However, Natsuki had pretended to be a powerless little girl to keep the wool pulled over Aya Tokoyogi’s eyes, making her careless while Natsuki herself waited for a chance to regain the time that had been stripped from her.
For a single moment, the shaken, fire-eyed witch looked at Natsuki with something like pity.
“Yukina Himeragi, distract Aya Tokoyogi—I only need a moment. You! Ponytail! Is Aya’s daughter still conscious?”
“P-ponytail…?!”
Though not exactly fond of the nickname Natsuki had pinned on her, Sayaka immediately nodded.
Apparently, Natsuki remembered that the only one who could save the wounded Yuuma was another witch—Natsuki.
“So you turn against me to the very end, Natsuki?!” Aya roared bitterly.
Along with the lethal aura that erupted from her, countless symbols drew themselves in the air. Illusions of sorcerous criminals emerged from them, all at once.
When it came to witches using spatial control magic, Natsuki was without peer. Aya, who specialized in the manipulation of written symbols, couldn’t lock on to Natsuki’s coordinates.
“Blow ’em away, Al-Nasl Minium—!”
Kojou’s Beast Vassal went about annihilating the illusions Aya had created with glee. Then, it brandished its twin horns and charged toward the defenseless fire-eyed witch.
Aya redeployed her wall of symbols to defend against the assault. However, Kojou dematerialized the Beast Vassal just short of colliding with the wall. The incandescent bicorn had been a decoy for drawing Aya’s attention. Breaching the wall and leaping through was not the Beast Vassal, but a girl wielding a silver spear.
“Roaring Thunder!”
Yukina’s right leg leaped up and caught Aya Tokoyogi’s chin.
With the witch’s attention focused on deploying the wall, she had no way of evading the attack. With the defensive magic enveloping her breached, Aya’s brain was scrambled by Yukina’s ritual energy-infused kick.
Aya lost consciousness for one brief moment, severing her link with the Guardian that served her. Not letting that moment go to waste, Natsuki unleashed her magical chains.
“Faceless knight protecting the spiraling abyss, emerge from thy prison of frozen anguish—”
Silver chains bound the black knight’s entire body.
The black knight thrashed violently to shake off the chains hindering it, acting like a wounded beast. However, the magic-infused chains did not break; instead, they ate into the black knight’s armor.
Natsuki continued to chant her spell.
“My name is Void. With the Eternal Flame, I burn away thy Oathbreaker Curse. Shatter thy black-blooded yoke and return to thy proper form. Raise thy sword for she who is blessed by the spirits, the Blue Maiden!”
Natsuki channeled her magical energy through the chains; it visibly coursed through the black knight’s entire body like electric shocks. The armor encasing the Guardian’s form cracked all over; from beneath, a new suit of armor emerged.
Blue armor like the deep sea.
Kojou’s group instinctively understood.
The curse Aya Tokoyogi had cast upon the Guardian had been lifted.
“Yuuma!” Kojou called.
That was the most Natsuki could accomplish.
Only one more thing was needed to save Yuuma: the will to sever herself from her mother’s control. The will to live, even if Yuuma knew her own existence was without “meaning.”
Something in Yuuma’s hazy consciousness caused her to shout.
“Le Bleu!”
The now-blue knight howled. The ripped-up spiritual pathways had been restored; her connection to her Guardian had been reestablished.
Yuuma had regained her powers as a witch.
In turn, that meant Aya Tokoyogi had lost her own Guardian.
Blood dripped from the corner of Aya’s mouth as she panted and spat out, “So the doll that I created defies my rule…!”
It was the same thing she had herself done to Yuuma. Her spiritual pathways had been ripped apart from having her Guardian forcibly taken away.
As the fire-eyed witch fell to her knees, Natsuki looked down at her and calmly stated, “It’s over, Aya… Return to the prison barrier. Your dream is over.”
As she was the mastermind plotting the destruction of Itogami Island and thereby plunging its entire population into crisis, Aya’s crimes were most grave. The circumstances differed from when Eustach had illegally entered Itogami City and caused an incident. It was barely conceivable that the sentence awaiting her would be as lenient as the death penalty.
But if she was sealed inside the prison barrier, she would be beyond the reach of the Gigafloat Management Corporation. It was the best option Natsuki had for the sake of her old friend.
Even understanding how Natsuki felt, Aya slowly shook her head.
“Solitary confinement? To think that my turning on LCO’s sorcerers would come back to haunt me like this…”
Aya herself had already cut ties with the organization she had governed, the criminal organization LCO. She didn’t need them anymore, regardless of whether her experiment succeeded or failed.
But as a result, she’d lost a great many usable pawns. Aya had few options left.
But even though she was backed into a corner, Aya said with thorough amusement, “However, Fourth Primogenitor, surely you must be suffering, controlling other Beast Vassals while having summoned one powerful enough to support the entire island. How much longer before you lose control? If I can endure until then, I win. The effect is the same.”
