Yu lost the next exchange.
Then the next one.
Then three more in a row.
Sung Aka Little Dragon screamed against the black dragonmascus tanto—sparks spitting gold and red across the smoke—but Seizen was moving too fast now. Not wild-fast. Not sloppy-fast.
Precise.
Cruel.
His Viatra read everything first.
Yu cut high.
Seizen was already under it.
Yu turned the wrist, tried to fold into a backhand return—
too late.
The tanto kissed his forearm.
A red line opened.
Yu didn't slow.
He stepped in hard, grey aura cracking under his boots.
Martial Muti — Dragon Step.
He drove forward with a saber burst, Little Dragon flashing from neutral steel to wind-laced silver in the same breath. The curve of the blade whistled for Seizen's neck—
Seizen leaned a hair.
The edge missed by a finger.
The return took Yu under the ribs.
A quick stab. A twist. Withdraw.
Yu's breath hitched.
The wound was shallow.
It still hurt like hell.
He roared and swung again—fire lacing the saber now, the edge hissing orange. The cut tore through smoke and heat both.
Seizen cut the angle apart.
The tanto hit the flat, slid, disappeared—
then the second slash came from nowhere and opened Yu's shoulder seam.
Another line.
Another leak.
Seizen's cloak turned through the smoke. Hair flashing silver-white in the firelight, crimson eyes cold and certain.
Yu planted. Forced himself back into center.
No panic.
No retreat.
The men around them needed to see him stand.
He launched again.
Little Dragon rose in a brutal crescent. Fire on the first beat. Wind on the second. Earth-weight on the third.
Three linked swings. Three kills in any ordinary war.
Seizen danced between them like the cuts belonged to someone else.
First passed over his head.
Second shaved his coat.
Third—
he stepped inside it.
The tanto slammed the saber wrist.
Little Dragon jolted wide.
And Seizen's heel came around.
A spinning back kick.
No wasted motion. No flourish.
Just perfect impact.
It hit Yu square in the chest.
The general flew.
He smashed through the side of a barracks block hard enough to crater the wall and vanish into stone and dust.
Athena's voice tore loose before rank could stop it.
"No!"
Seizen didn't look at her.
He inhaled.
Then spat two fireballs after Yu.
Fire Muti — Ash-Star Barrage.
The first punched through the broken wall.
The second hit half a beat later.
The building blew from the inside.
Flame vomited from windows. Stone blocks kicked loose and spun through the yard. A roof support snapped and folded, collapsing one whole side of the barracks into a burning heap.
The soldiers nearest the blast staggered back.
The heat slapped them.
Someone screamed the general's name.
Athena took one step forward—
—and smoke at ground level broke.
Yu came out on one knee, coughing soot and blood, one hand still wrapped around Little Dragon.
He wasn't alone.
Mustafa Mubar had one shoulder under him, staff planted hard.
Lisa Ali stood at the other side, one hand out, sound pressure bent around them in a tight shell that bled the blast wide instead of deep.
Yu hacked black spit onto the dirt and shoved himself upright.
"I'm not dead."
Lisa didn't even look at him. "Then stop getting thrown through architecture."
Mustafa glanced once toward the center of the yard, face unreadable. "He kicks hard."
Bootsteps sounded behind Athena.
Loose.
Lazy.
Almost drunk.
Darius King came through the smoke with a lacquered hyōtan gourd in one hand and one eye half-lidded like he'd wandered into the wrong assignment on purpose. Mushi walked at his shoulder, quiet as a drawn blade, one hand already near the hilt. Behind them, their people spread without needing orders, reading the chaos and taking lanes.
Darius took a long drink of boze.
Lowered the gourd.
Looked at Seizen.
"…Seems like we made it just in time."
He said it with a grin.
His eyes were sober.
They tracked the damage fast—the bomb craters, the burning gate, the dead, the way the dead had fallen, the shape of the attack.
Then they settled on Seizen standing in the middle of it all.
Darius clicked his tongue softly.
"Damn," he said. "We have to fight Seizen."
The name sat heavy for a beat.
"The Black Prince of the Black Clan himself."
His eyes cut once toward the harbor dark.
Tikhan's deployment on Dune Island?
Retaliation?
No.
He kept walking.
Red Order doesn't need revenge lanes.
They can hit anyone, anywhere they please.
So why send a Shinshō here?
Why Seizen Kairo? The crimson one?
His mouth flattened.
"This is something else."
Athena turned. "Captain—"
Darius waved her off with the gourd.
"Relax."
He kept walking into the firelight.
"I'm just gonna talk."
Yu spat blood and almost laughed. "You never just talk."
"That's how you know this is serious."
Across the yard, Seizen watched him come.
No birds dropping.
No fireballs.
Just that cold crimson gaze.
Darius lifted the gourd in greeting like they were meeting at some academy reunion instead of inside a burning base.
"Hey! Seizen! You remember me?" he called. "I used to be one of your teachers back in the academy, back in my young and handsome days. You used to be the quiet—"
Two kunai flashed.
No warning.
Just silver-black lines ripping through smoke at his throat and eye.
Darius moved late enough to look sloppy and early enough to humiliate the throw.
Tak. Tak.
He caught both.
Spun them between his fingers.
The nearest soldiers made the same sound all at once—half relief, half disbelief.
Seizen's mouth curved the barest amount.
"Not bad, sensei," he said. "Still have those fast reflexes hidden under your sloppy movements."
Darius laughed.
"You caught me."
He corked the gourd and let it hang.
"Maybe I should get serious."
The air changed.
Seizen's base aura rose first.
Not a pillar. Not a scream.
A raw grey aura rolled off him in a silent, predatory wave while faint crimson bled at the edges of his Viatra. Fire bent toward him. Loose ash circled his boots. The puddles around broken stone trembled.
Darius answered.
His own grey aura pushed out in a widening front—warm, heavy, dangerous. Broken glass on the ground started chattering. A snapped spear shaft lifted, trembled, then slid across the yard. Loose flame flattened sideways.
The two aura fields met.
The environment reacted before the people did.
Dust split down the middle.
A hanging lantern tore free and shattered on the ground.
The water in the fire buckets climbed one inch up the rim.
Then the soldiers felt it.
They backed up.
One step.
Then another.
Even the wounded dragged themselves clear.
Because this wasn't just aura anymore.
This was territory trying to happen.
A proto-sovereignty pressure.
A warning.
A gold Seeker had arrived with his squad.
Mushi angled left, hand on his sword, silence gathering around him like a sheath.
Lisa flexed her fingers and the air behind Darius gave a low, dangerous hum.
Mustafa spun his staff once and planted it, reading support windows and kill lanes.
Athena slid in beside Yu. Yu straightened, blood still running down his side, Little Dragon lifting again despite the damage.
Darius pointed one of the stolen kunai at Seizen like he was starting class.
"Alright," he said. "Now I'm awake."
Seizen lowered his chin.
Crimson Viatra burned brighter.
A few black feathers peeled out of the smoke around his shoulders and hovered.
Darius smiled.
No warmth in it now.
Just teeth.
He rolled his neck once.
Grey aura deepened.
The ground under him spider-cracked.
"Let's see," he said softly, "if you still remember how I used to hit."
The moon broke through the smoke for one clean second.
Seizen stood in crimson eyes and grey pressure.
Darius stood in grey pressure and a drunkard's grin.
The soldiers around them held their breath.
And Cainowa's burning base made room for a second monster.