The impact echoed like sacred thunder.
Karmore flew backward from the blow, landing with her feet dragging across the ground, carving furrows in the earth. Her expression hardened. For the first time, she felt something more than pain.
She felt familiarity.
Electricity still crackled around Tekio's body. His eyes shone with an ancestral duality. It wasn't just him there.
It was her too.
— So you managed it… — Karmore murmured, a broken smile forming. — Fused your souls. How absurd.
Tekio breathed deeply but did not smile. His expression was solemn. Serene. Almost sad.
— Yara… never abandoned you. Not even now.
The words pierced like blades.
But Karmore charged again, tearing through the air like inverted lightning.
Tekio pivoted, dodging by millimeters and landing an elbow strike on her shoulder. Karmore spun on the ground, regaining her balance, and responded with a low kick. He leaped over it and counterattacked with a palm strike to her chest, channeling an electric wave that hurled her against a destroyed tree.
CRASH!
She landed on her feet, panting, her eyes fixed on her enemy.
— You talk as if you know me… — she said through gritted teeth. — But you have no idea what I've been through.
— I don't. — Tekio replied. — But she does.
And Karmore felt it. For a fraction of a second, his gaze was her gaze.
The same tenderness. The same guilt. The same love.
— Shut. Up! — she roared, running in a zigzag, arms energized, fists ready to shatter everything.
The ground cracked under her feet. The surrounding trees trembled. The earth was saturated with spiritual energy.
But Tekio was different.
He wasn't just faster. He was anticipatory. As if his mind had expanded beyond his body.
As if two consciousnesses were thinking in unison.
His movements were clean, without hesitation. Inside, he felt Yara's invisible hand guiding him, not as a puppet—but as a partner.
And when their fists collided again, the impact didn't spark…
…it distorted space.
Ripples cut through the air like waves on a lake, and for a moment—a small, terrible moment—Karmore saw the past.
Herself. A girl. Trapped.
Chains on her wrists. Voices judging her. Demons watching from afar with disgust—something only she could perceive.
Her family dead, blood and bodies.
And in the middle of it all, her sister, Yara, staring at her with cold eyes.
Eyes that pierced her soul.
Karmore screamed and shattered the memory flow with a brutal punch to Tekio's jaw, throwing him aside. But the damage was already done.
She staggered. Gasped. Eyes wide. Mind ablaze.
— You… saw… what she did…? — she said, her voice trembling.
— You're wrong. Yara didn't do that. Your mind is broken, and you're being manipulated. What they did to you was monstrous. — he replied, spitting blood. — But you are not what they created.
I will make you see. I will break whatever they did to your mind.
Inside Tekio, Yara was surprised.
She felt it.
Something she had never been able to do—this was the first time Yara saw what Karmore saw.
There was something within Tekio that directly touched the soul and core of people.
For the first time, Yara saw the real possibility of saving her sister.
Bringing Amara back.
Tekio felt Yara's emotions and knew this.
He was betting on it.
But this was nothing more than hope. In the real world, the battle continued.
— Shut up… — she whispered.
— You are more than Karmore.
— "Don't say that name!" — she roared, her body trembling, aura fluctuating.
— You are Amara. Not a monster they want to create. Not a curse.
She took a step back.
— I believe in you. Yara believes in you. We want to save you.
— TEKIOOO!! — she screamed, her aura exploding in a whirlwind of agony.
But Tekio advanced. Without fear.
Without hesitation.
Not to hurt. Not to kill.
But to reach out.
His hands opened at the last second, and he grabbed her by the shoulders. A touch that wasn't violent. It was firm.
Like the touch of someone holding a body about to fall into the abyss.
— I will make you see. I will save you, even if you're stubborn, whether you want it or not. I will save you… from yourself.
Karmore's eyes trembled.
And there, for an eternal second…
…her aura wavered.
Dissolved.
Revealing a soul…
shattered.
But not lost.
Karmore's shoulders shook under Tekio's hands.
Her body heaved, her breathing erratic. Her eyes, once so cold, now shone with confusion, rage… and something deeper.
Regret?
Perhaps.
But then…
Came the pain.
— Agh…!! — she choked, stepping back.
Her hand went instinctively to her head, as if something were piercing her skull from the inside out.
— No… not now…
She screamed.
A sound that wasn't just human. Wasn't just hers. It was as if multiple voices mixed together.
Tekio took a step forward.
— Amara?!
But he stopped.
His spine shuddered.
The mark on his back—the one that grew as he evolved—began to itch intensely. First like small spasms. Then like embers under his skin.
He fell to his knees.
— What… is this…?!
And then, like a mirror shattering, Karmore also fell, her body arching, her back shaking violently.
— NO!!! NOT NOW!! — she roared, her eyes now filled with blood.
Her aura exploded in a spasm of pure, uncontrolled energy.
It was no longer the aura dominated by hatred. It was something greater, anomalous, that seemed to scream from within her very core. An impulse coming from somewhere beyond herself.
Tekio, still on his knees, tried to stand, but his mark pulsed as if connected to an internal sun about to implode.
Yara, inside him, screamed:
— Something… is activating our roots. She— she also has a mark?! — Yara watched through Tekio's eyes and felt it.
Felt the threat — Tekio, GET AWAY FROM HERE! — she shouted.
But there was no time.
Karmore lifted her face.
And it was no longer the same gaze.
Before, her eyes were broken. Now, they were sharp blades. Hard. Frozen. Blood streamed like tears from both eyes.
Every trace of vulnerability had sealed shut like a scar forcibly reopened.
— You almost broke me, Tekio. — she said in a thread of a voice. — But I'm not made to be saved.
She smiled. But it was a broken smile. Cold as steel.
— I'm made to destroy.
CRACK!
The ground beneath her cracked with the new surge of energy.
She advanced.
Tekio tried to react, but she was already upon him.
A hook to his abdomen lifted him from the ground.
He flew meters backward, the impact causing trees to collapse around him.
— Let's end this… — she whispered, walking slowly with her aura spiraling. — …before I forget who you are.
Tekio spat blood and struggled to support himself.
The mark on his back burned. But it wasn't just pain.
It was a response.
A bond between them, something ancient… but incomplete.
He felt it.
Amara's soul was still in there, trapped.
Only now, locked behind a hundred locks of pain.
And the key…
Was in the midst of the storm.
To be continued…