"Hah… hah… hah…" Zoey panted hard, chest heaving as the last demon dissolved into drifting pink particles.
Behind her, Mira staggered, using her Gok-do as a crutch to stay upright. Both Demon Hunters were a mess, bloodied, bruised, and worn ragged. Zoey's leather wear was slashed open across the back, exposing raw skin, and crimson scratches marred her face. Mira looked worse, one arm dangling uselessly at her side, trembling with every movement.
"Come help me reset my shoulder," Mira muttered, grimacing. "Swung my Gok-do too hard against that big one earlier."
Zoey winced at the memory, the hulking demon that had nearly taken both of them apart. It wasn't like anything they'd faced before, an unholy amalgamation of every demon type they knew, its body encased in jagged external armor that wasn't affected by their weapons.
"Sure thing," Zoey said, moving closer. She shook her head bitterly. "First guns, now whatever that thing was, and it's even wearing armor. I thought we saved the world already."
Mira gave a short, tired chuckle. "The world's never truly saved, Zoey. That's something that doesn't change. There will always be demons." She braced herself against a crumbling wall as Zoey took her dislocated arm, bracing her own weight before shoving it back into place.
"Hngh..!" Mira groaned sharply, then exhaled when the joint snapped back into its socket. She stood still for a moment, catching her breath, before turning her gaze on Zoey with a strange softness.
"It doesn't matter what form the darkness takes." Mira's voice steadied, her expression gentle despite the blood and grime streaking her face.
Zoey frowned but nodded, her voice firm despite her exhaustion. "That's why we exist. To fight it. To shield the world, and rid it of its demons. Right?"
Mira's lips curved into a faint, pitying smile. "Never change, Zoey." She gave her partner a warm look as she walked past, her footsteps dragging but determined.
Zoey blinked after her, raising an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Mira didn't answer, already tilting her head back to scan the rooftops above. "We have to find Rumi and that other demon," she said, voice steadying as her focus returned. "We can't let her fight alone."
Boom!
A massive explosion tore through the district, rattling the ground beneath their feet. The shockwave staggered Zoey and sent Mira sprawling hard onto the rubble-strewn floor.
"No." A voice cut through the ringing silence behind them. "You can't let Rumi fight at all. She's not ready, and neither are you two."
Zoey's head whipped around, eyes widening. "Melissa?"
Standing in the fractured glow of burning rooftops was Melissa. But she didn't look anything like the confident, take-charge woman they had met just half a day ago. Her right hand dripped with blood, not her own, but almost certainly the blood of fallen Hunters. Her left hand trembled at her side, shaking as though from exhaustion or fear or something else they couldn't explain.
"What are you talking about?" Mira demanded, forcing herself back to her feet. "We kill demons. It's what we do. And besides, we came here to protect you, and to find out what the demons are planning."
"She's already gotten what she wanted," Melissa interrupted sharply, her voice carrying a slight, unstable tremor.
"And what does she want?" Zoey pressed, her face tightening.
Melissa looked away, lips trembling. Her fist clenched, blood smearing against her knuckles. "..." For a moment she couldn't answer. Then, quieter, almost a whisper: "You have to save Rumi. And the three of you have to leave. Before it's too late."
Shiiiing!
A vicious slicing sound split the air overhead. The sky above shredded in a flash of red and violet.
Zoey's head snapped up in alarm. Mira's sharp eyes caught it first, movement where the rooftop had been.
The top section of the nearest building shuddered violently, then split clean away from its lower half. With a groan of crumbling stone, the entire upper structure began sliding down toward them.
"Move!" Mira shouted.
All three scrambled, diving aside as tons of debris slammed into the street, blasting up dust and shattered brick.
Zoey stared, still on her hands and knees. "What the hell…?"
Melissa steadied herself, clutching her trembling hand against her chest. Her eyes burned with a grim certainty. "This war…" she said slowly, voice heavy with warning, "is entering an entirely new level of conflict. One you girls must prepare for, in body, and in mind. It's the only way you'll survive."
Zoey swallowed, listening intently.
But Mira wasn't listening. Her eyes had already locked on the streaks of violet and red tearing through the skyline. "I think that was Rumi," she said, urgency filling her tone. Without another word, she sprinted toward the destruction.
"Mira!" Zoey cursed, then scrambled up to follow.
---
Rumi's mind ran on a frantic mix of desperation and instinct as she burst into existence in a swirl of violet smoke, landing atop a brick chimney. She barely registered her footing before her gaze snapped forward, already picking out the next structure to leap toward.
A flash of silver cut her thoughts short. A curved blade hissed through the air, so close she felt the wind burn against her neck.
She vanished again.
Several buildings away, Rumi reappeared above a skyscraper rooftop, only for a silver scythe to crash into the spot she had just appeared, the blade cleaving clean into the concrete with effortless precision.
Of course, she had already teleported, with barely even a chance to catch her breath.
