“Magnazone,” Cypher intoned, his voice sharp with the kind of authoritative finality that brooked no argument. He hadn’t performed the celestial hand signs that usually accompanied the spell—there was no time, and no space for hesitation. It was going to hurt him. That much was certain. But it would destroy Blood Shadow, and that was all that mattered now.

This was new ground for him. Cypher had only ever used the magnazone spell on inanimate objects—metal structures, inert chunks of iron and steel. But the principles held steady. The human body, after all, was full of metals. Iron flowed through the blood, calcium gave bones their strength, and there were traces of potassium, magnesium, zinc, and others scattered throughout. Blood Shadow, for all his grotesque transformation into a black, pulsing monstrosity, was still a body. Somewhere inside that writhing mass, those metals remained. Cypher was willing to bet on it.

And then there were the MetaTEC devices—the two pieces of technology still trapped within the blob that Blood Shadow had become. That meant more metal, more fuel for his spell. All Cypher had to do was break it down at the atomic level, destabilize the electron shells, rip apart the very bonds that held it together.

The fanged maw that surged toward Cypher’s neck froze mid-lunge. The black tendril that connected the face to Blood Shadow’s body quivered violently, spasming like some malfunctioning machine caught in a feedback loop. And then it spread, the entire creature convulsing, jerking and trembling like a glitched character in a corrupted simulation.

Cypher didn’t let up. His focus sharpened, his teeth clenched as he forced raw energy—not mana, no, something far deeper—into the spell. He didn’t rely on the ancient leyline magics Hashimoto used to fuel his spells, drawing power from the earth and the aether. No, Cypher tapped into his own primal energy, the chakra that surged through his body like an untamed river. This was his life force, his essence, drawn up from the deepest reserves of his being. A Primal Spell—that's what he'd call it. The name seemed fitting enough.

Pain clawed up his arm like white-hot fire, searing through his muscles as his body rebelled against the unnatural force he was commanding it to harness. Sweat dripped from his brow, but Cypher pushed through the agony. Blood Shadow had to be destroyed, no matter the cost.

“Nooooo!” Blood Shadow roared, the cry of a cornered beast faced with its inevitable end. His voice was filled with disbelief, with rage, as his form shifted and twisted. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he began to reconfigure himself. Limbs emerged from the black mass, his once-human shape reforming as he fought for control over his own body. He was clawing his way back, piece by piece, battling against the spell that threatened to tear him apart atom by atom.

Cypher would not relent. He watched, silent, unyielding, as the monstrosity before him struggled. Blood Shadow's defiance was palpable, every shift of his body a testament to the ferocious will to survive. But Cypher’s resolve was stronger, burning like molten steel in his veins. He could feel his own body breaking under the strain, the searing pain creeping up his arm threatening to undo him.

But Cypher didn’t care.

He only had one objective: destroy the abomination.

“I see you’ve learned my secrets,” Cypher rasped through the pain, a bitter smile cutting across his bloodied face. “Perhaps I overshared my techniques online.” He pushed the thought away, banishing it before it could fester. Cable was a rotten apple—once human, now twisted into something darker, something utterly divorced from the light of humanity. But Cypher couldn’t let this fool’s corruption change his course. His knowledge wasn’t meant to be hoarded; it was a weapon for all of humanity, a desperate hope to arm the masses with the tools they’d need to fight back, to reclaim their shattered world.

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He dropped his wand. The metallic spike clattered against the floor, the sound sharp and final. With his hand now free, Cypher formed the celestial symbols with careful precision. Mars. Scorpio. Saturn. Gemini. Venus. Virgo. Taurus. And lastly, Moon. The intricate sequence aligned his chakra to the primal element he was about to invoke, connecting him to powers far beyond the mortal ken.

“Gravatron,” Cypher whispered, voice straining with the effort, and closed his open hand from a crescent moon into a tight, trembling fist. The effect was instantaneous. Blood Shadow’s shriek filled the air, a bone-rattling wail as his twisted form collapsed inward, drawn into a singular point where the two MetaTECs still pulsed with malignant power.

Cypher pushed harder, grinding his teeth against the agony searing through his entire being. He was forcing all the metallic matter in Blood Shadow’s body to condense, to compress into something small, dense, unyielding. The pressure on his own chakra points was immense, draining him to the bone. One by one, he felt them empty, their vital energy extinguished like dying stars. When his knees finally buckled, he collapsed to the floor, gasping as the spell unraveled.

The silence that followed was deafening. Cypher lay still, breath ragged, limbs too weak to lift. Then, from somewhere close by, came the sound of something heavy and dense hitting the ground. It rolled lazily across the blood-soaked floor—a marble-sized object, smooth and metallic, radiating a deep, lustrous red threaded with veins of black lightning. It crackled with latent power, a terrifying potential still barely contained.

“Materia,” Cypher whispered, naming the thing he had just created. His mind raced despite the pain; he wondered if, within that small, dense orb, Davey’s essence remained, twisted and imprisoned alongside Cable’s. Or had it been lost to the void entirely? Slowly, agonizingly, Cypher crawled toward the materia, every movement a fresh hell of barbed pain ripping through his body. He didn’t care. The pain was irrelevant now. Stripping off a glove with shaking fingers, he bagged the materia like it was something foul, something far too dangerous to touch with bare flesh, and stashed it deep in his pocket.

What was left of Blood Shadow had dissolved into a thick, stagnant mist, dark tendrils dissipating slowly into the stale air. Cypher doubted that the creature was truly dead. Perhaps it had been banished back to whatever twisted realm it crawled from, its essence too dispersed to hold form for now. That was good enough. It had to be.

Cypher staggered to his feet, shaky and half-blind with exhaustion, and fumbled for his fallen wand. The weight of it felt alien in his hand, a relic of a world far behind him. Then the Blood Tower lurched, a sickening tilt that sent cracks snaking through the walls, groaning like a beast wounded unto death.

The gore that had once painted the walls, floor, and ceiling—the living, writhing mass of scarlet sinew—was no longer vibrant. Instead, it had curdled into a diseased brown, rotting away before his eyes. In some places, it shrank back entirely, exposing bare gaps in the tower’s structure, cracks revealing the fragility that had been hidden beneath. Cypher’s heart sank, realization dawning. “Oh no,” he muttered, his voice tight with dread, just as a section of the ceiling caved in.

A body tumbled through the breach, limp and broken. Without thinking, Cypher dived beneath her, catching her fall with his own bruised body. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, his ribs creaking under the weight. The shell of iron-hard sand he’d unconsciously reinforced barely saved him from being crushed outright. But the air burned in his throat, and for a moment, all he could do was gasp.