The earth rumbled and cracked with each step before surging upward to form a jagged pillar straight at the enemy. The impact senta deep grumble through the stone, but Kazuma only laughed as it crumbled at his feet.
“Seems like you haven’t quite mastered Mana use yet, have you?” With a casual backhand, he sent Taiga sprawling across the sand.
“Come now,” Kazuma taunted. “Surely you can do better than this? Has your Sensei taught you nothing?”
Aimee growled in frustration, pushing herself to her feet just in time to see Kazuma extend both arms toward her, each one splitting into a mass of writhing, hissing snakes. Before she could react, they wrapped around her torso, constricting tightly and pulling her off the ground, dragging her toward him.
“Aimee!” Iruka called, struggling in the grasp of his own serpent.
Kazuma’s grip tightened as he pulled her against him, his voice a low, dangerous hiss in her ear. “Is this a game to you?”
“What?!” Aimee gasped, struggling to free herself.
She had no idea what he was talking about.
But, before she could respond, Taiga’s voice rang out from behind them. “Let her go, you monster!” Then, his hair ignited, flames of every color licking up from his scalp as his eyes blazed with the raw power of fire coursing through him.
Oh fuck. He was releasing whatever it was inside him.
Taiga’s hands moved rapidly through the air, forming a series of symbols, and a beam of heat erupted from his palms, aimed directly at Kazuma and Aimee.
SHIT! Aimee thought as the searing heat bore down on them.A little blinking probably won’t break the Rules. She closed her eyes, twisting reality, and teleported just a foot out of Kazuma’s grasp, dropping to the ground and gasping for air.
The heat beam struck Kazuma across the face just as he jerked away. Hissing in pain, his once smug expression twisted into one of purerage as he clutched the scorched side of his face, smoke rising from the burn.
Taiga sprinted to her side, and with a grunt, he dragged them both away from Kazuma’s looming figure, sand kicking up beneath their heels.
“You okay?” His voice was tight with concern.
“I’ll live,” she gasped as Kazuma turned to face them, her mouth falling open at the sight.
The melted flesh of Renji’s face peeled away, dripping like molten wax from a cursed candle, revealing the pale, smooth skin underneath, as if sculpted from polished bone. His dark, serpentine eyes glowed with flecks of purple, the slitted pupils narrowing as his lips curled back, revealing fangs far too long for a human mouth.
“I’ll kill you, boy!” he shrieked, stepping toward them as more of the flesh mask he had worn fell away in chunks, revealing the true face beneath.
Aimee flinched, her hand flying to her chest, and for a moment, the world tilted.
Kaz.The name tore through her mind.
Whaaat have I done? Her heart slammed against her ribs as memory tore through her—snatches of another life that had been stolen from her. His laughter in the dark. His steady hand in battle. The heat of his mouth when she let herself forget the Mission. A man she had loved—and left—without a word when the Pattern ripped her away.
And now here he stood before her, twisted, monstrous. Yet beneath the ruin, it was impossibly, unbearably, still him.
“Kaz?” Her voice was barely audible.
Her knees weakened as a sob rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. Panic surged, her heart breaking as the memories of their past together and the reality of what he had become collided in her mind.
“Kaz?” she repeated, but he didn’t hear her.
“I will kill you all!” He took another step forward, completely oblivious to the woman before him.
He raised his hands, and the air heaved upward, pressure coiling into a vortex that spun around his fingertips before bursting into a roaring cyclone. It was stronger than anything Aimee had ever encountered, more powerful than any elemental attack she had seen in this world, save for Taiga’s fiery outburst just moments ago.
Then, it was barreling toward them.
But Aimee’s legs refused to move, her mind still spinning.
Then Taiga coughed beside her.
