Daniel took that as his invitation.
In a violent strobe of violet light, he vanished from the spot, reappearing a hair's breadth behind Glint. He didn't hesitate; his blade hissed through the air in a silver arc aimed directly for her throat. But the steel didn't find flesh. Instead, it struck a translucent, hexagonal screen of purple energy that shimmered into existence the moment he moved. The impact rang out like a hammer hitting a cathedral bell.
Glint didn't even turn around. She simply tilted her head, a melodic, mocking laugh bubbling from her throat.
"My magic is superior to your 'abilities' in every way, little ghost," she purred. "You are a science experiment; I am the daughter of the old world."
With a casual flick of her fingers, the air itself revolted. A ferocious wind spell exploded outward, a localized cyclone of pressurized air that didn't just push Daniel back—it shredded. The invisible blades of wind sliced through his jacket and bit deep into his skin, leaving a dozen stinging red lines across his chest and arms. Daniel was launched across the gallery, his body slamming into a massive gothic pillar with a sickening thud.
Before he could even slide to the floor, Glint was there. She didn't walk; she blinked through the space, manifesting inches from his face. She pressed her palm against the center of his chest, and her eyes flared with a magnetic, indigo light.
"Stay," she commanded.
A surge of polarized energy rippled through the stone. Daniel's body was suddenly seized by an impossible weight, his very marrow reacting to the spell as he was magnetized to the pillar. He was locked in place, his arms pinned to his sides as if the stone itself had developed a gravitational pull specifically for his blood.
Glint stepped back, floating slightly off the ground to look him in the eye. She reached out, tracing a clawed fingernail along the line of his jaw. "Poor little human. Did the serum make you feel like a god? It sickens me. Your blood is tainted by the lab—bitter, sterile. It would taste awful, so I think I'll just end the performance here."
She turned her head, glancing down into the pit of the arena where the red hurricane of Brakus was still brutalizing Argon and Blitz. A dark, predatory flush crossed her features, her voice dropping into a seductive, sadistic croon.
"The boy, though... his blood smells much tastier. Raw. Royal. It smells like a vintage I haven't tasted in a thousand years."
She turned back to Daniel, her expression hardening into a mask of arcane execution. She raised both hands, and the air around her began to fracture. One by one, jagged spikes of coalesced energy began to manifest in a halo around her head. Each one was different, a terrifying catalog of the elements: a spear of white-hot lava, a jagged bolt of frozen shadow, a needle of lightning, and a shard of pressurized blood.
They all swiveled in the air, their points converging on Daniel's heart.
"Tell me, ghost," Glint whispered, her grin widening to reveal her sharpened teeth. "Care for a dance with the Devil?"
Daniel chuckled, the sound thick with the metallic tang of his own blood. He looked her dead in the eye, his pupils dilating until they swallowed the irises whole. "I'm afraid I wouldn't be much of a partner," he rasped. "I tend to step on toes."
Glint's eyes widened as the space between them didn't just ripple—it folded.
The magnetic seal was designed to hold matter, but Daniel was becoming something less than solid. With a violent surge of violet light, his molecular structure fractured and reformed. He vanished from the pillar's grip, leaving behind nothing but a scorched outline on the stone.
Before Glint could pivot, Daniel rematerialized in her personal space, his shoulder dropping into a brutal, high-speed tackle. The sheer kinetic force of his momentum—boosted by a teleportation jump—slammed into her chest, shattering her focus.
The halo of elemental spikes she had painstakingly conjured shuddered and dissolved, their magical structures breaking apart into harmless sparks of light and steam. Glint was sent skidding backward across the gallery, her boots carving shallow grooves into the floor. She righted herself, her face twisting into a snarl of genuine confusion.
"How?" she hissed, smoothing her hair as it writhed like angry serpents. "That magnetism was tied to your very iron. No human should have been able to pull away."
"I'm learning to be more than just human," Daniel said, his voice overlapping with a ghostly echo. He felt the Zerone-X in his veins screaming, pushing his cells to vibrate at a frequency that bypassed her static spells. He hadn't actually damaged her—her passive magical barrier had soaked up the hit like a sponge—but he had bruised her ego, and in this arena, that was more dangerous.
