Article Seven, Section Three

The air had changed. That was the first thing Ryoko noticed after picking herself out of the wreckage of twisted metal and broken machinery.

It wasn't just the temperature drop or the sudden visibility of the night sky through the warehouse windows. The oppressive weight pressing down on her lungs felt like being submerged in deep water. The atmosphere itself had become hostile, saturated with an alien presence that made her skin crawl.

The shadow creatures on the walls were dying.

Not fleeing. Not hiding. Actually dissolving into wisps of black smoke that evaporated into nothing, their forms unable to maintain cohesion in the face of whatever was radiating from the boy standing at the center of the room.

Except he wasn't a boy anymore.

Rome took a step forward. Just one. The concrete beneath his boot didn't crack so much as crater, spiderwebs of fractures spreading outward in a perfect circle. He moved with a grace that felt fundamentally wrong on a human frame, all sharp angles and predatory motion. The purple light surrounding him wasn't some gentle aura. It crackled and writhed like living lightning, hungry and impatient.

"Oh fuck," Ryoko whispered, tasting blood.

The B-Rank Tyrant, the nightmare that had casually backhanded her through a pillar not two minutes ago, did something Ryoko had never witnessed in all her years hunting Phantoms.

It roared in fear.

The sound rattled the remaining windows, a primal howl of panic from a creature that had stood at the top of the food chain until approximately thirty seconds ago. Its remaining good arm lashed out in a desperate, graceless swipe that screamed of terror rather than aggression.

Rome tilted his head.

The massive claws passed so close to his face that Ryoko could see individual strands of his white hair being disturbed by the displaced air. He hadn't dodged. He'd simply moved, reading the attack's trajectory before it even fully manifested, his body responding to the flow of killing intent rather than the physical motion itself.

What the hell kind of technique is that?

The Tyrant's arm finished its arc. Rome's hand shot out mid-swing, open palm pressing flat against the creature's armored hide with a sound like meat hitting a hot griddle. The sizzle made Ryoko's stomach turn.

The monster shrieked.

Black and red tendrils of energy, visible to Ryoko's trained eyes, began flowing out of the Tyrant's body and into Rome's palm. Not being cut. Not being burned. Being drained, siphoned away like water through a straw. The creature's chitinous armor dulled where Rome touched it, the demonic energy that reinforced its structure being systematically stripped away.

Rome smiled.

It was the most terrifying thing Ryoko had seen all night, and she'd watched three people get turned into dried husks. This wasn't the nervous grin of the civilian she'd saved. This was bliss. Pure, unfiltered satisfaction spreading across features that suddenly seemed too sharp, too angular, too old to belong to a seventeen-year-old construction worker.

"Oh that's good," Rome breathed, his voice layered with harmonics that made Ryoko's inner ear ache. "That's really, really good. Like finally scratching an itch you've had your entire life."

The Tyrant wrenched itself backward, stumbling on legs that now trembled. It created distance between them, its maw opening to unleash the same corrosive bile attack Ryoko had barely dodged when it was busy dismantling her clones.

Rome's mouth opened.

What came out wasn't bile. It was worse.

A lance of pure violet demonic energy erupted from his throat. The blast punched through the Tyrant's shoulder, vaporizing armor and flesh in equal measure. The technique, the execution, the casual power behind it all screamed of something Ryoko recognized.

That was the Abattoir Amalgam's ranged attack. The hook monster that had nearly killed her before Rome tackled it off the catwalk.

He copied it.

"No," Ryoko whispered, pushing herself up the pillar behind her with her good arm. "That's not possible. You can't just..."

Rome was already moving again, a purple blur cutting through the warehouse like a scalpel through tissue. The fight stopped being a fight somewhere around the third exchange. It became a demonstration. A practical lesson in the futility of resistance.

He didn't try to kill the Tyrant. He deconstructed it.

Armored plates came away in his hands, separated at the molecular level as he drained the energy binding them together. The creature's desperate counterattacks met empty air, Rome flowing around each strike with the confidence of someone who could read the script before the actors finished their lines.

"Come on," he crooned, ducking under a wild haymaker that would have liquified concrete. "Is this really all you've got? All that rage, all that beautiful demonic energy just begging to be taken, and you're giving me this amateur hour performance?"

He caught the Tyrant's arm mid-swing, his grip leaving smoking handprints on its hide.

"I mean, I'm grateful for the meal and all," Rome continued, wrenching the limb backward with a sickening crunch. "I expected more from something that scared my new friend over there so badly though."

The Tyrant tried to headbutt him. Rome leaned back, let the strike pass, then surged forward to plant both hands on the creature's chest.

"Don't worry," he whispered, his purple eyes blazing. "None of you will go to waste."

The warehouse lit up like someone had set off a violet sun.

Energy poured out of the Tyrant in visible streams, screaming torrents of black and red being forcibly extracted and pulled into Rome's body. The monster thrashed, its shrieks hitting frequencies that shattered what few intact windows remained. The sound went on for ten seconds that felt like ten hours.

Then there was nothing.

No dust. No corpse. No evidence that a nine-foot apex predator had existed thirty seconds ago. Just Rome, standing in the center of a scorched circle, breathing hard like he'd just finished an intense workout. Black markings crawled up his arms, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

"Holy shit," he said, grinning at the ceiling. "I could get used to this."

Ryoko forced herself to her feet. Every muscle screamed in protest, her broken ribs grinding together with each breath. The katana felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as she raised it with a trembling arm.

Rome turned around. His eyes found hers across the warehouse floor, and that smirk spread across his face like oil on water.

"So," Rome said, taking a step toward her. "Want to get out of here?"

Ryoko's grip tightened on her sword. The blade caught the purple light radiating from Rome's aura, throwing distorted reflections across the warehouse walls.

"By the authority granted to me as a scion of the Valac Clan..."

Rome stopped walking. His head tilted, curious.

"...and in accordance with Shaman Regulations, Article Seven, Section Three..."

She took a painful step forward, every fiber of her being demanding she run instead. Valacs didn't run though. Valacs didn't abandon their duty.

"I hereby classify you as a Demon-class threat."

The smile dropped from Rome's face.

Ryoko raised her katana despite her screaming muscles, the blade pointing directly at his heart.

"And I will exercise my duty to exorcise you!"