The Broken Halo

The crimson lightning disappeared first.

A thick branch touched the white speck and lost its colour. Its forks broke into pale grains, and those grains vanished before the thunder could reach them.

The same change raced along the next branch.

Then the next.

Simon’s pupils contracted.

The lightning was not being pushed back.

It was coming apart.

A white hollow opened in the leading edge of his sword cut. His demonic energy dissolved along its boundaries, leaving a widening gap where enough power to split mountains had existed an instant before.

There was no great explosion.

Only light.

White spread through the black and crimson attack, bleaching everything it touched.

The tribulation lightning fought it.

Destructive bolts twisted inward, striking the tiny source from every side. Each contact ended the same way. Crimson became white, broke apart, and ceased to exist.

Within the manifestation’s chest, Simon felt cold sweat run down his back.

An ordinary slash would have been gone already.

No matter how large he made it, an attack built only from his demonic energy would give that light more of the same thing to dismantle.

The magnitude of the force did not matter if the force itself could not remain intact.

His sword cut buckled.

A crack raced upward through it, splitting the flames all the way to its towering tip.

Another opened below.

Simon could see the white speck through the wound it was making.

It was still descending and still coming toward him.

His body remained fixed at the end of the swing. He could not even turn his face away.

’Damn it. I’m not going down like this to a mere fucking speck of light!’

His Will bore down upon the technique.

The four seeds thrummed within his Prime Forged Heart.

Their power had entered the strike with his demonic energy, but it did not yield as readily. Pride’s influence clung to the shape Simon had imposed upon it. Wrath strained toward destruction even while the white light stripped away what carried it.

The cracks widened anyway.

Far below, Lilith watched enormous pieces peel from the slash.

They became pale silhouettes.

Then nothing remained of them.

But a black flame stayed alight inside the whitening gap.

It bent beneath the advancing speck.

It thinned and almost went out.

Then its tip curled around the white surface.

Simon’s eyes sharpened.

The flame had not vanished.

Black Chaos fire crawled over the light.

Where it touched, a dark blemish appeared upon the speck.

For the first time, the white light changed.

The enormous pupils behind it narrowed.

Simon felt the resistance through his control of the attack. His flames were being torn apart, but they were burning what tore at them.

Neither power was passing harmlessly through the other.

There was something there he could cut.

His jaw tightened.

The Sword Daemon’s technique kept feeding the same point.

When the foremost section dissolved, the power behind it drove into its place. When that broke, the next portion followed, carrying black flame and the force of the four sins into the opening.

The edge kept pressing into the blemish the flames had made.

The white speck’s advance slowed.

Within the slash, the power of his sins resisted the unravelling. Chaos flames burned the white power they could reach, while the sword art forced everything that survived toward the same act of severing.

None would have been enough alone.

Even together, they were barely holding.

The remaining tribulation lightning flared one last time.

Then the final crimson branch vanished.

The slash was black now, fractured from top to bottom, its enormous edges crumbling into white dust that disappeared before it could fall.

Simon tasted blood.

His reserves were dwindling beneath the cost of the giant surrounding him. The cube flashed, distributing what remained while his mental energy drained into keeping the technique from losing its shape.

He could not move his hands, but he could still refuse to let the attack collapse.

’Cut.’

The black flame gathered around the speck.

A shallow groove appeared beneath it.

The light brightened.

For an instant, the entire battlefield turned white. Simon could no longer distinguish the ground, the shield, or even the giant’s arms around him.

Only the contact remained clear.

A black edge.

A white point.

Both breaking.

The groove deepened.

The immense force following Simon’s slash drove into it, and the speck stretched around the intrusion.

Then it split.

Black fire entered the division.

The two halves whitened the flames around them, stripping away layer after layer.

But the flames were already inside.

They burned through both halves.

The light swelled into two pale circles, each darkening around a black centre. Their rims shivered, thinned, and folded inward.

Then they were gone.

The white glare withdrew from the world.

Simon dragged a breath into his lungs.

His fingers moved.

The thing holding him still had loosened.

Ahead, his sword cut emerged from the fading brilliance.

It was scarcely whole. Great gaps interrupted its outline, and the flames along its sides flickered unevenly.

But it was still advancing.

Toward the violet shield.

The One’s gaze sharpened.

Light gathered across the barrier, but its colour was shallower than before.

Much of the power brought into the realm had been committed to the white attack. The protection that had stopped Simon’s earlier blows no longer possessed the same strength.

The damaged slash reached it.

KRAAAACK!

A fracture opened beneath the black edge.

Simon watched it spread.

Across the curved surface.

Up toward the eyelid.

Down through the violet light beneath the pupil.

The slash kept feeding the fracture.

The shield shattered.

BOOOOOOM!

Violet pieces scattered across the sky, turning as they fell. Some were larger than the broken hills below. Black flames ran between them, and the sound reached the ground hard enough to flatten the rising dust.

The eyes were exposed.

Simon’s attack continued.

Its battered edge reached the radiance before the nearer iris.

And faltered.

The black fire stretched toward the pupil, but its leading edge came apart before it could cut through.

Too much had been spent.

The lightning was gone. Most of the slash had been destroyed by the white speck, and breaking the shield had taken almost everything that remained.

The eye behind it was untouched.

The last black flames began dispersing.

Then another sword cut appeared within them.

Lilith’s eyes flickered with surprise.

A second sword cut emerged directly before the eyes.

It was smaller and horizontal this time around.

Far smaller than the first, though its broad, uneven shape still spanned the space between the two irises. There was no crimson storm around it, no towering wall of power swallowing the sky.

Only black fire enclosing another downward cut.

Simon’s sword had not risen again.

He had never needed a second swing.

When he formed the technique, he had held a portion of its power within the force following the first edge.

The first release carried it forward.

The second emerged where the first had spent itself.

One stroke.

Two successive cuts.

Maintaining that separation had cost him the strength he desperately needed. With his poor proficiency, the later release was smaller and weaker than it should have been.

But sheltered behind the first edge, it had reached the target with its own power intact.

It had not endured the white light.

It had not broken the shield.

And now neither obstacle remained.

The second cut fell.

A black line crossed the nearer violet iris.

The constellations within it separated.

Farther along the broad edge, the other eye split too.

Below them, the white head opened from forehead to chin. Every smaller face inside its mouth divided along the same path, exposing halves of mouths that continued opening without meeting.

The cut passed through.

For a moment, the severed shapes remained beside one another.

Then the halves drifted apart.

Violet light spilled between them.

There was no blood.

Only the impossible sight of two enormous eyes divided across the sky, and the nested faces hanging broken beneath them.

The distant owner had not been touched.

His manifested gaze had.

And it was still looking at Simon.

The divided pupils shifted together.

Their attention settled upon the figure inside the giant’s chest.

Sweat poured down Simon’s face and soaked his body. His arms trembled around the Chaos Blade. The shaking spread through his shoulders, his legs, and the enormous manifestation struggling to remain whole around him.

His third eye ached.

The silver cross flickered.

But his expression was cold.

He looked into the severed eyes and finally spoke the technique’s name.

”Sword Daemon’s Sword Art...”

Blood slipped over his lower lip.

”Heaven Bleeds Twice.”