A group of soldiers crowded the entrance to the control room, weapons drawn but feet planted. None of them dared go in. None of them dared leave.
Someone made the choice for them.
"FIRE DRAGON'S ROAR!"
A tornado of flames punched through the palace's outer wall like it was made of cardboard, flooding the entire corridor in a howling inferno. The heat hit first, then the fire itself, devouring everything in its path.
Vidaldus, the long-haired rockstar clutching his electric guitar, came with it, ragdolling through the blaze and slamming into the cluster of soldiers at the entrance. Bodies scattered like bowling pins, launched backward by the sheer force of the fiery vortex.
"ICE DEVIL'S RAGE!"
A frost tornado followed on its heels, shoving Ikaruga's kimono-clad body through the same breach. She hit the far wall and crumpled.
The corridor that had been a furnace half a second ago flash-froze. Temperature plummeted so fast the air cracked. If Gray's silver-white ice hadn't locked the floor and walls rigid, the structural damage from Natsu's attack would've brought the whole section down.
Keyes drifted in behind them. His skeletal form phased through the frozen corridor like it wasn't entirely solid, hollow eyes sweeping the carnage with mild disinterest.
"I didn't expect Trinity Raven to fall so quickly." His tone carried no urgency. Just the faint irritation of a man whose tools broke ahead of schedule. "What troublesome fellows."
He didn't spare a glance for the soldiers groaning in the wreckage. His gaze found Crawford instead, slumped against the corridor wall, blood on his chin, unconscious but breathing.
"He's actually still alive."
Keyes raised his staff. A ray of purplish-black light lanced from its tip and pierced Crawford's heart.
Crawford's eyes snapped open. He stared at Keyes with a look of pure disbelief, mouth working, trying to speak, trying to ask why, but the life was already draining from his body. His hands twitched. His lips moved without sound.
Then he died.
And then he stood up.
Crawford rose to his feet as if the hole in his chest didn't exist. His posture was straight. His expression was blank. Whatever had made him Crawford Seam, the cowardice, the self-interest, the nervous sweat, all of it was gone. Wiped clean. Unlike Silver, who had retained his will and his soul even under Keyes's control, Crawford was an empty vessel. A puppet with the former Chairman's skills and none of his personality.
"Lord Keyes."
Keyes smiled. "Very good. Lord Mard Geer orders the immediate activation of Face."
"Yes."
Crawford's hands moved on autopilot. A virtual keyboard materialized before him. His fingers flew across it, the same practiced motions he'd performed in life, and hit the confirmation key without hesitation.
[01:00:00]
The countdown appeared on the virtual screen. Crisp. Final.
The main display in the control room synced immediately.
[00:59:59]
[00:59:58]
"Excellent." Keyes's lipless mouth stretched into a grin.
The wall behind him exploded.
Rhodes came through it shoulder-first, debris scattering around him. He took in the scene in a single sweep, Crawford standing upright with dead eyes, the countdown ticking, Keyes looking satisfied with himself.
His gaze settled on Crawford's chest. The wound. The emptiness behind the eyes.
"It's you." Rhodes's voice was flat. "You killed him outright."
Keyes turned to face him without hurry. "In this situation, the dead are far more useful than the living. And now, everything is settled. Face is activating as we speak. Within the hour, all magic on this continent will cease to exist."
He raised one skeletal hand and pressed it against his face in a theatrical gesture of sorrow, head tilted back, voice dropping into something almost operatic. "Even a human as powerful as you will become as helpless as an ant once you lose your magic. Ah... what a pitifully fragile race."
"Yeah, sure." Rhodes didn't have the patience for a monologue. 'A mage gets weak without magic. Stunning observation. Like demons wouldn't crumble without their curse power either.'
He'd already confirmed what he needed. Crawford was dead. Keyes's necromancy was active. The countdown was running.
Time to fix all three.
"Chem Tech Dragon Soul!"
Rhodes's form shifted, his aura changing texture, a different kind of energy flooding through him. He raised one hand and snapped his fingers. A clean, sharp sound that echoed through the frozen corridor.
Crawford's body twitched. Swayed. Then his hands moved. His fingers flew across the keyboard again, this time undoing what he'd just done.
Keyes felt it before he understood it. A severance.
A thread he'd woven into Crawford's corpse, suddenly cut clean. His control, gone.
"You..." The composure cracked. His hollow eyes widened. "It was you. Silver, the control I had over Silver, you were the one who broke it."
Rhodes looked at him like he'd just stated the obvious. "You're only figuring that out now?"
Keyes went still.
All this time, he'd believed Silver had broken free on his own, either destroyed by his son in a tragic father-son duel, or liberated through the sheer power of the bond between parent and child. He'd found it beautiful. The drama of it. The tragedy. Father and son, dead and living, trading blows until love severed the chains of death. He'd savored that narrative. Mourned that he couldn't witness it.
