The War in Solarii Part 4 (ソラーリの戦争 / Sorāri no Sensō)

The sky over Solarii still burned.

Flames crawled along the glass-front towers of the mid-ring. Smoke choked the air, lit from below by the orange glow of ruined streets. The outer wall was a jagged wound of broken crystal and twisted steel. From that wound, corrupted giants and demon spawn still pushed inward, trying to swallow what was left of the city.

Near the crater that had once been a plaza, the Celestine line held by stubbornness more than strength.

Hajime stood at its center, chest heaving, sweat and soot mixing on his skin. Izumi was a step behind him, vines wrapped around her legs and arms, thorns withdrawn but ready. Around them, Celestine soldiers braced with cracked shields and chipped blades, faces pale under streaks of ash and blood.

Far ahead, near the ruin of the main gate, three pairs of auras clashed in constant collisions. Hayate’s sunfire flickered against dark green corruption. Raiden’s seraphim wings strained to intercept void-black strikes. Kazuki’s healing light fought to keep up with decay and venom.

Between those fronts, on a shattered avenue that should have led to a quiet upper-ring plaza, Rei and Akane continued to beat each other into the stone.

No one had the breath left to pay attention to them. The city screamed loud enough on its own.

A fresh wave of corrupted soldiers surged from the crater’s far edge. Giants stomped through the rubble, flanked by wolf-bodied horrors and twisted knights whose armor had merged with their flesh. Black Seiki rolled off them in waves.

The Celestine captain lifted his sword with a trembling arm.

“Shields up! Hold the line!”

The first impact sent a ripple through the formation. Shields skidded. A soldier went down with a crushed leg. A giant’s club smashed into the street just in front of them and sent a shock up Hajime’s spine.

Hajime dug his boots into the broken stone. His whole body vibrated.

If they broke here, there was nothing between this wave and the inner city. The survivors Izumi had led to safety would be overrun. The families hiding in hollow buildings would die screaming. Hayate and the others would be fighting for a city that no longer existed.

His hands shook.

“Izumi,” he said quietly.

“I know,” she answered. “Just be careful...”

Her voice trailed off. She did not have to finish.

Hajime remembered the first time.

The feel of his bones straining like metal pulled too far. The way the world had narrowed to a white point and then gone black at the edges. The way Adam’s Will had stirred and watched him.

He remembered his own promise, spoken in quieter days. That he would not lean on a power he did not fully understand. That he would not swap one chain for another.

Ahead of him, a Celestine knight screamed as a corrupted beast tore his shield away and bit through his arm. Another soldier went down under a rain of claws. In the distance, a tower finally surrendered to the fire and collapsed, sending a cloud of ash across the battlefield.

Rei’s fight, Izumi’s vines, Hayate’s sunfire. None of it would matter if this wave punched through.

Hajime drew a breath that hurt all the way down.

He lowered his head.

“You guys will want to move back a little,” he said.

The captain glanced at him. “What are you doing, sir?”

“Trust me,” Hajime said. “And do it now.”

The captain swore under his breath, then began shouting orders. The line stepped back in a ragged rhythm, shields still up.

Izumi looked at Hajime from the side, eyes wide and tired.

“You are an idiot, but I know you can do this,” she said.

“Don't worry about a thing,” he replied, grinning ear to ear.

He stepped forward alone.

Seiki boiled under his skin, hot and heavy, like molten metal. His fingers tingled. His vision blurred at the edges, then snapped back into ruthless focus. He could feel Adam watching from somewhere deep behind his ribcage, silent and waiting.

Hajime closed his eyes for one heartbeat and remembered the crater in the training fields, the first time he had torn the ground apart by accident.

“I leave the rest to you,” he thought, not sure whether he meant Adam or the power itself.

Then he opened his eyes, faced the oncoming tide, and spoke.

“Genesis Awakening.”

The words slammed into the air like a verdict.

This technique lasts as long as Hajime's human Seiki doesn't drain out.

