The Shore Reaver’s roar turned from rage to raw panic. Foam frothed around its jaws as it twisted away from the guilds, thrashing blindly at some unseen horror beyond the red wall. Chunks of stone exploded beneath its claws; shattered pilings clanged down the waterfront like huge dice on a board. Akima went rigid. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints and a line of blood trickled from one ear. “It’s terrified… something else is inside the dome,” she whispered, voice so faint the wind nearly stole it. This dread isn’t its own, someone is pouring it into the creature. The guilds watched, powerless, as the leviathan writhed. Each strike of its tail toppled store-houses, sending splinters and fish crates skittering across flooded streets. The air smelled of salt, tar, and a metallic tang that clung to the tongue like copper filings. Then everything stopped. A single, needle-thin filament of scarlet light lanced downward from the clouded sky, silent, perfect, horrifying. For an instant it looked delicate as spun glass. A heartbeat later it widened into a blazing column the width of a city gate and hit the Reaver square between its glowing eyes. Sound came a breath later: a cavernous crack that rattled teeth and blew windows inward a kilometer away. Where the beam touched scale, flesh atomised. Bloody steam billowed in two towering plumes as the leviathan split from crown to keelbone, halves sliding apart with a groan like breaking glacier ice. Viscera slapped into the surf; a sheet of dark blood painted the crimson dome from the inside, sizzling where it met the barrier’s energy. The guilds stood rooted in ankle-deep water, reflections of scarlet carnage dancing in their widened eyes. Tetsuo found his voice first, hoarse and disbelieving. “What in the world was that?!” Akima staggered, clutching her temples. “Someone’s here… but their mind’s a storm. Despair, rage, grief, all twisted together. I- I think they’re corrupted… or worse.” Aira pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. “They killed it like it was nothing,” she breathed. Daichi hovered down beside her, face drained of colour. “Whoever fired that beam is minimum SS-Rank,” he said, tone stripped of its usual sarcasm. “If they’re hostile, this just went from bad to catastrophic.” The two halves of the Reaver sank beneath the tide with a hiss, leaving only a widening stain and the crackle of residual energy crawling over the dome’s interior like red lightning. No one cheered. No one moved. Every gaze turned inland, searching the crimson horizon for the presence powerful enough to slaughter a legend , and wondering if it now hunted them. – Southern rooftops, beneath the red dome. Lars pinned his cloak against the whipping wind, eyes tracking the scarlet lance that had just bisected the Shore Reaver. The monster’s halves tumbled apart like broken statues; a hush fell over the ruined district. Yuki swallowed hard. “A single strike… that’s beyond SS-class.” Sora let out a low whistle. “Whoever did that just stole our thunder.” Ryota, fist crackling with unfocused energy, forced a grin. “Then let’s go congratulate ’em, and make sure they’re on our side.” The four members of Mars vaulted from the warehouse roof, boots thumping onto a cobbled avenue drowned in red light. They’d taken only a few steps when Yuki stiffened, pointing across the street. Atop the clock-tower’s parapet stood a lone figure in a tattered black cloak. Moon-pale fingers rested on the stone rail. Yuki cupped her hands. “Hey! Are you injured? We can help!” Her polite call echoed off broken facades. The figure’s answer was silent violence: It lifted one pale hand, then hooked a razor-sharp fingernail across its own wrist. Blood spurted forth in a spiraling ribbon, congealing mid-air into a saber of living crimson that pulsed with sinister light. Ryota’s bravado evaporated. “That… is seriously messed up.” With a whispered exhale, the cloaked stranger dropped from the tower. The impact cratered the cobbles, a shockwave blasting the Mars guild backward in a spray of rubble. Sora recovered first. “My adaptation Will read you like a book, pal.” He flashed forward, fist wreathed in a silver aura. Mid-swing, the blood-blade carved straight through his spiritual coating and sliced through his flesh. A red line opened across Sora’s hand; the stranger’s weapon drank the spilling blood, lengthening with every drop. Sora staggered away, eyes wide. “My ability is useless here.” Ryota reacted on instinct, launching a compressed sphere of blast energy. The attacker raised a casual palm, blood webbed into a concave shield, swallowing the blast without a sound. “Lars, orders?!” Yuki shouted. But the stranger was already moving, a blur of red. It appeared before Ryota, blade scything in a smooth arc. The slash ripped open his chest plate; blood sprayed as he rocketed through a shuttered storefront, wood and glass exploding outward. “Ryota!” Lars darted forward, guilt warring with fury. He planted himself between the cloaked figure and his downed comrades. Sora clenched his wounded hand, breath ragged. “This thing’s leagues above A-rank. We need to fall back, now!” The stranger’s hood slipped back, revealing twin sapphire eyes and black hair that spilled across her shoulders. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, only a shade older than the Mars Guild, but her eyes were ancient things, wide and frantic, glistening with tears that never quite fell. A thin, broken sob escaped her lips. Then her expression emptied, grief turning to something colder. She lifted her crimson-stained fingers and began to spin. Blood fanned outward in a widening ring, whirling faster and faster until it became a bladed halo, an orbiting disc that hissed through the night air. Lars thrust out his hand, spiritual energy crackling around his palm as he yanked every loose nail, coin, and iron hinge within reach into a shimmering magnetic wall. Sparks skittered across the hastily-forged barrier. The girl snapped her wrist. The blood-disc shrieked forward. Metal screamed as the makeshift shield stopped the blade, for a heartbeat. Then the disc sheared through, carving Lars’s defense in two and slamming into his chest. He flew backward, skidding across slate shingles before crashing onto the cobblestones below. Pain detonated through every nerve; electricity crackled out of control from his palms. I-I can’t… keep this up… Sora’s frantic gaze locked on the girl. “Lars, hang on!” He flared his adaptation aura, but the sight of Lars coughing blood made his stomach twist. Yuki hurled jagged shards of ice, only to see them shred to mist as the girl’s spinning ring returned to her hand, reforming into liquid that crawled up her arm like living mercury. “You’re too weak,” she said, voice hollow, more statement of fact than insult. She extended her hand; crimson tendrils lanced outward and coiled around Lars. His body went rigid, his skin blanching as though the very color were being pulled from him. Lars’s breath hitched. Each exhale grew shallower. “Stop it!” Sora roared, dashing forward, aura blazing. But before he could reach her, a single flick of her fingers sent a pressure wave that staggered him to his knees. Yuki skidded to his side, frost blooming uselessly along the tiles. The girl’s eyes, crystal blue, yet drowned in sorrow, never left Lars. “Give it back,” she whispered, though to what, or whom, no one could tell. Sora’s fists trembled. Terror and fury warred inside him, rooting him in place as the nightmare played out, utterly real, and utterly beyond their strength to stop.