Noah adjusted.
He stopped relying on real crows alone.
The next flock that appeared overhead was twice as large.
Jihei looked up.
Black wings filled the sky.
Dozens.
Then hundreds.
The cloud rolled between buildings like smoke.
Jihei raised one hand.
Green lightning exploded upward.
Half the flock disappeared.
No bodies fell.
Illusions.
Jihei looked toward Noah.
Noah was gone.
A second flock poured from an alley.
Jihei fired again.
More illusions.
A third passed over the rooftops.
Jihei ignored it.
One crow broke away.
Then another.
Noah emerged from the shadow cast by the flock itself.
His sword struck Jihei's shoulder.
Deep.
Jihei roared and released a burst of lightning.
Noah disappeared before the discharge could catch him.
The vampire stumbled.
Blood ran heavily down his arm.
Noah reformed on a rooftop across the street.
Black feathers circled him.
Jihei looked toward the illusionary flock still moving overhead.
Then toward the real crows mixed among it.
Jihei: "That's cheap."
Noah: "Effective."
Jihei laughed once.
Jihei: "I'm starting to dislike you."
Noah: "I'll survive."
Jihei raised both hands.
The green lightning changed.
Darker.
Heavier.
Noah recognized it immediately.
Corrupt Lightning.
But Jihei didn't fire at him.
He fired at the ground.
The bolt struck the street.
Green-black electricity spread across the pavement in branching veins.
Another bolt struck the side of a building.
Corrupt current crawled over the wall.
Another hit a rooftop.
Another an alley.
Another a collapsed vehicle.
Within seconds, sections of the battlefield began glowing with poisonous green energy.
Noah watched carefully.
Jihei wasn't attacking.
He was contaminating.
Noah teleported toward a shadow behind a damaged wall.
He stopped himself.
Corrupt lightning crawled across the bricks beside it.
Another shadow beneath an overturned truck.
Contaminated.
An alley.
Contaminated.
A doorway.
Green current crackled inside.
Jihei was poisoning his escape routes.
Jihei: "You like shadows."
Another blast struck a building.
Jihei: "So let's make them dangerous."
Noah's expression hardened.
He sent three crows toward different routes.
One landed near a doorway.
The corrupt current snapped toward it.
The crow died instantly.
Another flew low over a rooftop.
A stray arc struck it.
Gone.
Noah shifted his attention.
The safe paths were shrinking.
Jihei kept moving.
Not toward Noah.
Around him.
Green-black lightning spread in a wide arc.
Street after street became hostile terrain.
Noah responded with razor feathers.
A storm of them crossed the road.
Jihei hardened lightning around one arm and cut through the first wave.
The second embedded in his side.
He kept moving.
Noah teleported.
One safe shadow remained behind a distant building.
He entered it.
Jihei saw where the feathers vanished.
His eyes sharpened.
He didn't chase the shadow.
He fired ahead of it.
The corrupt bolt struck the exit point.
Noah reformed.
Directly into the blast.
Green-black lightning pierced his shoulder and chest.
His body locked.
The shadow wings behind him shattered into feathers.
His connection to the crows vanished all at once.
Every borrowed perspective went black.
Noah hit the ground.
The pain came a heartbeat later.
Deep.
Draining.
His fingers twitched.
He tried dissolving.
Nothing.
The feathers around his coat trembled but refused to answer.
His sword slipped from his hand.
Jihei landed several meters away.
Green lightning rolled over his arms.
Jihei: "Got you."
Noah remained on one knee, breathing hard.
This time, the corrupt lightning had struck cleanly.
And Jihei had planned it.
The corrupt lightning did more than hurt.
It hollowed him out.
Noah could feel the difference immediately.
The blood he had spent the last several minutes reclaiming still burned through his body, but the connection between that power and his abilities had been severed again. His wings would not form. The shadows around him felt distant. Even the black feathers scattered across the road refused to answer his will.
His crow network remained dark.
For the first time in several minutes, Noah could see only what stood directly in front of him.
Jihei.
That was enough.
Green lightning pulsed across the vampire's body as he approached.
Noah forced himself upright.
His left shoulder barely responded.
The corrupt current had struck through his chest and spread into the surrounding muscles. Every movement sent another wave of numbness through his arm.
Jihei noticed immediately.
He always noticed weakness quickly.
The grin returned.
Then the street flashed green.
Noah moved before Jihei reached him.
A fist passed inches from his jaw.
Noah ducked and turned with it, but Jihei had already changed direction.