Gold-silver Seiki detonated from his core. It did not roar outward in a pretty halo. It punched through him, down his arms and legs, crackling through his veins until his skin felt too tight to hold it.

The ground under his feet split in a jagged pattern. Dust rose in a sudden ring. Loose stones rattled away from him. The nearest corrupted soldiers recoiled from the impact and then pushed back in with mindless rage.

Adam was now in control.

Hajime moved.

His first step crushed a tile into powder. His second carried him into the face of a charging giant. The world slowed, just enough that he could see the exact angle of the club dropping toward the line.

He jumped.

His fist streaked up like a falling star.

The impact under the giant’s jaw sounded like a cannon blast. Its skull caved. Black Seiki burst from shattered bone. The creature’s head snapped back, and its massive body followed, crashing into a row of demon spawn behind it and flattening them.

Hajime landed, knees bending under the strain, ribs flaring with sharp pain.

Another giant swung a rusted beam toward a cluster of soldiers who had not moved fast enough. Hajime’s body screamed that it was done, but Genesis Awakening did not care.

He twisted, every tendon burning, and threw a punch toward empty air.

The Seiki burst that left his fist ripped a gouge through the street and slammed into the beam mid-swing. The metal shattered. Corruption splattered like tar across the ground. The broken weapon tumbled aside, missing the soldiers by inches.

Hajime tasted blood.

A wave of corrupted soldiers rushed him, eyes glowing sick red, mouths open in soundless screams. He waded into them with ugly efficiency. Bones cracked under his fists. Armor buckled. Black flesh tore.

For a moment, he really did stand in the ring with monsters that made Hayate look small.

Then Genesis Awakening began to burn out.

The gold-silver aura around him frayed like threads pulled too hard. The weight of his own body crashed back down on him all at once. Every muscle seized. Pain roared in from all directions.

He took one more step, drove one more punch through a corrupted chest, and then his legs buckled.

Hajime hit one knee. The world wobbled. He coughed and red sprayed onto the stone. His hands shook uncontrollably. His vision dimmed at the edges, then snapped back in sharp flashes. Adam released control.

The corrupted wave had broken. The ground in front of him was a field of dead bodies and shattered limbs. The Celestine line behind him stared, some with mouths open, some with eyes wide in awe or fear.

“Hajime!” the captain shouted. “Pull him back!”

Vines wrapped around Hajime’s chest and shoulders.

Izumi yanked him backward with more strength than her frame should have had left. She dragged him behind the shields and lowered him against a broken pillar, her hands already moving.

“You stubborn idiot,” she muttered, voice tight. “I knew you'd do it.”

Hajime tried to smile. It hurt. “I couldn't have made it this far without you. Thank you, Izumi.”

“You don't have to thank me. It was nothing really...”

Her vines split at the ends, fine roots pressing against his skin. Petals unfurled along his arms and torso, glowing faintly as she channeled Seiki into him. The pain did not vanish, but it sharpened into something bearable, instead of an all-consuming roar.

She wrapped thicker vines around his ribs like living braces.

“This is all I can do right now,” she said.

Hajime’s head thudded back against the stone. Sweat and blood crawled down his neck.

“I'm still not close,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. "Is Rei okay?"

Izumi did not answer. Her hands trembled as she kept feeding Seiki into his broken edges, her own reserves scraping bottom.

The line above them moved forward again, cautiously filling the space he had carved with his body and his bones.

Near the breach, the war between lords had turned into something slow and ugly.

Hayate’s armor hung off him in cracked plates. Sunfire guttered along the edge of his spear, no longer the roaring blaze that had once lit the training fields. His breaths came shallow and fast.

Across from him, Lord Kurotaka’s cleaver dripped with green-black corrosion. Renjirō’s gauntlets were half-dissolved into serpent flesh, teeth sunk into the stone itself to keep him upright. Shigure’s cloak of shadow clung thin around his shoulders, edges ragged where Raiden’s blades had cut through.

