Shattered Glass (5)

The moment Sosuke stepped forward, the air fractured.

A pulse of violet lightning erupted from his skin, blistering the ground in a wave of electric heat. Sparks arced across the broken metal tiles, crawling up the shattered walls like living serpents. Lance raised his arm to cast a spell, but Sosuke was already gone.

A deafening crack split the air. Sosuke reappeared mid-air above him, twisting as a spiraling javelin of lightning formed in his palm. He hurled it down like a bolt from the gods. Lance summoned a wall of darkness to defend, but the spear tore through it, blasting him through the far wall and into the next chamber. The lab buckled and collapsed behind them.

Sosuke landed, the world around him sizzling with static. His chest heaved. You can't fight for revenge. You said that. You meant that. But his heart screamed for blood. His fists trembled.

He dashed again.

The next room was colder, darker. Broken observation tanks leaked a thick black liquid. The floor buzzed with broken wiring, sparks jumping at Sosuke's presence like they recognized their master.

Lance stumbled to his feet, one side of his torso charred and oozing. "Tell me—do your friends see the real you when you fight like this?" he coughed. 

"I don't care what you see," Sosuke muttered. He clenched his jaw. His right hand twitched. Keep it together.

A circle of magic formed beneath him—Lightning Pulse. Lightning surged out like a sonar shockwave, slamming into Lance's legs and locking them in place with crackling chains. Sosuke flashed beside him, blade drawn, cutting low. Lance raised a barrier but the force shattered it like glass.

"You're fast—" Lance muttered, already parrying another strike. But he couldn't keep up. Not anymore.

Sosuke leapt back and crossed his arms. "You want to see power?" His katana vanished into threads of lightning. "Then choke on it."

He swung both arms outward—lightning exploded in every direction like a hurricane of spears. They carved through walls, tore up the floor, and shattered the machines behind Lance. The room blinked white.

Lance flinched and staggered, blood running down his temple. A snarl escaped him. "You're finished!" He dropped into shadow, rising again behind Sosuke. His blade arced forward.

Sosuke turned just in time, catching the blade with a palm covered in crackling mana. His knuckles split, but he didn't flinch. "You're done hiding."

Electricity raced from his wound and over his body, forming a living armor of thunder. He ducked and drove his knee into Lance's gut, then gripped the villain's cloak and hurled him through another wall.

They crashed into a reinforced chamber—an arena of iron and circuits. The remains of the arena Lance had once used to test his experiments. Cables dangled from the ceiling. Lightning snapped across them like whips, eager to be fed.

Sosuke stepped through the smoke, lightning bouncing between his fingertips like an unstable heartbeat. His breathing was off. His vision blurred. Not yet… don't lose yourself yet.

Lance rose, slowly this time. Bones cracked as they shifted. His skin looked wrong, stretched. "You're going to burn out. Just like you always do."

Sosuke's voice was low. "Then I'll burn taking you with me."

He vanished again.

The ground exploded behind Lance. Sosuke appeared with a blade forged from condensed lightning and mana, jagged like a lightning bolt made real. He slashed downward—Lance blocked, but the impact launched both of them skyward.

They crashed into the upper balcony of the lab, where old control panels sparked uselessly. Lance struck first this time, shadow lashing forward. Sosuke countered with a pulse of magnetic force, the shadow deflecting wide before he punched Lance across the platform.

Sosuke followed up, chaining together strikes, each one faster and more erratic. A combo of raw lightning fists, electrified kicks, and flash steps that seemed to warp space itself.

Lightning exploded from every pore. The building itself rattled. Walls crumbled. Floorplates curled and burned. His katana reformed in his hand, brighter than ever.

He raised it high. The spell circle beneath him was massive—layered. Ancient. Thunder God's Wrath.

The katana pulsed, its tip pointed at Lance.

But then, Sosuke froze.

The blade hovered. His hands shook. This isn't who I want to be. His throat tightened. He forced himself to stop. Lightning crawled up his arms, begging to be released.

Lance took the chance.

Dark tendrils whipped out, slamming into Sosuke and launching him back across the balcony. He crashed into a pillar, coughing blood, the wind knocked from him. Sparks scattered like fireflies in the dark.

He tried to stand. His legs didn't respond.

Lance limped forward, hunched but laughing. "Almost, boy. You almost had me. But you still don't know what real strength is."

He stood slowly, legs shaking but steady. "The blood you've shed. The lives you've taken." His voice rose with each word. "Was it all for some twisted pursuit of strength? Was this your way of becoming something divine?!"

