Darius and Seizen aura hit harder.
Way harder.
The base reacted all at once like a proto sovereignty, a battle of wills.
A barracks roof ripped free and vanished into the smoke.
A watch post split down the middle.
Burned beams, shattered tiles, broken crates, snapped spear shafts, and loose stone tore up from the ground and started spinning through the air. Dead bodies lifted, rolled, and got dragged across the yard like the pressure itself had hands.
The drill ground cracked.
Then broke.
Whole slabs of stone burst upward. Debris ripped through supply sheds, smashed through already-burning walls, and turned the inside of the base into a storm of shrapnel.
One broken support beam punched through a side building hard enough to collapse half of it.
A spear spun end over end and buried itself in a post.
Chunks of rock and splintered wood started flying fast enough to kill anybody still standing too close.
Athena saw it first.
"RETREAT!" she screamed. "GET BACK! NOW!"
That broke everyone loose.
Survivors started pulling away from the clash. Lisa grabbed Yu. Mustafa moved with her. Wounded fighters stumbled back through smoke and broken stone, some half-dragging each other.
Nobody with sense stayed near that pressure.
Nobody except Musashi.
He stood his ground with his blade sheathed and eyes forward.
Ready to back Darius up if this went bad.
Ahead of him, Seizen and Darius kept staring at each other while the whole base came apart around them.
And then—
everything else disappeared.
Just for them.
The screams got pushed to the edge.
The fire dropped out.
The wind stopped mattering.
There was only the space between them now.
Darius looked at Seizen.
Really looked at him.
Damn, kid.
The pressure kept roaring.
Loose stone circled through the air. Flames bent sideways. A dead body rolled across the yard and smashed into a wall hard enough to crack bone.
Last time I saw you, you were one of the happiest little bastards in the room.
Seizen didn't blink.
Crimson Viatra burned through smoke and ruin. Black-red aura ripped off him in wild waves, violent enough to make the air shake around his frame.
Even shouldering your whole damn clan dying…
Darius's grin faded a little.
Even carrying your little brothers after all that…
His eyes sharpened.
Master Elric thought you were the one.
A beam snapped overhead and went flying into the night.
One of the five legendary protégés.
The earth under Darius's feet groaned.
And now look at you.
His jaw tightened.
One of the most dangerous people on the planet.
The Black Prince.
The Best Viatra user alive.
The Black Clan's bane.
Third-ranked Shinshō of the Red Order.
Darius inhaled once.
Slow.
Heavy.
I didn't see the hate underneath.
A stone slab burst apart beside him.
That's on me.
His shoulders loosened.
His stance lowered.
I'm sorry.
His aura surged.
The ground beneath his sandals split wider.
So if I beat you…
His fingers curled.
Into a style.
I'll give you the help you should've gotten.
Then the thought hardened.
Turned sharp.
Hot.
But that doesn't mean I'm taking it easy on you.
Darius King slid into stance.
Low.
Loose.
Alive.
Weight shifting like he was half-relaxed and half-ready to kill.
Hands narrow and angled, wrists soft, elbows floating just right.
Martial Muti: Flightless Feather Style.
Snake. Crane. Cat.
A style that looked light until it touched you.
Seizen saw it.
And smiled.
Small.
Cold.
Interested.
"Ahh," Seizen said.
His black dragonmascus tanto rolled once through his fingers.
"Flightless Feather Style."
The crimson in his eyes deepened.
"One of the ten greatest fighting styles on the planet."
His smile sharpened.
"Let's see if it can keep up with my Viatras."
Then he vanished.
The ground blew apart where he'd stood.
Darius moved on instinct.
Too late to follow it clean.
Seizen was already behind him.
The tanto came down for the top of his skull so fast it barely looked real—
CLANG—
Darius yanked the dagger up from beneath the old Seeker cloak at the last possible second.
Steel screamed.
Sparks burst into his face.
The impact bent his knees and blasted broken stone out in a ring around him.
Darius grinned anyway.
"Wooo," he said. "You almost had me, kid."
Seizen answered with another strike instantly.
Then another.
Then another.
No pause.
No wasted motion.
Tanto flashing.
Dagger turning.
Hand to blade.
Blade to hand.
They blurred.
Musashi narrowed his eyes and still missed pieces of it.