And it was all a lie.
Some human had just walked up and snapped the thread. No drama. No tragedy. No beautiful father-son moment. Just brute-force interference.
Keyes's jaw tightened.
Then what had been the point? The emotion he'd felt watching Gray wield Silver's magic, the rare flicker of something almost like feeling in his undead heart, all of it had been based on a fantasy.
'Despicable human.' His grip on his staff tightened until the bone creaked. 'To waste my scarce emotions. To rob me of my rare pleasure.'
Keyes reined in his anger. The mission came first. "What order did you give him?"
He didn't need to wait for Rhodes's answer. Crawford reported it himself, his voice mechanical and empty.
"The Self-Destruction Magic Circle has been activated. All Face units will self-destruct within one minute."
Keyes's composure shattered. "A Self-Destruction Magic Circle?! Why would such a thing exist?!"
Crawford responded without inflection. "Face is a weapon more devastating than the Etherion. The Magic Council proposed its complete destruction on multiple occasions but could never reach a consensus."
His dead fingers continued working the keyboard as he spoke, as if narrating his own actions in real time.
"However, to prevent abuse by hostile parties, both Face and the Etherion were equipped with failsafe self-destruction systems. If the sequence is not reversed within one minute, all Face units will be permanently destroyed."
"STOP IT!" Keyes leveled his staff at Crawford, dark energy spiraling around the tip. "Cancel the order, NOW!"
Crawford didn't respond. His fingers kept tapping.
He wasn't under Keyes's control anymore.
Keyes fired a bolt of spiraling dark energy screamed toward Crawford's back.
Rhodes was already there.
He stepped between them without rushing, one hand raised. A thin magic shield caught the blast and deflected it into the ceiling. Debris rained down.
"In your dreams."
Keyes flickered. His body turned translucent and he phased sideways, reappearing behind Rhodes like a shadow, staff already swinging toward Crawford from a new angle.
"Give me that corpo..."
A section of wall detonated inward.
"WAIT A MINUTE!!!"
Gray came through it like a freight train.
His right fist encased in a silver gauntlet of Devil Slayer ice connected with the left side of Keyes's skull.
"Ice Devil's Zeroth Destruction Fist!"
The hit was monstrous. Gray's physical strength and the full concentrated force of Devil Slayer magic behind it. Keyes's face deformed on impact, his skull caving inward around the gauntlet before the force launched him backward.
Keyes spun through the air headfirst like a thrown dart, silver-white ice consuming his upper body mid-flight. He punched through one wall. Then another. Then a third. Each impact spraying frozen debris.
He finally stopped, upside down, head buried in the floor, directly in front of Kyoka.
"Keyes." Kyoka had only just recovered from the kick Rhodes had landed on her earlier. She was still clutching her stomach, one hand braced against the wall, when a frozen skeleton drilled through the ceiling and embedded itself at her feet.
She stared at him. Then her expression changed.
Something else was wrong. She could feel it an absence, like a thread being cut somewhere inside her network.
"Seilah's magic power... it's disappeared."
The words hung in the air for a single second.
Then Kyoka screamed.
"AAAAAHHHHH!!!"
The demon markings on her skin spread and darkened. The horns on her head lengthened violently, shooting upward, sharpening, piercing clean through her original headpiece and shattering it. Her shoulders broadened as muscle packed itself onto her frame. Her clothes tore and split at the seams. The claws on her hands extended to nearly a foot long, black and gleaming.
Her aura doubled. Then tripled. And it was still climbing.
"HAHAHAHA." The laugh that ripped out of her didn't sound demon anymore. It barely sounded sane. "Humans.. ALL of you, DIE!"
Kyoka issued her declaration of victory and charged out of the smashed room, only to find a golden halo appearing around her body.
Her steps halted abruptly.
"This is..."
Rhodes smiled calmly. He had no interest in experiencing that sensation of multiplied pain again, so he had decisively chosen this spell from the start.
He slowly clenched his open right hand.
"Fairy Glitter."
With his motion, the golden halo tightened instantly, binding Kyoka's arms firmly against her waist. No matter how she struggled, she could not move even slightly.
"How can human magic..." Terror finally appeared on Kyoka's face. The power contained within this halo was far beyond what she could endure.
She might die.
Death itself did not frighten her, but dying here, before seeing Master END, before returning to Zeref's side, was something she could not accept.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
In the next moment, the sky outside dimmed briefly, and in contrast, the golden halo burst forth with blinding brilliance.
"Take him and go!" Rhodes shouted to Gray as he moved immediately, scooping Mira into his arms and following Gray as they leapt out through the window.
Boom!!!