The seal broke.

The force snapped back into him and threw him sideways.

He hit the concrete hard on his shoulder, rolled, and went still for a second.

His reserves had dropped badly just from holding it those few seconds.

His hands were trembling.

He pushed himself to his feet.

She was already there.

Her hand closed around his throat.

She lifted him onto his toes, choking and looked at him with Hana’s wide dark eyes.

Up close he could see the dark energy running under her skin.

In her veins.

"Who are you," it said.

Two voices.

Hana’s, and underneath it a deep hoarse rasp that didn’t belong anywhere near her.

"Nobody," Kaito said. He was surprised how steady that came out.

She threw him.

He hit the concrete.

The blasts and the seal had cost him more than he could afford.

This ghost had more raw power than he had expected.

He needed to think. He needed to do it fast. And he needed to stop looking at her face while he did it.

She was walking toward him again.

The dark energy around her had thickened and he could feel his spiritual energy being pulled from him the closer she got.

Not his controlled reserves, but the spiritual energy he couldn’t keep contained, the one that leaked out of him because he hadn’t trained in weeks.

The ghost was feeding on it. Every second she was near him it was taking what he couldn’t hold in.

He stepped back hard, putting distance between them, and dropped to the ground and drew fast — a burst seal, both hands, three of them spread across the path between them, designed to detonate outward when something with dark energy crossed them.

She walked through all three.

They detonated.

The bursts hit her and the dark energy flared and scattered and reformed and she kept walking without breaking stride.

Fine.

He needed distance.

He needed time.

He needed to figure out how to end this without the forced banishment, the Reizen technique he had only ever read about, never used, the one that would exorcise the ghost completely and kill Hana along with it.

She lunged.

He threw himself sideways.

She caught his arm anyway, spun him, and drove him into the low parapet at the edge of the roof.

His spine slammed into concrete.

For a second, the street below snapped into focus, six floors down.

Her hands closed on his collar.

"You cannot stop this," it said. Both voices at once. "You are weak."

The words came out of Hana’s mouth.

That hit harder than the wall.

Even under the rasp, it was still hers.

And the rest of it was true.

He was outmatched.

His energy was already down to a fourth

He had one idea left.

He stopped holding himself up.

His knees buckled and he dropped straight down, slipping out of her grip, and hit the concrete on his side.

He lay still.

He slowed his breathing down.

He closed his eyes most of the way.

He waited.

Her feet stopped beside his head.

He could feel the dark energy pressing down from above, the weight of her standing over him, the proximity drain pulling at what little he had left.

Don’t move.

The feet didn’t move.

Then she crouched.

Her hand reached toward his face.

Immediately. He grabbed both her ankles and poured everything he had left into his palms at once.

The chains came out thick and fast, wrapping from ankle to knee to waist, layer over layer, each one locking before the next began.

He fed them continuously, both hands gripping her ankles.

"ENOUGH—"

Just the rasp now.

No Hana underneath it.

Hana’s body thrashed against the chains, her back arching off the concrete, her arms pulling.

The dark energy spiked and hit his spiritual energy hard .

His vision went grey and he held on. He gritted his teeth and held on.

The ghost pulled against the chains with everything it had.

He pushed back with everything he didn’t.

His arms were shaking.

His reserves were almost gone.

But the ghost was tiring.

He could feel it.

The resistance had stopped growing.

Hours of possession had cost it.

The chains had cost it.

It was still stronger than him but the gap was closing.

Now.

He released his right ankle grip for one second, drove his hand into the concrete, and drew four fast strokes — the extraction seal.

The chains flickered.

The ghost lunged against them.

He grabbed her ankle again before they could snap.

The seal connected.

He poured everything he had left into it and pulled.

The ghost screamed.

The chains flared white.

The dark energy tore out of Hana in one violent separation.

Hana’s body dropped.

She hit the concrete on her side and lay still.

Unconscious. Breathing.

The ghost hung above her in the chains. Dark. Dense. The shape of a man, uncertain at the edges, pulling against the chains with what was left of it. The chains held.

Kaito sat back on his heels and looked at his hands.

His jaw ached. His ribs ached. His arms were still shaking.

He looked up at the ghost.

It looked back at him.

Without a host it was vulnerable and the exorcism at this stage was clean.

"Now you are the weak one.," Kaito smirked, dropped to one knee and pressed his palm to the concrete and drew.

The cleanse seal spread outward from his hand, the lines burning bright as he drew each stroke, brighter than anything he had drawn tonight, the seal pulling the last dregs of what he had into it.

Four strokes. Five.

The roof lit faintly blue around him.

"STOP—"

The ghost’s voice.

A man’s hoarse rasp. It pulled against the chains, hard, desperate.

"STOP. Please."

Kaito kept drawing.

"Please." The chains held it in place above the seal. Its form shifted and contracted. "Please don’t. Please. I am begging you."

Kaito’s hand slowed slightly on the sixth stroke.

"I finally had a chance. Please!!!"

He kept drawing. Seventh stroke.

"You don’t understand." The voice dropped. Quieter. Something raw in it.

"She deserves this. That girl deserves what I came here to do. Ghosts come back for revenge. You know that. You know what we are. I came back for mine."

Kaito’s jaw tightened.

He raised his palm to begin the final stroke.

"She is a monster," the ghost said.

Kaito’s hand stopped.

The seal glowed beneath him, one stroke from completion, the blue light waiting.

He looked up at the ghost in the chains.

It looked back at him.

The roof was silent.