The knee came next.
Noah blocked with his forearm.
Pain shot through the bone.
He slid backward.
Jihei vanished again.
Noah watched the empty space.
Not for the lightning.
For everything that came before it.
The angle of Jihei's shoulders.
The pressure against the pavement.
The way his center of gravity shifted before acceleration.
Perfect memory meant Noah did not have to rediscover any of it.
Every exchange remained with him exactly as it had happened.
But Jihei knew that now.
His next approach began the same way as several earlier ones.
Right leg.
Low shoulder.
Eyes briefly moving left.
Noah stepped right.
Jihei went right too.
Noah's eyes sharpened.
A feint.
The fist caught him across the cheek.
Noah hit the pavement, rolled once, and immediately rose.
Jihei was learning.
Good.
That made the fight more dangerous.
It also made Jihei more interesting.
The vampire attacked again.
This time there was no recognizable sequence.
He accelerated straight ahead, stopped abruptly, launched upward, then came down from an angle he had never used before.
Noah raised his sword.
Green electricity solidified into a curved blade in Jihei's hand.
The weapons collided.
The impact nearly drove Noah to one knee.
Jihei changed the weapon's shape while they were still locked.
The curved blade lengthened into a spear.
Noah released the bind.
The tip crossed his stomach.
Blood followed.
He stepped away before the toxic electricity around it could make full contact.
Jihei landed.
No pause.
Another attack.
Noah parried.
Then another.
He missed the timing.
The lightning weapon scraped his coat and burned through the fabric.
Noah retreated.
Jihei pursued relentlessly.
The difference from before was obvious.
Previously, Jihei had depended on being faster.
Now he was intentionally refusing to repeat himself.
Every acceleration changed.
Every weapon changed.
Every angle became something new.
Noah's pattern recognition still worked.
But there was less pattern to recognize.
He had to learn in real time.
Jihei understood that.
His grin widened.
Jihei: "Not so repetitive anymore, am I?"
Noah blocked another strike.
Noah: "Improvement should be encouraged."
Jihei laughed.
Then punched him through a wall.
⸻
The building collapsed around Noah.
Concrete and timber fell through the dark interior.
He rolled beneath a broken support beam and landed hard on one shoulder.
His body refused to dissolve.
Still disrupted.
Jihei entered through the hole he'd created.
Green light flooded the room.
Noah rose slowly.
His sword remained in his hand.
That was what mattered.
Jihei rushed.
Noah stepped inside the first strike.
Blocked the second.
Avoided the third.
The fourth caught him across the ribs.
Noah staggered.
Jihei followed with a kick that sent him into a staircase.
Wood exploded.
Noah landed beneath it.
Jihei approached.
The corrupt lightning around him made every shadow in the room flicker green.
Noah watched.
The power suppressing him was weakening.
Barely.
A black feather twitched near his foot.
Jihei didn't notice.
Noah did.
Another feather moved.
His abilities were returning.
Slowly.
Jihei formed a spear.
This one was longer than the others.
Green electricity condensed until the weapon looked almost solid.
He drew his arm back.
Noah remained beneath the collapsed stairs.
Jihei threw.
The spear crossed the room instantly.
It entered Noah's chest.
And Noah burst apart.
Jihei stopped.
Black feathers filled the room.
But they were wrong.
Too few.
Too light.
They didn't carry the weight of a body reforming.
Jihei's eyes widened.
A decoy.
The real Noah dropped from above.
His powers had returned just enough.
He had shed a small portion of feathers, shaped them into his image beneath the rubble, then silently pulled himself into the rafters while Jihei focused on the false target.
Noah's sword came down.
Jihei reacted at the last possible instant.
The blade still cut deeply from collarbone across the chest.
Blood erupted.
Jihei crashed through the floor.
Noah landed where he had stood.
His shadow wings flickered behind him.
Not stable yet.
But present.
His connection to the nearest crow returned for half a second.
Then another.
The world began opening around him again.
Jihei rose from the lower floor.
He touched the wound across his chest.
For several seconds, he simply stared at the blood on his fingers.
Noah dropped through the broken floor.
He landed opposite him.
Jihei's grin had disappeared.
Noah expected anger.
Instead, Jihei started laughing.
Quietly at first.
Then louder.
The green lightning around him intensified.
Jihei: "I thought I had you."
Noah: "You did."
Jihei looked at him.
Noah: "For a moment."
That only made him laugh harder.
Lightning exploded outward.
