The heat of the Astra was the last thing Sakura felt before the world went grey.
The red blade had passed through her heart like a hot wire through wax.
It didn't just cut. It vaporized. Her lungs filled with the scent of her own charred flesh, and for a moment, the sound of the rain vanished.
Sakura's knees hit the wet sandstone. She coughed, a thick spray of dark crimson hitting the puddles.
The red sword slid out of her chest as Ankit Mehta pulled it back with a practiced, lethal grace. She slumped forward, her forehead resting against the cold ground.
Her blood began to swirl in the rainwater, spreading out in a dark, jagged inkblot around her white suit.
Ankit stood over her for a moment. He looked down at the back of her head, his expression one of bored contempt. He didn't see a threat anymore.
He saw a corpse that was simply taking its time to realize it was dead.
"You had a reputation, Sakura Watanabe," Ankit said. He wiped a smudge of rain from the hilt of his Astra. "They told me you were the most dangerous woman in the corporate sector. But in the end, you're just another specialist who forgot that raw power always wins. You stood in the path of a prophet. You should have stayed in Tokyo and counted your money."
Ankit turned his back on her. He began to walk away toward the Prime Minister's residence, his boots splashing rhythmically in the rising puddles.
He didn't look back. He didn't need to. No one survived a 8th deviation Astra through the heart.
-
In the Minato apartment, the atmosphere was far less grand. Masaru was hunched over the internal panel of the air conditioning unit, his hands covered in a mix of dust and cooling fluid.
He was holding a screwdriver in his teeth and squinting at a frayed wire that looked like it had been chewed on by a demon or a very bored rat.
"If this doesn't work, I'm throwing the whole unit out the window," Masaru mumbled through the screwdriver.
"Just do it," Kuzushi said from the floor. "The heat is a 6th Deviation threat. My brain is melting."
Masaru twisted the wire, jammed it into a terminal, and slapped the plastic cover back on. He hit the power button.
There was a desperate, mechanical cough, followed by a steady, rhythmic hum. A blast of ice-cold air billowed out of the vents.
Kuzushi let out a long, dramatic sigh of relief. Even Alex stopped his moaning and sat up, letting the cool breeze hit his sweaty face.
"Brilliant," Alex whispered. "You've actually done it, Masaru. You're a regular MacGyver."
"Don't get used to it," Masaru said, wiping his hands on his pants.
Then, the world tilted.
It happened in an instant. A sudden, crushing weight slammed into the room. It wasn't gravity, but it felt like the atmosphere had turned into solid lead.
Masaru's knees buckled, and he hit the floor hard.
Across the room, Alex and Yuki collapsed where they stood.
Kuzushi, despite her 5th Deviation rank, was forced down to all fours, her face pressed against the carpet.
An incredible strain rippled through their bodies. It felt like their veins were being filled with liquid mercury.
Every muscle in Masaru's body locked up in a scream of silent agony. He tried to breathe, but his lungs wouldn't expand.
He looked at the others. They were all in the same state, their eyes wide with a primal, animalistic terror.
The sensation lasted for exactly ten seconds.
Then, the weight vanished.
Masaru gasped, air rushing back into his lungs so fast it made him dizzy. He clutched his chest, his heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm. "The hell... what was that? What just happened?"
Kuzushi didn't answer immediately. She was still on her knees, staring at her hands.
Her face was pale, and for the first time since Masaru had met her, she looked genuinely afraid.
She tried to spark a bit of her kinetic energy, a small flare she usually used to stay alert.
Nothing happened.
"It's gone," Kuzushi whispered. Her voice was hollow. "My energy. I can't feel the reservoir. It's like someone reached inside me and emptied the tank."
"Mine too," Alex said, his voice trembling. He was trying to summon the faint glow that powered his gadgets, but his hands remained dark.
Yuki was silent, her eyes vacant. The frost that usually clung to her signature was completely vanished.
They were hollowed out. Their demonic energy wasn't permanently gone, but it had been siphoned away so completely that even their natural regeneration was moving at a crawl.
They were, for the first time in their lives, as powerless as the people they were paid to protect.
Masaru looked at the ceiling, a cold realization dawning on him. "The contract," he muttered.
-
In the courtyard in New Delhi, the rain was still falling.
Ankit Mehta was fifty paces away from the spot where Sakura had fallen. He was halfway to the stairs when the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
The air behind him didn't just feel cold. it felt dead.
He spun around, his Astra igniting in his hand.
Sakura Watanabe was standing.
Her white suit was shredded, the hole in her chest still visible, but the flesh around it was black and cauterized. She didn't look like a human being anymore.
She looked like a ghost that had refused to leave the room. Her eyes weren't violet. They were a shifting, swirling void of every color and none at all.
Ankit's grin returned, though it was tighter this time. "You're persistent, I'll give you that. Most people have the decency to stay down when their heart is gone. What are you? A revenant?"
Sakura didn't answer. She didn't speak. She didn't even breathe. She just looked at him.