"Impressive," Glint sneered, her voice dropping into a cold, hollow register. "But it won't stop the inevitable."
She reached behind her, and the shadows of the arena seemed to congeal at her spine. With a sound like a heavy tomb opening, a massive, ancient grimoire manifested. The book was gargantuan, its cover bound in the hide of something that hadn't walked the earth in eons. It didn't just float; it hung open behind her shoulders, the pages fluttering with such rhythmic intensity that it mimicked the slow, powerful flapping of wings.
Bathed in the eerie glow of the book's ink, Glint looked less like a witch and more like an avatar of the void.
"I was saving this for that hag, Eris," she spat, her aura darkening until the violet light turned a bruised, sickly black. "I wanted to show her exactly who she was dealing with before I took her head. But you're starting to make me very, very angry, little ghost."
The air around her began to hum with a frequency so high it made Daniel's teeth ache.
"Let's see how many times you can blink before I turn this entire city into a graveyard."
The atmosphere within the colosseum had reached a terminal velocity. The "Siren's Song" was no longer a melody; it was a rhythmic, pulsing throb that vibrated in the very atoms of the stone.
Daniel felt a sudden, violent heat blooming in his chest. It wasn't the warmth of the serum—it was something cold, sharp, and entirely alien. As Glint's grimoire flapped its leather pages, Daniel raised his hand, and instead of the usual violet flicker, a jagged bolt of black static arced from his fingertips. It hissed with the sound of tearing silk, lashing out and melting a hole through a nearby stone gargoyle.
"What is that?" Daniel whispered, his own hand trembling as the unstable energy crawled up his arm like a parasite.
Glint watched the black static with a predatory grin. "Oh, look at you... finally starting to spill over the edges. It's a shame you won't live to see the masterpiece we're painting." She raised a hand, and the grimoire bled ink into the air, forming a dozen spectral hounds made of shadow. "Eris said the catalyst needed a 'heart of grief' to truly ignite. I thought you were too shallow for that, but look at you burn."
"Ignite what? What catalyst?" Daniel barked, but he had no time to think.
He lunged, his speed now so great that he left trails of black smoke in the air. He and Glint became a chaotic blur of shadow and light on the high gallery.
While the sky burned, the ground was a slaughterhouse.
Brakus was a whirlwind of dark red ichor. He had completely lost the ability to speak; he only roared, a sound that felt like the earth itself cracking open. He caught Argon's massive fist in mid-air and, with a terrifying display of blood manipulation, forced the officer's own blood to harden inside his veins.
"Argh!" Argon screamed, his arm turning a bruised, stony purple as his circulation was weaponized against him.
Blitz tried to intervene, flickering behind Brakus with his black blade, but the red aura around the boy was too dense. Blitz's sword struck the blood-shield and shattered into a dozen pieces. Brakus spun, back-handing Blitz with enough force to send him crashing through three stone tiers of the colosseum.
"He's not just strong," Blitz wheezed, coughing up gold-tinted blood. "He's... he's absorbing the arena's resonance. Argon! He's becoming the battery!"
Deep in the bowels of the colosseum, Haru and Matthew were running through corridors made of fused warehouses and ancient stone. The air down here was thick with the smell of ozone and rotting roses.
"There!" Matthew pointed his flashlight.
In the center of a cavernous chamber stood a massive, pulsating crystal encased in a cage of silver wires. It hummed with the exact same frequency as Daniel's heartbeat. It wasn't just a generator—it was a biological bridge.
"Haru, look at the base of it," Matthew whispered, horrified.
Connected to the machine were dozens of glass vials filled with a glowing, royal-blue liquid—Brock's essence, distilled into a psychic signal.
"It's an overclocking rig," Haru growled, pulling a thermite charge from his belt. "They aren't just trapping them. They're using the boy in the air to drive Brakus into a feedback loop. If we don't blow this, Brakus is going to reach critical mass and level the whole district."
