The battle was far from over. Blood flowed and cries rang out across the entire city, heroes and enemies alike, in a chaos that showed no sign of slowing down.
Shion and Shinsei had taken refuge on the rooftops, from where they could observe the battlefield and follow the unfolding of events without being spotted. A few hundred meters from the Eiffel Tower, hidden, they did their best to stay out of sight.
Shinsei surveyed Paris from the rooftop with a meticulous, analytical eye, searching for his father amid the chaos. His face left no doubt about what he felt — everything unfolding before him revolted him. A silent resentment toward his father showed through his every feature, a deep opposition to his radical methods that he had never known how to express.
Suddenly, he turned around and walked toward his younger brother Shion, sitting on the ground to recover his strength after his confrontation with Kuro. The worry was visible on Shinsei's face, and with it, a quiet guilt at not having arrived in time. He crouched down in front of Shion and spoke in a soft, almost hesitant voice. "Shion… were you able to stop the bleeding with the cloth I gave you?"
Shion stayed silent for a moment, eyes cast down, then spoke in a calm and serious voice. "Maybe I never should have disobeyed Father and come here." He paused, letting the silence sit for a few seconds, then continued. "But I don't regret disobeying for a single moment. If I hadn't, I never would have seen any of this. I never would have understood what Kuro truly thinks. And I never would have been able to change. I would have stayed the same my entire life — chasing after Father, becoming strong for stupid, selfish reasons."
Shion made it clear that despite the situation and what he had been through, he remained in control of himself and his emotions — calm and serious at once. Slowly, he got back on his feet. His body protested with every movement, still bearing the shock of the blows received from Kuro — aching muscles, ribs that burned with every breath, legs trembling faintly under his weight. But he made the effort to rise on his own, without help, teeth clenched against the pain.
Standing, his back to Shinsei, he continued saying what he had to say, his voice firm and steady. "Brother, we cannot go on like this. I speak for myself, for you, for Kuro, for those fighting right now and for all those who stayed on the other side. If we continue down this path, there is only ruin at the end of it, and Father refuses to see that. If we want to change our fate, we absolutely have to stop him in his madness."
Shion turned around slowly, the bloodstained cloth over his right eye, his left eye shining with a strange clarity. "And if it comes to it, I will be the one who stands before Father."
Those words left Shinsei stunned, unable to respond immediately. He hadn't thought his younger brother could speak such words with such conviction. But what froze him most deeply was not the words. It was Shion's face.
Over his right eye, the cloth used to stop the bleeding was soaked through with blood, darkening steadily to a deep crimson. But his left eye shone with an intense azure that clashed violently against the blood-red sky of the night, stained by the fires still consuming the city.
In that instant, Shinsei thought, eyes wide. "His eye… that's… no, that's impossible. And yet there's no doubt. That symbol. It's the Shugan. He's awakened his Shugan."
Shinsei was stunned that in such circumstances Shion had awakened his Shugan. But what surprised him even more was the color — a blazing azure blue. In normal times, every person who awakened their Shugan bore the color red. It was an absolute first for a Shugan to be azure blue. The circumstances of its awakening and the rarity of its color seemed to indicate that Shion was destined for a great future, to accomplish feats that would leave their mark on the world.
Meanwhile, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, Reimu was preparing to finish things once and for all — to take Nozomi's life. But despite the pain, despite a lost eye, Nozomi refused to give up. He steadied his breathing to calm himself and collect his thoughts, meticulously working the aetherium he had left, concentrating it with painful precision into each of his limbs.
The two stared each other down without breaking eye contact for a single second. All at once, Nozomi broke into a run to the side at full speed — in constant motion, he was harder for Reimu to hit.
Reimu, for his part, remained still, watching Nozomi with patience, waiting to see what he would do. As Nozomi circled around him, stone spikes suddenly burst from the ground along his path. Thanks to his reflexes, he managed to dodge them with acrobatic movements, his feet grazing the tips with each pass.
As a spike surged up directly in front of him, Nozomi leaped and used it as a springboard, executed a front flip, and in midair — head and feet inverted, fingers clenched — he sent a concentrated fireball toward Reimu.
