The earth beneath Ren’s feet began moving in perfect geotric patterns. Circles within squares within triangles ford and reford, each shape glowing with energy before dissolving into the next configuration.
Columns of fire erged spontaneously from the ground. The flas burned in impossible colors: deep purple, electric blue, silver-white that hurt to observe directly.
Water in the air crystallized into fragnts of ice that orbited around him like satellites, each shard catching and reflecting the firelight in prismatic displays. The ice formations were perfectly geotrical, defying the natural chaos of frozen water.
Currents of wind created vortices that mixed with the flas in spirals of living fire.
Sirius barely had ti to teleport before a spear of living wood erged from the exact spot where he had been standing, the tree growing to full size in seconds. The wooden attack was imdiately followed by a lightning bolt that converted the tree into smoking charcoal, filling the air with the scent of burning forest. A failed but dangerous combo.
"Impossible," Sirius murmured while reappearing twenty ters away. "A child of that age and with that rank shouldn’t be able to control so many elents simultaneously. The mana strain alone should kill him."
But Ren was no longer where Sirius expected to find him.
The black marks had changed Ren’s perception in fundantal ways that went beyond simple enhancent. He could feel Sirius’s exact location as if connected directly to his mana signature through invisible threads.
It didn’t matter how perfect his shadow control was anymore; to this transford Ren, he was like a torch blazing in absolute darkness.
The sensation was overwhelming, too much information flooding his consciousness at once but without the help from the huge network from his mushroom.
Ren appeared directly beside Sirius, moving not only through teleportation but also through pure physical speed that left afterimages in the air. His fists, now covered in mineral so hard it could cut through steel, crashed against the tree where Sirius had been a fraction of a second before.
The impact created an explosion of steam, but Luna’s father had already moved again. The tree split completely in half, the two sections falling in opposite directions with groaning creaks that echoed across the clearing.
"Your speed has improved," Sirius admitted, reappearing behind Ren. His breathing was slightly faster now, the constant fast teleportation started to take its toll even on his huge reserves. "But you’re still predictable."
He launched daggers of pure light, each one blazing like a miniature star.
But Ren intercepted them without even turning by creating a shield of earth that imdiately transmuted into magical tals.
The light daggers shattered on contact, their energy absorbed and redirected. The molten tal shot like projectiles, each droplet seeking Sirius with guided rage.
Sirius dodged them with an aerial pirouette that would have been beautiful in other circumstances, but when he landed, the ground beneath his feet had beco quicksand. He had to teleport again to avoid sinking, his boots leaving impressions in what had been solid stone monts before.
"Fire and earth to create tal," he observed while dodging another attack, his voice carrying grudging admiration and a bit of a growing concern. "Water and wind to create ice... Fire and wind to create lightning. What else can you do?"
As if giving an answer, Ren combined light and darkness.
The result was sothing that shouldn’t exist in nature: a ray of chaotic energy that was simultaneously brilliant and black, absorbing light while emitting a black energy that seed to be emulating it. The contradiction created a visual paradox that hurt to perceive directly, a beam that seed to exist in negative space while blazing with the intensity of a welding torch.
When it passed near Sirius, the effect was disorienting at a perceptual level, as if reality itself was being distorted. Colors inverted, shadows fell upward, and for a mont the world seed to turn inside-out.
Sirius avoided the attack, but for the first ti since the beginning of the confrontation he suffered a negative effect, he had to truly concentrate to maintain his balance after the evasion. The chaotic energy had affected even his spatial awareness, making up and down montarily aningless concepts.
Ren pressed his advantage, fusing more completely with his two beasts. Jade scales with black lines covered most of his body now, creating patterns that seed to shift and writhe. His eyes blazed with green inner fire, no longer entirely human.
His next shadow jump was perfect.
It wasn’t the clumsy, imprecise movent that Sirius had criticized before. It was fluid, instantaneous, executed with a mastery that rivaled decades of practice by the most experienced shadow warrior’ in front of him.