Back above, Daniel slammed a fist wrapped in black static into Glint's shield. The barrier cracked, a spiderweb of violet light fracturing under the weight of his unstable power.
"Give me the boy!" Daniel screamed, his voice now a chorus of a dozen different tones.
Glint laughed, her grimoire flapping faster, casting a spell that turned the very air into liquid lead. "Which boy, Daniel? The one in your head, or the one currently becoming the foundation for our New World? You're so focused on the 'where' that you've completely missed the 'why.'"
She leaned in, her eyes inches from his. "We didn't need a King, little ghost. We needed a corpse to build a throne upon. And Brakus is doing such a lovely job of dying for us."
Daniel let out a scream of pure, unadulterated rage. His black static exploded outward in a massive dome, shattering the gallery floors and sending them both plummeting toward the blood-soaked arena below.
[Shadow Sanctuary:Eris quarters]
The chaos of the colosseum felt like a world away from the sterile, suffocating silence of the Shade Group's central spire. Here, the air was cool, scented with expensive parchment and the faint, metallic tang of chemical preservatives.
A sharp, rhythmic knock echoed against the heavy oak doors of the Director's private study.
Eris didn't look up immediately. She sat behind a desk of polished obsidian, a leather-bound journal open before her. The light from a single desk lamp cast long, skeletal shadows across her face, accentuating the sharp lines of her features.
"Enter," she said, her voice a calm, chilling contrast to the carnage unfolding at the docks.
The doors groaned open, and a young woman—an initiate with the pale, hollow look of someone who had spent too much time in the labs—stepped inside. She bowed low, her voice trembling slightly.
"Director. The sensor arrays have just spiked. Glint has activated her Grimoire. The resonance is reaching the fourth stage, just as you predicted."
Eris finally looked up. A faint, ghost of a smile touched her lips—a expression that carried no warmth, only a terrifying sense of satisfaction. She closed her book with a deliberate thud.
"Good," Eris whispered. "Then the pieces are finally moving of their own volition."
The initiate hesitated. "But... Director, Argon and Blitz are still on the ground. If Brakus reaches the fifth stage of the feedback loop while the Grimoire is open, the biological fallout will... it will incinerate them. They are Hades' finest hunters. Should we not signal for their extraction?"
Eris rose from her chair, walking toward a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the darkened city.
"Hades' finest," Eris repeated, her tone dripping with quiet disdain. "Argon is a blunt instrument who enjoys the sound of breaking bones too much to be truly efficient. Blitz is a narcissist who believes his speed makes him untouchable. They are relics of a cruder age, child. Hades clings to them because he fears the future. I, however, am building it."
She turned back, her eyes reflecting the distant, violet glow of the colosseum's aura on the horizon.
"I didn't just set a trap for the boy," Eris continued, her voice gaining a melodic, professorial edge. "I set a trap for the clutter in my organization. By pushing Glint to use the Grimoire and feeding Brakus that artificial frequency, I've created a self-cleaning engine. The boy will destroy the old guard for me, and in doing so, he will burn his own humanity to ash. He becomes the perfect weapon, and I am rid of the expensive, disobedient 'heroes' Hades is so fond of."
"But the battery... the signal from the younger brother," the girl stammered. "Is it not overkill? The output is already five times the safety limit."
"In science, there is no such thing as overkill," Eris said, her gaze turning cold as she looked back at the distant spire of purple light. "There is only the result. Brakus needed a reason to die so that the King could be born. And Glint? She's so blinded by her own 'superior magic' that she doesn't realize she's just the match I'm using to light the fire. Let them play their parts. By dawn, I will have my god, and Hades will have his empty chairs."
She waved a hand dismissively. "Leave me. I wish to watch the telemetry in silence."
As the door clicked shut, Eris leaned against the glass. Far away, the sky flickered with a jagged burst of black static—Daniel's unstable awakening.
"Surprise me, little ghost," she murmured to the empty room. "Show me what happens when a mistake learns how to fight back."
The sky over the docks didn't just darken; it folded.
