9,000 psychic blades descended like a storm of spectral daggers, each one forged from pure will, each one a silent executioner. They streaked through the sky, blinding flashes of violet and indigo, faster than bullets. When they struck the ruined earth, they didn’t just cut—they shattered. Concrete ruptured on impact. Entire chunks of the city buckled under the assault. Buildings groaned, their steel frames screaming as they collapsed under the onslaught.

Lirael moved like a ghost through the carnage. Her body twisted, her instincts sharper than thought. She ducked, wove, and blurred past collapsing structures, each step perfectly measured, each motion a whisper of impossible precision. A skyscraper crumbled ahead—glass and debris rained down in a lethal cascade. She surged forward, pivoting mid-stride. With a sharp twist, she kicked the air itself.

BOOM.

The air compressed violently, detonating outward in a shockwave. The half-collapsed building—an avalanche of steel and stone—was sent hurtling, a colossal projectile aimed straight at Hikari.

Still hovering midair, Hikari’s eyes narrowed. She felt the weight of the structure rushing toward her—a tidal wave of destruction. But she did not flinch.

She lifted both hands.

A pulse of energy surged outward, cyan veins of power threading through the air. The moment the collapsing building reached her, its motion froze. Every fractured beam, every splintered window—suspended mid-fall, held within the psychic grasp of an unseen force. Then, with a flick of her wrist—

SHHHRRKK.

The entire structure was cleaved into massive, weightless chunks. They peeled apart, splitting like an overripe fruit, and drifted harmlessly to the ground.

Lirael exhaled sharply, watching from the ground. A slow smile tugged at her lips.

“Maybe I massively underestimated her.”

She had expected resistance. But this? This was growth. She knew Hikari was an Apostle, but to refine her power this quickly—it was unexpected. Dangerous.

And thrilling.

But even as the thought formed, Hikari moved.

A sonic boom cracked the air. She was already upon her.

Lirael barely had time to process before Hikari—nothing but a streak of cyan fury—was there. The force of her propulsion sent ripples through the city, windows splintering, asphalt cratering beneath the sheer force of her velocity.

Hikari’s thoughts burned through her mind like a wildfire.

“She hurt Lila. She hurt little Amanda.”

Her fingers curled.

“So now—”

She clenched her fist, eyes squeezing shut for the briefest second. Psychic energy surged, raw and unfiltered, taking shape in an instant. A scythe—blazing, ethereal, merciless.

She wound back.

”—I’m gonna hurt you!”

Hikari descended.

Like an angel cast from heaven, like judgment made manifest, like vengeance streaking toward the underworld. The cyan glow of her psychic scythe carved through the ruined cityscape, trailing raw force in its wake. She swung in a wide, merciless arc, the blade screaming through the air—an executioner’s stroke meant to cleave Lirael in two.

But it never landed.

CRACK.

The impact wasn’t just a block. It was a collision of wills, a cataclysm made tangible. A force so immovable that when the scythe struck it, the resulting shockwave detonated outward, warping the space around them. Entire buildings shuddered. Windows ruptured into dust. The ground split apart, deep fractures spreading like veins of destruction.

Hikari recoiled mid-air, heart pounding. Who—what—had stopped her?

She looked up.

A man stood before her, the embodiment of something beyond. Tall, poised, impossibly composed. His frame was lean but athletic, his presence like the eye of a storm—unshaken, eternal. His raven-black hair was unkempt, tousled by sleepless nights spent unraveling secrets never meant for mortal minds. And his eyes—icy blue, vast and hollow, two portals into the void itself—pierced through her with an intelligence so absolute, so unrelenting, that it made her skin crawl.

Then, he spoke.

“I’d rather you not kill the witch I’m supposed to capture alive.”

His voice was calm, measured, a perfect counterbalance to the chaos around them. It wasn’t arrogance, nor was it a plea. It was a simple, irrefutable statement of fact.

Hikari’s breath hitched. Instinct screamed at her to move. Run. But she couldn’t.

