Yuri moved.
Not because he chose to.
Because his body refused to let him freeze.
Instinct eclipsed thought. Years of training—of running, hiding, surviving—tore control away from his fear and seized the wheel.
Steel flashed.
He slipped inside the first attacker's guard with horrifying ease. There was no hesitation, no doubt—only memory guiding muscle. His hand twisted, disarming the man mid-step, and in the same fluid motion his blade found flesh.
A clean line.
A warm spray.
The body collapsed before the blood had time to understand it was supposed to fall.
For half a second, Yuri stared at the man's widening eyes.
Then reality surged forward again.
The others recoiled.
Shock cracked their formation. Their confidence faltered—just enough.
Then they charged.
Yuri swore under his breath and shoved Sarah behind him, pressing her back against the wall with one arm. He didn't look at her. If he did, he might stop.
Blades clashed.
Metal screamed.
Each impact rattled up his arms, reverberating through bone and memory alike. He felt every strike. Every near miss. Every breath scraped raw from his lungs.
This is happening, his mind whispered, detached and horrified.
"Maximum Output…"
The words left him like a prayer he hated himself for knowing.
His voice was low.
Controlled.
But underneath it—fractured.
"MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"
The words detonated something forbidden.
Maximum Output wasn't a technique. It wasn't a stance or a skill that could be trained safely.
It was a breach.
A state whispered to him years ago by his mentor—never taught, never written down. Its origins were unknown, deliberately buried. To force the human body to abandon its limits entirely. To strip away every governor nature had installed for survival.
Muscle fibers tearing faster than they could heal.
Tendons screaming under impossible strain.
Nerves burning so hot they risked shutting down forever.
The body wasn't meant to exist there.
To remain in Maximum Output for more than a fraction of a second was suicide.
That was the rule.
Yuri had broken it anyway.
Not by staying.
But by flickering.
He slipped in and out of the state in microscopic bursts—less than a heartbeat at a time. Long enough to act. Short enough that something vital didn't snap completely.
It was a balancing act between power and annihilation.
And every time he crossed that threshold, something inside him paid the price.
The air snapped.
His vision narrowed. The world sharpened into lines and openings and kill-zones. Pain vanished—replaced by a terrible clarity.
Four cuts.
Each one deliberate.
Each one final.
Four bodies hit the ground out of sequence, like puppets whose strings had been severed at different moments.
One breath.
That was all it took.
Silence crashed down.
Sarah gasped behind him.
Yuri didn't turn around.
He already knew what she saw.
—
Then the building screamed.
Glass shattered somewhere down the hall. A distant explosion rattled the walls. Panic poured through the school like a living thing.
Screams.
Running feet.
Crying.
Yuri stood there for a heartbeat too long, blade dripping at his side.
Then another scream echoed—closer this time.
Duty crushed hesitation flat.
Yuri moved.
He became motion.
He tore through the halls as chaos swallowed the building. Pulling out his mask. Doors burst open under his shoulder. Masked intruders turned just in time to realize their mistake.
Steel sang.
Blood painted lockers.
He intercepted blades meant for children. He stepped into kill paths without thinking, his body paying the price in torn muscle and burning nerves.
Every burst of Maximum Output felt like tearing himself apart from the inside.
Every stop felt like cowardice.
Students fled past him—faces streaked with tears, mouths open in silent screams. Some recognized him. Some didn't.
None stopped running.
By the time the noise began to fade, Yuri was breathing smoke.
Bodies littered the halls—twisted, broken, still.
He stood among them, chest heaving, vision swimming. The school felt wrong now. Too quiet. Too stained.
Outside, trembling students poured into the courtyard, drawn together by fear and instinct. One by one, their gazes lifted.
Upward.
To the rooftop.
A lone figure stood there, silhouetted against the sky.
A dark angel.
The vigilante.
Yuri.
Blood soaked his uniform—some dried, some still warm. His shoulders sagged beneath the weight of everything he had done and everything he hadn't been able to stop.
He reached for his mask.
The porcelain cracked in his grip.
A sharp sound split the air.
CRACK.
The mask fractured down the center.
So did something inside him.
Below, faces stared up at him—Eithen. Sarah. Others he knew. Others he didn't.
Fear.
Awe.
Grief.
Yuri met their gazes—and felt nothing hold him anymore.
His knees buckled.
The world tilted.
He stepped back.
And fell.
The air rushed past him, roaring in his ears like judgment.
So this is it, he thought distantly.
Then—
White.
A masked figure dropped from above, catching him effortlessly mid-fall. Arms steady. Grip unyielding.
They landed without sound.
The figure looked down at the crowd—silent, unreadable.
Then vanished.
Leaving behind only blood, broken walls, and the echo of a boy who had tried to carry the world alone.