Kojou silently grimaced. He didn’t care to admit it, but Aya was right. Just like his other Beast Vassals, Natra Cinereus, the Beast Vassal of mist, was frighteningly difficult to control. One slip and it’d completely run amok.
At the moment, he had it behaving while supporting the man-made island, but that wouldn’t last for long. If that Beast Vassal went berserk, no doubt Itogami Island would literally go up in a puff of smoke.
Yukina posed her spear and stated, “We shall defeat you before that happens.”
Aya narrowed her eyes and smiled.
“Can you do it, Sword Shaman?”
Her expression somehow seemed darker than before.
Realizing that something very wrong was happening to Aya, Natsuki became visibly shaken, her tiny body shuddering. She shouted up, her voice almost shrieking:
“Stop! Don’t do it, Aya!”
The next moment, Aya Tokoyogi’s entire body was enveloped by fire. It was not fire in a physical sense; these were ominous, black flames that seemed like they came from the pits of hell itself.
Aya’s body, completely enveloped in flame, was no longer visible from the outside. Only her fiery eyes were visible, blazing amid the darkness. The magical power trickling out from her became a frightening torrent, now rivaling that of Kojou’s own Beast Vassals.
“Wh-what the hell…is this?!” Kojou shouted.
Sayaka, the only one observing the battle with a cool head, was the first to identify the calamity. “She’s losing her soul!” she shouted. “It’s a witch’s final stage—her soul is consumed by her devil, while her flesh becomes that of a true demon—”
Natsuki bit her lip in despair.
“…At this point, no one can stop it. Aya is beyond saving…”
No one could appreciate the fear of losing one’s own soul more than a fellow witch.
Kojou nervously clenched his fists. “No way…”
His control over his Beast Vassals was at its limit. If they couldn’t stop Aya then and there, Itogami Island would be destroyed by Kojou’s own hand.
However, now that she’d become a full demon, Aya’s magical power was off the scale. How could he defeat a monster like that if he had such a hard time even keeping his Beast Vassals on a leash—?
As Kojou brooded over the matter, Yukina gripped his hand firmly.
“No, senpai. We will stop her. For Yuuma’s sake, too—”
Yukina’s eyes were filled with unshakable determination. She knew what she had to fight for.
They couldn’t abandon Aya with the injured Yuuma watching. They couldn’t let the mother perish before the eyes of the daughter who’d spent a lifetime waiting to meet her.
Yukina was functionally an orphan; she had not known her own mother. That was why she wanted to save Aya. It was thinking well suited to the considerate, deeply serious Yukina.
“Guess there’s no helpin’ it, then,” Kojou replied, gripping her hand back.
That was enough to tell each other how they felt: Whatever it takes.
“She herself stated,” began Yukina, “Snowdrift Wolf does not nullify magical energy, but rather, it returns the world to its proper state. If that is so—”
“Got it. I’m about at my limit, anyway.”
“Yes. It’s now or never!”
Yukina raised her spear and charged.
The being that was once Aya Tokoyogi traced symbols with her fire-enveloped fingertip. From these, she created amorphous monsters not known to them. They were probably creatures from the demonic realm.
The monsters rushed toward Yukina, as if to block the witch from her.
“C’mon over, Regulus Aurum—!”
It was a lightning-shrouded golden lion that blew the amorphous monsters away, the fifth Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor. Its lightning, infused with incredible demonic power, burned the creatures to ash. They’d blazed a trail for Yukina.
The girl danced through, her silver spear held high.
“I, Maiden of the Lion, Sword Shaman of the High God, beseech thee.”
As she made her solemn chant, her spear was enveloped by a white glow.
The witch losing her soul stopped moving, as if she feared that glow.
“O purifying light, O divine wolf of the snowdrift, by your steel divine will, strike down the devils before me!”
A single flash of the silver spear bisected the black flames that enveloped the witch.
Aya’s body, bathed in the magical light, lost her divine power. This also meant that the pact with her devil had been broken. Her corrupted witch’s body had been severed from the demonic realm.
From behind, they heard the lisping voice of a very young girl…
Silver chains shot out from thin air to pluck Aya’s body right out of the black flames.
Having lost their reason for manifesting in the world of men, the demonic flames twisted and burned savagely but for a single moment before puffing out and vanishing.
Then the ward enveloping the school and the effects of the Black Bible vanished.
Kojou and the others were instantly assaulted by a feeling akin to color returning to the world. Magic had returned to Itogami Island. With that, Kojou dismissed his mist Beast Vassal.
The silver fog slowly lifted, and the entirety of Itogami Island and the blue sea that surrounded it came into view.
Kojou groaned as the first dazzling rays of light poked over the horizon.
The rays of the morning sun shone upon their tired, beat-up bodies.
At some point, night had yielded to dawn.