One Flash
On the floor strewn with rotten flowers, a distant silhouette slowly raised its head.
A bouquet of decayed blooms. Mold clung to every stem, dried blood crusted every petal. The withered hand clutching it cast a long shadow across the rotten flowerbed.
Astamar. His violet eyes, tinged with green, first swept over the 'scent.'
"......The smell's changed."
His voice was low and slow.
"Someone else touched the battlefield I left to fester."
"There are too many eyesores that need clearing."
"I was curious what color it'd rot into if I left it a bit longer."
One flower from the rotten bouquet fell to the ground. Plague mist bloomed briefly at the impact, then mingled with the pile of decayed petals and seeped slowly away.
"That's Astamar."
Foul stench and cloying air. Amid the mingled reek of blood, rot, and iron— the demon regarded the four of them quietly, like a craftsman appraising materials.
Navriel spoke lowly.
"Rak, he wants a long fight. The 'let's see how far it rots' type."
Rak replied curtly.
"That's why I'll end it quick."
Rak's eyes flicked sequentially to El and Zan.
"El."
"Yeah."
El lifted her chin slightly.
"Recovery. Stick it to me as much as you can."
El gave a short laugh.
"Got it."
Rak immediately turned to Zan.
"Zan."
Zan straightened her posture.
"Block the plague and decay at your limit."
"...Yes."
No more words were needed. Everything essential had been said.
Rak stepped forward one pace. El pressed right up beside him. One hand on his side, the other atop his shoulder blade.
"I'll hold you together before you shatter."
Zan quietly raised her hand behind Rak's back. Inhaling, she traced a short line in her mind.
'Everything inside this line, I'll block.'
Red fragments bloomed from Zan's fingertips. Instead of reforming the shattered prayer fragments into sentences, they spread into a translucent barrier enveloping the four.
Like a thin membrane settling over skin, a chill warmth seeped into their flesh.
The rotten flowerbed. The plague mist. The strands of decay creeping around Astamar. Those strands caught heavily against the barrier's exterior.
'Let it in, but as late as possible.'
Zan's power unfurled quietly around the four like a hemisphere.
And one layer more. Zan gazed at Rak's back and extended her hand a bit further.
'The rest is on you, Rak.'
Some of the red fragments layered along Rak's silhouette like thin lines, wrapping him repeatedly. A boundary etched right above his skin, between flesh and mist. The instant plague and decay touched that line, their speed slacked like slipping across glass.
"Ngh..."
A thin trickle of blood ran down Zan's nose bridge. Red beads formed at her eyes, mouth, and ears.
El ground her teeth beside her. She could vividly picture Zan breaking first, before Rak.
In that moment, Rak said curtly,
"Enough."
Zan clenched her teeth.
"Not yet—"
"Enough."
Rak's voice cut sharp.
"Push more here, and you die."
Zan's fingertips trembled faintly. The red fragments surged once more, then sank slowly like an exhaled breath.
The barrier settled into its basic outline around the four, while the extra lines around Rak barely held form and fixed in place.
El glanced at Zan. Her lips were pressed tight.
'......Got greedy.'
But there was no time to tend her now. Something was stirring deep inside Rak's body.
The air compressed once more.
Power surged once more from within Rak's body.
Flesh and bone. Muscle and tendon— the sensation of being stretched beyond their limits.
Only then did a murky red light flare thickly from El's fingertips once more. It wasn't clean light. The hue of countless battlefield wounds forcibly stitched back together. Light that first sutured muscles, bones, and blood vessels on the verge of bursting.
Wrapping Rak's flesh and bones from the inside out, it roughly etched a line: 'Hold up to here.'
Zan slowing the plague and decay from outside with her barrier, El forcibly retarding the disintegration of Rak's body from within. If self-destruction was the end of Reinforcement, what Rak wielded now was that extremity compressed with El's recovery and Zan's resistance layered atop.
El felt it beneath her palms: Rak's body quietly fracturing once, twice— then being held together.
Flesh and bone shredding from the inside out, then reknitting.
'He's insane. For real.'
The Reinforcement she'd seen in training grounds was merely a slight boost in output. What circulated in Rak's body now was power that ground his entire self to paste.
El drew a short breath. Rak didn't open his mouth. He merely thought it inwardly, a curt invocation.
A single, blinding stroke.
And he advanced.
No one saw the moment Rak moved. El's eyes held Rak's shoulder. Before the next frame— it was gone.
"......Huh?"
A short breath escaped El's lips. No footsteps. Instead, a beat late—
—Bang!
