The sky had become a warzone, a canvas of chaos painted by streaks of pure destruction. Lirael and Elias cut through the air, their forms reduced to blurs of color against the bruised, ashen clouds. Lirael was a spectral shadow, a streak of grey and black, while Elias burned across the heavens in swaths of black and molten orange. Below them, the ruined city lay sprawled in jagged concrete bones, its skeletal remains bearing witness to the cataclysm above.
Elias hurled jagged spears of negation, their obsidian edges glinting with the promise of erasure. These were no mere weapons; they were conduits of annihilation. Where they flew, reality itself quivered. The spears did not simply wound—they devoured. Anything they struck was not just destroyed but unwritten, ripped from existence so completely that not even a ghost of its potential future remained. The air screamed as the negation spears sliced through it, the very molecules unraveling in their wake.
Lirael retaliated with bolts of dark matter-infused lightning. Each arc was a jagged serpent of black and violet, hissing through the sky with a hunger that went beyond the physical. When it struck, it burned through flesh and spirit alike, a searing brand of despair that twisted the soul. Her lightning did not merely strike—it infected. Structures destabilized, the bolts phasing through solid matter like whispers through silk, causing stone to crumble and metal to weep molten tears. The energy radiated an oppressive aura, feeding on every dark thought, amplifying anguish until it became a physical weight.
From the ground, they were nothing more than streaks of chaos—grey and black spirals crashing against black and orange slashes. Between them, the air crackled with the clash of lightning and the shimmer of glass-like shards of negation. It was a storm with no rain, only violence. The wind was thick with the scent of ozone and the copper tang of rended reality. The echoes of their battle resonated through the ruins, a symphony of thunderclaps and the crystalline chime of shattered existence.
Lirael's voice cut through the tempest, a melody of defiance woven with razor wire.
"Give it up! You're not taking me anywhere alive~!"
Elias's lips curled into a smirk, the expression sharp as a blade. His voice was a low growl, barely audible over the maelstrom.
"Then allow me to—"
He didn't finish. His body blurred, a ripple in the fabric of space, and in the next heartbeat, he was upon her. Elias moved like a falcon stooping for the kill, his speed shattering the sound barrier with a thunderous boom. His silhouette became a comet, black and orange flames licking at the edges of his form.
He twisted mid-flight, his body a coil of potential energy, and snapped into a front flip. His leg arced overhead, every muscle coiled tight as a drawn bow. The moment froze, a single frame of impending doom, before his heel slammed down onto Lirael's head. The impact was an explosion, a detonation of force that cracked the air and sent shockwaves rippling through the clouds.
"Try a more roundabout method!"
Lirael plummeted. Her body became a meteor, trailing wisps of grey and black as she was hurled towards the ground. The atmosphere screamed around her, the friction igniting the air in a corona of pale fire. She cut through the sky like a blade, a streak of darkness racing to reunite with the broken earth below.
The sky howled as Lirael plummeted, the world a blur of greys and blacks spiraling into chaos. Her raven-black hair whipped against the wind, strands snapping like tiny whips across her pale skin. The ground rushed up to meet her, its jagged teeth bared—an inevitability that even she, the Witch of Despair, could not evade.
Her arms rose against gravity's pull, trembling fingers splayed, dark matter crackling at her fingertips. But the force of Elias's attack had fractured more than bone—it had shaken the rhythm of her power, a discordant note in her symphony of control. Her silver eyes, dull yet piercing, held not fear but a deep, bottomless rage.
The impact was cataclysmic.
BOOM!
The earth split beneath her, a spiderweb of fractures radiating outward from her broken form. A crater yawned beneath her, swallowing the debris of shattered stone and twisted metal. Buildings shivered in the wake of the blast, their glass windows shattering in cascades of crystal shards. The shockwave tore through the ruined city, a ripple of destruction that turned the skeletal remains of the world into splinters.
A wet, ragged cough tore from Lirael's throat, spraying black ichor onto the dust-choked air. The liquid hissed where it struck the ground, acidic smoke curling upwards. She lay in the epicenter of the crater, limbs splayed, her robes of woven shadows clinging to her like a shroud. For a moment, silence held the city in a vise grip.
Then the sky screamed again.