Reimu struck the fireball with his bare palm and dispersed it cleanly. Taking advantage of the fact that Nozomi had not yet touched the ground, he made a sharp spike shoot up at the exact spot where Nozomi was about to land.
But Nozomi had anticipated a counter. The moment he touched the ground, he immediately conjured a gust beneath his feet that propelled him high into the air, dodging Reimu's spike in the same motion.
Reimu wasn't about to let that stand. While Nozomi was airborne, he drew a long, deep breath, filling his belly with more and more air, holding it for a few moments. Then, in a single burst, from his mouth erupted a colossal stream of fire — so fierce and so vast it rivaled the breath of dragons, surpassing even the breath of some of the most fearsome creatures in existence. In an instant, this torrent of fire spread across the sky toward Nozomi, so immense and so bright that the soldiers and heroes fighting in the distance could see it from their front. At the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the ground turned to ash beneath the heat, the stone walls cracked, and metal melted like wax.
In the air, Nozomi saw the breath closing in at terrifying speed. He had to react fast or be incinerated. Dodging to the side with his mastery of wind was impossible — the breath covered too great a surface. Nozomi had no choice but to form a sphere of condensed air all around himself, hoping it would be enough to absorb this devastating blast.
In an instant, Nozomi's sphere was engulfed in Reimu's flames. The blast lasted several dozen seconds, spreading with the same relentless intensity. Then, at the edge of the flames, Nozomi's sphere reappeared, falling through the void. He had quickly understood he wouldn't last long inside and had created a lateral gust of wind that drove his sphere to the left until he cleared the flames — scorched at the edges, but alive.
Through the smoke in the sky, Nozomi could be seen falling through the void from several dozen meters up, silent, before slamming into a building in an extraordinary impact, the facade exploding outward under the force of the collision.
The sky darkened further and a storm formed within minutes, fed by the brutal rise in temperature caused by Reimu's breath. Violent winds surged, and thunder rolled across the entire sky in low rumbles and bolts of lightning tearing through the clouds.
Reimu walked in silence, calmly, toward where Nozomi had crashed. But before he had time to blink, the building where Nozomi had gone down exploded into dozens of massive blocks of stone that hurtled toward Reimu, slamming into the ground with colossal force.
Nozomi, just before the impact, had regained consciousness. Through his combined mastery of air and water, he had cushioned his fall and was now controlling those stone blocks, trying to drive Reimu into a corner.
Reimu reacted quickly and kept moving to make himself harder for Nozomi to hit, dodging the stones coming from every direction. But Nozomi watched his movements carefully, reading him better and better, predicting his trajectories with growing precision, backing him further and further into a corner.
Reimu, seeing the situation grow complicated, used the projectiles Nozomi was hurling at him to gain height. Once high enough, he searched for Nozomi with his eyes. But while he had been busy dodging the stones, he hadn't noticed that Nozomi had moved. Without Reimu realizing it, Nozomi had slipped around behind him. Reimu barely had time to catch a glimpse of him at his back before a flaming kick connected with his ribs and sent him crashing straight into the ground in a brutal impact.
But as Nozomi landed, from the cloud of smoke raised by Reimu's impact with the ground, a grazing bolt of lightning shot out at lightning speed and struck Nozomi head-on before he even had time to sense it coming. He skidded across the ground for several meters before coming to a stop at the base of the Eiffel Tower, his clothes smoking, the breath knocked out of him.
Reimu emerged from the cloud of smoke, his Imperial Armor having once again shielded him. He was walking toward Nozomi when the rain began to fall abruptly, flooding all of Paris in no time, hammering the debris and the ashes with a curtain of cold water that clashed violently against the heat of the fires.
As Nozomi pulled himself up as best he could, Reimu drew closer. Nozomi, breathless and exhausted, let a faint, bitter smile cross his lips and pressed both hands flat against the soaked ground. In a fraction of a second, across a radius of twenty-five meters, everything froze instantly — Nozomi had used the rain that had soaked everything to ice over the surroundings and trap Reimu in a prison of ice.
But Nozomi knew this prison would only hold him for a few seconds. He stood, drew a long and painful breath, and raised the tips of his right hand's fingers toward the sky. A second later, every bolt of lightning contained in the stormy sky struck the Eiffel Tower before converging into Nozomi's fingertips at a single burning point. He had used the Eiffel Tower as a lightning rod to channel all the electricity in the sky into one point before absorbing it into his own body.
