The water roared in a steady, circling thunder, holding the demon like a storm holds a shipwreck. Mist drifted over the clearing in pale veils, catching moonlight and turning the battlefield to silver.
Juvia—cloak damp at the hem, hair clinging in blue ribbons to her cheeks—glided down from the hill and came to stand under the great sphere. Inside, the Lullaby writhed, being scalded by the hot water. Its skull-like face pressed against the translucent wall, jaw opening and closing in a silent howl as the water muffled every sound it made. Black threads of curse-energy spidered outward, only to be shredded and washed thin by the current as surely as ink dissolves in a basin.
A shadow fell beside her. Makarov approached with cautious, measured steps, his small hands folded behind his back, eyes narrowed against the spray. Even his experienced magic resisted the urge to flare—it was instinct to brace against the pressure, and it took discipline not to. For a long heartbeat, he simply studied the sphere, watched the way the current folded and refolded with surgical precision.
"It keeps regenerating with its magic," he observed at last, voice low. "You're forcing its power to diffuse, but it will rally soon. Do you—" he turned his head up slightly, speaking not like a master to a child, but one colleague to another "—need help?"
Juvia's head rotated toward him by a fraction. Her expression did not change, but the air temperature seemed to drop a degree.
The deathgaze landed.
"Are you," she said, very evenly, "trying to prevent Juv—ahem, Beta from displaying her heroic side before Shadow-sama?" Her eyes narrowed another sliver. "Or are you attempting to become Beta's rival in earning Shadow-sama's favor?"
Makarov blinked twice. "Not at all, not at all," he said, hands up immediately, a bead of sweat gathering under one brow. "Simply offering help."
Juvia's gaze lingered a moment longer—evaluating, weighing, filing him into an internal cabinet labeled Potential Interference to fulfilling the duty Shadow-sama gave her beautifully—and then returned to the sphere. The water tightened obediently at a minute gesture of her fingers. The Lullaby battered against the wall, and the wall bent with the blow, absorbed it, and returned to shape.
How should I finish him…? The thought floated up unbidden. Something worthy of Shadow-sama's eyes. Elegant. Clean. He will praise me… A blush threatened. She slapped the idea back down with iron will. No. Compose yourself. If you don't, you will faint, and if you faint, you will disappoint your beloved Shadow-sama. Breathe. Maintain grace. You are Shadow's Garden Beta!
Footsteps skidded in wet grass. "WHOOOOA!" Natsu's voice boomed, starstruck and delighted. He barreled to a stop at the edge of the puddled ground, leaning forward with both hands on his knees, grinning like a kid at the circus. "You trapped that giant creepy bone-head? That's awesome!"
Beta did not look away from her work. "He may possess power," she said coolly, "but he does not know how to use it." Then, softer, with a warmth she could not suppress: "Quite the opposite of Shadow-sama's power—graceful, exact, absolute." The corners of her mouth tugged; she stifled it, failed, and ended up wriggling in place in the tiniest, mortified way—like an embarrassed earthworm. A flush bloomed across her cheeks.
Gray approached more slowly, eyes sharp. He kept his distance from the spinning water, testing the air with a cold breath that crystallized into a thin lace of ice and shattered instantly. "Careful," he warned, half to himself, half to Natsu. "That pressure isn't normal. One miscast and the whole thing could blow."
Erza stepped forward with him, sword lowered but ready, armor still vibrating from the demon's earlier scream. Her gaze flicked from the sphere to Beta, then to Makarov. "Master?" The question hung between them: Do we intervene?
Makarov folded his hands again, watching the tiny corrections in Beta's spellwork: the way she tapped a fingertip against a current to disrupt a knot of malice, how she leaned and the whole sphere subtly precessed around the demon's center of mass. "We hold," he said. "For now."
Lucy drifted up beside Gray, eyes wide, hair plastered to her cheeks by mist. "She's… amazing," she whispered. The reflection of the water magnified in her pupils, a living lens. "I've never seen magic behave like that. It's like she's sculpting it."
Natsu straightened, fired up again. "Yeah, yeah—so let's finish this! Hey, black cloak and blue hair! You wanna tag-team? I'll blast it when you drop the water and—"
Makarov's fist came down on his head with a solid thunk. Natsu folded like a poorly pitched tent.
"Sit," Makarov said mildly. He did not look away from the sphere. "Use your eyes. Not every problem is solved by heating it up."
Natsu lay there, muffled. "M'kay."
Bob hovered at the back of the group, fanning himself delicately while sweat glimmered on his brow. His voice, usually lazily musical, carried a genuine tremor of awe. "My, my… what delicate control. That level of precision—there aren't many mages in Ishgar who could hold such a huge spell steady. She's quite the talent." He peeked at Makarov. "Do we… know this one?"
"We do not," Makarov said. "And that bothers me."
His gaze followed the path she had descended, tracing back up the slope to where she must have come from. There, against the moonlight, he thought he saw a silhouette — still, and impossibly calm. Yet no magic, no presence, not even the faintest breath of life could be sensed from it.
A chill ran down Makarov's spine. For a wizard of his level, to see something and feel nothing at all — that was far more unsettling than any overwhelming power.
His gaze went back to Beta's hooded silhouette. A young voice, he noted. Young, and yet this level of force. Stronger than me? Perhaps. His mouth set into a thin line. Why hide her face? A wizard of darkness? No—she doesn't sound like it. But secrecy is rarely innocent.
Inside the sphere, the Lullaby thrashed. The demon's curse energy, a river of night, rushed outward in convulsions—only to be braided apart and sent spiraling back by the sphere's circulation. It tried to gather strength in the skull; the flow eroded it. It tried to sing; the water took its voice and broke it down into useless vibration. Its magic bellowed; the pressure gradient choked it.
This… prison… The words didn't carry as sound but as a battering presence. This mortal's current… chews the hymn… Its claws raked the inner wall; the surface flexed and reformed, unmarked. I am the requiem— The water shoved the claim back into its teeth.
Beta lifted her left hand, fingers splayed. The sphere brightened as moonlight refracted through dozens of spinning eddies she had set within it—nested rings of flow like gears in a clock. Each ring turned against its neighbor, a net of never-still planes slicing curse-energy into thinner and thinner sheets until it dispersed completely.
Erza exhaled, half-admiration, half-tactical appraisal. "She's stripping the magic away before it can cohere," she murmured. "If the demon can't bind its energy, it can't shape an attack."
Gray nodded. "Like shredding cloth before it's sewn. Efficient… and terrifying."
Lucy tugged on Natsu's scarf as he tried to rise again. "Don't you dare. Don't you see the amount of water above us ?! If you mess up the pattern, we'll all drown!"
Natsu flopped back with a huff. "Fine. But if that thing breaks out, I'm turning it into charcoal."