NOVEL WEB Chapter 30: AVATARS
A distant boom shakes the academy. Smoke mushrooms above Emberium. Debris rains over the riverbank— severed limbs, shattered masonry thudding into the tide.
Kibo's eyes snap open. He forces himself upright, blood dripping onto the stones.
"Cerbaz!" His voice cracks, then strengthens. "I thought my sword served the innocent. I called slaughter 'unity.' I was wrong."
Jarkata turns, shocked, sweat across his face. "Impossible."
"So many innocents… crushed." Kibo steadies his odachi, flames reigniting. "I am a killer— but not a hypocrite. I'll own that."
"I don't even know what my ideal is anymore or what I am fighting for but this spilled blood— this is too much."
Kibo stares at his hands— burned, bloodied, shaking. Nothing left to obey. No more just cause. Silence his only solace before unrelenting screams. He feels hollow— a weapon laid to rest on the battlefield but still as sharp as ever and stained with the blood of many.
He looks at the corpses, at the unrelenting cascade of rubble. Clearly upset.
"But I know one thing— I won't live in a world where life is dismissed as 'casualties'."
He remembers many faces— too many to count. A little girl clutching a doll, a strong man shielding his wife, a decrepit old mage casting a barrier with trembling hands. None of them were ever soldiers. None of them were ready for any of this.
No screams. Just their whimpers. Their dreadful cries and begging.
Kibo not even having the strength to say no.
Flames flicker at his fingertips. Justice long forgotten. Only human warmth remaining.
Kibo sees another building collapse— more civilians gone in seconds. No rescue, no warning. They vanish into the sea.
"I'll put an end to this. Even my master—if I must!"
Ryusaki, no longer a father or saviour but a man with blood on his hands. A dream built on corpses. Gently told lies— spoken like prophecy. And Kibo the fool to trust them.
"Zeit—" Jarkata snarls.
"Zeit—" Kibo echoes.
Time lurches.
Jarkata moves first— his punch a comet aimed at Kibo's heart. The odachi flashes— steel meets gauntlet. Kibo's counter cuts Jarkata's left arm clean off just as the fist erupts through Kibo's chest. The impact drills a tunnel through the shoreline, tearing trees and houses apart. A gaping hole yawns in Kibo's torso.
Both stagger, coughing blood.
"You're an undead mage. Otherwise you would die." Jarkata rasps.
"I'm not an undead." Kibo growls, flames sealing his ribs shut. "Not human, not a construct—"
He was raised to win. Bred in quiet war rooms, on borrowed myths and silent nods. Nobody ever taught him how to mourn. Not how to live after the fighting was done. Now the bill is due.
"A magic beast." Jarkata finishes.
Kibo's eyes blaze. "Ryusaki raised me— told me the innocent would live once he 'saved' this nation. "This society." He surveys the wreckage, jaw clenched. "Lies. All of it. I'll burn every lie. You're right— I need to fight for my own ideals!"
He studies the corpses around him, piece by piece.
Jarkata bares his teeth. "Zeitblende—Zehn Minuten!"
Light pours from his eyes into his severed limb. Bone knits, flesh regrows. He flexes new hand, laughing hoarsely. "Now the real fight, Ryushin. Don't disappoint me."
Kibo responds with a blast of white flame, slowly healing his chest.
"Zeitverzerrung—Endlichkeit." Jarkata intones.
The world muffles. Stone fragments and broken pillars freeze midair.
"Au Ra—Re Al Ms!" Jarkata draws mana into his core, body glowing crimson.
Kibo plants his feet, odachi flaring red-white. "Chorded Odachi— break the rules of this world!"
Gauntlet meets blade. The pressure rips a scream from Kibo's throat. His blade grinds against Jarkata's guard, redirected into a sturdy frozen wall— vaporizing it grain by grain seemingly unaffected by the stopped time. Jarkata's eyes widen— then Kibo's heel smashes into his ribs, cracking them again.
Jarkata crashes midair into a wall, spine shattered. "Johnny, Sena… save me a seat in the afterlife. First…"
He remembers their faces— Johnny and his terrible jokes, Sena and her quiet strength. Gone. All gone. This isn't going to be revenge. It was the final burial grounds for everything.
He rises and rips off his robe. "Release of Death—Todezeit." Jarkata declares, voice low and final.
"A suicide spell?" Kibo snarls, stepping back
"A domain." Jarkata's replies with a grin.
Crimson timers blaze above their heads— sixty seconds counting down.
"I'm dying anyway." Jarkata pants. "Your chance, Ryushin. Order belongs to the strongest."
"Ryusaki is the strongest." Kibo looks away, to the bloody dust, melancholic expression.
Jarkata laughs "He's nothing beside her. Nothing!"
Even now, something twist inside him. Its her voice— clearer then any spell— echoing in his head. She asked him to protect this world. Not to ruin it. Now he stood alone, beck-deep in blood, screaming at ghosts in the night.
Jarkata looks to the sky. A ticking noise begins.
Tic. Tac. Tic. Tac. Tic. Tac.
The seconds begin to tick. A new reality forms, a new domain.
The Wind howls, carrying dunes of sand into the void. Mansions dissolve.Bbooks scatter like ash. When the wind dies down, a blood-stained desert remains— two silhouettes, burning timers, a crimson moon and bleeding stars.
Jarkata spreads his arms. "Welcome, Ryushin. My avatar can only exist here— in this intermediate world of time.
He doesn't plan on surviving. This world— his domain— wasn't just a mere battlefield. It was a tomb built with loving detail, where time is at a halt just long enough to say their final goodbye and then let the clock run its end with purpose.
"His voice echoes distant. "Äon, I raise my last call. Appear and fight with me until my clock runs out, so my soul can return to the cycle."
Kibo squints through the sand. A shape coalesces— twenty-four wings, twelve blazing eyes, a body woven from organic light. Majesty incarnate hovering over Jarkata— Äon.
Kibo's breath catches. He shrugs off his coat, gazing upward to the titan. "So beautiful." he murmurs. "And yet, our hands drip with blood. Even your domain is full of it."
He smiles, melancholy. "Cerbaz, I was always afraid to summon mine— thought it was unclean, monstrous." His eyes lock with Äon. "But a true avatar chooses its mage, doesn't it? Never the other way around."
He drives his odachi into his own heart. Blood pours down the blade.
"Ryushin—!" Jarkata shouts, but Äon silences him with a finger to her lips.
Jarkata nods solemnly.
Black shards peel from the air behind Kibo. A three-meter shadow forms— limbs twisted, torso warped, eyes like hollow white rings in darkness. It looms, silent, mournful.
Kibo exhales, steady voice. "I accept you. Fight beside me to the last breath."
No more fear or shame. Just truth— as ugly as it could be, heavy on his heart— and it was his alone. The shadow didn't judge. It only stood.
Kibo felt seen— for the first time in his life he wasn't just some human weapon— but someone trying to be his own person.
The shadow embraces him, its eyes darker then its body. The odachi vanishes.
Kibo's glows with dark light "Doppelgänger!"
Searing light from Äon meets abyssal black from the shadow, spiraling around Kibo's battered body. For a moment the desert realm flickers— bright, then dark— caught between two avatars.
He glances at Jarkata, eyes fiery but softened. "I'm beginning to understand now. You fight for the beauty of this world— and I'll fight for the worth of its people!"