Raiden’s twin swords, Choral Edge, moved more slowly now, each swing calculated to intercept, not to dominate. The seraphim wings that shielded the troops behind him were cracked, chunks missing from their glowing span. Kazuki’s staff shone dully as he leaned on it, his healing light focused on keeping Hayate and Raiden conscious more than anything else.

Hayate spat blood onto the ruined rampart.

“We hold until we're dead,” he rasped.

He tightened his grip on the spear and stepped forward again.

Raiden almost reached out to stop him, then lowered his hand. Kazuki turned his head as if listening to something only he could hear and then nodded once, acceptance and resignation mingling in his eyes.

Kurotaka raised his cleaver.

“Blight-Rend Point,” he snarled.

A needle of corruption lanced toward Hayate, fast enough that a normal knight would never have seen it.

Hayate planted his foot, twisted his torso, and shouted through bloody teeth.

“Sunheart Pulse!”

Sunfire exploded from his spear in a tight, focused wave. The corruption spike evaporated in the blast. The wave slammed into Kurotaka, forcing the Hellbound lord back three steps and scorching a line across his chest.

Hayate staggered and almost dropped his weapon.

Raiden’s voice cut through the roar of the breach.

“Seraph Guard!”

The cracked angelic wings behind him surged forward, intercepting a follow-up blast of void from Shigure. The collision shook the wall. Lines of strain ran deeper through the already damaged seraph form.

Kazuki lifted his staff, the sigils along it flickering.

“Grace Light.”

Gentle radiance washed over Hayate’s back, slowing the flow of blood from his wounds, easing the worst of the tremors. It was not enough to fix anything. It was just enough to keep him standing.

Then all six lords felt it.

A pulse of red-black Seiki rolled up from deep within the inner city. It was not a blast or an attack. It was more like a bell tolling in the bones of anyone who could sense it.

The moment the First Seal Scroll was torn from its resting place.

Kurotaka’s lips curled.

“Objective achieved,” he said.

Shigure’s eyes narrowed, violet-black shadows tightening around him.

“Thanks for the scroll.”

Renjirō’s serpents hissed in a rasp that sounded uncomfortably like laughter.

On the Celestine side, none of them knew exactly what had just happened. They only knew it was bad.

Raiden’s jaw clenched. “We should have known. Damn it all.”

Kazuki shook his head once. “We couldn't have known. Calm down, Raiden.”

A scream echoed across the mid-ring, louder than any human throat should have allowed.

Back in the shattered plaza, Akane’s laughter cut through the sound of stone breaking as Rei slammed her into another collapsed building.

Blood streaked both of them. Her smile had not dimmed once.

Rei’s breath came steady and measured, even as his body protested. His broken knuckles pressed against bone and chain and flesh again and again. Every impact sent shards of pain up his arms, but Uriel Ascension Phase One kept his focus razor sharp.

She dodged like a feral animal. He read her hips, her shoulders, the tension in her toes. He turned her feints into openings and punished them until ribs cracked and tendons screamed.

She loved every second of it.

“You're getting impatient,” she gasped as he slammed a knee into her side. “It's starting to hurt now, Rei-Rei.”

He didn't answer.

His eyes tracked her, unblinking, cold, and bright. For flashes of a second, her face blurred in his mind. Not because of the smoke, not because of the blood in his own eyes, but because of the memories layered over her features.

Mirae’s tilted smile. The way she had laughed on the training ground when he had flattened three opponents in a row. The way she had watched him with a mix of fear and something else, something like awe, when he had walked out of the underground matches alive every time.

Akane’s smile was sharper. Her laughter was louder and more broken. But the shape of it, the angle of her chin, the way her eyes shone when she looked at him in the middle of carnage, all of it tugged at the same place in his chest.

She was the one person, after Mira, who had ever met him in that space between joy and violence and not flinched.

A twisted reflection in a more rotten world.

He could not kill that. Not with his own hands.

Akane swayed on her feet, chains clinking softly.

