"You should've told me."
The moonlight through the broken windows froze mid-beam, dust motes suspended like stars in amber. The flames from the burning hotel outside stopped flickering. The sirens stopped wailing. The world held its breath.
The blood barrier erupted between them like a crimson tide frozen mid-crash.
Lucy stepped through the shattered warehouse wall, her boots crunching on debris, her remaining hand raised with fingers still curled from the casting.
The crystalline wall of blood caught the pale moonlight filtering through broken windows, scattering it into fragments of red and silver that danced across the cavernous space.
Her empty sleeve swayed with each step.
"Zenith of Sloth."
The words fell from her lips.
"Hollow Verdict of the King's Mercy."
The warehouse dissolved.
One moment Hoshimi was standing on cracked concrete with his back against cold steel, the next he was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that shouldn't have existed.
The floor beneath Reina's feet was polished marble, black and gleaming, veined with threads of gold that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light.
Columns rose on either side of her, massive pillars of white stone carved with scenes of battles, judgments, executions. The ceiling soared overhead, lost in shadow and the faint, distant glow of chandeliers that hung like frozen stars.
And at the far end of the chamber, atop a dais of seven steps, sat a throne.
It was carved from the same black marble as the floor, its back rising high and angular, its armrests wide and imposing. The seat was cushioned in velvet the color of dried blood.
Lucy sat upon it.
Her dark blue hair cascaded over her shoulders in waves that seemed to move with a life of their own.
Her empty sleeve was still pinned up. Her crimson eyes blazed with an intensity that made the air itself feel heavy.
She wore robes now, judicial robes, black and severe, trimmed with gold thread that matched the pulsing veins in the marble floor.
Lucy leaned forward.
"You stand before the Queen," Lucy said.
Her voice echoed through the chamber, layered with harmonics that hadn't been there before.
It was still her voice, he could hear Lucy in it, the same quiet determination was gone, she almost sounded like Neila..
"Accused," she continued, her crimson eyes fixed on the figure at the center of the chamber, "you will answer for your crimes."
Reina stood in the center of the marble floor.
Her revolver was still in her hand, but her arm hung at her side. Her gold eyes swept the chamber with an expression that might have been curiosity or might have been something else entirely—something that looked almost like relief.
Chains had appeared around her wrists.
They were not physical chains, Hoshimi could see through them, could feel their insubstantiality pressing against his mana sense like static electricity.
"Isn't that interesting?"
They were constructs of the Zenith, manifestations of its rules, its authority, its absolute jurisdiction over the space it had created.
They bound her in place.
Above her, suspended from the shadowed ceiling by chains of its own, hung a guillotine.
The blade was massive, taller than a man, wider than a doorframe, its edge gleaming with a light that had nothing to do with the chandeliers overhead.
It was angled slightly, positioned directly above Reina's head.
"You stand accused of crimes of serving a corrupt system that has enslaved your kind for centuries." She paused. "How do you plead?"
Reina looked up at the guillotine.
"That's not my problem."
"The Court requests a clear answer."
The chains around her wrists tightened.
The guillotine above her shifted, its blade catching the light. The pressure in the chamber increased.
Reina's lips curved.
"I was doing my job under the threat of death."
Lucy's expression didn't change, but something in the chamber shifted. The veins of gold in the marble floor pulsed faster. The chandeliers overhead dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again.
"State your crimes," Lucy said. Her voice was steady, but Hoshimi could hear the strain beneath it. "For the record. So that judgment may be passed."
Reina's gold eyes met hers. "I've killed a lot of people, too many to even remember, but it isn't my fault, I am not responsible."
She turned her head.
The chains tightened further. The guillotine descended slightly—just a few inches, just enough to make its presence more immediate, more real.
"The Court recognizes your confession to be false," Lucy said. "Excuses, excuses, excuses. The court deems you guilty of your crimes."
Reina was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was different. Softer. Stripped of the cold professionalism she'd worn like armor.
"I knew what I was doing," she said. "Every step of the way. I knew what the government was. I knew what they'd ask of me eventually. I knew that someday, they'd tell me to kill him, and I knew that I would do it. Because I am a weapon. I've gone too far to change what I am."
"The Court has heard the confession," Lucy said. Her voice was louder now, filling the chamber with that layered resonance. "The Court finds the accused guilty on all counts."
She raised her hand.
"The sentence is death."
The guillotine fell.
The blade descended with a sound like the world's sharpest whisper. It cut through the frozen air, through the suspended dust motes, through the column of moonlight that had held still since the Zenith began. It struck Reina's neck.
