Doom!
A suffocating, heavy aura erupted from Shion as the dark tendrils rushed back toward her, fully enveloping her form in a swirling vortex of pitch-black energy.
"Yes... That's it. Give me that sweet anger," Mya purred. Reaching into the folds of her low-cut kimono, she drew an elegant folding fan and snapped it open before her face. "My name is Mya. What is yo—"
Before she could finish her sentence, a volley of shadow-forged daggers tore through the air toward her. Mya's eyes widened slightly. With a swift, fluid sweep of her fan, she batted the projectiles aside, pinning them harmlessly into the white gravel.
But Shion was already gone.
Mya's gaze darted forward, only to find Shion materialising directly in front of her, a newly forged blade already slicing toward her throat. Mya instinctively tried to step backwards, but her body refused to obey.
'What?! I can't move...'
Glancing down in a flash of panic, Mya saw that her own shadow had twisted against her. It had risen from the ground, wrapping around her ankles like obsidian hands, its distorted features warped into a wide, deeply creepy smile.
"How shre—"
Shring!
Shion's dagger connected cleanly this time. With a flawless, lethal stroke, Mya's head was severed from her shoulders, tumbling to the ground with a soft, hollow thud. Shion spun through the air, landing gracefully on the opposite side of the courtyard. In the same motion, she hurled three more daggers straight into Mya's stationary torso.
But instead of biting into flesh, the blades struck the gravel with a chiming clank. Mya's headless body didn't collapse; instead, it dissolved entirely, bursting into a massive, swarming cloud of vibrant blue and red butterflies.
"You have certainly grown stronger since your emotions took over," Mya's voice resonated from above.
The butterflies converged in the moonlit sky, weaving together to reform her body. Now levitating high in the air, Mya looked down at Shion with a patronising, serene smile, completely unharmed.
"Ahhhh, in the air too?!"
A sudden, sharp gasp escaped Mya's throat. Before she could process the movement, a massive, crescent-shaped shadow sickle had extended from the darkness below, its jagged edge hooking directly underneath her chin.
"You are getting ahead of yourself, little human," Mya spat, her serene demeanour finally cracking.
Refusing to be pinned again, Mya reached down and caught the razor-sharp shadow blade with her bare, pale hands.
Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
The very instant Mya's bare palms clamped down onto the shadow sickle, her heart rate doubled violently. Time slowed to an absolute crawl, and a jarring, vivid vision forced its way into her consciousness.
A towering, silhouetted man stood before her in the deep gloom of a colossal hall.
"Mmmm... out of all the women I have planted my seed into," the man's resonant, low rumble echoed, "only four of them have managed to bear decent children, tch, I have to increase the Reiryoku in this region if I want the ritual to succeed."
Trapped within the fragile perspective of her own infant body, Mya glanced to her left and right. There, lying helpless on the cold floorboards, were three other newborns. Each infant possessed a distinctly different colour of hair: pink, orange, and one ocean blue.
The vision snapped shut as abruptly as it had appeared.
"What... what was that?!" Mya huffed, her mind reeling in confusion.
Losing her composure, her grip tightened in a panic. Her fingers flared with a corrosive, acidic light, crushing the shadow sickle until it shattered into useless dust.
As her eyes readjusted to the moonlight, Shion was already waiting. In her hands, the churning darkness had materialised into a massive, jet-black folding fan, a colossal thing with three stars.
With a silent, furious glare, Shion swung the giant fan. A catastrophic gust of compressed wind tore through the Zen garden. The sheer force of the gale swatted Mya out of the air like a fly, sending her crashing toward the earth while the devastating wind pressure cleanly sliced and dismantled the wooden architecture of the pavilions behind her.
Mya hit the stone tiles hard. Yet, she bore no physical scars. Gritting her teeth, she slid backwards across the courtyard, bringing herself right to the edge of a decorative stone pond. She gently dipped her fingers into the water. Upon her touch, the liquid rippled violently, defying gravity as it began to rise into the air in thick, spinning ribbons.
Just then, Mya's own shadow rose once more from the white gravel behind her, its face warped into that same creepy, malicious smile as it raised a shadow dagger to pierce her spine.
But before the rogue shadow could strike, a single blue butterfly fluttered down, landing on the obsidian wrist. Instantly, the entire shadow entity dissolved into harmless smoke.
"I have no need for things that refuse to obey their master, even if it's my mirror." Mya spat, her voice cold.
She tilted her hand upward, forcing the columns of pond water to leap high into the sky, where they scattered into thousands of hovering droplets.
Thump.
For the very first time since the encounter began, Mya's footstep made a distinct, physical sound. It was a hollow, resonant stomp against the stone, vibrating with the deep, rhythmic thrum of a traditional tsuzumi drum.
At that exact signal, the suspended water droplets began to fall like an artificial monsoon. Mya violently waved her fan. The falling rain instantly altered its trajectory, shooting high-velocity liquid bullets that flew straight toward Shion.
The relentless bombardment caught Shion entirely off guard. The water droplets were like miniature cannonballs, tearing through her defences and slicing into her body. As the stray droplets hammered into the structures behind her, they left massive, perfectly round, hollowed-out scars in the thick timber. A mere moment later, the entire row of buildings groaned under the structural damage and collapsed into a mountain of splintered ruins.
"Ha... ha..."
A ragged, hoarse gasp tore through the settles of the ruins. Shion shuddered violently where she stood, her hands clutching her battered chest as she tried to keep her balance amidst the splintered timber.
"You are finished," Mya declared, casually closing the distance between them with slow, triumphant strides, her high Oiran shoes clicking lightly against the wet stones.
But a few paces away, Mya abruptly froze.
Instead of crimson blood dripping from the deep, ragged flesh wounds inflicted by the water bullets, a thick, pitch-black ink began to sizzle and boil within the lacerations. Shion's physical form was violently warped. Before Mya's stunned eyes, the silhouette began to transform her chest compressed and flattened, the slender waist filled out, and the shoulders broadened into a powerful, muscular male frame.
Had it been any other person receiving that catastrophic elemental bombardment from Mya, they would have been shredded to pieces. But for all her years of studying the shinobi of Iga, Mya was entirely ignorant of the Hattori clan's sacred heritage: Keshin Kanjō.
Those who successfully reached a certain threshold of Reiryoku reserves could be considered functional immortality. By fluidly shifting their physical state between male and female at will, they could completely reset their biological condition, instantly sealing lethal wounds and purging toxins from their system.
Though Shion could barely even be considered a second-rank practitioner, the incredibly dense Reiryoku saturating the Sanctuary actively resonated with her lineage. The ambient energy granted her a massive, temporary awakening mirroring the explosive boost Yorimitsu had tapped into moments before.
And that critical blind spot in Mya's knowledge was about to cost her dearly, though she couldn't be blamed, even Shion herself doesn't know that the ritual is reversible.