For a second, the battlefield was still. The dust of the last blow was still settling, floating like ash over a smoldering silence.
Then—
A tear in the air.
Reality itself cracked like glass under pressure, glowing with a sickly, violet light. The portal didn't swirl open—it screamed open. An otherworldly distortion, like static pumped through the bones of everyone watching, shot across the arena.
From it, he emerged.
Hana stood from her seat in the stands, her entire body frozen. Her lips parted but no words came out. Her heart beat once, then again—then started racing with panic.
"Tomura…?"
But not the Tomura Hana remembered. Not the quiet, reserved but kind guy she claimed as her best friend. This version of him stumbled into the world, hunched and trembling, as if gravity had increased tenfold. Veins pulsed unnaturally across his skin, a jagged contrast to his otherwise familiar form. His breath hitched with every step.
Down below, the fighters and crowd alike stared in disbelief. The announcer tried to speak but couldn't. Even Hinote's anger paused. Even Ikazuchi's lightning crackled lower.
Tomura raised his face. His eyes were dimmed—flickering like dying stars—as if two lights fought inside the same socket.
He clutched his head. Then his chest. Then dropped to one knee.
"No, NO!!! Not now—not yet!" he rasped, voice broken.
Then he screamed.
A sound like no human should ever make, a desperate howl that stabbed through the heart of everyone watching. His body jerked, twitching like a puppet whose strings were being yanked by two different hands.
Inside his mind, chaos reigned.
—
"You're weak," it hissed, a black shape in a blood-red void. "You let her see you like this? Pathetic."
Tomura gritted his mental teeth, standing before the demon like a dying warrior before a beast.
"I won't let you take over. Not now. Not yet."
"You're already mine. You always have been. The only thing stopping me… is your denial."
Their surroundings fractured like memory shards—pieces of Tomura's past, Hana's face, the Syndicate, the basement he was raised in—all shattering under the demon's growl.
"You can't stop what's coming. And they're not ready."
—
Back in the arena, Tomura raised his head again, eyes now glowing with a horrifying mix of despair and danger.
He looked right at Ikazuchi and Hinote. Right past them.
Right through them.
His voice came out cracked, warped at the edges, like two people speaking through one mouth.
"It's too late…" he growled, "I tried but, I couldn't do it…The countdown's over. It begins now."
And then—he vanished.
Sucked back into the portal like a rubber band snapping into place.
Gone.
The portal sealed behind him with a gut-punch BOOM of pressure collapsing inward.
Silence.
Just silence.
Hana still stood, her breath stolen. Her hand trembled at her side, clutching the armrest she had been leaning on without knowing. Her eyes—wide, glassy—held a thousand questions and the sharp, sudden edge of fear.
Ikazuchi, still hovering mid-air, looked to Hinote.
But Hinote… was gone...