And Reina spoke.
Reina closed her eyes.
"I sacrifice."
The words came out calm. Measured. The voice of someone who had prepared for this moment long before it arrived.
"An Oath of Equivalent Exchange."
"Witch's Oath."
Her voice was calm. Utterly, terrifyingly calm. The words cut through the frozen silence with the precision of a scalpel.
"For surviving this attack, I offer half of every single physical attribute I have. This I swear."
The Oath flared.
Golden light erupted from her chest, from her throat, from her eyes. It clashed against the guillotine's blade in a shower of sparks that scattered across the frozen warehouse like falling stars. The blood-blade bit into her neck, drew a thin line of crimson, and stopped.
The Zenith screamed.
Not Lucy. Not Reina. The space itself.
The frozen moonlight shattered into a thousand fragments. The suspended dust motes exploded outward. The chains dissolved. The guillotine evaporated into mist. The warehouse rushed back into existence with a roar of collapsing physics.
Lucy stumbled backward. Her remaining hand clutched her chest. Blood dripped from her nose, her ears, the corners of her eyes. The Zenith had shattered after doing its job.
Hoshimi could see the mark on her neck, a thin red line that traced a perfect arc across her throat. Blood dripped from the wound, slow and dark, staining the collar of her coat. She should have been dead. Should have been decapitated. Should have been nothing more than a body crumpling to the marble floor.
But she was still standing.
"What the hell?" Lucy's composure cracked. "The sentence was carried out. You... you should be..."
They were back in the warehouse.
Moonlight filtered through broken windows. Dust hung in the air.
The concrete floor was cracked and uneven, just as it had been before the Zenith manifested.
Hoshimi was standing at the edge of the space, his knife in his hand, his body still thrumming with the residual warmth of the sword's healing.
Lucy was on her knees, gasping.
Reina moved.
She crossed the distance between them in a blur, not as fast as she'd been before, not even close to the impossible speed she'd shown before, but still faster than Lucy could react.
Her fist caught Lucy in the stomach.
The impact lifted her off her knees and sent her crashing into a stack of rusted barrels.
The metal crumpled around her. Blood sprayed from her lips. She tried to raise her hand, tried to form a barrier, tried to do anything—
Reina was already there.
Her palm struck Lucy's chest. A hole opened, clean, precise, the size of a fist, punched straight through muscle and bone and the lung beneath. Lucy's body convulsed. Blood poured from the wound, hot and dark, pooling on the concrete in a spreading stain.
"Vitae Core!" Lucy's voice was raw, desperate, the words torn from somewhere deep in her chest. Her flesh began to knit together, slowly, agonizingly, the tissue weaving itself back into place even as Reina's hand withdrew.
Reina's palm drove into her stomach. The impact sent a shockwave through the warehouse, cracking the concrete beneath their feet.
Lucy's body tried to crumple, tried to protect itself, but Reina's other hand was already there, already closed around her throat, lifting her off the ground.
A knee drove into her ribs. Three of them cracked.
An elbow came down on her collarbone. It shattered.
A palm struck her solar plexus. Her lungs emptied.
Reina released her. Lucy hit the ground. Her body convulsed, blood pouring from the wound in her stomach, from the cracks in her ribs, from the dozen places where Reina's strikes had found their mark.
She struck again, and another hole opened in Lucy's shoulder.
Lucy's hand came up. Blood rose from the floor, forming tendrils that lashed toward Reina's legs.
Reina stepped aside.
The tendrils struck concrete, cracking it, but didn't touch her. She closed the distance again.
Another strike, Lucy's thigh, her side, her arm. Each blow precise. Each one forcing Lucy to regenerate, to burn through more of her rapidly depleting reserves.
"Your regeneration is rather impressive but it isn't enough."
Lucy's crimson eyes blazed. She raised her hand again, not to attack this time, but to form a barrier, a wall of blood between herself and Reina.
A blade of pure, condensed violet light carved through it from behind.
Hoshimi stepped through the dissipating blood, his sword blazing in his hand. The blue light along its edge had brightened to something almost blinding, not the ocean-blue of before, but something sharper, more intense.
Hoshimi moved, thrusting his sword straight into Reina's stomach.
The sound was awful, blood dripped from Reina's lips as she backed away from him.
Her breathing became labored, her hand was already reaching towards her wound, trying to prevent any more blood from coming out.
Hoshimi's chest ached, like an anvil sitting atop his solar plexus, slowly digging into him.
[I don't, I don't want to hurt her]
"Vitae Core."