As Daniel and Glint plummeted from the high gallery, they looked less like falling bodies and more like a colliding star. Daniel's unstable black static lashed out in jagged, rhythmic pulses, while Glint's grimoire flapped violently, shedding pages that turned into razor-sharp shards of violet glass.
They hit the arena floor with a cataclysmic thrum that silenced the roar of the battle below.
The impact crater was twenty feet deep. A dome of displaced air and pulverized stone expanded outward, shredding the seats and sending a cloud of white dust five stories high. For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of settling rubble and the high-pitched ring of a vacuum.
Then, the dust was obliterated by a pillar of pure, necrotic light.
Glint rose from the center of the crater, hovering effortlessly. She wasn't just unharmed; she looked empowered. The grimoire behind her had grown, its "wings" now spanning ten feet, dripping a liquid shadow that sizzled against the stone.
Daniel lay at the base of the crater, his skin mapped with black veins, his body twitching as the Zerone-X fought to repair shattered ribs and a ruptured lung. He tried to rise, but Glint simply looked at him, and the gravity in the crater tripled. He was slammed back down, the stone beneath him spider-webbing.
"ENOUGH!"
Brakus, draped in his terrifying red shroud, lunged at Glint. He was a blur of crimson rage, his fists crackling with the weight of an entire district's worth of stolen energy. He swung a blow that should have leveled a mountain.
Glint didn't move. She didn't even raise a hand.
A single page from the floating book behind her drifted into Brakus's path. When his fist connected with the paper, the result wasn't an explosion—it was a total nullification. The red aura around Brakus's arm was sucked into the parchment like water into a sponge. Glint reached out and caught his throat, her fingers glowing with a sickly pale light.
"You are a battery, little king," she whispered, her voice amplified by the magic until it shook the very foundation of the colosseum. "And I am the one who decides when to flick the switch."
She threw him. Brakus didn't just fly; he was a projectile that leveled the stone pillars where Argon and Blitz lay. The impact was so great that the three of them—the giant, the speedster, and the boy—became a tangled heap of broken armor and bruised flesh. Blitz, his robes charred and his speed dampened by the "Siren's" interference, could only stare up in dazed terror. He saw the coldness in Glint's eyes and realized for the first time: We aren't the hunters anymore. We're the bait.
Below the carnage, the air was a different kind of nightmare. The room was a forest of fiber-optic cables and glowing fluid tanks, all vibrating with a frequency that made Matthew's nose bleed.
"I can't get past the firewall!" Matthew shouted over the screaming hum of the crystal. He was hunched over a portable terminal, his fingers flying across the keys while sparks showered from the interface.
"It's not just code, Haru! It's bio-metric. It's looking for a specific DNA sequence to unlock the cooling vents!"
Haru was standing by the door, his light machine gun smoking as he scanned the dark corridors for reinforcements. He looked back at the massive, pulsating crystal, then at the vials of Brock's essence.
"Hack the power feed instead!" Haru barked, wiping a streak of soot from his forehead. "If we can't unlock the vents, we'll just starve the damn thing. Blow the stabilizers!"
"I'm trying! But the system is adapting!" Matthew's voice was edged with panic.
"Every time I cut a line, the Grimoire above compensates! It's like the book and the machine are talking to each other. We're not just fighting a witch, Haru... we're fighting an ecosystem!"
A massive tremor shook the ceiling, dusting them in stone grit. Above them, Glint's laughter echoed through the vents, sounding less like a woman and more like a landslide.
Glint descended, her boots touching the ground as she walked toward the incapacitated group. She looked at Daniel, then at the broken form of Brakus, and finally at the flickering, fake image of Brock in the sky.
"The feast is prepared," she said, raising the Grimoire high. The pages began to turn at a blinding speed, casting a strobe light of every elemental color across the ruins.
"Shall we begin the final rites?"
Daniel forced his head up, his eyes burning with a mixture of violet light and black static. He looked at Brakus, then toward the floor where he knew Haru was struggling.
He was out of time. They were out of plans.