This time she appeared on top of a streetlamp nearly twelve meters high. For a fraction of a second, she was balanced there, until the scythe found her once more. A perfect downward stroke split the lamppost cleanly in two, the halves toppling in silence before Rumi blinked away in panic.
The weapon belonged to the red-cloaked girl, who never even touched the ground. Her movements were liquid, unbroken. Even as her blade sliced the lamp in half, she was already twisting off the falling metal, boots skimming its edge as she launched forward again.
She tapped once against the glass face of a building, then hurled herself higher, cloak flaring as her form warped mid-air into a flowing mass of molten crimson. The red cloak and body dissolved into shifting molasses, twisting unnaturally as she threaded through the skyline with impossible speed.
Ahead of her, violet smoke coalesced again, Rumi, perched atop another streetlamp, chest in the process of heaving.
The mass of crimson re-shaped mid-flight, limbs snapping back into place as the scythe gleamed in her grip. She was already swinging before Rumi could blink.
Another slash screamed through the night. Another swirl of smoke.
And again, the red-cloaked girl was gone from one perch, already in motion, already chasing, never once breaking rhythm.
If Celine had still been in the sky, looking down from the helicarrier, she would have seen it clearly, a red streak tearing across the rooftops, relentless and fluid. Chasing it, or so it seemed, was a blinking violet dot that flared into existence, vanished, then reappeared again in rapid bursts.
To an untrained eye, it might have looked as though the violet light was pursuing the red, desperate to catch up. But in truth, the opposite was happening. The red streak was the hunter, weaving effortlessly through the city, and the violet glow was its prey, flickering, fleeing, and just barely staying ahead of the scythe that never stopped closing in.
'She's not giving me any time to react,' Rumi thought frantically as a silver blade inched closer to her eyes, only for the world to twist. In the next instant, she was staring out over the Seine, standing on the edge of a skyscraper facing the lake.
But even there, she wasn't safe. She had teleported straight into the path of that same silver blade, its gleaming edge already arcing toward her neck.
'How fast am I supposed to move?'
She twisted again in a flash of violet, heart hammering in her throat as she reappeared at the corner of a steel tower.
But the scythe was always there. A silver arc cutting her reality itself, chasing her through every corner of the skyline.
Rumi's vision blurred as she blinked out once more, this time into the narrow railing of a pedestrian bridge strung above the street. The instant her weight settled, her instincts screamed, her eyes catching the faintest shimmer of red reflected in the steel cables.
She vanished again just as the scythe split the bridge in half. Steel cables snapped like whips, flinging sparks into the night as the structure collapsed into the road below.
Even though she had never been one to be afraid of heights, Rumi's stomach lurched when she reappeared this time, she hadn't chosen the spot. Her panic had. The edge of a cathedral spire tore against her boots, barely holding her balance. Her eyes widened as she realized she was standing above the Seine itself, water glinting below.
And even then
The red cloak was already there. The girl stood weightless against the collapsing air, her body nothing more than that formless crimson molasses that bent gravity to her will. Her scythe gleamed as though it had been waiting for Rumi all along.
"Not… fast enough…" the cloaked figure whispered, her voice carrying even across the open night, echoing like it came from inside Rumi's own skull.
Rumi's pulse spiked. She vanished, again, again, again, until the world became a stuttering sequence of rooftops, spires, lampposts, broken rails.
And still the red streak followed.
'The only way out...' Rumi thought grimly even as she teleported every half second. 'Is to leave her range entirely.'
'Out of the city itself.' Rumi's chest tightened the moment the thought came up, twisting her gut like a stab.
'That would leave, Mira and Zoey here... Alone...' Her patterns shone. "With her.'
Her patterns flared violet across the skyline, blinking her from tower to tower in a frantic, broken rhythm.
The thought drilled into her skull like a curse. Out of the city. Out of her reach.
But leaving meant abandoning Mira and Zoey. Leaving meant handing them over to her.
Rumi's jaw clenched as she reappeared on the skeletal frame of a construction crane. Steel groaned beneath her boots, swaying high above the streets. The wind whipped her hair across her face.
And then the scythe was there again.
A single stroke carved the crane in half, the shriek of metal tearing through the night as the entire structure buckled.
Rumi vanished a heartbeat before the crane folded into itself, smashing into the avenue below in a thunderous avalanche of steel and sparks.
The air shimmered red in front of her. The cloaked figure was already there, suspended as if gravity didn't apply, cloak flowing like molten blood.
Her scythe rested across her shoulders, her stance calm, effortless. She tilted her head ever so slightly, as if studying Rumi's next move.
She wasn't attacking Rumi this time which should have been odd to the demon hunter, if she wasn't terrified.
Rumi's heart thundered. Her knees bent instinctively, ready to blink again...
...when a new voice cut across the sky.
"Rumi!"
Her gaze turned down, at the base of a ruined apartment block. Mira's figure appeared, looking beat up but otherwise fine, her Gok-do planted in the fractured ground like an anchor. Zoey stumbled up beside her, with her clothes in tatters.
