The world seemed to slow.
Dante reached inward, not to the unstable swirl of mana, not to healing, not to reinforcement.
Deeper.
To the thing he shouldn't have been able to touch before. His stored energy. His trump card.
Space.
The energy he had absorbed didn't burn like fire or roar like wind. It was quiet and heavy. Dante dragged it out. The moment it surfaced, the air screamed.
Space folded around his palm, collapsing inward, then stretching thin like glass about to shatter. The energy coated his hand, not glowing, not flashing just absent, as if reality itself had been scraped away and replaced with nothing.
A perfect copy of Julius space energy.
It formed a blade. The wind stopped.
Snow drifted down from the gray sky slowly, silent flakes settling onto Dante's blood-soaked shoulders, onto Kale's boots, onto the ruined earth where a forest once stood.
White against red.
Cold against heat.
Soon there will be only one left in the battlefield.