"Void," she whispered. "Ice Cage."
Ankit's eyes went wide. That wasn't her technique.
From every direction, hundreds of jagged, blue icicles erupted from the air at the speed of sound. They didn't come from the ground; they materialized out of the rain itself. Ankit didn't have time to process the shift.
He screamed, his Astra flashing in a frantic circle. He barely managed to shatter the shards before they impaled his skull, but the sheer force of the ice pushed him back ten feet.
"How?" Ankit yelled, his voice cracking with confusion. "Two voids? That is impossible! Nobody can hold two distinct spatial deviations! It would tear your soul apart!"
Sakura didn't give him time to think. She raised both hands.
To her left, the Forest of Iron erupted, thousands of chains tearing through the sandstone.
To her right, the Ice Cage continued to fire, shards of frozen blue energy whistling through the gaps in the iron.
Ankit was forced into the air. He flew through the torrential downpour, his red sword clashing against iron and ice.
He was a master of his craft, but he was being attacked by two different hunters at the same time, controlled by a single mind.
He had to dodge, parry, and weave through a chaotic storm of metal and frost.
"Who are you?" Ankit roared, his 8th Deviation energy flaring to its limit. "What kind of monster are you?"
He realized he couldn't play defensive anymore. This woman was a black hole, and she was growing stronger with every second. He had to finish it now.
"Void!" Ankit screamed. "Yudh Kshetra!"
The white battlefield of the sun-bleached desert returned. Ankit became a streak of red light, moving at sublight speed.
He wasn't aiming for her heart this time. He was aiming for the neck. He would take the head and see if she could stand up without a brain.
He moved faster than the human eye could track. To Sakura, he should have been a god. He was a heartbeat away from her, his Astra poised to sever her head.
Normally, it would have been over.
"Void," Sakura whispered. "Kinetic Nullification."
Ankit hit a wall.
It wasn't a physical wall. It was a total cessation of movement. The sublight speed he was carrying turned into a lethal weapon against his own body.
Because his kinetic energy was instantly set to zero, his momentum had nowhere to go. Ankit hit the invisible barrier and was slammed into the ground with the force of an airplane crash.
The red sandstone shattered beneath him. Ankit coughed, his ribs breaking, his face a mask of blood. He scrambled to his feet, his mind reeling.
"Nullification? Three? You have three?"
Sakura stepped forward. The rain around her began to swirl into strange, geometric patterns.
"Void," she said. "Tech Empire."
The atmosphere turned pitch black.
In the darkness, hundreds of glowing blue apertures opened in the air.
They weren't magical circles. They were sleek, mechanical turrets and laser arrays that pulsed with a cold, technological hum. They locked onto Ankit's heat signature.
A hail of high-intensity lasers tore through the courtyard. Ankit danced through the beams, his Astra moving in a desperate blur to deflect the light, but the sheer volume was overwhelming.
A beam grazed his shoulder, melting his flesh down to the bone. Another took a chunk out of his thigh.
He was an 8th Deviation hunter, the pride of his nation, and he was being hunted by a woman who was using four different voids. 1 of her own and 3 that didn't belong to her.
Fear.
It was a cold, oily sensation that Ankit hadn't felt in twenty years. He looked at Sakura, and he didn't see a corporate hitwoman.
He saw a predator that had reached across the ocean to steal the strength of her subordinates.
Ankit decided he would go out on his own terms. He gathered every remaining scrap of his demonic energy. His body began to glow a deep, violent crimson.
"One more!" he screamed. "Yudh Kshetra!"
He moved at sublight speed one last time. He put everything into this strike. He ignored the lasers, ignored the chains, and ignored the ice. He was a red line of pure destruction.
His Astra went right through Sakura's face.
He felt the resistance of the bone. He saw the white suit tear. He saw the violet eyes go blank. He had won. He had finally closed the gap.
But there was no blood.
Ankit blinked. The world shifted.
"Void," Sakura's voice came from behind him. "Trade of Souls."
Ankit realized he wasn't holding his sword anymore. He was holding nothing.
Sakura was standing where he had been a millisecond ago. She was holding the red Astra in her hand. Her face was untouched.
Ankit tried to look down, but he couldn't feel his jaw. He couldn't feel his nose. He had been swapped into the trajectory of his own strike.
The Astra had passed through his own head at sublight speed during the swap.
Ankit Mehta's face had been severed. The top half of his head slid off his neck, hitting the sandstone with a wet, heavy sound.
His body stood for a second, the red energy of his Astra dying out, before he collapsed into the blood-stained puddles.
Sakura stood over the dead hunter. She looked at the red sword in her hand, the weapon of an 8th Deviation.
With a simple snap of her fingers, the red blade dissolved into nothingness. The lasers vanished. The chains retreated. The ice melted.
The courtyard was silent again, save for the sound of the rain. Sakura stood in the middle of the mess, her suit ruined, her heart gone, but her eyes cold and predatory as ever.
She had made her point.