There was a CRACK!—a sensation that shook Zane's soul. And it felt like his head was splitting, and his body was splitting, down the seams of his very being—his ears screamed with white noise. He reeled, groaning…
He tasted iron and salt in his mouth.
Something had hit him just then—something he saw head-on, and his whole soul was seared with its afterimage. He wouldn't have known it was there if he hadn't been looking for it. Not because it was hidden—but because it was so big and so sudden and so powerful it was hard to grasp it all… it felt like staring into the headlights of a freight train right before it struck. Ran him over with pure destruction.
The world was coming back to him in bits and pieces. He was realizing that he was still upright—he blinked, looked down—
His whole front side had been blackened utterly. He saw chunks of skin flaking off like ash, chunks of muscle, of deadened matter, breaking off… He wasn't sure if it had been blood or skin or even an organ—the ruins of him leaked out of a great split running down his chest…blood gushed out too, still pumping hot, bright with fading life.
Then the pain hit, and he wobbled, and he had to grit his teeth and fight to keep his eyes from rolling back.
The lash of it—all at once—was incredible…
It was a pain beyond the world.
Zain had felt quite some pain in his time—some at the extreme bounds a man could tolerate. But this was something else.
Only sheer force of will kept him from blacking out.
He forced himself to focus on the fuzzy notification in front of his eyes.
Warning!
Health under 75%
Warning!
Health under 50%
He blinked.
Over half his Health—instantly wiped. Just like that.
And it dawned on him then—coming out of the shock of it, and the Law-trance—that he had just taken the single hardest shot he had ever taken.
But he was still upright. That was what mattered. His heart was still beating strong in his ruined chest, beating faster… He wasn't sure what he just saw—he hadn't even managed to grasp the littlest bit of it, despite his best effort…
But there was no time to think on it.
The storm was just getting started.
He could sense a stillness in the air, a buzzing, a gathering of piercing light far above.
A second bolt was coming.
He hadn't found his footing yet. He wasn't quite sure what was happening; things were still spinning violently for Zane. He could feel viscerally chunks of himself collapsing—felt the world still wobbling around him, pockets of spotty darkness encroaching at the edges of his vision…
He narrowed his eyes, and snarled.
Now above all—through that wall of sheer blinding pain, in the midst of the chaos in his mind, in his body—he knew he had to find it in himself.
He forced his Bloodline to burn and felt a hit of shocking life burn through him, flaring through deadened veins, a bright new flame burning against the dark….
It was time to fight for all he was worth.
Then—just as he was dragging himself back to life, heartbeat by heartbeat, breath by breath—something inside him kicked in.
He felt a sudden rush of essence. Of raw, unfiltered life-force—something beyond even Health. Something that bolstered the soul, that made his eyes shine with a keen glow, and he dragged in a heavy breath.
He remembered this feeling.
It was the Chaos Fruit. Its powers, laying dormant within him, coming to life at last… and then again—a second rush—a burst of crisp, fresh energies sending glowing sparks sparkling up his mind—
Reina’s gift was with him too.
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The thought of her then gave him almost as much of a kick as her gift.
Then came a third burst of crisp energy—flourishing from deep within, bracing against the decay trying to reach his very heart—halting it in its tracks… a Tribulation Seal he had collected long ago. All his preparations—gathered with his friends in the Superdungeon, from Reina, from Noughtfire—giving him strength when he most needed it…
As the darkness deepened above him, and—in paradox—the light pierced brighter…
An Asura aura flared out of Zane. An aura flaring bloody red, a red full of bloody life, and he was suddenly burning up with Vitality again—deadened muscles coming flush too, rippling down his whole body—
He had surged to over 50% Health again. Peaking in Vigor, one burning star of life in that barren stretch of rock—of space—a single candle-flame flickering against the cruel Heavens…
The second bolt fell in a jagged white scar that seemed to split the sky in two.
It smashed him, and his world went all-white, and all-black, at once. Everything gone monochrome, gone to the void…
Warning!
Health under 50%
Warning!
Health under 25%
Warning!
Critical Health!
Blood fountained out of Zane's mouth.
He saw, through crashing waves of sheer pain, that he was smoking all over—that this time, it had knocked him all the way down. The blood in his mouth was black.
He propped himself up to an elbow, heaving mightily, blinking gaping spots out of his eyes.
His jaw was still clenched tight—bloodied at the mouth, but firm.
