Shadow's Roses

“So do you think Mahana is Pyara or nah?”

The question startles the whole Heart Melody team. Well, it's actually a good one to be fair. They are stuck outside the Arena of Synchrony until Mahana passes her trials. None of the Lovely Hearts quite knew what Mahana was going through, but Pyara had done okay with hers in the past so they weren't particularly concerned.

“I think she is. When Aran and me tried to prank her with an old classic, not only did she avoid it, she managed to get Oktusha caught up instead.”

“Oh that was you?” “Noted.”

Oktusha and Omba's nearly simultaneous responses send a cold bead of sweat down Zafara's back. Possibly not the best thing to admit in front of the twins of revenge. Aran speaks up.

“I don't think I agree. She also doesn't know some basic things that not only Pyara knew, but everyone knows. Like, she didn't know what the Five Open Voices were, let alone what Lumenai is.”

“Yeah and it's not like it was a very good prank. I don't think anyone would fall for it.”

“! Ami, are you just gonna sit there and let Omba badmouth our pranking skills?”

“Our? She's right. That was one of yours and it kinda sucked. If I had made it she never would have seen it coming.”

Zafara looks betrayed and the other girls laugh. Well, three girls laugh. The last girl remains silent. Kali is the only one who remains in her transformed state. While the rest of the team is seeing this as a bit of a break from the unending hatreds of demonic foes, Kali remains alert. No one blames her. Watching your sister die can do that to you.

“I'm really not sure. Sometimes it seems like she knows things that only Pyara should know. And sometimes it seems like she doesn't know the most basic things about how the world works. What about you, Oktusha?”

“Absolutely yes. I mean, would discord have really taught us teleport and then turned around and offed the leader?”

Omba's face remains composed but she absolutely screaming on the inside. Sometimes she thinks she got her twin's brains in addition to her own.

Do you not see Kali and how stiff she is now?

This isn't the first time Omba wished her sister had even just a little common sense.

“Hey, Heart Seria, what do you think?”

Okay, at this point I'll settle for a filter. Or better yet, a muzzle.

The internal screaming evolved into outright panic. Even Aran and Zafara are looking vaguely uncomfortable with drawing attention to Kali's dead(?) sister.

Kali, or rather Heart Seria, doesn't break her focused observation of opaque energy dome that held the team out of the Arena of Synchrony where Mahana is stuck fighting for her life. The silence has long since stretched past awkward.

“I-“

Whatever Kali was going to say is interrupted by the shuttering of the energy dome. A loud Krakoom of thunder followed by the heavy thud of a body impacting the dome had all the girls back on their feet and at high alert. This is likely the reason none of the team were injured by the colossal body of a demon that came crashing through the barrier almost immediately afterwards. Everyone froze. Five sets of lock with the burning emerald lime eyes of their leader. Heart Symphony's face is impassive. She's not worried. Nor is she particularly perturbed. She looks like she's dealing with a marginally unpleasant task and is methodically working down the list of tasks to accomplish. No one moves to cross the breach in the dome. A fortuitous choice as the opened hole suddenly snaps closed with a violence that would have easily severed anything that happened to have been in the way at the moment.

Attention returns to the corpse of the expelled demon. Its skin is a pinkish hue and its horns are truly ornate and elaborate. The fact that it hasn't even begun to desync is evidence of its insane magical potential. Even the Demon Generals began to dissolute in a few seconds. And yet…

“Verismo?”

Omba already knows what Kali is asking far and proceeds to scan the monster. She hums under her breath to give the spell just a little more potency. The results draw her up short.

“Orichalcum.”

That's a surprise. Orichalcum is greater level than what the team has faced thus far but considering the ease with which Mahana had handled this General, everyone is confident they could as a group handle at least as much.

“Emperor.”

One word to freeze the entire team where they stand. The team as a whole had never even faced a Demon Emperor and yet here is Mahana, not only winning, but tossing them through impenetrable barrier with overwhelming force.

“She's not Pyara. That's not my sister.”

Kali's quiet voice breaks the quiet.

“Yeah, okay. Pyara was never that strong.”

Omba finally facepalms. Maybe it would be best to just duck tape Oktusha's mouth shut. Ami's watch beeps.

“Okay ladies. Barrier down in 30 seconds.”

