Dead silence followed.
It wasn't peaceful. It was the kind of quiet that crawls under your skin and burrows there.
Then, a faint whisper cut through the dark.
I lifted my head. My eyes locked onto his.
"Symen..."
My name left his mouth like a distant echo—deep, hollow, and vibrating through the ground itself.
Haroku stiffened beside me. I didn't need to look at him to know the panic spiking in his chest. He turned to me anyway, his voice unsteady.
"How... how does he know your name?"
I didn't break eye contact with Jason.
"He knows it," I said quietly, "because he's the one who cursed me when I was a child."
Saying it out loud didn't make it feel any more real.
But it was the truth. And that was enough.
This wasn't just another exorcism anymore. This was personal.
I reached deep into my coat and pulled out the ancient parchment—the first of my Legendary Papers. Even dormant, it pulsed with a heavy, ancient energy. The inked symbols etched across its surface seemed to shift and reconfigure if I stared at them for too long.
I closed my eyes and started the chant.
The moment the first syllable left my lips, the ground beneath us trembled. Energy pooled around me, faint at first, then rapidly igniting into a blazing golden aura that wrapped around my body like a living flame.
Haroku moved in absolute sync.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him throw his hands forward, activating his own seals. The encroaching shadows twisted and shrieked, resisting his pull, but one by one, they were dragged into the earth and locked away.
But it wasn't enough.
Because Jason wasn't stopping.
More entities spilled out from the dark. Constantly. Endlessly. Ten. Fifty. A hundred. The numbers multiplied exponentially.
They crawled across the ruined floor, scaled the walls, and seemed to bleed directly out of the air itself. It felt like we were being swallowed alive.
"They're multiplying too fast!" Haroku shouted over the roar of the rushing wind.
Jason hadn't moved an inch.
He sat effortlessly on a throne formed entirely of dense, writhing darkness, a jagged crown resting upon his head. He leaned back against the shadows, looking utterly bored.
"Is that all?"
His voice rolled over the battlefield like thunder. Then, he lazily raised a single hand.
"Arirein."
Reality collapsed into chaos.
A catastrophic surge of dark energy erupted from his throne. Violent and completely overwhelming.
In the next fraction of a second, thousands of shadows flooded the space. The sky above us turned a suffocating pitch-black. The concrete cracked and splintered under the sheer, crushing pressure.
Breathing became agonizing. For a split second, even my instincts froze.
"This... this is insane," Haroku muttered, his voice barely audible.
He wasn't wrong. But we didn't have the luxury of time.
They came at us from every conceivable angle. An endless, suffocating tidal wave.
I snapped my eyes open. "Don't stop!"
We pushed back.
Haroku's hands moved in a blur, casting seal after seal faster than I had ever seen him work. Sweat poured down his face, his energy reserves draining by the second, but he didn't slow down.
Neither did I.
My chanting reached its absolute peak. The golden aura surrounding me burned brighter, sharpening into a blinding, concentrated force.
I didn't hesitate. I released the seal.
Golden light erupted outward in a devastating shockwave.
In a single, violent strike, thousands of shadows were incinerated—wiped from existence as if they had never been there at all. The concussive force of the blast shook the very foundation of the school.
For a brief, desperate moment, the darkness fractured.
It was the only opening Haroku needed.
"Now it's my turn!" he roared.
He poured every last drop of his remaining power into a final, massive strike. A shockwave of pure sealing energy spread outward, crushing and trapping whatever shadows had survived the light.
And just like that—the endless horde was gone.
All of them.
The deafening noise vanished, leaving the battlefield eerily empty.
Except for him.
Jason remained on his throne, exactly where he had been. Untouched. And he was still smiling.
I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Haroku. We were both gasping for air, our bodies pushed dangerously past their limits. But neither of us looked away.
"This is it," I rasped.
He gave a sharp nod. No more words were needed.
We combined everything we had left in the tank.
Our raw power merged—my blinding golden light and his crushing sealing force intertwining into a singular, devastating attack, far greater than anything we could produce alone.
"THIS ENDS NOW!"
We hurled the combined energy forward. It tore through the heavy air, carrying every ounce of our remaining strength, every shred of our resolve.
For a heartbeat, it felt like it was actually going to work. Like the nightmare was finally going to end.
Then, Jason spoke.
Just one phrase. Quiet. Absolute.
"Change... Hinamaku."
Before the massive attack could even touch him—he vanished.
There was no blinding flash of speed. He didn't hide in the shadows. He simply ceased to exist in that space.
Our attack ripped through empty air and detonated far in the distance, the explosion echoing uselessly across the empty grounds.
Everything stopped.
No shadows. No suffocating darkness. No Jason.
"...He's gone?" Haroku said slowly, his arms dropping to his sides.
I scanned the ruined courtyard, every instinct still screaming at me to fight. "...Yeah."
At that exact moment, the distant sound of a clock striking 6:00 AM drifted over the city.
As if the world had just been waiting for permission, the suffocating black clouds dissolved. The crushing weight in the atmosphere evaporated. Soft, steady sunlight broke over the horizon, washing over the cracked concrete like it was reclaiming the earth.
The battlefield transformed.
The sheer destruction from moments ago suddenly felt distant, almost surreal in the morning light. A cool breeze drifted past us, and for the first time in days, the air felt completely normal.
I let out a long, shuddering breath.
Haroku dropped to his knees, utterly exhausted. "We... survived."
I didn't answer him. I just stared up at the sky.
The sunlight hit my face, warm and bright, but it didn't chase away the cold settling in my chest.
Because I knew the truth.
This wasn't a victory. Jason hadn't lost. He had simply chosen to leave.
And somehow, that made him infinitely more dangerous.
The peaceful silence covering the courtyard wasn't an ending. It was a promise that something much worse was coming.