The world was a distant, muffled place to Nowa Beckitzer. He floated in the memory at fourteen years old, watching Amy slowly die while laughter echoed around them. No one came. No one ever comes.
A younger version of himself, the child he used to be, wept in the darkness of his mind. "It's always like this. I was born a curse."
Fragments of a time before the alley surfaced, hazy, half-formed memories of his true beginning. "The last time I remember my real parents... there was only chaos. I couldn't understand their words. But I could feel it. They loved me. They loved me so dearly that they cast me away."
The memory of impact. An infant dropped on the trashbin, raining. A newborn's instinct took over. "I landed in a raining alley. Afraid, I did the only thing I could. I cried. And cried."
A shadow fell over him. "Someone reached me. But they weren't kind. They exploited me. Used me for their own benefits. Until I ran... Until... Amy found me."
Her face, gentle and warm, superimposed over the memory of the first adaptors. "The kindness and love I learned from her..." The image shattered, replaced by blood and laughter and their lust. "...Until it was ripped out of me."
"I have learned throughout my life... that kindness and love means nothing when you are helpless."
I hate it… I hate all of you… I hate all of you to the deepest of my soul! Die. Die. Die. Die! Die! DIE! DIE! DIE!
It is time to stop being the victim. It is time to stop being the weapon. It was time to become the fire. It was time to be the villain once more.
It's time to show what the universe forged the FLAME NOAH out of.
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His eyes snapped open. The Reality Crash Rune technique, forcibly activated by the Willpower of his Hatred, shattered the mental prison and reality around him, releasing something that should not have been released. The ground beneath him shook a single time. The grief was gone. The hesitation was gone. All that remained was a cold, focused hatred and a wrath that tells annihilation. Marisa, who still held his shoulder, flinched at his sudden, overwhelming aura.
He saw the triangular entity vanish through the rift, Reimu's bound form disappearing with it. The tear in reality began shrinking rapidly.
The air around Nowa distorted, not with mana, but with the sheer pressure of his absolute killing intent. The Amy-Sakuya entity took an involuntary step back, its serene mask cracking completely.
"Impossible! Your spirit is supposed to be chained!" it hissed.
Nowa's gaze locked onto the doppelganger, his voice dangerously calm. "I will make sure you and I have a proper conversation later."
He glanced at Marisa. "You're in the way."
Marisa backed away slowly, her eyes wide with fear. "O-okay, but save Reimu! It took her, Nowa!"
"I'm on it." Nowa stood. "Limb rewind. Delay soul exchange." His missing forearm restored itself in a flash of painful light, flesh and bone knitting together instantly. The Liquid Nano Armament receded to his inner shoulder. He clenched both fists, and they erupted with black flames, the Voidflame he so despised, now embraced without reservation.
[KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL] [KILL]
Then he moved. There was no warning. No telltale shift in the air. One moment he stood before the Amy-Sakuya entity, the next he was behind it, having completed a spinning fist technique so fast that not even reality could follow. The space he'd traveled through was erased, a raw distortion flickering in his wake for a single heartbeat. A choir of phantom dragon cries echoed where he'd passed.
The entity hovered for a moment, its arms and legs cleanly severed, the stumps cauterized by void-black fire. Nowa landed, arms wide in a fighter's stance, then without hesitation the flame on both of his hands flickered out. From nothing but his own will, the air manifested a long sword, not through the 50ms Author, not through runes, not even through Voidflame, but through the sheer force of his will.
He grabbed the blade with his right hand and drove it through the entity's core, pinning it to the water's surface as if the lake had turned to solid stone. The entity didn't sink, immobilized by the sword and its missing limbs.
Nowa's focus snapped to the rift, now barely large enough to pass through. He rushed forward and gripped the edges of the collapsing reality.
Meanwhile, inside the rift, Reimu's world narrowed to a tunnel of pure horror. The triangular entity dragged her through the corridor and emerged into a vast, cavernous space and her blood ran cold.
Arrayed before her stood an army. Forty Fractureborns, each more monstrous than the last, their forms a nightmare collage of glitching and organic misalignment. Every distorted eye was fixed on her.
The general, a hulking creature of shifting plates and flesh, spoke in their own language. "FY-nuh-lee WEE HAV HUR. TYM TOO FLEE. WEE NEED TOO dih-LIV-ur HUR TOO LORD ZEE-roh.(Finally we have her. Time to flee. We need to deliver her to Lord Zero.)"
A smaller, more serpentine Fractureborn slithered forward, its voice a sibilant whisper. "LORD ZEE-roh OHN-lee WAHNTS thuh POW-ur, NAHT thuh VES-ul.(Lord Zero only wants the power, not the vessel.)" Its gaze traveled over Reimu's bound form with predatory interest. "LETS NAHT WAYST thuh BAH-dee. LET UHS PLAY WITH HUR.(Let's not waste the body. Let us play with her.)"
