Witchbound: My Power Grows With Every Trial

The bracelet struck the floor with a crystalline clink that echoed throughout the hall like something entirely unfit for the place it found itself in.

In the silence that followed, Takuma stopped any of his attacks. His body was locked in place as though some unseen force had pinned it to the floor, something more powerful than any conduits feeding into him. Immediately after that, the lines on his back started to pulse more unevenly, like breaking their pattern. The system was no longer functioning as it should have.

Ren noticed it right away. Something inside Takuma was fighting to reach the surface. He steadied himself and prepared to react, but made no immediate move just yet. Instead, he waited to see which way the balance would tip. Would he stop the attacks altogether? Or will he succumb to Reiji's control once again?

Reiji's voice echoed throughout the hall, harsher than before. "You fool, you're letting them interfere!"

The cables around him twitched violently. They lashed from the mechanical wall into Takuma's back, forcing even more of the black fluid into him. The conduits swelled against his burnt skin, binding tighter, fighting to drag him back under control.

But that control slipped. Takuma took a breath in, and for the first time in a really long time, it felt like a clean and fresh one, untainted by the corruption Reiji had been driving into him. And in that fleeting clarity, Shiori's presence stirred in his mind, sparking fragments of memories through the haze.

Ren knew this was his moment. He lunged forward, and with his Pact Blade at the ready, he cut through the bundle of conduits at Takuma's spine. As the blade tore through them, black fluid burst out in a spray that hissed against the floor. Two of the lines snapped completely, while the others were severely damaged and pulsing irregularly.

Takuma gasped as though surfacing from some deep waters he had been submerged in for a long time and finally regaining some awareness. His knees hit the ground while his grip of the blade loosened. His breath was ragged but, for once, human.

Ren steadied his own breathing while letting the moment settle and assessed the state of his arm, which was still burning from the wound he had taken earlier. The fight was far from over, but now Takuma no longer felt like a machine. That in itself was starting to feel like some sort of victory.

From his wall, Reiji felt the change too.

"You're letting chaos drive you again... Stabilize... Become more for Naraku..." He kept mumbling in fragments, more like an engineer talking to himself than a leader giving orders.

The bracelet on the floor pulsed faintly, as though responding to the sudden change within Takuma. A subtle glyphword shimmered along its edge, and a few seconds later, the same symbols glowed along Takuma's blade as well. Only then did Ren realize they were actually the same. They were connected somehow.

"It holds mother's protection glyph. Keep it close." He remembered Takuma's voice in his vision.

They were brother and sister. Of course.

Then, Reiji's tone sharpened again, dragging Ren's attention back to the wall.

"Naraku cannot afford to lose Takuma as it lost Shiori," pausing for a moment as though suddenly reconsidering. "Unless..."

His head tilted slightly, and then a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

"Unless, of course, you were to take his place. You would hold the system steady when he won't be able to anymore."

Ren's chest tightened. He realized that Reiji didn't care who carried Naraku's weight as long as someone did. All he needed was a backbone bound to the system, a tool in his eyes. Witch or Pact Bearer, it made no difference, as long as pure Pact-blood ran through their veins. And when they were spent, he would replace them, like nothing mattered.

Cables lashed out from the walls like serpents, aiming directly at Ren this time. Ren's Pact Blade intercepted the first batch, triggering sparks throughout the air, but then another came from below, coiling around his ankle. He finally managed to twist free from those as well before they could pin him to the ground.

The hall then became a storm of black lines and cables, all coming alive and driving to bind him in place. But before they could close around him, Takuma moved as well.

His blade flew across the chamber and landed with a calculated strike on what seemed like one of the sources of the conduits. It cut clean through several of them, causing the leftovers to fall to the ground all at the same time. Black fluid sprayed from the source, splattering across the floor and walls.

"Ungrateful wretch!" Reiji shouted with fury across the hall.

More conduits coiled violently, seizing Takuma by the shoulders and waist, forcing him back down. The sound of his body hitting the floor was heavy, and the cables constricted his body tighter, punishing him for the insolence of his reaction.

Takuma fell to his knees as his back arched under the pain. The black fluid poured into him in violent surges. His face twisted as he tried helplessly to push back.

Ren stepped forward without thinking. His Pact Blade was weak, dimmed by exhaustion and the blood still dripping from his arm, but it was still usable. He slashed through two of the cables pinning Takuma, forcing them back from his body.

Reiji smirked from his wall at the sight of that. "You cannot save him. If he fails, another must stand in his place. This is the order Naraku demands."

More cables moved in batches, surrounding the area until they finally formed a patterned shell across the hall.

"You are welcome to take his role," Reiji added in a lower but sharper voice.

Ren breathed hard from all the effort, but his thoughts were clear. He knew he couldn't win against Reiji in their current format. Naraku itself was Reiji's weapon, and Takuma stood as the living proof of that.

He looked at Takuma, bloodied and pinned to the ground, but still clinging to the fragments of humanity left in him.

Off to the side, the bracelet glimmered faintly on the floor, like a reminder of something that once had been important.