Chapter 78: Kizawa's Thunderclap

My golden-silver flame is a roar in the silence, but Kuro-Kiri is a void that swallows sound.

I lunge. It is not a calculated strike. It is an explosion of pure kinetic fury. I am Mizuki, and I am the Weapon. I aim for the center of the black fog, for the place where the stolen green crystal of the Hollow-God now beats like a corrupted heart.

"Burn," I scream.

The impact is not physical. My dagger, formed of my own life-force, meets the wall of solidified shadow. Light clashes with anti-light. The air in the Nexus screams as atoms are torn apart and stitched back together in wrong ways.

Kuro-Kiri does not budge. He laughs, a dry, rustling sound inside my skull.

"Is that it?" his voice whispers. "Is that the fury of a Phoenix? It is warm. Like a dying ember."

He waves a hand. A tendril of black fog, tipped with a sickle of green energy, lashes out. It hits me in the chest. The force is like a falling mountain. I am thrown backward, skidding across the obsidian floor. My flame flickers, nearly snuffing out.

"Mizuki!" Hachiro yells. He jumps over Krell's body, his green-glowing fists raised. "You want heat? Eat this!"

He punches the fog. It is a blow that could shatter a tank. The fog just parts. Hachiro stumbles through it, hitting nothing but cold air. The fog reforms behind him, solidifying into a fist of its own. It slams into Hachiro's back, driving him face-first into the stone.

"Predictable," Kuro-Kiri sighs. "You are flesh. I am concept. You cannot punch a shadow."

Erima fires. Her arrow is a black streak aimed at the green crystal heart. It hits the fog and stops dead in the air, suspended. Then, it slowly dissolves into dust.

"And you cannot shoot a nightmare," the General mocks.

He turns his crimson eyes back to me. I am struggling to my knees. The cold is seeping back in. The doubt is creeping into the edges of my vision. He is right. He is stronger. He has the power of the Void and the power of the God. We are just broken children playing at war.

"Now," Kuro-Kiri says, raising his hand. The fog in the room begins to swirl, forming a vortex of blades. "Let us end this farce."

"No."

The word is soft. It cuts through the roaring of the vortex like a diamond cutter through glass. Kuro-Kiri pauses. He turns his helmeted head.

Kizawa is standing there.

He is not in a combat stance. He is standing straight, his arms hanging loose at his sides. His twin swords, Silence and Storm, are in his hands, the tips resting on the floor. He looks bored.

"The Blade," Kuro-Kiri muses. "The broken boy. Do you have a final prayer?"

"I am not praying," Kizawa says. His voice is flat, devoid of fear, devoid of anger. It is the voice of a machine that has finished its calculations. "I am adjusting."

"Adjusting?"

"You said you are an idea," Kizawa says. He lifts his right sword, Silence. The blade is chipped, dull gray steel. "You said we cannot kill an idea."

He lifts his left sword, Storm. It catches the green light of the crystal.

"You are wrong."

Kizawa takes a step forward. He does not rush. He walks.

"An idea is just a pattern," Kizawa says. "A structure. A frequency. If you disrupt the pattern, the idea dies."

"And you think your steel can disrupt me?" Kuro-Kiri laughs. "I am the Void!"

"I know," Kizawa says. "I held the Void. I was the Anchor. I know what you taste like."

He stops ten feet from the General.

"You taste like static."

Kuro-Kiri snarls. The vortex of fog blades descends. A thousand razors of shadow scream toward Kizawa.

"Kizawa, move!" I scream.

He does not move. He breathes. He sheathes his swords. The click of the guards hitting the scabbards is the loudest sound in the room. He drops into a crouch, his hands hovering over the hilts. It is an Iaijutsu stance. The drawing stance.

"Void Style," Kizawa whispers. The fog blades are inches from his face. "First Form: Thunderclap."

He draws.

It is not a cut. It is not a slash. It is a sonic boom.

He draws both blades with such impossible, god-breaking speed that the air itself shatters. A shockwave of pure vacuum explodes outward from his body. It is not wind. It is the sound of space tearing open.

A deafening crack hits us like a physical wall. I cover my ears. The stone floor beneath Kizawa pulverizes into dust. The vortex of fog blades does not just stop. It vaporizes. The shockwave tears the shadows apart, shredding the cohesion of the mist.

Kuro-Kiri screams. It is a sound of genuine shock. The fog that makes up his body ripples violently, destabilizing. The armor of shadow cracks.

Kizawa is gone. He is a blue blur, moving in the wake of his own shockwave. He is inside the General's guard. He sheathes his swords again. Click.

"Second Form," Kizawa whispers, right in the General's face. "Flash."

He draws again. This time, I do not see the swords. I only see a grid of blue light appearing in the air, dissecting the General's torso. Horizontal. Vertical. Diagonal. Twelve cuts in the space of a heartbeat.

Kuro-Kiri flies backward. He slams into the far wall of the Nexus, pinning himself there. His shadow-form is leaking black smoke from a dozen impossible wounds.

"How?" the General gasps, his voice flickering like a dying radio. "I am intangible."

Kizawa stands where the General was. He flicks his blades, clearing them of black residue.

"You are not intangible," Kizawa says coldly. "You are just fast. You vibrate between states. Shadow and matter."

He looks at his swords. They are glowing with a faint, blue aura.

"I just cut faster than you can vibrate."

He points Silence at the pinned General.

"I am the Anchor. I held the line against the Spinner King himself. You are just his shadow. You are nothing."

Kizawa turns to me. His eyes are clear. The blue ice is back, but it is not the ice of death. It is the ice of absolute focus.

"Mizuki," he says. "He is destabilized. The core is exposed."

I look. In the center of the General's shredded chest, the green crystal Heart is pulsing wildly, unprotected.

"Finish it," Kizawa commands.

I scramble to my feet. My flame roars.

"With pleasure," I say.