He stood upright, the electricity flowing from the Eiffel Tower to his fingertips, crackling across his skin, radiating through every vein. He thought, teeth clenched. "The electricity is spreading through my entire body. One lapse in focus and it's over for me." He tried to concentrate as best he could, ignoring the burning in his limbs. "I have to contain the electricity for as long as possible."
All the electricity in the sky was now contained within Nozomi's body. As Reimu had freed himself from the ice prison, he caught sight of Nozomi — his entire body coursing with arcs of electricity crackling across his clothes and through his hair. In an instant, from the tips of his left hand's fingers, Nozomi unleashed all the electricity and directed it at Reimu in a single concentrated beam of devastating power.
The power of the attack was such that it was impossible for Reimu to dodge. As the beam kept striking Reimu continuously, he was pinned in place, unable to move an inch. He felt the attack, and for the first time, he could not remain unmoved before such power. But he did not fall, and in a provoking tone, he shouted at Nozomi. "It will take far more than that if you want to finish me."
Nozomi was desperate. Despite a flawlessly executed plan, his attack still wasn't powerful enough to pierce the Imperial Armor. Everything seemed to be over. But suddenly, in the distance, amid a heap of rubble, an explosion went off, leaving both Nozomi and Reimu shaken.
As the smoke cleared, a blue glow could be seen through it. Nozomi observed the scene while maintaining his attack on Reimu, but for a brief instant, he was completely thrown by what he was seeing.
The smoke cleared entirely, and Kael's body appeared — standing atop the rubble. Covered in wounds and blood from head to toe, clothes completely torn, face swollen, it was a miracle he was still on his feet. And yet, there he was.
Nozomi, thrown for just a fraction of a second, quickly assessed the situation and saw an opportunity to finish Reimu. He turned toward him and said, his voice broken but determined. "I told you — as long as we're not dead, we'll always get back up. Now, what are you going to do — you who can no longer move?"
Reimu stayed silent, gave no answer. He was visibly unsettled by Kael. He thought, eyes fixed on him. "How can this kid still be standing after all of that? His plan is to have the other one attack me while he holds me in place. But in that state, he won't even be able to take a step."
Nozomi stayed still, holding his attack for as long as possible to buy every precious second he could. He thought, eyes locked on his brother. "Kael, are you capable of doing anything at all in that state? If you got back up on your own… then I trust you for what comes next, big brother."
The two faced each other, motionless, waiting for what Kael would do. Everything rested on him.
But while everything around was loud — the fighting nearby, the crackling of fire, the lightning of the storm — Kael heard nothing. He stood on that heap of rubble, his gaze empty, his body seemingly lifeless. His scars had spread from his right hand all the way up to cover his entire torso and climb onto his face, tracing deep and luminous lines across his skin. His breathing was heavy, ragged. In his subconscious, a single burning thought. "I can't see anything. I hurt everywhere — the pain is unbearable. My body barely wants to move. And yet I feel it. He's there, motionless. He's not moving. If I touch him, even once… then maybe I can defeat him before Nozomi is in mortal danger. It only takes one hit. Just one."
From Kael's right hand, a phenomenal quantity of aetherium condensed — dense and unstable, vibrating under the pressure. All around his body, aetherium poured off him in great quantities, the blue glow trembling under the strain. The power radiating from him was such that the ground cracked beneath his feet and the aetherium itself seemed to shudder around him.
This spectacle played out before Reimu's eyes, and he did not remain unmoved. He felt the danger approaching. But between one blink and the next, Kael was already less than a meter away, ready to strike. Between those two moments, barely a second had passed — and that had been more than enough for Kael to cover the entire distance, propelling himself at lightning speed.
Reimu's Imperial Armor was active. But faced with the determination and raw power radiating from Kael, Reimu felt for the first time something unusual: doubt. He sensed the danger looking into Kael's eyes. And in that situation, he could not move because of Nozomi's attack.
