The air shimmered.
Her blade, an extension of ancestral will, danced forward. Ice spiraled outward, each movement of her sword birthing elegant arcs of frost that shattered the golden barrier like porcelain. Ayato countered with a wave of his scepter, calling down spears of celestial fire. Ayaka twirled, weaving through them like a snowfall in stormwind, her wings shedding snowflakes that froze the flames mid-air.
Ayato and Ayaka lunged forward at each other.
Their blades clashed, a burst of gold and blue rippling outward, tearing the clouds around them.
Ayaka's strikes were swift and precise, every motion a graceful blend of discipline and spirit. Ayato's counters were crushing, delivered with divine momentum. Each swing of his scepter left trails of radiant ruin, while Ayaka's blade left arcs of frostbite in the air.
"Why do you resist?" Ayato growled, pressing her back with a barrage of slashes that cracked the very sky. "You could join me. We could reshape the world. No more weakness. No more duty. Only control."
Ayaka parried, her frost dancing along his divine steel. "You don't see it, do you? You haven't risen—you've lost yourself."
She pushed forward, unleashing a flurry of strikes. With each clash, ancestral whispers echoed around them. Visions of past Kamisato leaders shimmered in the air—some standing behind Ayaka in silent support, others watching Ayato in mournful judgment.
Ayato faltered—just slightly.
Ayaka took the opening.
She spun, her wings expanding. A snowstorm surged from her body, engulfing the platform in a blizzard. Visibility dropped to nothing. But within the storm, Ayaka moved like moonlight—fluid and unstoppable. She struck Ayato's flank. Frost spread along his divine robes.
He roared, releasing a burst of golden energy that blew the storm away.
His form flared, eyes glowing with divine fury. "If you wish to save me, fight me. Prove that your path is stronger!"
Ayaka raised her blade. "Then I will. Not to defeat you. But to reach you."
They clashed again.
Strike after strike, sky after sky shattered around them. They battled across floating islands of light and ice, through voids pulsing with energy, over memories made manifest—childhood gardens, moonlit courtyards, their father's study.
In one such place, Ayaka hesitated.
Ayato did not.
He struck her down into the floor of their old training ground. But as she fell, she whispered a name.
"Ayato."
His hand trembled.
Ayaka rose again, her body wounded, but her resolve crystalline. "You told me once… 'We lead with presence.' Where is yours now?"
His divine aura flickered.
Ayaka advanced. Her strikes were no longer to wound, but to awaken. Each one targeted not weakness, but memory. The place he first taught her to hold a blade. The time he shielded her during a duel gone wrong. The words he said when he took on the mantle of clan head.
Ayato's form wavered. Golden light peeled away, revealing slivers of the brother she knew beneath.
But he roared and flung her back again with a shockwave of wrath, surging with renewed fury. The sky turned dark. Stormclouds of divine essence gathered, and Ayato descended from above with a downward strike that split a floating island in half.
Ayaka barely rolled aside, her wings flaring open as she soared back into the storm. She summoned a flurry of needles—tiny, near-invisible shards of frost—that struck from all angles. Ayato raised a dome of celestial gold, but her ice pierced through the seams.
They clashed again amid a maelstrom of past and present.
Ayato conjured an army of divine afterimages, reflections of his will, each attacking in perfect rhythm. Ayaka danced through them with uncanny grace, her blade never stopping, tracing arcs of starlight through the chaos.
She countered with illusions of her own—refractions of frost and memory. They wove a battlefield of echoes, brother and sister lost in a dance of what was and what might yet be.
They collided once more—one blow cracking a mountaintop illusion, another sundering a river of golden flame.
The fight raged, endless, merciless, yet full of sorrow. A clash of wills wrapped in history and love. Each strike was a plea, each parry a cry.
No conclusion.
Their blades met once more, sparks and frost clashing in a thunderous storm that rippled across the heavens. But then—
Silence.
Ayaka's breath came in soft, pained gasps. Her blade trembled slightly in her grasp. Blood traced a line across her cheek, a whisper of the battle's toll. Her delicate armor, once pristine, now hung in tatters along the sleeves, ice and silk shredded by divine fire. Across from her, Ayato stood still, his scepter lowered, shoulders heaving beneath his tattered divine robes, golden embroidery darkened by soot and fury.
A perfect standstill between them both. They both simply were at far too even of a pace.
"Enough," she said softly, her voice barely carrying through the quiet stormclouds above.
The wind calmed. The battlefield hovered in uneasy stillness—fragments of shattered sky and memories suspended around them like broken glass in a dream. The air hung with the weight of all unspoken things.
"I know you're still in there," Ayaka continued, taking one slow step forward. Her blade remained lowered, its tip grazing the icy stone beneath her feet. "You can end this. We can end this."
Ayato's eyes narrowed. Divine embers glowed faintly in their depths. "Still you cling to hope. Even now. Even after everything."
