Blyke closed his eyes and inhaled.
The breath did not sound human. It sounded like a furnace opening.
Henry stepped back immediately, one hand lifting slightly toward Cagaro and Arcee without looking at them.
"Step back with me. " he warned quietly.
They obeyed.
The air around Blyke thickened. His red waistcoat began to smolder, threads glowing from within as if magma flowed through the fabric instead of blood through veins.
Heat radiated outward in pulsing waves, bending the already fragile air of the cathedral. Steam curled from his skin in spirals, rising around him like a ritual shroud.
The floating marble beneath his boots cracked.
Cagaro shielded his face from the sudden surge. "What's happening?"
Henry did not take his eyes off Blyke. "He is synchronizing."
The Seraphim's wings twitched, reacting to the sudden spike of energy. Distorted beams boomed but the space around Blyke refused to bend.
The heat intensified.
Blyke's shoulders trembled once, then steadied. His brown hair began to lift, strand by strand, drawn upward by invisible force.
It sharpened into fierce, upward spikes, wild and defiant, evoking the silhouette of a mythic warrior crowned by flame.
Arcee's voice lowered despite herself. "Is this okay for him?"
Henry nodded once. "Yes."
Scarlet lines ignited across Blyke's body. Thin at first, then blazing brighter, carving patterns along his arms, neck and jaw like molten veins exposed to air.
They pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, each throb releasing another wave of pressure that forced dust and shattered glass outward in expanding rings.
Blyke's eyes opened. They burned. Light glowed from within them, red-gold and unwavering.
A metallic resonance rang through the cathedral as something formed around his fists.
Golden iron gauntlets manifested piece by piece, plates sliding into place with precise, deliberate weight. They were not ornamental. They were forged instruments formed by thee Runic Flow with patterns that shimmered in the same scarlet energy coursing through him.
The steam around his body turned to a roaring aura.
He tilted his head upward toward the Seraphim and released a roar that shook suspended pillars and sent ripples through fractured space. It was not rage alone. It was declaration of a war.
Cagaro stared, half awed, half alarmed. "He is different!"
Henry's voice remained calm, "No."
Above them, the Seraphim's wings spread wider.
Henry's eyes sharpened.
"He's finally fighting the way he should."
Blyke rolled his shoulders once, steam coiling off him in violent spirals, scarlet lines blazing brighter with every heartbeat.
He looked up at the Seraphim and grinned, not respectfully or cautiously.
Mockingly.
"Yo," he called out, voice echoed through the floating cathedral. "You float high, wings wide, thinking you divine sight? Distort space, bend light... still can't land a hit right. You spam beams, twist seams, hide behind your bright dreams. But I break schemes, crack extremes, burn kings into steam."
Cagaro blinked. "Is he… rapping?"
Henry folded his arms. "Yes."
The Seraphim's wings flared violently.
The cathedral warped as multiple beams fired at once, not randomly now but in furious succession. Light carved into pillars, folding space toward Blyke from three directions.
Blyke inhaled sharply and shouted, voice detonating across the chamber...
"NOW I UNLEASH IT MY ASTRA—IRONCLAD KAISER!"
The name rang like a war bell.
The first beam twisted inward; Blyke stepped into the distortion and let it sling him sideways.
The second carved through where his head had been a fraction earlier. The third split the ground before him. He slammed his golden gauntlet into the marble.
The impact boomed like artillery.
Scarlet energy surged downward and massive rectangular stone blocks erupted upward in staggered formation, torn from the cathedral floor as if summoned by force of will alone. They hovered briefly, aligned like a jagged staircase into the sky.
Blyke launched himself.
Each step cracked under the pressure of his ascent. A distortion wave curled toward him.
The warped air bent his trajectory perfectly toward the Seraphim's core.
"Your halo's flickering!" he shouted mid-flight. "System overheating, baby!"
He drew his fist back. Scarlet lines converged into the gauntlet, gold glowing white-hot at the edges. Then he punched.
The strike connected with the invisible spatial field around the Seraphim and the atmosphere shook.
Sound vanished for a split second as shockwaves rippled outward, shattering floating glass and blasting feathers backward in violent spirals.
The Seraphim reeled.
Blyke hovered briefly in the aftermath, steam pouring from his shoulders.
He cracked his knuckles mid-air.
"Next verse," he taunted, eyes blazing. "Try harder."
The Seraphim answered with escalation.
Its wings expanded to their full impossible span and this time the beams were not thin lances of distortion—they were pillars.
