The first wave struck like a storm.
Dozens of shikigami surged down the fractured slope—mask after mask gleaming in the distorted light, their bodies moving with the precision of sothing that had rehearsed this mont for lifetis.
Rin moved first.
She stepped forward without a word, hands parting in a sharp motion. The small charm at her waist shimred—and the earth bent.
Not broke. Bent.
The shikigami in front twisted mid-leap, slamd sideways into the ground by pressure that had no shape. A second later, her feet barely touched the thread-laced floor as she pivoted and sent the pressure outward again, folding two more creatures into a heap of crumpled limbs.
Sayo followed, silent and special. She moved like a shadow given purpose, her arms sweeping through the air—and her own shadow moved ahead of her.
It reached out, grew limbs of its own, and pulled a shikigami down before it ever touched her. Her expression didn't change but her shadow opened its jaw, silently, and swallowed the mask whole.
***
It didn't wait.
The thread behind my ribs coiled tight and I stepped through ti—not fully, not flawlessly, but just enough to place myself between two advancing figures.
Steel t bone.
My blade carved through one, turned on the second. I saw its arm raise, claws descending—I rewound one second.
The claw missed.
I didn't.
Behind , Shuji stepped forward. He held no weapon—but clocks on the broken walls behind him froze mid-tick. Ti inside the battlefield stuttered—just slightly—buying seconds where there should have been none.
I felt it.
He wasn't stopping ti.
He was distorting it.
Twisting its rules like gears forced to fit.
***
Tatsuya fought like fire.
His blade never stopped moving. His technique wasn't clean—not like Genzo's—but it was fierce. Chaotic. A samurai fighting on instinct, not code. Three masks hit the floor around him in less than a minute.
And Genzo—
Genzo stood where the fighting was thickest.
Not cutting through it.
Holding it.
His blade flashed only when necessary. The rest of the ti, his power ford like a barrier—pausing creatures in midair, giving others ti to escape, redirect, strike.
A shikigami lunged for Sayo from behind.
Genzo's arm swept up—no blade. Just his palm.
The creature stopped cold mid-leap, frozen, like ash in wind that never moved.
Sayo turned. Her shadow dragged it into the ground.
***
Above us, the woman in indigo robes did not move.
She watched.
Every ti one of us fell into rhythm—she tilted her head slightly, and the rhythm broke.
One of Shuji's distortions collapsed too early.
Rin missed a step as the ground beneath her cracked in the wrong direction.
My rewinds Began to lag—two, there seconds too slow to fix what had already happened.
She was unraveling us.
Not through force.
Through precision.
Through timing.
Through mory.
"We can't win like this," Shuji said, breathing hard. "She's rewriting the battle before it's over."
"Then we change it faster than she can," I said.
I looked around—at each of them.
Every one of us held a part of this fight.
But together—
We had a chance to take it back.
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