“Rei,” she purred, voice rough. “You're thinking about me. That look in your eyes. You see me, not just the Demon Queen, right?”

He shifted his stance.

“Just stop talking already unless it's to give up,” he said.

She giggled.

“Temptation Mist.”

Red-black Seiki burst from her skin in a sudden wash of vapor. It rolled across the plaza, thick and cloying, smelling like blood and something sweeter underneath. The edges of Rei’s vision warped. For a heartbeat, he heard laughter that was not Akane’s. Mirae’s voice, from another lifetime.

He dug his heel into the ground hard enough to crack stone and forced his lungs to drag in hotter air from above the fog.

Uriel’s Will flared in his chest, cutting through the haze like a blade through a cobweb.

Don't falter, the angel’s voice snapped.

“I'm not the one faltering,” Rei muttered.

His Seiki surged, shaking the mist away from his immediate space. Akane’s eyes lit up. Instead of frustration, she looked delighted.

“Fine,” she said. “Then I'll stop playing around.”

Her chains rattled, rising from her waist and shoulders in twisting arcs.

She raised her arms wide.

“Revelation of the Demon Queen!”

The plaza answered.

Red-black Seiki exploded outward, slamming into the ruined buildings. Stone bubbled and sagged where it tried to hold its shape. The air warped, heat and pressure increasing until even the flames nearby seemed to bend toward her.

Chains thickened, transforming into living things that writhed and twisted around her like metallic serpents. Her eyes burned brighter. Her skin took on a faint, hellish glow. Every drop of blood that hit the ground near her twisted, bubbled, and then crawled up into the shape of a demon spawn, their bodies leaner, sharper, more vicious than before.

Rei planted his feet against the pressure.

His body, however, began to lose the argument.

Akane blurred.

Her knee crashed into his ribs before he could fully shift. The impact sent a crack through his side, a wet sound he felt more than heard. She followed with an elbow that caught his jaw. His head snapped sideways. Hot copper filled his mouth.

He caught her wrist with his left hand, twisted, and drove his own elbow toward her throat.

She blocked it with her forearm. The collision sent a shock up his injured arm. Pain flared white. His vision dimmed for half a second.

She grinned inches from his face.

“See?” she whispered. “In the end, I always have to go a little further than you. Because you're my man.”

Her head smashed into his nose. Bone broke. He staggered. She grabbed his collar, yanked him forward, spun, and flung him into the side of a collapsed spire.

The impact dug a Rei-sized crater into the stone.

He pushed himself back to his feet.

He did not wipe the blood from his face. It would have been pointless.

Akane walked toward him, chains dragging grooves in the ruined plaza. Demon spawn formed a loose ring around them, but none dared draw too close.

Akane’s head tilted.

“I cannot stay and play forever, Rei.”

She moved.

Chains snapped toward him like vipers. He slipped between two, ducked under another, and drove a fist toward her solar plexus. She caught his wrist in one hand, spun with his momentum, and slammed him into the ground so hard his teeth rattled.

He lay there for a second, air gone from his lungs.

Akane placed a foot on his chest, pressing down just enough to keep him pinned, not enough to crush.

She leaned over him, hair falling forward, her eyes wild and fond.

“If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't be able to speak right now,” she said. “So stop pretending you hate me.”

He stared up at her, expression unreadable.

“Hellbound Legion,” she called, voice rising over the flames. “Withdraw.”

The word rolled across the battlefield like a command that even the corruption itself heard.

The demon spawn around the plaza pivoted as one and began to move away, toward the breach and the outer gap. Corrupted giants peeled off from their attacks on the mid-ring, trudging back toward the broken gate. In the distance, Kurotaka, Renjirō, and Shigure began to fall back as well, their auras shifting from attack to extraction.

Near the breach, Raiden’s eyes widened.

“They're retreating,” he said.

Kazuki did not relax. “They got what they came for.”

