Witchbound: My Power Grows With Every Trial

When it was all said and done, the wall behind Reiji stirred. A deep vibration rolled through the entire area, breaking into violent surges that shook dust from the ceiling. The mechanical layer that had held him pinned then started to split apart violently.

Ren steadied his grip on the Pact Blade, getting ready. Its light was no longer as bright as it had been on other occasions, but he could still rely on it somewhat. He lifted it, even as his shoulders ached and his body screamed with fatigue and pain.

The surface of Reiji's wall was covered with a layer of sigils that were pinned chaotically all over the place. They were what had been holding him in place all along, but in an instant, they all tore aside like simple crumpling paper as the wall broke apart completely.

And from that cavity, Reiji pulled himself free.

Only... he looked a lot different now. His upper body still bore the resemblance of a man. He was bare-chested, revealing a somewhat muscular shape, while his face was filled with conduits and glyph markings that pulsed with black fluid underneath. The lower part was even worse. He was bound entirely to a mass of cables and machinery fused with flesh and fragments of plates displaying more abstract and awkward glyphs. Each movement he made happened with a grotesque mixture of both human and machine.

Ren took a few steps back as he watched him turn into this new shape of a being.

"You were never meant to be here, boy. And yet, here you stand, dragging her weight around. Can you see now the depth of her manipulation?"

The cables lashed and struck before Ren could form any reply. They attacked all at once, like a downpour of black lines that tore through the hall. Ren sidestepped the first, then brought the Pact Blade up to cut through the second. Sparks flew everywhere. The next wave came even faster afterwards. He ducked, rolling under it and slashing as it coiled down toward his head.

But Ren knew he couldn't hold this rhythm for much longer.

A cable then rose from above, ready to attack full on. Ren planted his hand on the floor and triggered his Glyph Sense. The glyph flared to life under his palm, with the shape forming along the stone, then finally snapping open. Ren vanished inside as the cable crushed into where he had been standing just seconds before.

He then reappeared across the hall, stumbling hard as the glyph shattered violently beneath him. His head was spinning, and his stomach twisted from the sudden jump.

"Such tricks won't get you very far," Reiji grinned, amused.

Ren tightened his grip on the blade, refusing to answer.

Reiji then moved forward, triggering a deep rumble that echoed through the entire hall. With each step, the conduits struck like spears, leaving trails of black fluid where they landed.

"Do you understand now what you are fighting? Naraku is not a weapon... It's what I am now," Reiji said as though admiring his own creation. "I gotta hand it to those two, Takuma and Shiori, as useless as they proved to be in the end, both of them, they did give me enough Pact mana to build myself into all of this. Things finally obey a greater order."

"You are insane..." Ren then mumbled, not caring whether the words actually reached Reiji or not, since he felt there was no reasoning with him anymore anyway.

Reiji then lifted a few fingers, and the walls around obeyed. Glyphs flared to life on their surface, releasing heavy panels that tore free and collapsed toward the floor, only to rise again in an attempt to crush Ren where he stood.

In a desperate attempt to evade, Ren pressed his palm to the floor once more. Glyph Sense flared weakly, and he was able to slip through just in time, reappearing behind Reiji in a burst of blue light. But the disorientation hit harder with it. His vision blurred, and his head throbbed, so he fell to his knees as soon as he reached solid ground again.

"You tear yourself apart to delay inevitability. That is all you've done since that witch chose you," Reiji said as he turned slowly, unhurried by what seemed to him like pitiful attempts at prologing what was deemed to happen anyway.

A few of the cables lashed around Ren, coiling tight across his shoulders before sliding up toward his neck. They constricted with force, cutting off his breath. The glyph at his wrist flickered as its light was weak, nearly gone. He clawed for breath, gasping as the cables pressed harder.

Then, for a moment, he thought this would be it. He stopped resisting. He let the Pact pull him under, no longer fighting the burn racing through his veins. And yet for some reason, the mark at his wrist, instead of dimming, suddenly flared to life. Heat surged through it until it burst outward into the hall.

The entire floor shook as flames poured out of nowhere. They erupted across the chamber, tearing through conduits and forcing them to recoil back to their sources. The fire spread along the cracks in the floor as well and raced up the walls, tearing down the awkwardly placed sigils, one by one, wherever it encountered them.

The heat drove Reiji back a few steps for the first time, leaving him confused as to what was triggering this new wave of energy.

Then, from the fire, a figure began to take shape. It was familiar, beautiful and terrible, all at the same time.

Kagami.

Ren was surprised to see that she wasn't in the shape of a black cat anymore, but that of a woman. Her body was bare, traced in firelight, while her hair streamed behind her like a river of embers. She walked forward with precision, and with each step, the ground glowed with a golden shade. Even in this new form, Ren recognized her presence immediately. It was her, alright, the one he had walked with since this journey had started.

As her body formed through the flames, Kagami's eyes were locked on Reiji.