"You just rang the dinner bell," Kuroda whispered, and the shadows in the vault obeyed.
Kaito didn't waste a breath. His reaction was pure, primal instinct. "Aiko, the river! Get to the hole!" he roared. He ignited the plasma cutter, not as a weapon, but as a distraction, and hurled the hissing, white-hot tool directly at Kuroda's smiling face.
The sorcerer didn't even flinch. A single, thick, black tendril of blight energy rose lazily from the floor and swatted the plasma cutter aside like a bothersome fly. It clattered uselessly against the far wall. "Crude," Kuroda sighed, as if disappointed. "You have no idea what real power is."
The tendrils surged forward. They did not come in a chaotic wave; they moved with a terrifying, intelligent precision. Dozens of them. They didn't strike at Kaito. They shot past him, converging on the square hole in the wall, weaving themselves into a thick, writhing wall of blackness. In seconds, their only escape route was completely, hopelessly sealed.
Kaito skidded to a halt, pulling Aiko behind him. They were cut off. Trapped. The vault had become a tomb, and the undertaker was smiling at them.
"Now," Kuroda said, clasping his hands politely behind his back as he advanced, "let's begin."
Kaito's mind raced, processing the impossible tactical situation. Kuroda was a true master, a sorcerer of immense power, and he was toying with them. He wasn't trying to kill them, not yet. He was cornering them. He was savoring this.
"Stay behind me, Aiko," Kaito commanded, his voice a low growl. He drew the spiritual blade from the sheath on his harness—the short, black, anti-magic weapon Master Jin had insisted he carry. He ignited his own power, the Kamaitachi spirit answering his call. The air around him shimmered, shadows coiling around his arms and legs, his body dropping into a low, predatory crouch. He was shadow against a void, shadow against shadow.
He lunged.
To a human eye, he simply vanished. He crossed the ten feet between them in less than a heartbeat, his blade aimed not at Kuroda, but at the man's throat, a killing blow.
Kuroda didn't move. He simply watched, his smile placid, as his personal shield of blight energy did the work. A dozen tendrils erupted from his own body, meeting Kaito mid-air. Kaito was a whirlwind of motion, his blade a blur as it sliced through the shadows. The anti-magic metal worked—each tendril he cut dissolved with a psychic hiss—but for every one he destroyed, two more took its place, lashing out, forcing him back.
It was a relentless, exhausting, and utterly futile battle. Kaito was a warrior, built for speed and killing precision. Kuroda was a puppet master, a creature of absolute defense, and he possessed an endless supply of shadow-strings.
Aiko watched from her position against the pedestal, her heart in her throat. Kaito was fighting a hydra. He was impossibly fast, impossibly skilled, but he couldn't get close. He was on the defensive, being herded, being tired out. He can't win this, she realized with a dawning, sickening horror. He's just distracting him.
She looked at Kuroda, who was watching Kaito's struggle with the bored, detached amusement of a man observing a very predictable, very expensive floor show. His true focus, she could feel, was on her. He was waiting for Kaito to make a mistake, to tire. And then, he would take his prize.
No. She was done being the prize. She was done being the person he had to die to protect. She was his partner.
"Kaito!" she screamed, her voice cutting through the hiss of magic. "The tendrils! They're all connected to him!"
She deliberately stepped out from behind the pedestal, making herself a target. "Hey!" she shouted, her voice trembling but defiant.
Kuroda's cold, dead eyes finally shifted from Kaito, landing on her. His smile widened. "Ah," he breathed, as if seeing dessert. "The little light wishes to play."
"Now, Kaito!" Aiko yelled, bracing herself.
While Kuroda's attention was on her, she didn't just shield. She gathered every ounce of the Kirin's blessing, every bit of her rage, her fear, and her defiant will to live, and she pushed. It wasn't a wall. It was a sunburst. A wave of pure, holy, golden light exploded from her in a 360-degree radius, a silent, divine concussion.
The effect was absolute.
The shadow tendrils, born of the blight, screeched—a sound Aiko felt in her bones. They recoiled from the light, sizzling and dissolving into black, greasy smoke, like darkness evaporating in the face of a new dawn. The room was momentarily, blindingly clear, the walls themselves groaning as the corrupt energy was scoured from them.
Kaito, his own shadows momentarily forced back by the holy light, felt the absence of his attackers. He spun, his eyes landing on Kuroda.
The sorcerer was no longer smiling. He was snarling, his hand raised to shield his eyes. His perfectly handsome human glamour flickered and dissolved, revealing, for a split second, the thing beneath. It was not a man. It was something ancient, sexless, and made of shifting, hungry darkness, its eyes two cold, dead voids.
"You bitch!" it hissed, its voice no longer smooth and cultured, but a guttural, inhuman rasp. The blight energy, no longer toying, receded from the walls and consolidated around the creature, forming a thick, black, shimmering armor. It was done playing.
"That was the signal to leave!" Kaito roared. He knew a killing blow when he saw one. He didn't wait. He grabbed Aiko's waist, his arm a band of steel, and sprinted for the hole in the wall. The path was clear, but only for a second.
They were three feet from the exit. Two feet. Aiko was about to leap into the black, rushing water below.
"You will not take what is mine!" Kuroda shrieked from behind them.
A single, needle-thin tendril of pure, concentrated blackness, moving faster than sound, shot from the creature's outstretched hand. It was faster than Kaito's Kamaitachi speed. It was faster than Aiko's light. It wasn't aimed at Kaito; it was aimed directly at Aiko's back, at her heart, at the source of the Kirin's light it craved.
Aiko saw it coming, not with her eyes, but in the reflection of Kaito's wide, terrified ones as he faced her. She had no time to move, no time to even scream.
At the last possible millisecond, Kaito did the only thing he could. He spun, twisting his body, deliberately putting himself in the path of the attack.
He grunted, a sharp, choked sound.
Aiko looked down. The black, corrosive tendril, a spear of pure void, had buried itself deep into his left shoulder, just below the collarbone, a place designed to kill.
The blight—the pure, unmaking, soul-eating sickness—was inside him.
His grip on her waist faltered. He looked at her, his eyes wide with shock and a sudden, searing pain, before he pitched forward, dragging them both through the hole and into the cold, black, raging river below.