The sheer weight of his presence pressed down on her, an aura so vast it felt like standing at the precipice of an abyss, staring into the infinite unknown. Her skin prickled, her mind recoiling against the eldritch force radiating from him—not raw power, but inevitability itself.

She shot backward, landing in a crouch, trying to suppress the tremor in her hands.

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What was this guy?

The man barely acknowledged her reaction. Dressed in all black—shoes, sweatpants, shirt—his only deviation was the long brown trench coat that billowed slightly in the residual winds of their clash. With an air of practiced indifference, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. The flame flickered, reflecting briefly in those cold, endless eyes.

A few feet away, footsteps echoed through the ruined streets.

Hikari turned, her tension snapping into something softer, something frantic.

“Lila!”

She spun on her heel, rushing to meet her, hands cupping her cheeks before she could think. Lila’s face was bruised, cuts littering her arms, but she was alive.

“Are you okay?”

Lila smirked, despite the pain.

“I’m good. Used my Aura to patch myself up. I can still fight.”

Relief flooded through Hikari, but the moment was short-lived.

A plume of smoke curled into the air.

The man exhaled lazily, his gaze half-lidded but never once losing its edge.

“I suggest you two high schoolers go home.”

He took another drag.

“I’ve got it under control.”

Hikari scoffed, arms crossing.

“The hell is this guy’s deal?”

“And who exactly are you?”

The man regarded her for a long, unreadable moment. Then, finally, he spoke, voice unshaken, unaffected.

“My name is Elias Ravenscroft. I was hired to capture Lirael alive.”

The name hit like a gunshot.

Lirael, still standing amidst the ruins, threw her head back in laughter. The sound was lilting, cruel—like a song sung at a funeral.

“You’re here to capture me? Oh, that’s rich~”

Elias remained utterly still, watching her with the same detached scrutiny one might afford a particularly interesting insect.

“I think it’d be in your best interest to comply.”

Lirael smirked, tilting her head.

“And why should I? Who do you think you are, giving orders to me—the Witch of Despair~?”

Elias took a slow drag from his cigarette, exhaling smoke as he spoke.

“I’m someone who can rock your shit.”

A pause.

Then, with a smirk of his own—

“Trust me, you don’t want to fight me.”

Lirael’s grin widened.

“Like hell I don’t~.”

Lirael moved first.

A flicker of motion—then she was there, a blur of inhuman speed. Her fingers curled into a fist, flesh warping as darkness congealed around it. Shadow and sinew, bone and tortured souls—all woven together into something wrong, something unnatural. It wasn’t just a strike. It was an execution, a condensed storm of entropy, hungry.

Her fist flew forward.

The air screamed. A pressure vacuum formed around her knuckles, the sheer velocity of her punch tearing a rift in the very fabric of the battlefield. This wasn’t an attack meant to break a man—this was a force meant to unmake him.

And yet—

THOOM.

A shield materialized.

It was not a barrier of the physical world. It did not shimmer like light or crackle like energy. It was a void, a gaping maw of nonexistence. The moment her fist connected, the shield devoured the impact, swallowing the kinetic force like an eldritch black hole.

A ripple of devastation followed.

The ruined city quaked, buildings shuddering as a shockwave detonated outward. The ground fractured. Air itself recoiled, folding in on itself as if reality was suffocating. The blast nearly sent Hikari and Lila toppling over, their knees buckling against the sheer force.

And then—silence.

The energy… was gone. Absorbed.

Lirael’s breath hitched.

Then—slowly, eerily—her lips parted into an impossibly wide grin. The edges of her mouth split, stretching beyond human limits, as if invisible hands were peeling her face apart. The corners of her lips twitched, and a breathy, lilting chuckle slithered out.

“Well, isn’t that something?” Her voice was a melody of static and silk. Her silver eyes gleamed, feverish. “You dabble in the occult, I take it~?”

Elias Ravenscroft, untouched, unbothered, looked down at her with those cold, void-stained eyes.

