The Last Spark

  Galvara lunged straight for Nobu, who barely dodged the first whip of wire. The second caught his sleeve and yanked him off-balance. He fell, hard. The wire struck where his head had been a second earlier, fusing a chunk of scaffolding into liquid slag.

  Kenny reappeared from the smoke, panting hard, one arm burned raw from elbow to fingers.

  He didn’t even slow down.

  With a ragged yell, he barreled into her blind side, swinging a rusted pipe he’d snatched up. At first it looked desperate, just another wild charge. But wedged near the end was one of Roi’s compressed contraptions, a clay pellet packed with flash-powder and gravel, sticky resin sealing it tight.

  Galvara caught the pipe midair, her wires twisting to melt it into ribbons.

  The pressure seal broke.

  A deafening pop detonated point-blank beside her ear, sharper than thunder. The sound cracked through the fog, making the scaffolding shudder. Galvara staggered, plates stuttering, her gauntlet faltering as she clutched the side of her head with a hiss of pain.

  “WE HAVE NO CHOICE EITHER!” Kenny roared, chest heaving, voice shredding itself raw.

  From the haze, Roi’s voice cut sharp and triumphant. “That’s it, idiot! DON’T LOSE MOMENTUM!”

  Rei snapped another flare against the wall. Sand bursting into a blinding flash that washed the fog white.

  Galvara reeled, a pained grunt escaping her as her eyes slammed shut.

  “Kenny! Roi!” Dozai barked.

  Both hurled their rusted knives. The blades spun through the haze, streaks of dull metal.

  Galvara forced her eyes open against the sear, batting the knives aside with a snarl. Her arm rose high, gauntlet humming...

  And Dozai was there.

  He cut into her blind spot, stepping inside the lethal orbit of the gauntlet. The heat hit him like a physical wall. The air screamed. The acrid smell of his own sleeve singeing filled his nose.

  For an instant, time slowed. Their eyes locked.

  “Galvara.” His voice was a raw scrape, barely a whisper, as his hands closed over her forearms. The contact was agony. A sickening, sizzling pain shot up his nerves.

  He felt his own skin protest, muscles locking against the instinct to recoil, but he held on. “Look at your hands.”

  The gauntlet froze mid-swing. The molten wires writhed, then tangled. The halo plates flickered, stuttering like a broken machine.

  “Your Maho’s failing,” he pressed, teeth gritted against the waves of heat. His voice was a desperate, urgent thread in the chaos. “Not because you’re weak. Your body isn’t meant to burn this hot.”

  Her arms trembled violently in his blistering grip. A child’s tremor, not a warrior’s. “No—shut up! I have to—”

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  “If you stop now, you’ll live.” His whisper cracked, splitting between genuine plea and calculated gambit. “Even if you lose, Hellick will see how desperate you fought. Proof of your strength.”

  Her whole body flinched. He felt it, the tremor in her frame, the fear quaking beneath the rage. For just a breath, her eyes weren’t a fighter’s. They were a child’s, wide and terrified, pleading for a way out, the fleeting hope that flickered.

  Dozai’s chest locked. A sick, sympathetic lurch twisted his gut, a visceral pull to step back, to lower his hands, to end her suffering.

  But that thought was death.

  For him. For everyone behind him.

  He bit down hard, jaw clenching until it ached, forcing the weakness back down where it belonged.

  Sympathy was a luxury. And luxuries got people killed.

  The bait worked. She's overextending.

  “NOW!” His shout tore through the smoke, raw and commanding. “BOXED!"

  The world snapped back into violent motion.

  Rei, Kenny, and Roi erupted from the smoke. No technique, no grace—just a battering ram of desperate bodies. Shoulders, elbows, skulls. They crashed into Galvara with the sickening, final thud of meat and bone.

  Nobu, trembling and half-collapsed, forced himself upright and threw himself into the slam, his weight a final, trembling addition to the press. He bit down hard, blood breaking on his lip as he ignored the flare of agony in his ruined ankle.

  A unified, wordless scream tore out of them. Ragged, hoarse, born from nothing but instinct and refusal.

  Galvara didn’t scream. But her gauntlet did.

  First a stutter, then a violent shiver as the plates tried to hold. Her halos spun erratically, circles of light whipping faster and faster in a frantic orbit as the device fought to stay active. For a heartbeat it resisted them, humming with a metallic, almost pleading strain.

  But her plates spun out of control, halos whirling faster and faster until, with a metallic shriek, they snapped inward against her back. The gauntlet jerked once, then went limp.

  The fight left her body in a shuddering sigh. Her knees buckled, and the full, crushing weight of the dogpile was on the verge from pinning her down.

  No one could bare looking at her face.

  But as Galvara was getting pushed... Slowly, her head turned. Her eyes weren’t on them anymore.

  Past the bloodied dirt, past the pit, past the faceless roar of the crowd, searching the high shadows of the rafters.

  Dozai followed her gaze.

  Half-veiled in gloom, Delnora leaned against the railing. Elbow propped, cheek resting on her knuckles. A faint, unreadable smile touched her lips from this distance as her fingers aimlessly drew patterns on the railing.

  But Galvara saw it clearly. Saw something in that look.

  Her whole body faltered. A strangled, wet sound caught in her throat.

  Her lips moved, forming the ghost of her mantra, the words crumbling as they rose.

  All that remained was a breathless, devastated whisper.

  “…No…”

  Her hands began to shake. Not from exhaustion.

  From a deeper, structural failure.

  Dozai felt it, a tremor running through her core, her pulse hammering a frantic, runaway rhythm against his blistered palms. Then, the heat.

  Not the controlled burn of her Maho, but a wild, chaotic flare, rising like a fever with no peak.

  The air around her hands sizzled. The five tore their grips away, skin screaming in fresh agony—her flesh was searing now, too hot to contain for long. Behind her, the dormant halo-plates screamed to life. They spun with a violent, shrieking chaos, overheated metal grinding itself to dust in a furious furnace.

  Galvara lurched upright. Each inhale was a rasp, each exhale a sob. She gasped in ragged bursts, chest heaving, body rocking with every breath like she was drowning on dry land. Sweat and molten residue rolled off her in waves, carrying the thick, gagging stench of scorched iron and cooking flesh.

  They watched in a kind of sickened awe. Rei’s face was a mask of horrified pity. Roi’s lips were pressed into a thin, grim line of understanding. Kenny’s expression churned with conflicted anguish. Nobu’s eyes held a pained, weary recognition of his own past untold.

  Dozai watched her stagger forward, limbs jerking and twitching, a marionette with its strings cut, driven only by a dying spark. Her eyes quivered in their sockets, wide and unseeing.

  She wasn't fighting anymore.

  She was just... moving.

  Like a weapon that had forgotten how to stop firing.