Mustafa, dragging Yu back through the smoke, turned once and saw enough to know this had gone somewhere beyond normal fighting.
Seizen flowed first.
Low slash.
Reverse grip rise.
Pivot.
Elbow.
Knee.
Tanto cutting from dead angles Viatra had already solved.
Darius slipped the first cut by less than an inch.
The second scraped sparks off his dagger.
The elbow missed his jaw when he twisted his shoulder just in time.
Then he answered.
Flightless Feather Style didn't hit like brute force.
It hit like beauty getting painted on a painting.
A soft drift that turned ugly at the last second.
His lead hand snapped in like a snake-line feint for the eyes.
His balance shifted crane-clean across broken ground that should've tripped him.
Then cat-fast reflex took over and he pivoted low, dagger whipping up under Seizen's arm toward the throat.
Seizen folded away from it.
Tanto flashed down.
Darius turned with it.
Steel slid on steel.
The sound came out raw and high.
Seizen spun.
So did Darius.
One black blade. One short dagger. Both moving too fast for the firelight to keep up.
Seizen flipped over a low kick and stabbed on the way down.
Darius rolled his wrist and deflected it, then slammed a palm toward Seizen's ribs.
Seizen caught the line, twisted, and drove a knee up the center.
Darius angled out just enough. The knee clipped his side and blasted him backward through loose debris.
He landed, skidded, and came right back in smiling.
Seizen was already there.
Tanto from the left.
Backfist from the right.
Shoulder feint.
Darius blocked high, slipped right, caught the shoulder, and spun with it.
For half a breath Seizen's body turned with the throw—
then Viatra corrected the whole thing.
He planted in mid-shift like the world had warned him first.
The tanto slashed backward.
Darius leaned away so hard his spine nearly folded.
The edge cut through the front of his cloak and ripped fabric free.
A half-burned training post behind him split clean in two.
Then Darius hit back harder.
His footwork changed.
Lighter.
Sharper.
Flightless Feather Style opening wider now.
One hand drifted high like crane-wing balance.
The other stayed low with the dagger hidden near his ribs.
He stepped in soft.
Seizen Viatras read a throat stab—
Darius dropped level and hammered a cat-fast rising elbow toward Seizen's chin, turned it halfway, then slid the dagger in low from the blind line.
Seizen twisted out of the elbow.
The blade kissed his cheek.
Just enough.
A thin line of blood opened.
Seizen touched down three steps away.
Still calm.
Still smiling.
He wiped the blood with his thumb.
Looked at it.
Then looked back at Darius.
His smile faded.
Seizen vanished off the centerline and reappeared on the outside angle.
His heel smashed into Darius's guard and sent him stumbling through broken stone.
Darius caught himself on one hand.
Seizen was already on top of him.
Tanto stabbing down.
Darius knocked it wide with the dagger and rolled across the drill yard as the blade punched into the ground and blew apart a chunk of stone.
Seizen raised his free hand.
Fire Muti flashed through the fingers.
Then he spat compressed fireballs in a vicious stream.
Darius cursed instantly.
"Oh, hell no—"
He moved.
The first fireball blew through a supply shed behind him and turned the inside into a furnace.
The second hit the ground at his heel and blasted rock into his calf.
The third came not where he was—
but where Viatra knew he'd dodge.
Darius twisted ugly to avoid it.
Barely.
The fourth was already there.
He juked left.
A fifth cut him off.
Too fast.
Too accurate.
That damned eye knew before his body did.
Darius dropped, rolled over shattered stone, came up sideways, then almost lost his head to another blast that tore through the smoke exactly where he was about to rise.
"Shit—"
He slammed a hand down.
Earth Muti: Foundation Wall.
A wall of stone ripped out of the drill ground between him and the next volley.
It lasted half a second.
Seizen's fire smashed through it and turned the whole thing into an explosion of molten rock and sharp fragments.
Darius burst out the side of the collapsing wall.
Not graceful.
This wasn't read-for-read anymore.
This was instinct.
Veteran reflex.
High-level Martial Muti body control keeping him alive against an eye that already knew too much.
He ducked one blast.
Across the yard, Seizen stood untouched in the firelight, tanto low, crimson eyes burning.
Darius spat to the side.
Grinned through the heat.
"Man," he said, still staring right at him, "I'm way too sober for this."