~Sextus~
Luke's steps halted. He stood inches away from Lamina. Vera stood next to her, still bound to the converted chains, her gaze locked onto Luke, her eyes showing a bit of worry. "You're talking about 'recalls' and 'paperwork,' Lamina," Luke said, his voice dropping into that terrifying calm. "But you forgot the most basic rule of the Ghost Doctrine: Never assume the target stayed dead."
Lamina's hand twitched, her grip on the spectral blade in her right hand tightened. Her scarlet eyes followed Luke, cold and alert. "It makes me wonder how an anomaly became the Sextus Apostolus." Lamina retorted, her gaze not leaving Luke for a second.
"Is that so? Funny, I wonder why a Watcher would be concerned with my past at all."
Lamina studied him. "A curiosity born of efficiency, nothing more," she replied, her voice chilling. "The archives on the Sixth were... deleted. A ghost in the machine."
Deleted? What the hell is she talking about? Can't dwell on it, for now at least.
Luke didn't smile. He tapped his foot on the mahogany floor. Crimson waves vibrated through the clubroom, moving at an ultrasonic frequency.
Time seemed to slow down, and the grey world shook inside and outside the school grounds. A sound reached Luke's ear. It was the silver watch, ticking like a bomb.
Luke exhaled as the second hand on Lamina's watch reached twelve. Luke wasted no time and moved. He didn't just dash to Lamina across the room; he stepped in her guard.
Lamina took a step back and drew her blade. She swung at Luke's chest. The blade whistled through the bookshelves of the archived clubroom.
Luke ignored the sword as he tracked Lamina's movement. He kicked his heel off the floorboard. He dashed toward the blade leaving a trail of smoke behind him.
"Ghost Step, First Art: Phantom Walker," Luke whispered.
The slash of her spectral blade should have severed him. The white light cut a line through the air so sharp it left a crack in its wake.
But the blade passed through Luke as if he were made of smoke.
"Phantom Walker isn't speed, Lamina," Luke's voice came from directly behind her. "It's the art of occupying the 'blind spot' of reality. If your watch can't record the frame, I don't exist in it."
He didn't use a sword. He used the palm of his left hand—the one marked with the Crimson Sigil—and slammed it into the small of her back. He pronated his palm like a clock hand until it reached upside down.
"Sixth Apostle Technique:Sextus Trigger"
The Crimson sigil throbbed violently. It sent a crushing wave of demonic energy on Lamina. Her charcoal suit didn't just burn, it was feeling extreme pressure. The energy sent the frequency through her body. It wasn't an explosion but a shockwave sent through her nervous and skeletal system.
The force of it launched Lamina across the clubroom. She crashed through the bookshelves and through the walls of the old school building. She landed on the track field, leaving a cloud of white smoke.
Luke looked at the wrecked clubroom—the shattered bookshelves, the jagged hole in the wall, and the smoke trailing toward the track field. His lungs burned, but the "null-point" he'd created was still holding the grey world at bay.
"She won't wait for long." Luke muttered to himself, his voice devoid of emotion facing the holed wall.
As the dust settled in the ruined clubroom, the ultrasonic hum Luke had released didn't fade—it intensified, turning into a rhythmic, crimson pulse that throbbed against the floorboards.
"Impossible," Ignazio hissed from the sidelines, his golden aura finally flickering back to life in a burst of disbelief. He stepped over a broken chair, his gaze locked on the spot where Luke had been a moment ago. He had spent years honing the Knight's Step, but what Luke was doing wasn't a step—it was an erasure. "He's moving between the seconds."
Vianne didn't speak. Her magenta eyes were darting frantically, tracking the lingering "ultrasonic crimson waves" Luke had released into the air. She saw what the others couldn't: the way the demonic heat of the Morningstar was perfectly canceling out the holy pressure of the Watcher, creating a pocket of "zero" around him.
"He's not fighting her," Vianne whispered, a chill running down her spine as she realized the technical depth of the Sextus Protocol. "He's debugging her."
The shockwave from the Sextus Trigger didn't just launch Lamina; it caused the entire vacuum of the clubroom to ripple and distort. The white chains that bound Vera returned to their violet, they slithered off her and back into her portals.
In the corner of the room, the archived figures of Mitoma and Kiyomi began to shiver. The grey static clinging to them cracked like brittle glass.
"Frequency... matched," a flat, monotone voice whispered.
"Took you long enough, Mitoma-san." Luke smirked, "I thought you were never going to notice."
Mitoma's eyes snapped open behind his glasses. He didn't look at the hole in the wall; he looked at his tablet, which was now scrolling through thousands of lines of code. "Kazama-san, you've provided the carrier wave. I'm going to hijack her administrative permissions... now."
Beside him, Kiyomi stepped forward, her blanket slipping to the floor revealing her long snow white hair with her charcoal grey blazer and black skirt. She didn't look at Luke; she looked at the "noise" bleeding in from the hole in the wall.
Vera stepped through the wreckage of the clubroom as she straightened her skirt. "It seems my adorable Vassal prefers a standing ovation." Vera mused, her voice hiding her awe at Luke. "Honestly, was it really necessary to put a hole through my precious clubroom?"
Luke turned to her and smiled. "Well I couldn't let my Master stay trapped, now could I?" Luke said, the softness in his voice returning. "Are you okay though, Buchou?"
"I'm alright thanks to you, though it's hard to believe. I appreciate you stepping forward."
"It's the least I could do, besides you've been protecting me. At the most this is what I could do."
