Blades of Retribution

"You think you own me?" Natasha breathed, a voice soft and deadly. "No. That bargain bound me to the life of my sister, not you. Once you took her life, the debt was transferred. You actually believe the gods are blind to blood crimes?"

Head Maid's golden eyes opened wide, horror piercing her calm mask. Awareness dawned, keen and merciless, a beat too late.

"Natasha—!" Leon's voice boomed through the hall.

The warning was a heartbeat too late. Power surged out like a fist of darkness, hitting the head maid in the stomach and flinging her through the corridor wall. She ripped through stone and plaster and slammed into the courtyard below; the crash rang through the estate—walls cracked, glass shrieked, and a cloud of dust engulfed the moonlight for a heartbeat.

Shouts erupted jagged and urgent as the guards floundered, metal clashing and boots resounding on cold stone. Leon's voice cut through their panic, harsh and crisp. "Fall into formation! Everyone, get into position — now!" His golden eyes were a blade; the order left no quarter for dispute.

Nova and Tsubaki were already advancing, blades glinting as they moved forward in formation. Out of the side passage Rias and Aria emerged like tempests concretized—their auras bursting forth, one red, the other purple, both wild and ravenous. The very air around them grew taut, heavy with an omen of violence.

Here, half-buried in a mound of rubble under moonlight, the head maid coughed and felt blood. She spat it like a curse, her eyes wild and staring upward. "Kill her!" she screamed, her voice cracked and torn with pain and hate. "All of you — kill her before she kills me!"

No one spoke. The prodding gave way to stiff silence; fingers hesitated above hilts, faces gone blank of certainty. Natasha stood upon the serrated top of the shattered wall, moonlight cleaving her outline sharp. Short black hair flew about her face, catching the light like ink; the wind seemed small against the warmth that enveloped her.

Her eyes glowed red—angry, raw, and exhausted all at once—so bright that they appeared to belong to something older than the darkness. Pain and fury woven through every breath she drew. She didn't appear as a scared woman; she appeared as vengeance that had discovered how to assume human shape.

"Anyone who steps forward," she said softly, "will die."

The words dropped like a block of ice into the courtyard, and for one shocked instant all stood still. Lantern flames sputtered, the wind chocked off its voice, and the men and women who had been pacing stopped as if they were carved of the same stone.

The head maid's hands trembled as she crawled backward, skirts whispering against the flagstones. Her voice was a thin, poisonous thread. "You'll regret this," she hissed, eyes darting for an exit. "When King Gary finds out—"

"Let him come," Natasha replied, each syllable tiny and firm. Her hands made the air into knives; double blades of water glimmered at her wrists, reflecting moonlight and casting it back in chilly, clinical splinters. There was no shake in her voice, but the silence had teeth.

Leon stepped up beside her as if he had been hiding in the shadow all along. A golden heat rolled off him, not loud but certain, like dawn pressing through night. The aura bent the air around them and formed an unspoken shield. "Enough," he said softly, but the single word carried the weight of command. "Natasha… you've already won. Don't lose yourself now."

She regarded him—sincerely regarded—like a woman discovering a face she no longer let herself see. Her chest heaved and fell unevenly. The heartache in her eyes was raw, a new cut. "Leon… if I don't kill her… my sister will never rest," she whispered, and the admission felt like a knife slipping free.

Leon's face gentled like a winter sky thinning; pity lingered at the periphery of his face, but when he spoke the voice that emerged was velvet-wrapped iron. "Then let her sleep on your strength, not your hatred." He didn't dispute the hurt; he proposed an alternative way through it.

For an instant her jaw trembled and the wild light in her eyes wavered. Anger gave way to something mortal—frail, hurting, painfully sincere. The instant was sincere enough that anyone observing might have touched the empty place under her rib cage.

Arounder them, the air shifted. The guards' reluctance thinned like the mist under sunlight—fear gave way to duty. The faces turned in the direction of fleeing now changed with the serious acceptance of those who recognized what needed to be encountered. The courtyard that had been a platform for rumors became a battlefield for choices.

Leon's face set into a map of determination. "Positions!" he shouted, voice slicing through the soft din. The order passed, sharp and instant, and the individuals who had stood frozen with shock moved with trained intent.

Light burst outwards as dozens of cultivators opened their cores. Energy flowered like miniature suns, each aura a hue, a tone, a threat of impact. The earth shook under the force; the air had a metallic flavor with unleashed purpose. Grandmaster Realm cultivators braced themselves, and the courtyard seemed too diminutive for the forces coalescing into something vile and definitive.

At the very heart of that brewing storm, Leon and Natasha collided, shoulders bumping, breath coming fast but controlled. They created an island of two on top of the boiling sea—an unseemly closeness in the midst of war. Hate moved around them in a circle, sorrow seethed just beneath restraint, and flashes of anger ignited the fringes of control.

They stood there—two bodies that wouldn't break apart despite everything else in the world preparing to break down. The moon observed, cold and colorless, as the cultivators laid bare their powers like oaths. The courtyard maintained its final thin barrier between blood and silence.

Night had only just started to smolder.

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