A chorus of guttural clicks and hisses of agreement rose from the assembled army. She didn't understand what they're talking about, but one thing is for sure, she felt all of their eyes held a malicious intent and lust towards her own body. A grim, cold dread seized Reimu's heart.
'Wait. What are they trying to do…? No… No!'
She struggled against the conceptual ropes, but they only tightened in response. A muffled, desperate scream escaped through the duct tape, the sound small against the army's growing excitement.
The serpentine Fractureborn began its advance, its form undulating with malevolent grace as the others closed in, a tightening circle of hideous flesh and predatory intent.
The triangular head entity threw Reimu's bound form into the center of the swarm. Hands, cold, and grasping, immediately seized her from all sides, touching, pulling, violating. A scream of pure, unadulterated terror ripped from her throat, stifled into a pathetic muffled shriek by the tape.
'No! NO! Stop! Let me go!'
She thrashed, a frantic, useless struggle against the overwhelming numbers. A clawed hand hooked into the fabric of her shrine maiden attire and tore, the sound of ripping cloth.
'NO! STOP! STOP! These beings are about to eat me?! No… they are about to rape me! I feel disgusted. It feels disgusting. It's so disgusting!'
A single tear of absolute helplessness traced a path through her cheek.
'Anyone! Please! Save me! Anyone! Please! Save me!'
Her wide, panicked eyes met only a wall of hungry, predatory gazes, a hot slippery limb spiraled into her legs. She tried to form a kick but it did not stop, worse, they pinned her legs down. Her resolve, her duty, her very identity as the Hakurei Miko shattered.
'I don't care if it's an angel, a demon, a yokai, anything! Please help me! Please, just anyone!'
More hands reached for her. A second tear joined the first.
'Nowa. Nowa! PLEASE! Save me. Save me! Save me!'
As if her very soul had commanded reality, the collapsing rift behind the horde exploded inwards. A thunderclap of shattering glass and screaming spacetime echoed through the corridor. Every Fractureborn froze, their advance halting as one.
All eyes turned to the source. Nowa stood framed in the now-gaping wound in reality, the edges of the rift pulsing. Both of his fists burned with the absolute nothingness of the Voidflame.
His eyes, burning with white cold fire, found Reimu's disheveled, pleading form on the ground. He swept over the surrounding swarm of monsters, taking in the scene of intended violation. His voice was low.
"You people disgust me."
He didn't lunge. He didn't shout. He flicked both hands in a crossed, contemptuous, dismissive arc.
A wave of black flame, silent and absolute, whipped over the room. It did not burn; it un-wrote. Half of the swarm, including the triangular entity, vanished into silent, non-existent memories. Reality screamed from the attack, flickering violently for two heartbeats. The remaining Fractureborns froze, their predatory confidence shattered.
Nowa didn't stop. He became a blur of motion, dashing past Reimu's trembling form. He didn't use complex runes or grand commands. His fist, wreathed in the void's fire, punched through the chest of the nearest Fractureborn. It unwrote a hole on contact. He pivoted, his elbow caving in the glitching head of another. Then another. And another.
It was a carnage of silence and erasure. He moved through them like a scythe through wheat, his form becoming soaked in the blood essence of his enemies. Reimu could only watch in a mixture of relief and pure terror. Her savior was also a savage, a force of annihilation made flesh.
As the last Fractureborn dissolved into nothing, the silence returned, heavier than before. Nowa stood panting in the center of the void, his back to her.
Then, a sensation, a warm, fleeting pressure against his back, like a ghost of Amy's embrace. A feeling of unconditional love and safety he hadn't felt ever since. A reminder of his remaining humanity. His adrenaline was fading.
He spun around, his fierce eyes searching the emptiness. There was nothing. Only the aftermath of erased bloodshed, and Reimu, shivering on the ground.
His gaze finally fell upon her. Seeing him fully and drenched in the evidence of his violence, his eyes still burning with embers of wrath, walked towards her, she instinctively scrambled backward, a fresh wave of fear in her eyes.
Nowa stopped his advance. He knelt at a respectable distance, making himself smaller, less threatening.
"I'm not here to kill you," he said, his voice rough but low. "I'm here to get you out." He saw the conflict in her eyes, the gratitude warring with horror. "Sorry. I'm not the usual hero. I know." He let out a weary breath. "This is all I know. Kill or be killed."
Slowly, he reached out. His fingers, which had just unwritten a score of lives, were remarkably gentle as they wiped the tear-tracks from her cheeks. Then, with the same deliberate care, he peeled the duct tape from her mouth.
The first thing she did was gasp in a shuddering breath. The second was to look at him, her face of trauma and relief, and sob a single, choked word that held a universe of meaning.
"I-idiot."