Boom.
The sound came again. It was louder and closer. Like the world itself had cracked open from the inside.
Nola's body ached. Her ears rang. Her arms were pinned awkwardly beneath her.
The air tasted like metal and ash. She felt nauseous.
Somewhere nearby, she heard someone cough.
It was a wet, weak sound.
She blinked slowly. Her eyes burned and her ribs throbbed.
Everything felt… wrong. A cold feeling gripped her.
Stone was shattered around her. The hallway was warped, cracked open like a wound. The walls pulsed with something dark and green, like rot had grown sentience and was bleeding through the stone.
Maika lay sprawled a few feet away, curled on her side.
Unmoving to her horror.
"Maika…?" Nola's voice cracked.
Across from her, Taveer was kneeling, his hands already glowing faintly red.
He wasn't panicking. He never panicked. But his eyes were too wide, and his breath too shallow.
"Come on," he muttered. "Don't do this."
He pressed two fingers to Maika's neck, then her wrist.
Nola struggled up on her elbows, watching as the glow around his hands deepened into a faint crimson light that coiled around Maika's body like threads of warmth.
"Blood-forged revival," Taveer muttered through gritted teeth. "Pain takes pain. Breath for breath."
His hands shook, but he kept going.
The spell wasn't elegant. It wasn't graceful.
It was for survival.
A Will-bearer spell passed down from Vlad's memory—a healing craft that hurt the caster just enough to make sure the receiver woke up.
Maika twitched. Coughed.
Then groaned as her eyes fluttered open. "Ugh… Did I die? Is this the afterlife?"
Taveer slumped slightly in relief, barely holding himself upright. "If it is, you're dragging us all down with your whining."
Maika blinked, dazed. "You look like you've been hit by a freight train."
Nola managed a tiny laugh, then the ground shook again.
A roar.
Low and wet and wrong.
Nola turned and finally saw it. The sight straight out of a horror movie.
The creature stood in the middle of the wreckage. Its body was a pulsing mass of green sludge and dark shadows, shifting and swelling, spitting steam and hate.
And there inside it was Brielle. Slumping.
Her body was half-submerged in the ooze, suspended like a puppet. Her eyes were closed, her arms limp, her braid drifting in the goo like it belonged to someone already dead.
"No…" Nola whispered, her breath catching.
The Moon Legion soldier who had saved them earlier was barely standing.
Her armor was shredded, her body bloodied and shaking. She coughed out blood.
Still, she raised her massive claymore with both hands.
The creature hissed again, two massive skeletal arms bursting from its body with a splatter of green slime.
They hit the ground with a crash, scraping stone, fingers like sharpened bones twitching as if remembering how to kill and destroy.
Maika let out a strangled noise. "What is that?"
"Riftspawn," the Moon Legion soldier rasped, wiping blood from her mouth. "A piece of shit from the inverted tower.
Nola couldn't breathe.
The creature began to move toward them.
The Moon soldier staggered forward and swung her claymore with everything she had.
The blade struck the creature's limb, slicing through one skeletal arm—but the recoil sent her crashing into the wall.
She slumped, her blade falling from her hands.
Taveer stood up slowly. His legs were shaking.
His hand moved to his stake.
His voice was low. Hollow.
"Don't look away."
"What—?" Nola whispered.
Taveer's eyes glowed crimson.
"You want to protect them?" he asked. "Then give in to me. Accept my power."
The stake pulsed in his hand.
And the change began.
His black hair turned ghost white.
His irises flooded with red like fire running in reverse.
Dark mist curled around him, a dark cold mist.
It didn't freeze. It burned. Like the stillness before the end of a storm.
And standing there, tall and quiet, Taveer looked like the memory of something dangerous.
"I am the last line," he murmured. "I am the sharpened stake."
Nola pushed herself upright.
Every part of her screamed to stop, to hide, to run away as her body shook.
But something stronger surged through her.
A voice.
A memory.
"You carry my name."
Tsuna.
"You carry my sword."
Her hand moved to the katana strapped against her back.
"So rise."
The blade glowed faintly under her fingers, warmth pulsing through the hilt like it had been waiting for this moment.
She gripped it and unsheathed it.
And her power exploded outward.
Her hair deepened to rich violet, flowing behind her like a banner caught in the wind.
Her eyes turned the same color, burning like lit amethyst.
Blue robes bloomed around her body. It was light as silk, strong as armor.
The katana in her hand gleamed with golden light and ancient memory as she floated
She stepped forward beside Taveer.
Not behind him.
Not hiding.
Beside.
The monster screamed, and the flute-song started again—louder, angrier.
But it didn't shake her anymore.
"I can't let her die," Nola said.
Taveer's voice was calm. "Then don't."
The two of them moved together.
Not trained.
Not perfect.
But driven by something deeper than fear of death, the fear of losing Maika.
Nola gripped the sword with both hands, watching the creature's core pulse.
Taveer crouched low, his stake flickering with red flame.
They didn't need to speak.
They were already speaking in breath, in blood and in Will.
And the monster was about to learn what it meant to face those who remembered their pain, but chose to rise anyway.