Nine seconds crawled by, like frost clinging to dawn—then time began to flow.

Centered on Dio, a ripple burst outward, like a stone in a still lake.

Color seeped back into the world like ink flooding wet paper.

The throwing knives stirred, hungry fish waking in a silver shoal.

Whoosh!

A lattice of silver knives ripped the air, a rain of fangs converging on the small figure.

In the next heartbeat, that center point would be minced like leaves in a storm.

Clang!

Speed meant nothing against a black blade.

The Darkness Sword drew a single dark afterimage, like a crescent shadow, and caught every silver edge.

Seeing every strike swallowed, Dio rubbed the back of his head, helpless as a man in light rain.

Yare yare... Tricks like that don’t work on a freak with reflexes like lightning under the skin.

Relief hit first, a cold tide in Lian’s chest.

He alone knew how tight that moment had been, like a bowstring on the verge of snapping.

The instant he reacted, he saw mana smeared on the knives, an ominous reek like iron rain.

Getting tagged would be ruin, a bad star over his head.

So he flooded the Darkness Sword with his mana, a black river damming a darker flood.

Then he flicked every knife away, petal by petal, careful as a surgeon under stormlight.

“The World!” The word dropped like ice into a basin.

Hearing Dio prime a stop again, Lian yanked his focus back, like a fist closing on flame.

Aer’s spell kept chewing at that field; the instant The World brushed him, a little more unraveled.

He could move for half a second inside the freeze now, like a fish wriggling under ice.

“But only half a second,” Dio murmured, eyes on statue-still Lian, the world held like glass.

“Then let’s see you dodge this.”

He traced a golden ring in the air, a moon on still water.

Then he reached through and pulled out a road roller.

He fed a thread of black mana into it.

Yellow bruised into black and red.

Four white characters stood on its flank: Kappa Heavy Industries.

He set the hulking thing ten meters above Lian’s crown, like a thunderhead loaded with iron.

He drew three throwing knives from his pocket and flicked them toward Lian.

Mid-flight, each split and swarmed into a hundred blades, a silver halo freezing around him.

“Let’s see you slip this net...”

Parry the hail, and the roller drops like a mountain—no need to narrate the rest.

He counted the sand left: a little over one second.

He looked toward Aer; Alicia and the others hung like pinned butterflies, and Aer was no exception.

Seeing Aer motionless, Dio snorted, a cat’s hiss in a quiet room.

“Tch... Even with her life on the line, she won’t lift a hand? All for that plan... colder than me.”

One second... slipped by...

Dio closed his eyes and waited for Lian’s scream, a bell about to break the fog.

—and then time moved.

Silence.

No scream, no cheer—like snow falling on an empty courtyard, the world held its breath.

Dio’s eyes flew open.

At Lian’s mark, nothing remained but the earlier knives stuck in the ground.

The roller and the storm he’d cast were ghosts.

Lian himself stood where he’d been, Darkness Sword in hand, not a scratch, calm as a pine in wind.

“Not... possible!”

His pupils blew wide, eclipsed moons in a night sea.

None of this could have happened.

The mana he smeared on those things came from the World Consciousness, a sun no Yokai could look at.

It couldn’t just evaporate.

At worst, wreckage should litter the ground, iron and bone like shells after a tide.

Why is there nothing?

No... that’s wrong—the stop hasn’t even ended!

“Confused?”

The voice he dreaded breathed at his ear, a winter draft through paper walls.

Dio jolted and slipped back, then fixed on Aer’s sudden silhouette, fear and caution burning in his eyes like twin lamps.

“Ah-la-la~ Don’t be so scared of me~ You make it sound like I’m some Yokai who’ll gobble you up.”

Dio didn’t buy a word.

If this creature truly snapped, being eaten would be the gentle death.

He’d heard the tales: she killed a man who ruined her plan, revived him, killed him again, over and over like a child snapping reeds.

Then, bored, she laid a superlative healing that would run for centuries.

She sealed every gift he had and tossed him into the Underworld’s tentacle layer for a very long holiday.

Seeing his guard only rise, Aer let the comfort act drop; she’d come to deliver one line.

“You know our plan, right? How could you let Lian get badly hurt?”

“If she can’t follow my script later, what am I supposed to do?”

Dio bobbed his head fast, a little bird pecking rice.

Aer, pleased, nodded.

She left him one line: “If you get it, you don’t need me to teach the next step.”

Then she drifted back to Lian’s side like smoke.

Watching her go, Dio wiped the sweat from his brow, tension beading like rain on stone.

His heart thudded hard—rare, since he’d become a vampire—like a drum under earth.

Thank the dark she didn’t spot the secret on my knives.

If she learned I’d reached out to the World Consciousness, I’d be sampling the Underworld’s tentacle layer myself.

He breathed deep, like a diver breaking the surface, and returned to his mark.

Aer watched him come back and gave an unreadable smile, then snapped her fingers.

Control of time settled back into Dio’s hands, cold and heavy as a chain.

Dio scratched the back of his head and looked at Lian, who frowned in confusion like a fox hearing distant thunder.

“A little accident,” he said, voice dry as sand. “It’s handled. Let’s continue.”