They slammed into the asphalt of the parking lot with a deafening crash. A crater spread outward in all directions, the asphalt buckled, and the shockwave shattered the windows of nearby cars.
Ethan rose from the smoke and dust. His eyes burned with black fire, his shoulder bled, and his rage showed no sign of subsiding. Hale lay at the bottom of the crater, grinding his teeth in pain with a shattered face and broken ribs, yet he still tried to get up, clutching a blade in his hand.
"This… isn't over yet…" he wheezed.
Ethan took a step forward. The shadows around him swirled, ready for the final blow.
Hale, lying at the bottom of the crater, suddenly threw his head back and laughed. The laughter was hoarse, filled with both pain and triumph.
"Ha-ha-ha… You really think you've won?" he wheezed, wiping blood from his broken lips. His eyes gleamed with madness.
"Poor, naive Ethan. While you're busy with me, Maria is already with Gerard. She's in his hands. And you can't do anything to help her."
With those words, Hale sharply raised his hands. His body began to dissolve, turning into a thick, swirling mass of dark gray smoke. "Luft," he whispered, and his form disappeared completely. Now he was a whirlwind of living smoke pierced with red sparks.
Ethan didn't wait. The moment Hale lost his physical body, he stepped forward and dove straight into the mist. The shadow power inside him flared brighter, and the two forces collided in the air. A dense, churning dark mist formed, shot upward, then began to plummet rapidly, spiraling above the parking lot.
Inside this mist, their faces merged and repelled each other in a wild, chaotic dance, the hysterical laughter of one man echoing through it.
Hale tried to absorb Ethan. He enveloped him from all sides, seeping into every pore, attempting to tear him apart from within. Instead, he felt a burning, unbearable pain.
The wisteria flowing in Ethan's blood acted like poison to his very essence. Every time Hale tried to draw in even a particle of his opponent, the darkness scorched him like acid.
"What… what is this?!" Hale roared inside the mist. His voice sounded distorted, echoing.
"Why can't I… devour you?!"
He struck, a dense clump of smoke slammed into Ethan, only to bounce back, burning Hale himself. Another impulse, and again pain. Hale was involuntarily wounding himself, trying to expel the foreign power.
Ethan, on the contrary, felt almost natural in this form. The shadow sludge wrapped around him, protecting him from the pressure. He moved inside Hale's mist like a predator in an enemy pack, displacing his opponent from his own domain with every second.
"You don't understand, do you?" Ethan's voice sounded inside the whirlwind, calm and cold.
"Wisteria is in my blood. It turns your Luft into poison for you. You're trying to absorb me… and killing yourself in the process."
Hale howled with rage and pain. The mist began to thrash chaotically, slamming into building walls and shattering car windows. With every moment he inflicted new wounds upon himself,contracting only to burn his own essence, expanding only to lose control and release pieces of himself into the sky.
"How… how can you be stronger inside my own form?!" he screamed in despair.
"This is impossible! Luft is mine! My domain!"
The mist began to fall faster, losing altitude. Hale resisted more weakly. His essence was melting, corroded by wisteria and his own fury. He tried to expel Ethan, but every push only intensified the pain and sped up his own destruction.
"Maria…" he wheezed one last time, barely audible.
"She will still… be his…"
But Ethan didn't answer. He continued forcing Hale out from within, turning the man's own power against him. The dark mist spiraled downward toward the ground, and inside it, one of Gerard's most dangerous servants was dying.
Then the shadowy entity crashed into the area where Flash and Gerard were fighting. They noticed it and froze.
"I am part of something you don't even understand!"
In the next second, Hale's body began to disintegrate. His skin blackened and dissolved into black mist. He transformed into a massive, pulsating whirlwind, a dark, oily essence saturated with power.
The whirlwind spun with a deafening roar, filling the entire space with cold, suffocating darkness.
Flash fired first. The silver bullet passed through the mist, making it shudder for only a moment. Gideon and Bruno opened fire, but the darkness swallowed the shots as if they were nothing.
"He's too strong!" Gideon shouted.
Susie was already raising her hands, trying to erect a barrier. The dark whirlwind struck it, and the girl was thrown backward, slamming into the wall.
And at that moment, Ethan stepped out from the very heart of the shadows.
He appeared suddenly, as if materializing from the darkness he himself had created. The black stake in his hand glowed with a dim light. The wisteria in his blood was still weakly active, but the decoction had begun to wear off.
"Hale!" Ethan shouted. His voice, amplified by the power of the weapon, rang throughout the warehouse.
"Are you finished?"
The whirlwind spun sharply toward him. From the center of the darkness came Hale's distorted, multi-voiced roar:
"You… worm! You don't even understand what you're holding! That power was meant for Gerard!"
The dark whirlwind rushed at Ethan with monstrous speed. It wrapped around him, trying to tear him apart from within and pull him in.