Noah's wings fully formed.
He shielded himself as the blast tore through the building.
The structure collapsed.
Both fighters burst through opposite sides before the roof came down.
They landed in the open street.
Jihei stood amid green electricity.
Noah stood amid black feathers.
The battlefield had gone quiet around them.
Not truly quiet.
Hanabi was still burning.
Explosions still sounded in the distance.
But everything nearby had already been destroyed badly enough that there was little left to break.
Jihei looked down at himself.
The wound Noah had given him was serious.
Any ordinary vampire would have slowed.
Jihei only became more excited.
Green lightning started entering his body rather than leaving it.
Noah noticed immediately.
The current condensed against Jihei's skin.
His muscles tightened.
The veins along his arms became more pronounced.
The road beneath his feet cracked.
Jihei inhaled.
Then forced even more power into himself.
The green glow became unbearable to look at directly.
Overcharge.
But stronger than before.
Noah's eyes narrowed.
Jihei's previous form had surrounded himself with lightning.
This looked like he was trying to become it.
His first step shattered the ground.
Noah barely saw him move.
His crow vision caught a green streak approaching from the side.
Noah lifted his sword.
Jihei struck before it reached position.
The blow launched Noah several hundred meters.
He smashed through the corner of one building, crossed an alley in midair, and crashed into another.
Before he could recover, green light entered the room.
Jihei hit him again.
Noah dispersed into feathers.
Jihei changed course instantly.
He followed the flock.
Noah tried reforming on a rooftop.
Jihei reached the destination first.
A lightning axe descended.
Noah vanished into shadow.
The building split beneath the attack.
He emerged two blocks away.
Jihei was already there.
Too fast.
Noah barely became intangible before the fist reached him.
For an instant, his body took on the pale, insubstantial quality of something caught between life and death.
The strike passed through his ribs.
The toxic electricity still burned along his outline.
Noah reformed several meters away.
That had been close.
Far too close.
Jihei turned.
There was blood running from his nose now.
A thin line.
His own power was hurting him.
Noah remembered it.
Jihei accelerated again.
Every movement made the lightning around him more violent.
His feet tore holes into pavement.
Walls cracked when he passed them.
His own skin had begun splitting in tiny places beneath the pressure.
Overcharge was giving him enormous power.
But his body had limits.
Jihei either didn't care or believed he could end the fight first.
Noah preferred the latter.
It meant he could be manipulated.
Noah flew.
Jihei chased.
The battle crossed another district.
Noah deliberately avoided direct exchanges.
He moved through shadows.
Split into flocks.
Left decoys.
Changed altitude constantly.
Jihei destroyed everything that might conceal him.
The island flashed green beneath them.
Noah was no longer trying to land clean hits.
He was making Jihei move.
Making him accelerate.
Making him maintain Overcharge.
Making him spend.
Every time Jihei almost reached him, Noah escaped by centimeters.
Every escape demanded another burst of lightning.
Another strain on Jihei's body.
Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.
Then along his ear.
He didn't slow.
Noah watched every sign.
Jihei was burning himself alive to keep this pace.
And enjoying it.
⸻
They reached a stretch of forest separating two developed sections of the island.
Noah entered first.
The canopy swallowed him.
Jihei followed as a streak of green light.
Trees exploded in his wake.
Noah used the darkness beneath the branches to move unpredictably.
One shadow.
Then another.
Then another.
Jihei blasted entire sections of forest apart.
Black crows scattered from trees.
Some real.
Some false.
Jihei stopped distinguishing between them.
Everything became a target.
Green projectiles crossed the woods.
Explosions ripped through trunks.
Fire spread.
Noah emerged behind him.
A feather blade formed in his free hand.
He struck.
Jihei blocked with an electric sword.
Noah's normal blade came from the other direction.
Jihei twisted.
The cut opened his side.
He retaliated.
Noah became feathers.
Jihei's lightning passed through the flock.
Noah reformed overhead with shadow wings spread wide.
Hundreds of hardened feathers rained downward.
Jihei crossed both arms.
Green electricity detonated outward.
The first wave disappeared.
The second penetrated.
Feathers buried themselves across his shoulders and legs.
Jihei roared.
Then the forest beneath him exploded.
Noah flew higher.
From above, the battle looked different.
He saw the destruction they had created.
Several miles of Hanabi Island carried evidence of their fight.
Burning roofs.
Destroyed roads.
Collapsed structures.
Broken trees.
Emerald scars across the ground.
And throughout it all, crows watched.
