Rossi crouched a short distance away, his twin blades crossed before him, a faint hum of vibration still lingering along their edges.
He exhaled, his breath condensing into white mist in the cold air.
"If I'd noticed the way the blood was flowing even an instant later..."
That string of coordinated attacks would have been enough to send anyone into eternal darkness.
"You-"
Alucard withdrew his lance and turned.
His expression darkened, the words only just reaching his lips.
"You can already see fragments of the 'future'?"
It was Rossi who said it.
He slowly straightened, adjusting the angles of his twin blades to point their edges at the enemy ahead.
"You think I'll concede just like that?"
The lance spun half a turn in Alucard's palm. He grinned, a long-unfelt heat surging from deep within his chest.
"Keep fighting? No."
Rossi's fingers settled on his sword hilt, a soft metallic scrape coming from the mouth of the sheath.
"The next strike ends this."
His strength was nearly exhausted, and little Haki remained-it was time to end this drawn-out fight.
On the waters off Scrap Iron Island, the ship covered in black spikes still lingered.
People crowded the edge of the deck, every gaze riveted on the island enclosed by the crimson barrier, trying to distinguish three familiar silhouettes within that dense color.
They could see nothing.
With every passing minute, the breathing on deck grew heavier.
"This is bad."
Oni sat atop the cabin, her chin propped on her hand.
Her sigh mingled with the sea breeze.
"If both of them die here, and I go back alone..."
She left the sentence unfinished, but a chill had already crept up the back of her neck.
Other people's siblings might look after one another, but there was no such