On a broken corner of the wall, Hayate watched the Hellbound Legion pull away with the kind of cold focus he saved for the worst moments.

He saw the demons leaving. He felt the echo of that red-black pulse.

He couldn't let them walk out after that.

He set his spear butt against the stone and pushed himself upright.

“Hayate,” Raiden said. “Don't!”

Kazuki stepped toward him, staff raised. “Your body is already at its limit. Don't be a fool!”

Hayate looked down at the city.

He saw the ruins. The smoke. The fires were still eating the lower ring. He saw knights leaning on broken walls, civilians huddled in alleys. He knew the numbers, even if he did not want to admit them yet. Too many were gone. Too many had been caught in the first waves.

If he let the Hellbound Legion leave unpunished, they would bring this ruin somewhere else next.

His fingers tightened on the spear until the knuckles went white.

“I have one strike left,” he said quietly. “That's enough.”

He didn't wait for Rei's permission.

He pushed off the wall and ran, sunfire flickering weakly along the spear’s tip.

As he moved, he drew the last of his Seiki together. It wasn't clean. It was ragged and painful, scraping together from reserves that did not want to be touched.

He whispered an apology that only he could hear.

“Forgive me, Solarii, if this isn't enough.”

He roared the move’s name, voice breaking halfway through.

“Sunheart Pulse!”

The spear re-lit to an extent, those in the inner city felt the heat that was being omitted.

True sunfire burst from its tip, brighter than it had been in the last hour. The blast wrapped around him, propelling him forward in a streak of light.

Down in the plaza, Akane began to step away from Rei.

A streak of gold cut through the smoke toward her.

She turned her head, the corner of her mouth lifting.

“Tsk,” she said.

Hayate drove his spear at her heart.

Demon spawn snapped up to intercept. His sunfire burned through the first two, melting them into slag. A third coiled around the shaft, tugging it just off line. The spear still tore a burning line across Akane’s side. Blood and Seiki spilled.

Her smile sharpened.

She moved her free hand.

A barbed sword erupted from the ground at Hayate’s back, driven by her Seiki. It shot clean through his chest and out the front, just below his sternum.

Hayate’s eyes went wide.

The sunfire along his spear wavered, then flickered out.

For a heartbeat, he saw nothing but the sky. It looked almost peaceful, if he ignored the smoke.

He thought of the first time he had seen Solarii from the air, riding a training platform with Raiden and Kazuki, listening to them argue about nothing at all. He thought of the way the towers had caught the morning light. He thought of the people who lived here, who had trusted him with their safety. He even thought of Rei in his last moments, and how he truly looked up to him.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered.

Akane twisted her hand.

The manifested weapon tore through his chest. Blood sprayed. Hayate’s body dropped to one knee, then fell forward with a dull, final sound.

Both sides of the breach felt his sunfire go out.

Raiden’s scream scraped his throat raw.

Kazuki stumbled, catching himself on his staff. His healing light dimmed around the knights he was touching.

Every Celestine soldier who could sense Seiki felt a weight leave their chests and did not understand why until they saw the body.

On the plaza, Rei watched Hayate fall from the corner of his eye.

Uriel’s Will reacted before he could think.

You will end her, the angel snapped. Now.

Rei’s right arm moved before he permitted it. It reached out toward where Seraphion had fallen earlier. Flames crawled up his forearm, licking at his skin. His legs tried to push him to his feet.

He planted his left hand on the ground, muscles screaming, trying to hold himself down.

His right hand kept reaching.

“I said no, Uriel,” he growled.

Uriel’s presence surged. His fingers jerked forward another inch, then another, pulled by a command that did not care about his opinions on the matter.

Rei bared his teeth.

He lifted his right arm as high as he could and then slammed it down, elbow first, into the shattered stone beside him.

The crack was loud and wet. Pain flared white-hot, drowning everything else for a second. Bone gave way. His forearm bent at the wrong angle.

His mind almost blanked.

Uriel’s control faltered but did not vanish. His broken hand still twitched toward the blade, fingers spasming.