Noah could see through them again.
Hundreds of scattered perspectives.
The network had recovered.
He searched for civilians.
Hunters.
Nearby vampires.
Safe routes.
Anything Jihei might threaten if the fight continued expanding.
Then every crow reacted at once.
Noah felt it before he understood it.
Feathers stood along their bodies.
Birds shifted uneasily on their perches.
Some took flight without being commanded.
The wind changed.
Noah stopped in the air.
Static crawled across his skin.
Not from Jihei below.
From above.
Noah looked toward the sky.
Clouds had begun gathering.
That should not have happened this quickly.
The smoke over Hanabi twisted into them.
Green light flickered somewhere inside.
Once.
Then again.
Farther away.
Noah's eyes narrowed.
Jihei stepped from the burning forest.
He was breathing harder now.
Blood stained his mouth.
His body bore dozens of cuts.
The Overcharge still raged around him.
Yet his attention wasn't on Noah anymore.
He was looking upward.
Smiling.
Noah descended slowly.
The crows across the surrounding miles continued reacting.
The static was spreading.
Not across one street.
Not across one district.
Across everything.
Jihei finally looked back at him.
Jihei: "You've been watching me from everywhere, haven't you?"
Noah said nothing.
Green light flashed through the clouds.
This time it stretched across the entire sky above them.
Jihei raised one hand.
Jihei: "Then watch everywhere."
Thunder rolled over Hanabi Island.
Not natural thunder.
Too deep.
Too close.
The clouds glowed emerald from within.
Noah's expression changed.
He had spent the entire fight learning Jihei.
The acceleration.
The projectiles.
The weapons.
The corrupt lightning.
Overcharge.
Every ability had been dangerous.
None of them had made his instincts react like this.
The crows were trying to flee.
Not from Jihei.
From the sky.
Noah looked across the island through their eyes.
Hunters were still fighting.
Civilians were still evacuating.
Vampires moved between streets.
There were living beings everywhere.
And whatever Jihei was preparing was not designed for a single opponent.
Noah tightened his grip around his sword.
Above them, another green flash illuminated the clouds.
Then another.
And another.
Until the entire sky looked poisoned.
Jihei's power kept rising.
Green lightning poured off his body in violent waves, no longer snapping randomly but being drawn upward into the storm forming over Hanabi Island. The clouds above churned faster with every passing second, their undersides glowing an increasingly vivid emerald.
The pressure alone made the air difficult to breathe.
Noah could feel it through every crow still within range. Birds scattered from rooftops and trees, abandoning the area entirely. Static crawled across feathers, skin, steel, even the ruined ground beneath him.
Jihei stood at the center of it all.
His body was already paying the price.
Blood ran from his nose and mouth. Small splits had opened across his arms and face from the strain of Overcharge, yet the lightning continued pouring into him and through him as though his body were nothing more than a conduit for what was gathering overhead.
The storm stretched far beyond the forest.
Noah could see that much through the remaining crows.
Residential streets.
Festival districts.
Evacuation routes.
Active battlefields.
The clouds covered all of them.
If Jihei released whatever he was preparing, Noah had no confidence the people beneath it would survive.
That ended the matter.
He wasn't going to let him finish.
Noah drew in a slow breath.
His body was already exhausted.
He had spent enormous amounts of curse blood transforming, teleporting, creating feathers, regenerating, maintaining his crow network, and repeatedly forcing his body through a battle that had crossed several miles of the island.
The blood he'd taken throughout the fight had kept him going.
Now almost all of it was about to disappear in one attack.
Noah cut his connection to the distant crows.
One by one, the borrowed perspectives vanished.
The world narrowed.
His own eyes.
His own body.
Jihei.
Nothing else mattered for the next few seconds.
Noah gathered his remaining curse blood.
All of it.
The shadows around him reacted first.
Black feathers rose from the ground in spiraling currents. More formed from his shoulders, his back, the edges of his clothing, multiplying until the air behind him became completely black.
Then they condensed.
Two wings took shape.
They were nothing like the ones he'd used earlier.
Those had been made for flexibility.
These were built for one thing.
Speed.
Layer after layer of hardened black feathers compressed together until the wings stretched far beyond Noah's body. Their edges narrowed like blades, every feather aligned perfectly to reduce resistance.
The pressure around him changed.
Jihei noticed.
His eyes lowered from the storm.
Noah's sword began changing next.
Black feathers wrapped around the steel.
One layer.
Then another.