Vast torrents of warped radiance tore through the cathedral, disintegrating columns and liquefying suspended stone into cascading shards of geometry.
One beam clipped Blyke mid-ascent.
It burned across his shoulder in a violent arc, scarlet energy scattering as he was blasted downward through three floating platforms. He vanished in smoke and fractured debris.
Cagaro's breath caught.
"He is down—"
Arcee's eyes narrowed. "That impact velocity was lethal!"
The smoke pulsed. A beat echoed from within it.
"Yo..." came Blyke's voice, hoarse but steady, "...that tickled."
He exploded upward out of the debris, steam roaring off him, shoulder scorched but already stabilizing in flickering red light.
He flipped mid-air, dodging a descending beam by inches, continuing without missing rhythm.
"Big lights, loud sights but still can't end fights!"
Henry allowed himself the slightest smirk. "His punches can temporarily unanchor physical cohesion in this state. Every hit strips reinforcement. Enhanced bodies lose structural integrity the more he connects hits."
Cagaro blinked. "You mean—"
"In this state..." Henry finished, eyes locked on the Seraphim, "he's a walking anti-supernatural weapon."
The Seraphim fired again, three converging pillars.
Blyke slammed both gauntlets together mid-air. A shockwave burst outward, bending the beams just enough for him to slip between them.
He kicked off a distortion ripple, using its curve like a ramp and drove a downward punch into one of the Seraphim's outer wings.
The contact did not explode.
Feathers flickered, their luminous structure glitching as if their divine composition had been momentarily unplugged from reality.
The Seraphim staggered back.
Blyke landed on a suspended fragment of altar stone, steam swirling violently.
He pointed upward, grinning through blood at the corner of his mouth.
"Every bar I drop," he said, voice burning, "you fall apart a little more."
The Seraphim made its next move.
Its wings tore outward in grotesque expansion, feathers splitting and elongating into serrated, clawed appendages that bent at unnatural angles.
The light around it turned violent, unstable and the beams it released were no longer measured distortions but furious barrages.
They slammed into pillars, vaporized fragments of cathedral stone and scorched across Blyke's body as he forced himself forward through the storm.
Each hit burned. One tore across his ribs. Another grazed his thigh. Steam hissed from his skin as scarlet lines flickered under strain. He clenched his jaw.
"I need to end this." he muttered under his breath.
The beams became random, chaotic, saturating the entire airspace with lethal geometry. Space twisted without rhythm, turning approach into suicide. But Blyke stopped trying to calculate.
He leapt straight through.
A beam clipped his side and spun him violently, yet he twisted mid-air, slammed a gauntlet into a distortion wave and used the warped recoil to launch himself upward again.
The Seraphim screeched without sound, its wings turned into deadly claws, slashing outward.
One talon caught him across the head.
Blood spayed out...
Blyke's vision blurred red as he was dragged downward by the hooked appendage, his body scraped against warped marble. The claw pressed harder, trying to crush.
Scarlet energy detonated outward from his chest, forcing the claw open. He tore free, blood running down his temple, eyes blazing brighter than before.
"You want close combat?" he shouted. "Let's go!"
He surged forward in a blur of steam and fury. A left hook cracked against a wing joint, destabilizing its structure. A spinning backfist shattered another claw tip into flickering fragments.
He drove his knee upward into its core, then hammered both gauntlets downward in brutal succession.
Each strike unanchored more of its divine cohesion, causing its radiant body to glitch and falter.
The Seraphim retaliated with massive beam pillars at point-blank range.
Blyke weaved between them impossibly, ducking under one, flipping over another, stepping on a rising block of shattered altar stone to gain height.
He kicked off that platform, then another, ascending like a comet through collapsing space.
Above the Seraphim now, bleeding and burning, Blyke slammed both gauntlets together.
" This will be my... "
The sound cracked like the sky splitting.
"... final attack. "
He drew his arms wide, scarlet energy darkening at the edges, compressing into something denser, heavier, almost black. The cathedral trembled as the air pressure inverted.
With a battle cry that shook every suspended fragment of marble, he roared,
"OBLIVION THUNDERCLAP!"
He clapped his gauntlets together with catastrophic force.
A circular shockwave erupted downward, not as light, but as jagged dark spikes of compressed energy bursting outward in all directions like a crown of spears.
They tore through warped space itself, pinning distortions flat, crushing beams mid-formation and slamming the Seraphim into the cathedral floor with apocalyptic weight.
The impact flattened it completely.
Feathers shattered. The floating cathedral rang with the echo of the thunderclap as dust and broken light settled in reverent silence.