Rei bit down hard on the base of his thumb.

He clenched his jaw and twisted.

The thumb joint snapped with a sharp pop. Fresh pain joined the screaming mess along his arm. Blood spattered onto the ground from where his teeth had torn the skin.

His fingers curled uselessly.

Seraphion remained where it had fallen.

Uriel raged inside him, a wordless blast of divine fury.

Rei sucked in a ragged breath.

“You don't get to choose for me,” he said quietly.

His broken arm dangled at his side. His thumb throbbed with each heartbeat. He stayed on his knees, watching Akane through the haze of dust and smoke.

She had not moved to finish him. She stood near the edge of the plaza, Revelation of the Demon Queen still humming along her limbs. She watched him with something like fascination.

“Only a man like you could stop a Will,” she said softly. “I've never seen that done until now... Amazing.”

She stepped backward, chains drawing in. Her aura began to contract, not fully vanishing, but lowering enough that the plaza stopped warping in her wake.

“I have to go,” she said. “You'd better come back to me soon.”

She turned, calling to the demons who still lingered near the streets.

The Hellbound Legion retreated through the ruined gate, demons and giants moving with disturbing discipline for creatures that loved chaos.

Behind them, the Celestine forces did not cheer. They simply did not have the strength left.

The fires burned lower as the night air shifted, drawing smoke upward. The screams of active battle faded to the moans of the wounded and the sobs of those who finally had time to realize who they had lost.

Solarii still stood.

Barely.

Whole districts had become blackened skeletons of buildings. Streets were gone, replaced by craters and piles of broken stone. In some neighborhoods, entire blocks had been flattened. The number of people still alive felt smaller than it should have, even without anyone saying the count out loud.

By the time the sun tried to pierce the smoke, Solarii’s population would be half of what it had been that morning.

On a broken stretch of plaza not far from the breach, someone had laid Hayate’s body out on a relatively flat section of stone. His spear rested beside him, the metal scorched and bent. His armor had been straightened as much as possible, though nothing could hide the hole in his chest.

Raiden stood over him, face empty, hands slack at his sides. Kazuki knelt nearby, one hand resting lightly on Hayate’s shoulder, eyes closed in silent prayer or apology.

A short distance away, Hajime leaned against a fallen column with Izumi beside him, her shoulder pressed to his to keep him upright. The vines around his torso had tightened as they dried, holding cracked bones in place. His Seiki felt like embers under wet ash.

Rei walked toward Hayate without really remembering the steps it took to get there.

His broken arm hung at a strange angle. His hand and thumb were a swollen, blood-dark mess. His nose was crooked. One eye had already started to bruise shut. Each breath hurt.

He reached Hayate’s side and sank to sit beside the body, legs folding under him.

No one told him to move.

He stared at Hayate’s face, at the lines of exhaustion that death had not erased, at the faint trace of sunburn on his cheekbones from a lifetime spent under training fields and battle skies.

There should have been anger. There should have been grief. Those things were somewhere inside him; he knew they were, but right now all he felt was a kind of hollow recognition.

This was what it meant to fight beings like Akane and the Hellbound Lords while the seals that held worse things than them whispered in the dark.

Hajime watched him from across the broken plaza, jaw tight.

Izumi squeezed Hajime’s hand gently, more to ground herself than him.

Rei didn't look up when he finally spoke.

“She's really going to do it,” he said.

His voice was rough, not from crying, but from too much screaming in battle and too much blood in his throat.

Kazuki opened his eyes.

Raiden’s fingers twitched.

Hajime and Izumi frowned.

“Do what?” they called, voices tired.

Rei lifted his head enough to look toward the broken outer gate, where the last traces of red-black Seiki were fading into the distance.

“She's trying to awaken Abaddon,” he said.

The word settled over the ruined plaza heavier than any falling stone.

No one spoke after that.

The fires of Solarii crackled in the silence, eating slowly through what the war had left behind.