He had felt the power that struck him even more clearly, more intensely this time. The impression was resolving in his body. He could sense its aftershocks lingering in the ruins of himself… he hung on the very precipice then.
He had been struck—twice—by something akin to the hand of god.
There were two reactions an animal had when struck by a force so huge it shook its very sense of self—when faced with the specter of certain death…
One—the most common by far—was to doubt. To fear. To lose it, and shrink away, and collapse.
Then there were men like Zane.
He coughed out a mouthful of blood. And bared his teeth to the Heavens.
Twice he’d tried to grasp that power, and failed. He knew this was his last chance.
He would seize it. He put matters of life or death out of his mind. The one thing in his mind, fixed with a burning intensity, was what he had to do.
The stormclouds rumbled…
The critical moment was coming. He could feel it. The clouds were collapsing in on themselves now, swirling faster and faster—and now, when the energy spiked high above, it just kept spiking beyond what he even thought was possible…
Zane faced it just as he always did. Head-on. He let out a furious bellow, and you could hear in that sound his proud, unyielding heart.
And the third bolt—the most devastating yet—crashed down.
He stared it down head-on—and in the moment before it struck you could see it clear, reflected in his bright eyes.
He refused to flinch when it struck him.
There came a BOOM! that rivaled a dying star going supernova.
And a full quarter of the planet went to ash. Like it had been willed out of existence. And only a blackened hull remained, caving in, all the way down to the blackened core…
For a moment you could only see slag and ruins. But then those pillars of smoke cleared a little, and there lay charred remains buried at the bottom of the crater.
There was Zane's lump of a body. Just lying there prone, face down—not even moving anymore.
***
"He… he had to have been in Critical Health, before that third bolt came…" croaked Burnwater.
"I know," said Noughtfire grimly.
"It was a miracle he made it that far at all—he shouldn't have even survived that second blast—"
"He shouldn't have drawn seven clouds at all," whispered the man in the straw hat. He shook his head. "His Fate is—was—too great for his body to bear."
He closed his eyes.
***
Zane floated in nothing.
He blinked. A void, stretching on and on. Soundless, without sensation, as though in a dream…
There was a spark, right in front of him.
A light. A piercing white—the color of tribulation lightning.
Flaring brighter—lengthening—growing to a piercing white column, brightening so fast it felt like staring at the center of the sun…
It was beautiful, and it was terrible, and though it was the only thing there—and though he saw it clearly—he could only barely begin to know what he was seeing.
That was the true face of Destruction.
He did not blink, or flinch, or look away. Though it grew so bright it was painful.
He reached toward the light…
***
Noughtfire stayed silent. Just watching the ashes, eyes narrowed.
A heartbeat passed. Two.
"Master," said Burnwater. "I think—"
He choked off.
There came a groan. Not from the planet—but from the big body lying prone on the ground…
Zane's eyes snapped open.
White lightning blazed across his pupils.
There was silence in the little cottage.
Then, a sound neither Burnwater nor the man in the Straw Hat had heard for ages.
Sage Noughtfire began to chuckle.
"Heavens…" croaked Burnwater. "What am I seeing?!"
They all saw Zane taking to his feet, made whole in a flash of white light. Saw an incredibly vivid purple blasting off of his body—a purple smoldering at the edges with a wispy sheer white. The color of tribulation lightning.
"That, disciple," said Noughtfire. "Is uncharted territory. I believe Zane has just integrated a spark of the divine. That is Heavenly Stormfire."
He had a ghost of a smile.
Burnwater whirled on his Master. “All along—you knew?!”
“Not exactly. All I knew is that it is hard to say just what Zane is capable of…He has a way of surprising you.”
Noughtfire took a sip of tea, which had been untouched since the start of Zane's ascension. A pause. He grunted.
"In retrospect… I may have set some of his lower incentives a little too easy."
The scarred man in the straw hat gave a little smile. "It was worth the visit after all."
"Back to the Frontier, then?" said Noughtfire. The edge of his lips quirked. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to sweep my floors a little longer?"
"I've rested long enough." He cocked his head, and for a moment his eyes shone with a strange light.
"In ten years' time, when we fight side-by-side against the First Wave…I wonder what kind of monster he'll be."
His finger lit up—and a flame of pure black burst into being, a black so dark it seemed more a void than a color. He slashed the air with a finger and the realm gave, burning open like dry paper thrust in a hearth. He stepped through the opening, burning gaps in reality. And vanished.