Seizen disappeared.
The ground where he'd stood detonated.
Not cracked.
Detonated.
Stone blew upward. Fire bent back. The whole yard buckled under the force of that first step.
Then he was in front of Darius.
No—
past in front of him.
Inside his space.
The black dragonmascus tanto flashed up and stopped an inch from Darius's eye.
That close.
Close enough for Darius to see his own reflection in the dark steel.
Close enough to split a blink in half.
Seizen's smile was already forming—
then stopped.
Just for a second.
A tiny second.
His eye flicked down.
Flowers.
Thick vines and roots wrapped hard around his leg, grown up from the broken ground without warning, locking his movement for the one instant he needed most.
Seizen's eye snapped back up—
too late.
Darius was already there.
Both palms at his chest.
Not rushing.
Not wild.
So fast it looked slow.
His hands moved with that eerie True Flow smoothness, so clean it made afterimages—like shadow hands layered behind the real ones, one palm becoming three, becoming five, becoming a storm of perfect lines.
"Spirit Muti: Buddhist Palm."
The hit landed.
No giant explosion at first.
Just contact.
Then the Spirit Muti went in.
A lethal wave.
Dense.
Heavy.
It punched through Seizen's body and wrecked everything inside it in the same instant the force finally bloomed outward.
The blast ripped him off his feet.
Buildings behind him exploded one after another as he tore through them. Wood, stone, tile, smoke—everything burst in a line across the base as his body got launched through wall after wall like the yard itself had been turned into a weapon.
The last impact thundered through the burning compound.
Then silence hit.
Battlefield silence.
The kind where everybody listens.
Musashi stared at the smoking wreckage.
"That was a direct hit."
Darius didn't answer right away.
His hands lowered.
Flowers drifted around his sleeves.
Steam rolled from his mouth.
But inside—
It isn't over.
His eyes stayed on the wrecked building line.
Something that small isn't keeping him down for long.
Then it happened.
A hand came out of the smoke.
Black silhouette first.
Fingers digging into broken stone.
Then crimson eyes opened inside the haze.
Watching.
Glowing.
At the same time, the crows that had been circling above the base all this time broke formation.
They dove.
A black storm of wings and beaks ripping through smoke straight at Darius.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't even lift a hand.
His Ōi pressed outward.
Not as a flashy burst.
As law.
As pressure.
As an invisible wall of will layered through his proto-Ryōiki.
The crows slammed into it mid-flight and stuttered in the air, wings beating against something they could not see. Some got forced back. Some twisted sideways. Some shrieked and scattered, unable to push through the sheer refusal in front of him.
Darius kept staring at the smoke.
Then lifted one hand.
Curled his fingers.
Waved.
Come on.
The building remains shifted.
Then Seizen walked out.
Slow.
Straight through the smoke.
At first all there was was the silhouette.
Tall.
Black.
Then the crimson came through.
His eyes.
Then the aura.
Black-red pressure erupting off him in ugly waves as he stepped over broken stone and burning wood like none of it mattered. Dust and ash peeled away from his body. Smoke bent around him. His smile showed first at the edge of the light.
"Not bad."
His voice came easy.
Too easy.
He rolled one shoulder as he walked, like he'd just gotten hit in training instead of blasted through half the base.
"I haven't been surprised like that in a long time."
He kept coming.
Flowers stirred at Darius's feet.
Seizen's eyes stayed on him.
"Reminds me of your old teaching days at the academy."
A small laugh.
Soft.
Mean.
"Always the unpredictable teacher."
His smile widened.
"Never caring what you wore."
Another step.
"Never caring what you said."
Then his gaze sharpened.
Locked right into Darius.
"I always liked your teaching."
The black-red aura around him thickened.
Rose.
Deepened.
The ground started shaking again.
"Let me show you what I've learned."
And his aura erupted harder—
right on the edge of Soul Bloom.