
At the same time, the two of them were still fighting through it all.
Kuzan attacked. Kairos answered. Sword light and cold kept colliding in midair, each impact sending another shock through the sea.
The sound alone was enough to make distant observers feel sick.
From Fire Country, Marines stood staring out toward the water, their faces pale. On a ridge far behind them, Robin watched without blinking, both hands clenched tight at her sides.
Then the iceberg giant crashed into a nearby island.
The island had already taken too much punishment from the earlier fighting. This time it finally broke. The whole mass of land split apart and collapsed into the sea.
Kairos didn't even spare it a glance.
Sandai Kitetsu shot through the air under his control and cut down a cluster of incoming ice spikes. At the same time, his other hand tilted the hilt of the Magic Blade.
Then the sound came.
Clang.
Another.
Then a hundred more.
The sea lit up.
Far below the surface, points of blue light appeared one after another, scattered deep in the dark water like stars waking up at the bottom of the world.
The fragments of the Magic Blade had broken free.
Kairos felt them immediately.
Some were still buried in drifting ice. Others were lodged in the seafloor or half-frozen beneath shattered waves. But now they were responding again.
His eyes sharpened.
"Raging Dragon… Void Sever."
He swung the hilt.
That was all.
The fragments answered as one.
A thousand streaks of blue rose from the sea and shot toward him, drawing long arcs through the air. From a distance they looked almost beautiful, like a swarm of stars being pulled into a single center.
The pressure around Kairos changed.
Not louder.
Not bigger.
Sharper.
Everything around him suddenly felt too small to contain what was gathering there.
Then the golden light erupted.
It burst from him so fiercely that even the sun seemed pale by comparison. A deep roar rolled through the sky, and behind Kairos, something vast began to take shape.
A dragon.
Its body was formed entirely from golden light, long and coiling, its outline shifting between brilliance and solidity. It did not look summoned. It looked awakened.
The sea below churned. The clouds above began to tear apart.
The dragon opened its jaws and roared.
The sound blasted through the sky and blew the cloud layer open for miles.
At that exact moment, the returning fragments reached Kairos.
But they did not reform into the blade.
They plunged into the dragon instead.
One after another.
A thousand fragments.
All swallowed by that golden body.
By the time the last one disappeared, the dragon no longer looked like light.
It looked like a weapon made alive.
Kairos stood at its center, one hand still gripping the hilt.
Then the dragon moved.
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