Elias descended, a dark comet trailing orange and black flames. His silhouette cut through the ashen clouds, his form a sharp, unyielding blade. The air around him warped, reality bending to accommodate his existence—a paradox in motion. He crashed down with the force of a meteor, his boot slamming into Lirael's stomach.
CRACK!
The ground caved beneath them, the crater deepening, the earth groaning as if in agony. The impact rippled through Lirael's body, driving more of the inky fluid from her lips. Her vision swam, the world distorting around the edges, colors bleeding into shadows. Each heartbeat was a drum in a war she could not win.
Elias's weight pinned her, his expression as calm as it was cold. He did not gloat. There was no satisfaction in his icy blue eyes—only a void, a nothingness that devoured even the notion of victory.
"Forget it," Lirael wheezed, a dark grin curling her split lips. "Tell your employer I'm not going quietly~!" Her voice, though fractured, dripped with a twisted kind of mirth, as if the pain only sharpened her sense of humor. "Also, I hope you know you just sent those two teenagers to deal with a Continental-Level Threat. Someone who can stockpile energy, manipulate kinetic force… and here you are. Wasting time with me~."
Her words were blades, each syllable honed to a razor edge, meant to cut deeper than any physical wound.
Elias responded not with words but with pressure. His boot shifted, grinding against her neck. Bone creaked, her windpipe compressing beneath his weight. The earth seemed to pulse with the beat of her faltering breath, a rhythm of impending oblivion.
"I guess I'll deal with them in a minute," he murmured, his voice a low rumble that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "After I'm done with you."
The air tightened around them, the world dimming as if even the light feared his promise. Lirael's mind raced, but beneath the swirling calculations and dark thoughts, a tendril of something raw and primal coiled—fear.
Her grin widened, teeth flecked with black. "You're not gonna kill me," she rasped, her voice a whisper that clawed at the edges of consciousness. "You don't have the balls~."
Elias's expression did not shift, but the pressure increased. The ground beneath her neck began to crack, tiny fissures spreading out like veins. Each second stretched into eternity, the world narrowing to the boot on her throat and the pale sky above. Her vision tunneled, the edges of reality curling inwards, eaten by darkness.
A shadow loomed in the corner of her mind—a figure draped in tattered veils, her hands cold and soft, the touch of eternity. The Pale Lady of Oblivion, a promise and a threat. Lirael felt the world slip, her body growing numb, the weight of her own mortality pressing down upon her.
But beneath the crushing force, a spark remained.
Her hand twitched, fingers curling inward. The skin rippled, bones and flesh unraveling and reforming with a wet, sinewy sound. Her arm elongated, skin peeling back to reveal a blade of pure dark matter—black as the void, edged with violet lightning that hissed and spat against the air.
Her strike was swift—a cobra lunging from the shadows. The blade shot upwards, a blur of hungry darkness aiming for Elias's eye. He moved, a ripple of motion that bent reality around him. His form blurred, and in an instant, he was no longer there. The blade struck only air, slicing through the sky with a sharp whip-crack.
He landed a few feet away, the ground beneath him warping, the stone rippling as if reality itself struggled to adjust to his presence. His eyes narrowed, a glint of something almost human—surprise, perhaps, or amusement, though it was gone as quickly as it appeared.
Lirael lay still, her chest rising and falling in shallow, broken breaths. The blade that had been her arm retracted, flesh knitting itself back into a semblance of humanity. Her silver eyes burned with a dim, persistent light, the embers of a fire that refused to die.
Above them, the sky churned, the clouds swirling in dark, twisting shapes. The wind carried whispers, the voices of the dead drawn to the aura of despair and negation. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled—a soundless knell, a reminder that death had yet to claim its due.
△▼△▼△▼△
Amanda Fujimoto sat huddled in the crumbling remains of the school next to The Weeping Cathedral, a place where light seemed to die before it touched the ground. The building wore its decay openly—broken windows like empty eye sockets, rusted metal framing the shattered bones of walls. The smell of rot permeated everything, a cloying, sickly-sweet odor that crawled into the lungs and lingered. The air hung thick with moisture, each breath a struggle through the wet blanket of decay.
Amanda was a ghost in this dead place, curled into the smallest version of herself, her knees pressed tightly against her chest. Her body trembled, a leaf caught in a storm, as deep purple light pulsed from her eyes—beacons of power and pain. She rocked back and forth, her fingers digging into her scalp, pulling at strands of tangled hair as if trying to rip the memories from her mind. But there was no escape. The images burned behind her eyelids, every blink another wound.