Ren materialized directly behind Sirius and, before the older man could react, his scale-covered hand slipped toward Sirius’s pocket and tore away the letter.
The movent was so fast, so precisely executed, that for a mont it seed like Ren had been in two places at once.
Sirius remained completely astounded for a mont, genuinely surprised for the third ti in the battle. His eyes widened fractionally, the first crack in his composure that suggested he might not have complete control of this situation.
"How...?" he began to ask, his voice carrying disbelief that went beyond re surprise.
"You won’t hurt her anymore," Ren mumbled, his voice distorted by the transformation but carrying an emotional weight that cut through the internal chaos.
With reluctant respect, Sirius took advantage of Ren’s mont of lucidity and his micro-pause to take the letter to execute what might be his best strategy given this situation.
He fused too. The Celestial Night Tiger multiplied his powers to insane levels.
"Even now," he murmured, his hands beginning to glow with light that was different from anything Ren had used, deeper, more fundantal, shining in the night with a distinguishable light like the one from a binary star, "after all, you still believe you can fix things by reading so words you don’t understand."
The light wasn’t just bright; it felt warm in a way that went beyond temperature. It carried the weight of purification, of things being returned to their proper state.
"This power you’re using seems dangerous," Sirius continued while the light intensified, growing from a gentle glow to sothing approaching the brilliance of the sun, "doesn’t seem like it’s really yours..."
The light reached blinding intensity, forcing even Ren to squint against its radiance.
The attack that followed wasn’t violent in the traditional sense. It was like the sun itself had descended to strike Ren directly, but instead of burning, it cleansed.
The Celestial Tiger had learned sothing very specific from Ren’s small companion before it had encysted itself. The power of purification... not just healing, but the ability to return corrupted energy to its original, neutral state.
The pure light struck the black marks like acid on tal, but the effect was more profound than simple destruction. The corrupt roots that had spread throughout his body turned green and began retreating at high speed, and in most parts the black parts disintegrated, not destroyed but purified, returned to a state of neutral energy.
Ren scread, not from physical pain but from the sensation that sothing was being torn away, or perhaps cleaned from his system. The power that had been flowing so naturally evaporated like water spilling from a broken container.
The jade scales then vanished like morning mist. His multiple elental control reduced to nothing, leaving him feeling hollow and strangely light. The supernatural perception that had allowed him to track Sirius disappeared completely, leaving him blind and deaf to the mana currents he had been so easily seeing.
He collapsed to the ground, unconscious before touching the earth. His body hit with a soft thud that seed impossibly loud in the sudden silence.
Sirius approached slowly to Ren’s motionless body, the expression on his face a complex mixture of relief, guilt, and sothing that could have been regret.
He took the letter from Ren’s slack hand, studied it for a mont, then carefully placed it back in the boy’s palm. His movents were gentle, almost reverent, as if handling sothing fragile and precious.
"You wanted so badly to read it," he murmured, his voice loaded with a sadness he hadn’t shown during the entire battle. The words carried the weight of years of difficult decisions, of choices made for reasons a child couldn’t understand. "Despite no longer being conscious... Despite the fact that all the letters say the sa thing and you’ll never truly understand the words..."
He straightened, observing the unconscious bodies of the students scattered across the battlefield like fallen leaves. The clearing looked like a war zone, scorched earth, broken trees, stones split along impossible lines, and the lingering scent of ozone and burnt tal.
"Children playing at being heroes," Sirius sighed, the sound carrying exhaustion that went beyond physical fatigue. "And adults who don’t even know how to protect them from themselves."
The letter in Ren’s hand fluttered slightly in the breeze, its contents holding secrets that the adult world kept from those too young to understand the true complexities of responsibility and power.
In the distance, the sound of approaching footsteps announced the arrival of Julius and the others, coming to collect what remained of a dream that had died in the space between childhood’s end and adulthood’s cruel compromises.
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