Air exploding swept past their ears. The sound of atmosphere catching up belatedly. Rak's form left not even an afterimage. Not a speed eyes could track, but a frame of vision left blank.
"He vanished—"
Before El could finish, the battlefield had already transformed.
Mist first. It split with a pop, bursting outward in all directions. Black plague energy and rotten pollen scattered four ways, as if stamped by an invisible 'line.'
Only then did 'what had happened' replay into view, like footage catching up.
The minions ahead were already severed. Necks and chests. Arms and legs. One frozen mid-charge, its upper torso simply gone; another with mouth agape, scream unborn as the back of its head vanished first.
Rotten bouquets tumbled en masse, shattered petals and blood scattering across the floor. And atop that, 'belatedly arrived' blood sprayed a beat later.
El watched the scene, chills crawling up her spine belatedly.
'......I really didn't see a thing.'
Her eyes hadn't tracked anything; only the aftermath arrived in the next frame.
Astamar hadn't 'seen' the scene at all. A sensation of something brushing past. A single windblade scraping sharply near his body. The scent shifting in an instant.
'......What just—'
Before the thought finished, pain arrived first.
Left arm gone. Right arm, legs too. Flesh gouged from his torso's side cooling all at once.
Vision lagged. Where his arms should be. Where his legs should be. All scattered separately atop the rotten flowers.
Black fluid leaking from cracked flesh could no longer carry power.
'...When...did it reach...here...'
The thought to comprehend cut midway. The authority wielding plague and decay slackened at once.
Astamar's pupils blurred. The hand clutching the rotten bouquet went limp, the final bloom falling to the floor.
In that instant, no plague mist rose.
Astamar lost consciousness without knowing how much he'd been slashed.
Only then did El spot Rak. She scanned nearby first. Not beside her, not in the front line.
"Where..."
Her eyes ranged farther. Dead center in the rotten flower path. Right before Astamar.
Rak stood there, as if he'd always been.
Blood dripped belatedly from his dagger's tip.
Rak's breath was ragged. His heart hammered hard inside his chest two, three beats late. Fingertips trembled faintly once, then stilled.
But his body still stood.
"It's over."
Rak said curtly.
The surrounding rotten flowerbed gradually lost its motion.
Navriel alternated between the severed battlefield and Rak's back, speechless for a long moment.
'......Heaven better take as long as possible to confirm this.'
That thought flashed by before she lifted her head to gaze upward.
Tremors in the air's invisible threads. Navriel spoke like one recalling her duty.
"...The prayer lines' resonance snapped right here."
The lines linking above and below turned to dead air all at once.
"They haven't seen the full situation up top yet."
"The one tallying today's ledger will only later tilt their head: 'Why no response from here?'"
El snorted.
"By then, we won't be here."
Then, Zan collapsed.
"......Ah."
Her legs gave first. Zan's knees struck the rotten flowerbed.
Red fragments surged once more from her fingertips, then nearly all extinguished.
Blood trickled from eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Every bodily crevice.
El rushed over.
"Hey."
Rak turned too.
"Zan."
Zan gasped for breath.
"I-I'm fi...ne..."
Her words cut as breath hitched.
El gripped Zan's shoulder and side.
"Shut your mouth."
Murky red light spread over Zan's body. Half-torn vessels. Organs pushed to rupture. Nerves and flesh stretched to breaking.
El's recovery roughly sealed them. A line to keep her alive. Not full healing, but enough to prevent death now.
"This is as far as we go for now..."
El said curtly. Her tone light as ever, but her eyes held clear worry.
"A bit more, and you'd have gone first for real."
Zan finally exhaled.
"...Sorry."
Rak said quietly.
"You did well."
Zan looked up. Rak's expression hadn't changed much, but those words bore an unmistakable seal of approval.
No new flowers bloomed in the rotten bed. The plague mist thinned. No fresh power rose from Astamar's body.
Rak shook off his dagger and spoke.
"Stay here long, and the prayer lines will reconnect."
The prayer lines would probe this sector again.
"We got what we came for. Astamar goes back to base."
He glanced down at the unconscious Astamar and added curtly.
"Alive."
El arched a brow slightly.
"Rotten doc'll have plenty to question."
Navriel gave a small laugh.
"I am a little curious what face Heaven'll make."
Rak said,
"Save the curiosity. We head back now."
The four's footprints etched new lines atop the rotten flowers one by one.
Where plague had tested the battlefield, Rak's One Flash had torn the testing ground apart first.