Reina wiped her lips, the wound on her stomach began to stitch itself together, her breathing was heavy, her amber eyes staring deep into him.
[She shouldn't be able to heal, was it because of my hesitance? But I really do not have any choice, do I?]
His sword carved an arc toward her throat. She swayed, the blade passing through empty air, and her palm struck his chest. He flew backward, crashed through a stack of pallets, rolled to his feet with the sword still in his grip.
Lucy attacked from the side. A spear of condensed blood, denser than diamond, drove toward Reina's heart. Reina caught it, bare-handed, her fingers closing around the crimson shaft and crushed it.
The blood splattered across the floor, inert, useless.
She was slower than before. Hoshimi could see it now, the subtle lag in her movements, the fraction of a second between intention and execution.
He lunged again. His blade traced a figure-eight pattern through the air, forcing her to retreat. She deflected the first strike with her forearm, sidestepped the second, caught the third on the barrel of her revolver. The impact jarred up his arms, but he held on.
Lucy's blood tendrils wrapped around Reina's ankle. Tightened. Yanked.
Reina stumbled.
Hoshimi's blade found her shoulder. The edge bit deep. Blood welled from the wound. It didn't heal.
Her fist caught him in the jaw. His vision went white, but he didn't fall. Didn't stop. His blade came around in a reverse stroke that forced her to release her grip on Lucy's tendril.
Lucy was on her feet now, unsteady, her breathing ragged, her mana signature flickering like a dying flame.
But she was standing. Fighting. A spear of blood formed in her hand, and she hurled it with the last of her strength.
Reina caught it. Snapped it in half.
But the distraction was enough. Hoshimi's sword found her side, drawing blood.
She moved to the side. A sudden shift of weight that carried her across the warehouse floor. He tracked her movement, his blade coming up in a guard position, but she was already changing direction.
He parried.
The sword intercepted her palm a millimeter from his chest.
The impact jarred up his arms, rattled his teeth, sent him sliding backward across the concrete.
His boots left furrows in the dust. But he stayed upright.
She struck again.
He sidestepped. The blow passed through empty air.
His blade came around in a horizontal slash aimed at her throat. She ducked. The edge passed over her head. She swept his legs. He jumped. She drove her elbow toward his descending form. He twisted midair. The elbow clipped his shoulder instead of his sternum.
They separated.
Ten feet of cracked concrete between them. Hoshimi's breathing was ragged. Reina's was steady again.
Lucy rose behind her.
Blood tendrils shot from her palm, a dozen crimson spears aimed at Reina's back. Reina didn't turn. She simply moved, flowing between the tendrils like water between stones, her body finding gaps that shouldn't have existed. One spear grazed her shoulder. Another nicked her thigh. The rest passed through empty air.
She spun. Her hand closed around one of the tendrils. She yanked. Lucy flew toward her, feet leaving the ground, body tumbling through the air.
Reina's fist met her face.
The impact spun Lucy sideways. She hit the ground, rolled, came up on one knee with blood pouring from her shattered nose.
The wound was already closing. Her mana reserves were already dwindling.
Hoshimi attacked from behind.
His blade carved a diagonal arc toward Reina's spine. She twisted. The sword passed through the space where she'd been. Her palm struck his wrist
. The sword clattered from his grip. Her knee drove toward his stomach. He caught it, but barely, his hands wrapping around her leg, his body bracing against the impact.
Reina's other foot left the ground. She drove her heel into his chest.
He flew backward. Hit the wall. Slid down.
Lucy's blood tendrils wrapped around Reina's ankles. Tightened. Pulled. Reina's feet left the ground. She twisted in midair, her body rotating with impossible control, and landed on her hands. The tendrils snapped. She drove her palm into Lucy's chest.
Lucy's sternum cracked. She flew backward. Hit the wall beside Hoshimi. Slid down.
"Enough."
She grabbed Lucy by the collar and threw her. Lucy's body tumbled through the air and crashed into the far wall, bricks crumbling around her, dust billowing outward in a choking cloud.
Reina stood in the center of the warehouse. Her gold eyes still burned.
Hoshimi crawled out of the shadows. His left arm hung useless at his side. Blood masked half his face. The sword was back in his right hand, its blue light dim but steady.
Lucy emerged from the rubble. Her empty sleeve was torn. Blood dripped from a dozen wounds, but her crimson eyes were clear.
They stood on opposite sides of the warehouse. Reina between them. The moonlight through the broken windows cast long shadows across the concrete.
[Excalibur, please do something]