She was trapped, caught in the sticky web of Lirael's illusions and cursed dreamscapes. They dragged her through her worst memories, twisting them into grotesque parodies of truth. Over and over, Amanda watched her family die, their faces etched with betrayal and fear. Every detail was sharpened to a cutting edge—the way her mother's hand had reached for her, the exact pitch of her father's scream, the wet, suffocating sound of a dying breath. She could smell the blood, feel its warmth cooling against her skin, hear the silence that swallowed their lives whole.
Her lips moved, repeating the same words, a litany of self-condemnation:
"It's all my fault…"
The mantra became a heartbeat, steady and relentless, pumping despair through her veins. It threaded through every thought, curling around the corners of her mind like dark ivy, choking out any glimmer of hope. She could not see beyond it. The idea of her own culpability had metastasized, spreading through her psyche, warping her reality until nothing else remained.
Every mistake, every misstep in her life looped endlessly in her head, a hall of mirrors where every reflection whispered of her failure. She should have known. She should have done something—anything. She should have screamed louder, run faster, fought harder. She should have been the hero, the savior. Instead, she had been a spectator, a coward hiding behind her own skin.
Her mind fractured into a kaleidoscope of blame.
Why hadn't she seen the signs? Hadn't there been warnings? Maybe a shift in the air, a chill before disaster. Maybe she had ignored it. Maybe she had wanted it. Her own thoughts turned vicious, fangs bared against her. What kind of person lets their family die? What kind of monster does nothing while the world burns around them?
"Please… someone… help me. Make it stop… MAKE IT STOP!"
Her voice was raw, the sound scraping her throat, each word a shard of glass. But there was no answer, only the hollow echo that mocked her desperation. She was alone, drowning in an ocean of guilt, every wave pulling her further from the shore. Her hands pressed harder against her skull, as if she could push herself into nonexistence.
"It's all my fault, it's all my fault, it's all my fault…"
The words built into a crescendo, a chorus of misery. Each repetition tightened the noose around her sanity, until the room seemed to pulse with her anguish. The deep purple energy swirling around her fed on it, the aura growing darker, more violent. Books, papers, and debris lifted into the air, suspended in the maelstrom of her sorrow. The very earth beneath her seemed to shiver, afraid of the force she was becoming.
"It's all my fault, it's all my fault, it's all my fault…"
Somewhere, beneath the layers of despair, Amanda could feel the power growing. It coiled around her like a serpent, each loop a reminder of her pain. It would be so easy to let go, to fall deeper into the darkness, to become the monster her mind painted her as. She deserved it. She deserved every lash of guilt, every phantom wound, every bitter memory. She deserved to hurt.
"IT'S ALL MY FAULT!"
Her scream shattered the stillness, a sonic blade that cut through the empty halls. The energy around her responded, a living thing that lashed out, sending a gust of force through the ruined room. Shards of glass and stone whipped around her, a storm born of her grief. Her aura pulsed, a heartbeat of violet light, each throb pulling more of her power to the surface.
And in the distance, Lirael felt it.
The Witch of Despair stood amidst the chaos of her own battle, her pale skin glowing under the stormy sky, her silver eyes reflecting the swirling void. Her arms, now twisted into whip-like blades, moved with wild abandon, each swing carving lines of black and purple lightning through the air. She could taste Amanda's despair, sweet and potent, a vintage aged in tragedy.
"Yesssss," Lirael hissed, her voice a silken thread woven with malice. "Fall more into despair and blame yourself. It's all going according to my plan~."
She raised her blade-arms high, the jagged edges catching the dim light. Her laughter cut through the battlefield, a sharp, brittle sound that seemed to flake off into the wind.
"Let's go, occult specialist! Let's see the clash of witchcraft and eldritch!"
Her voice was a challenge, a dare thrown into the void, but beneath the bravado lay a predator's patience. She did not need to win this battle with strength—her victory lay elsewhere, in the dark corners of Amanda's mind, where the real war was being fought.
And as Amanda lay on the cold, broken floor, her tears soaking into the dust, her power continued to grow, fueled by the very lie that Lirael had planted. A lie that had become her truth. A truth that might very well consume her—and everyone else.
To be continued…