Sparks crawled up his arms like veins set ablaze. "For the sake of everyone who fell in this war—Westoria, Astoria—all of them… I won't die here. Their souls won't be forgotten. They won't be tarnished!"

He screamed.

Sosuke screamed as his body was wreathed in lightning hotter than white flame. His skin split under the pressure. His bones screamed. Arcs of violet and gold twisted up his back like wings being forced into existence.

The light overwhelmed the room.

Lance stumbled back instinctively, shielding his eyes. "You… you're killing yourself. You can't even handle it—just give up!"

"Stop talking to me!" Sosuke roared.

The chamber shattered around them.

Sosuke blurred into motion, faster than before. A thunderclap echoed behind him as he struck Lance clean across the face, launching him through a wall of stone and into the outer corridor. The lightning warped the air as Sosuke dashed again—each footfall left molten craters in the floor.

Lance summoned a shield of darkness.

It didn't matter.

Sosuke tore through it with a blade of condensed plasma, swinging downward with such force that it cleaved through two floors. Lance crashed into the level below, coughing and disoriented.

Sosuke appeared above. His hand crackled with unstable energy. "Raiton: Void Collapse."

He drove it down—an imploding wave of magnetic force crushed Lance beneath rubble and fire. The shockwave twisted the corridor's walls inward, fusing metal and stone as if they were clay.

Sosuke dropped to one knee, panting.

I need more!!

His skin sizzled where the lightning kissed him. The armor of energy cracked and shimmered. But Lance wasn't finished either. Tendrils erupted from the wreckage and lashed toward Sosuke's legs.

Sosuke jumped.

He launched forward with a spinning kick that fractured the tendrils mid-flight. Lance reappeared at the far end of the broken corridor, eyes wide—desperate.

"This power doesn't belong to you!"

"It never did," Sosuke muttered, voice low and cutting. "But I made it mine."

He lifted his katana, and it fused with the storm, glowing like it was carved from the sky itself. He dashed forward, feinting left, then shifted directions mid-air, landing a vicious elbow to Lance's gut. Then, with a flicker, he grabbed the man by the collar and hurled him through another collapsing wall—this time into a vertical shaft that led to the surface.

Lightning coiled around his arms like chains.

"You're not staying underground. You're going to see the world before this ends."

He rocketed upward, dragging Lance with him through the stone shaft. They crashed through crumbling supports, jagged walls, and ancient barriers meant to never be opened. Lightning tore through every surface, disfiguring the old world as they ascended.

Up.

Sosuke's vision narrowed. His body screamed to shut down. His star eyes flickered once.

Keep going.

The final wall caved in as they burst through the last layer of rock, sunlight splitting the sky as dust exploded outward. They rose from the ruins, smoke trailing from Sosuke's limbs, Lance limp in his grasp.

Sosuke landed hard atop the surface, the stone below them fracturing like glass.

He dropped Lance, who rolled onto his back, coughing blood and gasping.

Sosuke stood over him, lightning leaking off his arms in streams.

"Now… it ends."

Moonlight spilled across the ruined field, bathing the wreckage in silver. Sosuke stood above Lance, motionless, his silhouette casting a long shadow that stretched over the dying man like a shroud.

Lance coughed blood and tried to laugh, the sound more wheeze than voice. "It's not over… I have clones. Everywhere."

The ground beneath him twisted. A malformed clone—half a torso, one arm, barely a face—dragged itself from the darkness, clutching a jagged device pulsing with unstable mana. It slammed its fist down.

A soft click. Then stillness.

Lance collapsed fully, staring up at the night sky with fading eyes. His lips curled into one final, hateful grin. "Fuck you."

Sosuke turned his head sharply as explosions echoed from deep below. A thunderous chain reaction shook the mountain from its roots. Lightning surged through his veins again, fury sparking at the edges of his soul.

"Even in your last breath, you want to kill?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

He spun on his heel, ready to charge back toward the crumbling entrance of the base—

—when his entire body jolted.

A blade burst through his gut. Clean. Precise. Right through his core.

His breath caught in his throat. He staggered forward.

The blade wasn't normal, it buzzed with some foreign mana, an energy that sank its teeth into his body and drank. His strength vanished in waves.

Sosuke's gaze wavered.

Far off, through the haze of battle and smoke, a lone bird sat on a cracked tree branch—still, watching. He could've sworn it stared right at him.

Unblinking.

Knowing.

Sosuke fell. The lightning vanished.

Silence followed.

Black.