Melissa trailed behind them, her hand pressed against her chest, her face pale but her eyes sharp with dread.
"You idiots," Melissa hissed, the words tight between clenched teeth. "You shouldn't have come closer..."
Rumi's breath caught at the sight of them, her control faltering for a split second.
Because in that instant, the girl moved, not toward Rumi, but downward. Straight toward Mira, Zoey, and Melissa.
Rumi's gut clenched. "No…!"
Her patterns exploded in a flare of violet, instincts dragging her into the red streak's path, even as she knew she wasn't going to be fast enough.
The entire city lit up like an aurora in the northern pole.
But this wasn't in the sky. It was bleeding out from the ground.
The Honmoon pulsed aggressively, and its glow poured upward in twisting curtains of violet and green, streaked with deep crimson. They writhed through the streets like living rivers of light, flooding across rooftops, swallowing alleys, climbing up the steel bones of towers until even the Eiffel's silhouette looked drowned in shifting color.
Stone and steel no longer looked solid. Under the Honmoon's light, the city rippled, bending as though the air itself had turned liquid. The Seine caught the glow like a mirror and carried it, turning the river into a vein of molten emerald that snaked through the city's heart.
Every surface shimmered as though half-submerged in water, warping with the colors that bent reality itself. Streetlamps glowed twice as bright, their pale halos devoured by the aurora's hues until even shadows were painted violet.
To a Demon Hunter's eye, it was beautiful. Unnatural, breathtaking, almost holy.
To Rumi, it was suffocating. Every one of her senses burst her into a new patch of warped light, where the Honmoon's glow melded against her skin and expanded her vision. She could barely tell where rooftops ended and sky began.
When Rumi appeared in front of Mira, Zoey, and Melissa, the red-cloaked girl was already there, her scythe poised to strike. Rumi now stood between them.
The patterns across her skin had changed. No longer jagged or chaotic, they wove into perfect strands of color, forming a net-like second skin that shimmered beneath the auroral glow. It looked less like markings and more like threads of power binding her together, holding her steady.
She raised her sword. The blade groaned, lengthening, widening, growing far beyond its normal size until it towered above her like a colossal slab of steel. It was a form she had only ever seen once before in her life. Back then, it had been fed by the most valuable thing in existence, a life.
Now, impossibly, Rumi held that same weight in her hands. And deep inside, like clockwork, she understood exactly what to do.
"Haaaaaaah!!" Her roar split the night as she swung with everything her body, soul, and burning patterns could give.
The blade carved through the air, and a wave of incandescent light burst forward, a radiant arc that tore across the ruined street in an instant. It struck the red-cloaked girl head-on, slicing clean through her formless body.
The mass of crimson molasses shuddered, split into two halves, and then disintegrated into a storm of red petals, scattering into the aurora-lit night.
For a moment, silence reigned.
Zoey's mouth hung open, her weapon slack in her grip as the petals drifted around them. "What... What just happened?" she whispered, disbelief and awe mixing in her voice.
Mira's eyes stayed locked on Rumi, even through her exhaustion. She didn't speak at first, but her hand tightened around her Gok-do, as if trying to ground herself against what she had just witnessed. Finally, she muttered under her breath, almost reverently, "That power… is that Jinu?"
Melissa, however, wasn't awed. Her face twisted with something closer to dread than wonder. Her trembling hand rose to her lips, eyes wide with a fear she hadn't shown before. "No… she's already…" Her voice broke as she stared at Rumi's glowing patterns, the threads of power weaving tighter across her body.
Rumi collapsed onto her knee as she stared at the scattering petals as if she herself couldn't believe what had just happened. "There... There was no soul." She whispered.
"What?" Melissa stepped forward, confusion and worry crossing her face. "What do you mean?"
"When I…" Rumi tried to rise but her body resisted, leaving her trembling on the ground. "When I struck her, I couldn't find her… soul. More than that, she felt… hollow."
"Back up." Zoey's voice cracked as she cried out. "You can see souls, Rumi?"
Rumi gave a weak nod. The admission alone was enough to make Melissa's shoulders sag with visible relief, as though some unbearable weight had finally been lifted from her. Her lips moved in a whisper, half to herself, half to the night. "They had no souls… they were already gone." She kept murmuring, almost lost in the realization.
Rumi barely registered it. She ignored Melissa's muttering, ignored Mira and Zoey as they knelt beside her, hands trembling as they tried to check her wounds. Her focus was elsewhere.
Her gaze rose. "What happened to you?" she breathed.
The red petals drifting from the disintegrated mass still lingered in the air, hanging unnaturally, lazily spinning down like ash instead of vanishing.
Perched on a rooftop a block away, the red-cloaked girl stood, her form outlined by the faint shimmer of the Honmoon's glow. She lifted her hand to her mask, and pulled it off. Her hood shifted just enough for the light to completely miss her face.
The only thing visible from the shadows, was her eyes.
Their gazes met, and even at that distance, Rumi could not look away.
'She has silver eyes.'