"You're my brother," she said, her voice trembling, each word dragged from the depths of memory. "I know what you carry. I know the burden. We were raised on ceremony and silence. Duty was carved into our bones. But I remember the boy who caught fireflies for me when I was too scared to go into the dark. The man who stood between me and shame after my first failed duel. You think you've become something greater…"
Her voice cracked, tears mingling with the blood on her face.
"...but all I see is how much you've lost."
Ayato's lips curled, not in warmth, but in bitter disdain. "Lost? No. I have shed. Weakness. Sentiment. Restraint. I've become what the Kamisato were always meant to be—absolute. Pure. Unshackled."
"No," she whispered. "You've become a shadow. A hollow echo of the man you once were."
He raised his head slowly, as if the words themselves ignited something inside him. "Do you want to know the truth?" he asked, voice like iron splintering under pressure. "The Kamisato name was never about dignity. It was about control. A cage gilded in honor. Every bow, every smile, every tradition—chains. I broke them. I became divine, Ayaka, and you mourn because I didn't ask for permission?"
"You didn't ascend," she said, her tone fierce despite the tears. "You fell. And now you're dragging everything with you."
"Dragging everything with me?! Nothing is getting dragged down except my very soul!" Ayato yelled out in fury as his divine aura began to flicker.
"You are running away from facing yourself...Please...Ayato..." Ayaka pleaded.
"I am not...running away from anything!...You dare challenge me?! I am beyond any mere being! I am beyond anything in existence! I am everything I could ever be!" Ayato's aura began to flicker rapidly.
Ayaka closed her eyes before reopening them and yelling out.
"I want...my brother back!"
His divine aura flickered violently, like a storm barely held at bay. Golden light twisted, warped by something darker. He clutched his head, stumbling backward as if wracked with pain. "No… No, I refuse...I refuse to be a pawn of your twisted game Ayaka...I will not be at the whims of our family once more...I will set my own path...as a divine god!....I will change everything!...I will make sure that you will-!"
The light faltered completely.
The divine aura that has surrounded him had instantly faded.
It only took mere moments before agonizing screams would come out of Ayato.
A raw, guttural cry of a soul fracturing beyond repair. The sound was that of a tortured soul beyond all meaning.
The golden robes convulsed and writhed, wrapping around his form like it was attempting to silence his pain, until Ayato vanished entirely within their cocoon. The entire dream-realm trembled. The air collapsed inward, drawn toward the center like breath before a scream. Thunder cracked—not divine, but wrong, broken and chaotic. Purple lightning tore jagged lines across a blackened sky that had once been golden.
"Ayato!" Ayaka ran forward, her voice rising in desperation. "Please! You can fight this! I know you can!"
But her voice was swallowed by the storm.
The last snowflake from her own incredible snowstorm dissolved midair, erased from existence.
The mere influence that whatever this chaotic energy was spewing was monumental.
From where Ayato had stood, a cataclysmic aura erupted—a hurricane of hate and power that distorted time and memory. The platform beneath them cracked and bled violet flame.
The cocoon split open.
And what emerged was no longer Ayato.
It was something vast, ancient, and terrifying.
Six enormous wings unfurled, obsidian feathers edged in violet fire, each beat of them releasing a pulse that shook the very firmament. A serpentine halo of black gold twisted above the figure's head, and its towering frame was cloaked in midnight silk etched with ancient sigils pulsing with malevolent life. The air around it thickened with dread.
Three heads emerged from the depths of the cloak, each wearing an ornate, expressionless mask:
The left mask twisted with divine rage, cracked along one edge like it had screamed too often.
The center mask smiled with unnatural serenity, unmoving yet infinitely knowing.
The right mask grinned with madness, wide-eyed and gleaming with chaotic glee.
The creature raised its arms, and the very sky recoiled.
"A-Ayato...?" Ayaka asked painfully.
"I am the truth you never wanted to see," it spoke, a layered voice that was no longer Ayato's, but a twisted chorus of what remained.
Purple lightning continued to strike all around. The purple darkish skies clouded all judgment.
"You named me Ayato. But that name is dust now. I am the echo of everything you denied. I am the darkness they buried beneath tradition."
Ayaka stood frozen, her blade limp at her side, mouth parted in silent horror.
"This...distortion...It is no longer Ayato...I cannot even properly begin to describe this atrocity." The Spirit of the Kamisato spoke internally to Ayaka
The rage-masked head snarled, "You clung to the past…"
The central mask whispered, "You thought love could stop inevitability…"
The third cackled, voice high and fragmented, "And now you face me."
All three mask's spoke at once. "You face your greatest sin....Ayaka Kamisato..."
The sky bled violet. The battlefield cracked and split, fragments of memory and sacred ground falling into the abyss. Training grounds, childhood gardens, ancestral shrines—all shattered like glass.
Ayaka fell to her knees, hands trembling. Her voice quivered. "Ayato… what have you done…?"
The creature lifted one massive hand, and shadows churned behind it like a rising tide.
"I have awakened," The rage-mask said, its voice dripping with cold finality.
It pointed at her with a finger like the blade of an ancient god.
"Welcome, dear sister… to the truth of my heart." The mask of madness cackled.