The Dreadknight saw them when they were still half a block away. It stopped and turned. The shadow aura around it pulsed once, expanded, then shrinked back down.
Then it charged.
Kai had half a second to process the speed before he was already moving — he ripped a section of road upward, creating a stone wave between them and the creature. The Dreadknight hit it at full speed and shattered it. Fragments of concrete sprayed outward like shrapnel. Kai threw his arm up, and the fragments stopped, mid-air, held in place by a concentrated field.
Kai barely had a second to process how fast the creature was before he was already moving. He ripped a section of the road upward, creating a stone barrier between himself and the creature.
The Dreadknight slammed into it at full speed, shattering it. Fragments of concrete sprayed outward like shrapnel. Kai threw his arm up, and the fragments instantly froze in the air, held still by a strong force field.
"Don't let it get momentum!" Drake called out, already flanking it from the right.
He jumped in close, cutting with both blades at the gaps in the armor's joints. The Dreadknight swung a backhand that would have knocked his head off.
But Brick was there already, shield raised, and the impact sent him sliding back eight feet across the road, his boots digging deep lines in the asphalt.
"I'm fine!" Brick grunted. "Keep going!"
Kai quickly pushed up more stone from the road, wrapping it around the Dreadknight's legs to try and slow it down. The monster broke free in just two seconds, but that short time was enough for Drake to land three good hits on its side.
The shadow aura thickened. The Dreadknight was angry now.
It hit Kai.
He didn't even see it move. One second he was standing ten feet away, and the next he was flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, staring up at the grey sky. Something in his side was screaming. Maybe a couple of cracked ribs.
He rolled over, got his knees under him, and forced himself to stand up.
The squad was holding, nut only barely. Jace had a set up a barrier between them and the civilian area. Sera was coordinating attacks from the flanks.
Drake was good, but he was burning hard… he's a B-rank, and even though he carries himself with enough confidence of an A-rank, he had limits against a creature like this.
Twelve minutes to go. Command had originally said seventeen minutes before reinforcement got to them. This meant they had been fighting for about four minutes already.
Kai looked at the Dreadknight. It was turning back toward the civilian staging area, losing interest in fighters it couldn't finish quickly. Past Drake, past Brick, heading for easier targets.
He already knew what he had to do.
He pulled up the System interface with a thought.
[Principle of Balance — A-rank threat detected in immediate vicinity.]
[Equalization requires significant energy draw.]
[WARNING: Environmental and biological toll will be severe.]
[Proceed? YES / NO]
Kai looked at the Dreadknight.
He looked at Jace's barrier, already starting to crack under the shadow pressure. He looked at the two blocks of civilians who had no idea what was coming for them.
"Yes," he said.
The moment he confirmed the choice, everything went white.
It wasn't the gradual kind of white, like light flooding in. It was more like reality itself decided to skip a frame. One moment Kai was standing with cracked ribs and a choice on his lips.
The next, the white was everything.
No sound. No feeling. No time.
And then… the colour came back… wrong, muted and drained.
Kai found himself standing in the middle of what used to be the industrial complex's northeast block. He was breathing hard; his hands were at his sides, and there was dark matter… ash, he realized, dry grey ash, scattered across his sleeves and his boots.
At his feet was the Dreadknight. Or what was left of it.
The armor had collapsed inward, like something had reached inside it and simply removed whatever was holding it together. The shadow aura was gone. The creature wasn't moving. Wasn't going to move again.
Kai stared at it for a long moment.
He didn't remember any of it.
Not the killing blow. Not whatever he'd done to make it stop. Not how he'd moved or what the fight had looked like from the outside. There was the choice, and then there was now, and the middle was just white.
He heard footsteps behind him.
He turned.
Drake, Sera, Jace, and Brick were standing at the edge of what used to be the block. All four of them were still, looking at him.
Drake's blades were still out. Sera's hand was raised halfway to her scanner but not moving. Jace had one hand pressed over his mouth.
None of them were speaking.
Kai turned to look in the other direction, and his breath stopped.
The Eastern part of District 12 was spread out all around him, and it was all wrong. It wasn't destroyed, burned, or damaged like after a battle.
Instead, it was empty.
Everything was the exact same dull grey color. The broken concrete, the cracked road, the dirt, and the long-dead plants pushing up through old cracks… it all looked like colorless, chalky ash.
There was no mana, no dimensional energy, and no sign of life anywhere. Just ash, stretching from one end of the sector to the other, as far as he could see.
The sky above it still had color. The rest of the district still had color. But this sector… his sector. looked like someone had reached down and deleted the saturation setting on everything inside it.
Kai turned back to his squad.
Drake was looking at him the way people look at things they haven't categorized yet. Not fear, not quite. Something right on the edge of it.
"Kai," Drake said slowly. "What just happened?"