"The silence is broken," Kiyomi murmured, her hand glowing with a soft blue, filtering light. "Everyone... get to the track field. I'll stabilise the path."
Vera stepped toward the hole. " Alright then, let's show the Little Crow what happens when messing with the house of Morningstar." Vera commanded her regal tone sharp.
"Right!" The others answered in unison as they approached the hole in the clubroom wall.The transition from the wrecked clubroom to the open air felt like stepping out of a tomb.
As Luke walked through and through the jagged gap in the wall, the "softness" he'd shared with Vera didn't vanish; it solidified into a cold, protective layer around his heart.
His lungs burned with the metallic tang of Holy Water, and his body felt like it was being dipped in pyroclastic lava, but he didn't stumble. He couldn't.
He stepped onto the track field, his shoes crunching on the synthetic turf. In the center of the field, the white smoke didn't drift away—it was being sucked inward, spiraling into a vacuum at the center of the crater.
The vacuum at the center of the track field let out a final, bone-chilling thrum, pulling the last of the white smoke into a single, dense point of light. Luke stood his ground, the Morningstar sigil on lefthandwing a defiant crimson.
"If you're going to complain about the track turf being ruined too, Buchou," Luke said, his eyes not leaving the crater, "I suggest you save it for after we deal with the 'system restore' she's about to try."
Behind him, Ignazio's golden blade hummed. "Let her come," the Knight grunted. "I've had enough of her 'Administrative' arrogance."
Suddenly, the point of light in the crater shattered like a computer screen.
The point of light in the crater didn't just fade—it shattered like a monitor under a sledgehammer.
The air didn't just grow cold; it became stagnant, weighted by a pressure that made the synthetic turf of the track field crack and turn to grey ash. The charcoal fabric of Lamina's suit didn't merely tear—it was consumed, unraveled by jagged veins of matte-black obsidian that erupted from a glowing V etched into the center of her chest.
The armor crawled over her skin like a living shadow, forming a sleek, lethal carapace that swallowed her torso and arms in form-fitting plates.
Around her waist, segmented, obsidian tassets manifested in sharp, overlapping daggers that flared at her mid-thighs, while a heavy, tattered skirt of black silk surged downward to catch the unnatural wind.
As the transformation completed, glowing white circuitry lines ignited across the black glass of her limbs, pulsing in a rhythmic, clinical beat that mirrored the ticking of her watch.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't the vacuum; it was the disintegration of her hair tie. Lamina's blonde hair flowed freely through the grey air, drifting behind her like a river of gold, smelling strongly of anointing oil and funeral myrrh.
She stood silent—a dark, regal monolith encased in a shell that looked terrifyingly familiar. Luke's breath hitched. His eyes fixed on that glowing V. It wasn't just a rank; spiralling serial number.
"The centre.." Luke whispered, his voice cracking the Apostle Key on his own hand flared in a sympathetic, agonizing thrum. "You aren't just an executioner. You're the one my mother warned me about. The Hollowed' Saint."
Lamina didn't respond. She merely adjusted her grip on her hilt, the white lines on her obsidian armor glowing with a sterile, murderous silver. She was no longer just a Watcher; she was the ghost of Luke's future, standing in his path.
"Well this is an unexpected reunion, Hollow Saint–or rather, Watcher." Luke said, his voice dropping to its 'Ghost' chill. The golden-silver light of his Apostle Eyes pulsed through his cornea blooming to his irises.
"Buchou, what's the plan? If I'm being honest I've had enough of her." Luke asked deliberately, his fist tightening as small streaks of blood flowed. Using Sextus Trigger had ruptured his left arm, his crimson sigil started dimming gradually.
Vera's eyes dipped to Luke's clenched fist, watching the crimson droplets hit the grey ash of the track field. She didn't offer a platitude. She didn't tell him to calm down. Instead, she placed a hand on his shoulder—not with "softness" this time, but with the iron-grip of a commander.
"If you're going to bleed for me, Luke, make sure you paint the field with her blood first," Vera commanded, her violet aura flaring to match his heat. "Ignazio, Vianne! Shield him. We're not just 'editing' this Saint—we're tearing her out of our territory."
Ignazio roared, his golden blade expanding into a massive wall of light that intercepted the first ripple of Lamina's white energy. Vianne vanished, her magenta streaks creating a localized storm that forced the "archived" air to scream and swirl, destabilizing Lamina's footing.
Vianne's magenta storm tore through the grey vacuum, creating a pocket of chaotic physics that forced Lamina to recalibrate her obsidian armor every microsecond. Ignazio stood like an unbreakable monolith, his golden wall of energy absorbing the shockwaves of her divine pressure, teeth bared in a snarl of pure defiance.
Luke felt the weight of Vera's hand leave his shoulder, but the heat remained—a lingering, violent encouragement. He didn't look at his bleeding fist anymore. He looked at the glowing V on the obsidian armor, his Apostle Eyes locking onto the pulse of its circuitry, identifying the lag in its response time.
"Outseal," Luke whispered, his voice sounding like two people speaking at once—the boy and the Ghost. The gold and crimson in his eyes finally merged into a terrifying, unstable white.
He didn't step; he simply erased the existence of the ground beneath him. As he launched toward the Hollowed Saint like a bolt of falling lightning, the 300-second timer on Lamina's watch let out a final, dying tick.
The school was silent. The sky was grey. And for the first time in twelve years, the Ghost was no longer running.