Black emerged from the wreckage.

Not a single step faltered.

The devastation Belle had carved into the world still screamed around him, fractured air, collapsing pockets of gravity, drifting ash where mountains had once stood, but none of it touched him.

He walked through the ruin as if it were nothing more than morning fog, his coat settling neatly against his frame, his hair untouched, every strand exactly where it belonged.

He stopped a short distance away.

Placed a hand over his chest.

And sighed.

The gesture was theatrical. Almost wounded.

"My, my," Black said lightly, tilting his head. "Is that really how you greet your favorite student now?"

His voice carried easily through the ruined air, smooth and amused, as if they were speaking in a quiet hall rather than atop the corpse of a landscape. "Attacking with the clear intent to kill? I must say, Master… that hurts."

Belle didn't respond.

She didn't shift her stance.

Didn't tighten her grip.

Didn't even acknowledge his words.

She stood perfectly still, black armor humming softly with restrained vespera, blindfold unmoving against her face. If Black expected anger, regret, or even recognition, he found none of it.

For a moment, something unreadable crossed his expression.

Then he sighed again.

The humor drained from him like blood from an open wound.

"…I see," he murmured.

And then...

His demeanor shattered.

A black aura exploded outward from Black's body, violent and suffocating. It wasn't mana. Not vespera. Not any clean, named power.

It was death.

The air screamed as it was overwritten. The ground beneath his feet blackened instantly, cracking and collapsing as if rotting at an accelerated pace.

What little life had survived Belle's earlier attack, resilient growths clinging to existence, microscopic remnants of ecosystems, died in an instant, snuffed out by his presence alone.

The aura surged toward Belle like a tidal wave.

And met resistance.

Belle's power answered in kind.

A second tide of death surged from her, cold and absolute, slamming into Black's aura head-on. Where the two forces met, reality buckled.

A wall formed, translucent black, rippling and unstable, stretching upward, growing taller by the heartbeat, each side devouring, erasing, rewriting the other in an endless struggle.

The air between them howled.

The ground split open.

The sky above fractured further, clouds tearing themselves apart under the strain.

For a dozen seconds, the wall of annihilation climbed higher and higher, an impossible structure born purely from will and death, until it threatened to swallow the heavens themselves.

Then.

Belle vanished.

One moment, she stood behind her advancing aura.

Next, she was directly in front of Black.

Her arm shot forward in a blur, fist aimed straight for his face.

No warning.

No buildup.

No wasted motion.

Black didn't dodge.

He met her strike with his own.

Their fists collided.

The impact detonated.

A massive shockwave of vespera erupted outward, flattening what remained of the ruined land, erasing the horizon in a blinding surge of force. The air itself shattered, sound lagging behind reality as the pressure wave raced across the world.

Far away.

Too far to see, yet close enough to feel.

Six pairs of eyes snapped open.

Monarchs stirred upon their thrones.

The Demon King paused mid-bite, crimson eyes narrowing.

The Elven King lifted his gaze from ancient maps.

Stone groaned in the halls of Ironhold.

Beasts howled across the Lycane plains.

Fangs bared in the Crimson Dominion.

All of them felt it.

All of them looked.

Across oceans and empires, through layers of reality, their gazes pierced the world, locking onto the point where Belle Ardent and Black clashed.

A fight had begun.

And they would be watching.

Belle moved first.

Her sword reappeared in her hand in a flash of black light, and she flowed seamlessly into motion, her presence sharpening to a lethal edge.

"Blacklight Sword Art," she intoned.

Her voice was calm.

Controlled.

"Second Form—Whisper of Contempt."

She killed something, the world rejecting her rejection of the concept of needing a body to survive.

Her form blurred, then dissolved, her existence slipping sideways out of physical law. She became intangible, unbound by flesh, by structure, by limitation.

Then she killed the concept of a body entirely.

Her blade passed through space itself, unhindered, unopposed.

Black's eyes widened, just barely.

Belle appeared behind him and swung.

His head separated from his shoulders in a clean, merciless arc.

For a fraction of a second, Black's body stood headless.

Then—

Death refused him.

Black's head dissolved into shadow, reforming instantly as his body twisted, flesh knitting together as if the strike had never occurred. He staggered back a single step, more surprised than harmed.

"Well now," he laughed softly, touching his neck. "That was rude."

Belle didn't relent.

"Third Form," she said.

"Me. Myself. And I."

Her will split.

Two more Belles stepped out of her shadow, perfect duplicates, each radiating the same oppressive presence, the same absolute control. SS-rank will made manifest, given form and intent.

All three attacked.

Their strikes overlapped, interweaving into a storm of death that shredded the air, carved through space, and erased everything caught between them. Each swing carried enough force to wipe a city from existence, and yet they flowed together with impossible precision.

Black laughed.

A sword appeared in his hand mid-motion, conjured from nothing, its blade dark, etched with writhing sigils that drank in the surrounding devastation. He moved to meet them, his own sword art unfolding in response, countering Belle's strikes with lethal elegance.

Steel met void.

Death clashed with death.

They vanished and reappeared across the battlefield, each exchange collapsing reality further. Mountains rose and were erased in the wake of their movements. The sky fractured again and again, struggling to remain intact.

Neither of them held back fully.

Neither of them went all out.

And the world suffered for it.

Minutes, or seconds, passed in a blur of annihilation.

Then, abruptly, they separated.

Belle slid to a stop, her clones dissolving back into nothing. Black stepped back, lowering his blade.

They faced each other across a field of ruin that no longer resembled a battlefield, only an absence where existence had once been.

Black was uninjured.

Not a scratch marked his skin.

But his clothes hung in tatters, fabric shredded and burned away, silent testimony to the damage Belle had inflicted before his regeneration erased it.

Belle was the same.

Her armor was broken in multiple places, black metal bent and killed, fractures glowing faintly with dying vespera. A thin line of blood traced down from the corner of her lips, the only sign that she had been pushed at all.

Her sword vanished in a soft spark of light.

She reached up.

And removed her blindfold.

Glassy eyes—purple tinged with pink—were revealed, unfocused yet piercing, reflecting death itself.

Black's sword vanished at the same time.

They both opened their mouths.

And the world—

Held its breath.

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