Kael struck Reimu head-on, without restraint, with every ounce of strength he had in that single blow. The impact created a gigantic cloud of smoke and dust around them. The power of the attack sent cracks spreading across the entire surrounding ground, growing wider and wider. The shockwave generated by the impact sent everything in the vicinity flying, forcing Nozomi to press himself flat to avoid being hurled into the air.
The cloud of smoke swirled in on itself — Kael's blue glow could be seen passing through it, pulsing, then suddenly condensing before scattering in every direction in a devastating blast.
After a few moments, the smoke cleared. Nozomi rose slowly, legs trembling, and pushed forward calling out. "Kael! Where are you! Kael!" He spotted a silhouette in the distance. On guard at first, he relaxed when he recognized Kael. But as he approached, his relief gave way to a cold dread — Kael's body appeared lifeless, in a critical state.
He moved closer and closer, but the more Nozomi advanced and the more the smoke thinned, when suddenly, behind Kael, another silhouette appeared. A second later, a hand shot out of the smoke and seized Kael by the head.
Nozomi recognized Reimu's hand immediately. His assumption was quickly confirmed. He ran despite the pain, despite the agony of every movement, to close the distance and tear his brother from Reimu's grip.
Suddenly, the smoke cleared entirely, revealing the scene in full. Nozomi couldn't believe his eyes. He focused his gaze, studied Reimu from a distance. Reimu's body was running with blood. He noticed his abdomen — where Kael had landed the blow — completely bloodied, marked by a deep and severe wound. And in the flesh, a crack was visible in Reimu's Imperial Armor.
Kael's strike had found its mark. He had managed to breach the Imperial Armor and inflict a wound that Reimu could not ignore. Reimu held Kael with one hand, looking at him with fury, a glimmer of astonishment crossing his cold eyes. He spoke. "My instinct about you was right, then. I was right to take an interest in you. Yuutaka Kael… you have managed to breach my armor. But unfortunately for you, it will take far more than that if you want to kill me."
Kael tried to free himself, but drained of all strength, his hands fell back into the void, limp. Nozomi ran toward them with everything he had, but before he reached them, Reimu released an intense wave of heat from the hand gripping Kael's head. An explosion went off immediately, and Kael's body hung limp, without any apparent sign of life.
Nozomi, out of his mind and terrified for Kael's condition, surged at Reimu. Reimu tossed Kael's unconscious body aside with an indifferent gesture and sidestepped backward, then immediately drove a rotating kick from the left that sent Nozomi flying.
Nozomi spat blood when he hit the ground, lifted his head slightly and caught sight of Reimu — his gaze blank and cold, that of a man who had abandoned any semblance of interest in the fight. The smile was gone. Nozomi pressed his hand to the ground to try to rise, but his arms refused to hold him. He had no strength left.
Reimu watched Nozomi struggle to get up, his gaze one of absolute coldness. "It's over, for people like you. You did well. It's been a long time since anyone managed to breach my ultimate defense."
He activated his Shugan. A heavy, oppressive energy of deep red and black condensed at a single point in his raised hand, absorbing the light around it. Then it spread, forming a shuriken spinning so fast it appeared motionless, radiating a power that seemed to drain all life from the surrounding area. Reimu cast one last glance at Nozomi, then released his attack.
The shuriken crossed the distance between them at terrifying speed, destroying everything in its path. Nozomi saw the attack coming. But his body — exhausted, broken — refused to move. For the first time since the fight began, Nozomi let go. Everything seemed to be over. His end was drawing near.
The shuriken found its mark. A colossal explosion and a shockwave that blew everything within a radius of several meters. Nozomi thought it was all over. But he slowly opened his eyes. The pain was still there, in every corner of his body — he was still alive. He opened his eyes wide and lifted his head.
The silhouette of a woman stood before him. A stranger Nozomi had never seen in his life, but who had evidently just saved his, forming a barrier between him and Reimu.
She stood facing Nozomi, marking a clear separation between him and Reimu. Her voice was soft and smiling. "Nozomi… you fought very well. You can rest now. The reinforcements are here."
As everything seemed lost and the end drew closer with every passing second, a mysterious woman had appeared, bringing with her something the battlefield had not known for a long time: hope. But who was she truly — and would it be enough to change the course of a battle this one-sided?