Each feather hardened as it settled against the blade, overlapping until the ordinary edge disappeared beneath a serrated mantle of condensed darkness.
Noah sharpened them further.
And further.
Until even the air around the sword seemed unwilling to touch it.
His arms trembled.
His breathing grew heavier.
Almost nothing remained after this.
Jihei understood what he was doing.
Green lightning exploded outward.
The storm above answered.
The first enormous bolt began forming within the clouds.
Noah lowered his stance.
Jihei raised both arms.
The emerald sky seemed ready to collapse.
Then Noah moved.
The wings opened once.
The resulting blast flattened the burning trees behind him.
His body disappeared.
There was no flock.
No shadow.
No trick.
Just acceleration.
A black line crossed the battlefield.
The sonic blast followed afterward.
Jihei's eyes widened.
He barely managed to turn.
Noah reached him.
His first strike wasn't the sword.
It was his foot.
Noah drove a wing-assisted kick directly into Jihei's chest.
The impact detonated the ground beneath them.
Jihei's body folded around the blow before being launched backward.
But Noah was already following.
The enormous wings snapped once.
He caught Jihei before the vampire had traveled more than several meters.
The feather-coated sword came around.
Noah aimed through the center of his torso.
Not to wound.
Not to disable.
To cut him completely in half.
Jihei saw it.
Instinct saved him.
Green lightning collapsed around his body at the final instant.
Instead of feeding the storm, the electricity wrapped tightly around his chest and abdomen.
Layer upon layer compressed into armor.
The black blade struck.
For one instant, the world became silent.
Then everything exploded.
A black-and-green shockwave tore across the forest.
Trees bent flat.
Others snapped completely.
The ground split outward in enormous fractures.
Flames were blown from burning trunks.
The clouds overhead flashed bright enough to turn night into day.
Noah felt the feathers on his sword cutting.
Through the outer lightning.
Through another layer.
Then another.
The armor screamed beneath the pressure.
His blade reached flesh.
It cut deeply into Jihei's torso.
But not deeply enough.
Jihei's lightning armor had absorbed most of the impact.
The slash that should have divided him in two instead opened a massive wound across his body.
Blood erupted.
Jihei was launched away.
Farther than Noah could follow with his eyes.
His body became a green streak disappearing through the forest.
A distant impact thundered somewhere beyond the trees.
Then another.
And another.
Noah remained suspended in the air for half a second.
The wings vanished.
Not dispersed.
Vanished.
He had nothing left to sustain them.
The feather coating around his sword fell apart.
Hundreds of black feathers drifted uselessly through the air.
The storm above flickered.
Green light continued moving through the clouds for several seconds.
Then began fading.
No Emerald Cataclysm came.
The clouds slowly lost their unnatural glow.
Noah fell.
He managed to twist before hitting the ground, landing hard on one knee and one hand.
His sword slipped from his fingers.
For several seconds, he didn't move.
His body felt empty.
Not injured in any singular way.
Just drained.
The connection to his curse was barely there.
He tried forming a feather.
Nothing happened.
Tried calling a crow.
Silence.
Even his regeneration had slowed to almost nothing.
Noah sat back against the remains of a shattered tree.
His breathing came heavily now.
He looked in the direction Jihei had disappeared.
No sign of him.
No lightning.
No movement.
Noah had no idea how far the attack had sent him.
Hundreds of meters?
More?
He couldn't tell.
And he didn't have enough power left to search.
That was frustrating.
He couldn't confirm the kill.
But Jihei hadn't completed the storm.
For now, that was enough.
Noah rested his head against the broken trunk.
The battle continued somewhere beyond the forest.
He could hear it.
Distant explosions.
Metal.
Screams.
He wanted to stand.
His body refused.
So Noah closed his eyes.
He had spent everything.
Every drop of curse blood he could safely call upon had gone into that final burst.
If Jihei returned immediately, Noah would have very few options.
But the same was likely true for him.
Noah had felt it when their attacks collided.
Jihei's lightning had collapsed.
His Overcharge had been extinguished.
Whatever remained of the Emerald Cataclysm had dispersed before it could be released.
They had burned each other dry.
Noah opened his eyes again.
The sky above Hanabi was darkening back toward its natural color.
For the first time in what felt like hours, there was no green lightning nearby.
He exhaled slowly.
There was nothing more he could do at the moment.
No teleportation.
No wings.
No feathers.
No crow network.
No strength left to chase Jihei across the island.
For now, Noah had only one job.
Recover.