He exhaled a plume of smoke. “That’s right. I dabble on occasion.”

The answer came too easily. Too casually. As if reality itself had already adjusted to his inevitability.

Lirael’s head tilted. Her neck cracked.

“Then this should be fun~.”

And with that, she moved.

She seized Elias by the collar, her fingers latching onto him with a strength that could crush steel, and launched.

A sonic boom shattered the air.

The city below ripped apart. Streets buckled, skyscrapers sheared in half, torn apart by the sheer force of their acceleration. A shockwave exploded outward, carving through steel and glass with the precision of a guillotine. Ruins collapsed. Dust swallowed the sky.

Hikari didn’t hesitate.

She grabbed Lila’s wrist. “Move!”

No time to watch. No time to process. While monsters waged war in the heavens, their mission remained the same.

Amanda.

Hikari wrapped an arm around Lila’s waist and propelled forward, psychic force warping the air around them. They shot through the crumbling city, weaving between collapsing structures, dodging the debris of a civilization long since lost.

Ahead, looming in the heart of Long Island City, the school came into view.

And so did the nightmare surrounding it.

A domain.

The air shifted.

It was wrong.

A vast, decaying metropolis stretched out before them—one that should not exist. A city frozen in twilight, trapped between the threshold of life and death. Buildings flickered between ruin and pristine condition, shifting with the pulse of unseen emotions. Some stood tall, untouched by time. Others crumbled into dust, their foundations rotted by sorrow.

Streetlights flickered, their glow pale and sickly, casting shadows that moved. Whispered. Their voices wove together, a cacophony of regrets murmured in languages long forgotten. The streets stretched endlessly, a labyrinth of alleys that spiraled inward, a cage with no doors.

And at the center of it all—

A cathedral.

A grotesque monolith of blackened bone and shattered glass. Its spires reached for a sky that wept. Ink-like rain fell in thick, viscous droplets, staining the earth. The bell in the tower tolled at irregular intervals, but it wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling. A deep, reverberating force that dragged at the soul, pulling buried grief to the surface, twisting memory and reality into a blur of suffering.

Hikari clenched her jaw. A pulse of psionic energy surged around her, forcing back the encroaching despair.

Lila’s voice was quiet. “We’re running out of time.”

They were close—fifty feet from the school.

Then, the creatures came into focus.

Over five hundred of them.

They gathered at the base of the cathedral, forming an unnatural tide of shadow and bone. Some hovered, others skittered, their grotesque forms shifting and writhing.

Hooded specters wielding curved blades, their faces obscured by veils of shifting darkness. They did not breathe, but they whispered, a constant litany of sorrow and hunger. The air around them thickened, growing cold, dragging warmth from the world.

Skeletal, wolf-like horrors prowled the perimeter. Their bodies were a grotesque fusion of smoke and bones, their silver eyes hollow. Their breath reeked of decay, their howls stretched too long, like a dirge played on shattered strings.

And then—the arachnids.

Lila shuddered.

Twisted humanoid torsos, fused with chitinous, insectile bodies. Their mouths split open, far too wide, revealing spirals of needle-like teeth. Their eight legs ended in hooked talons, perfect for ripping, for climbing, for catching. They moved soundlessly, a terrible contrast to their grotesque forms.

And yet—

The worst was the serpent.

A coiling abomination of pulsating shadows. Its body shifted, an ever-moving mass of darkness, covered in glowing silver runes that pulsed like a heartbeat. Its head was never the same twice. One moment, a dragon-like maw. The next, a gaping void. Then—a face. Human. Twisted in silent, unending agony.

It turned toward them.

It saw them.

A guttural, inhuman noise rumbled from its throat, a sound that was not meant to exist. The city itself shuddered in response, as if it, too, was terrified.

Lila inhaled sharply.

“Hikari—”

Hikari’s grip on her tightened.

“I know.”

They had no choice now.

They had to fight through hell itself.

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TO BE CONTINUED…