Pyara had explained to them the nature of her trial to obtain Coralas. The first thing she was told was that she would need to survive 30 minutes against a hatred of demons constantly increasing in power and potency. The last ten seconds of said trial would turn the barrier transparent, allowing the rest of the team to see their leader and prepare to go help them when the barrier came down fully. The team stood by at the ready, preparing to render whatever aid might be needed. Little did they expect to one most needing aid to be the Demon.

Oh. So not only had Mahana already been found worthy of her Ascension Artifact Blade before the trial was complete, she had already racked up enough khorian essence from slain demon souls to access her final awakening.

The barrier's shift to transparency is less of a window and more of a front-row seat to a localized sun. Inside, the air is a golden soup of jagged static and screaming light. Nobody moves. They can't. The sheer density of the aura radiating from their leader acts like a physical wall, pinning them in place with a weight that feels like divine judgment.

Mahana isn't fighting like herself. The fluid, calculated grace of her previous form has been replaced by a terrifying, metronomic finality. She doesn't dodge the beams of searing radiance that the two metallic giants hurl at her; she simply passes through them. Every time a strike that should vaporize a mountain reaches her, it hits a layered field of magical density and vanishes into nothingness.

Kali's hands strain, her grip on her own weapon tightening until her muscles cord with a visible, trembling pressure as she watches on. Mahana's weapon vibrates with a violent, jagged frequency. She is trying to swing it in massive, high-velocity arcs, but the sword looks like it's resisting. It somehow looks frustrated in her hands, its edges flickering as if it wants to attack from a thousand different directions at once.

The first demon, a towering entity forged of a red-gold metal that melts the earth beneath its feet, lunges with a fist like a molten hammer. She doesn't parry. She meets the blow with a raw, explosive detonation that levels the ground for fifty yards in every direction. The sound isn't a clash; it's a deafening, terminal peak that refuses to resolve into silence.

She's enjoying this.

Kali doesn't look away from Mahana's face at the realization. There is no mercy there. No fear. Just a dark, overwhelming wrath that seems to savor the way the demons' metallic bodies groan and buckled under her pressure. She isn't just winning; she is methodically dismantling them, her fury manifesting as a physical weight that makes even her allies feel like they are suffocating.

Ten seconds have passed since the barrier went transparent and it dissolves into nothingness. The heat from the red-gold giants rolls over the team like a physical wave, but it is instantly eclipsed by the pressurized chill of their leader's aura. Heart Melody is entirely frozen in place.

Mahana lunges, her movement no longer a run but a violent propulsion burst that cracks the atmosphere. She grips the hilt of her sword with both hands and drives a lightning-augmented thrust toward the lead demon's chest. The Emperor raises a burning limb to intercept, its red-gold surface glowing with the intensity of a collapsing star.

The collision never happens. As the tip of the blade nears the demon's guard, the artifact finally rebels against her restrictive grip. The solid metal shatters, not into shards, but into a constellation of manifested strike vectors that phase through the demon's defense. Kali watches, paralyzed, as the weapon seems to attack from every direction simultaneously, appearing as a blur of violent, unpredictable angles.

Mahana's eyes widen, a flicker of realization crossing her face as she instinctively surrenders to the weapon's true nature. She doesn't slow down. Instead, she unleashes a sustained barrage of magical output, effortlessly chaining explosive waves and concussive detonations that erupt from her skin. The first demon doesn't just fall; its legendary metallic frame is erased, ground into dust by the unrelenting offensive pressure.

The second demon rebels against its nature and attempts to retreat, but there is no gap in the rhythm, no moment for the defensive attention to lapse. She moves through the air in a directional surge of raw magical detonation, closing the distance instantly. The fragmented blade vectors materialize at the precise moment the demon tries to raise its guard, intercepting and shattering its limbs mid-assault.

The battlefield falls into a deafening, unresolved silence. The two emperors are gone, leaving only cooling slag and a landscape reshaped by catastrophic resolution. She stands at the center of the crater, the fragments of her weapon hovering around her like a crown of thorns, her gaze still burning with a divine, terrifying wrath.

Only five seconds have passed between barrier fall and termination.

The burning in her chest is what brings Kali back to herself. She wasn't breathing. She looks to the others, sensing the same breathless shock in them. Mahana coalesces her fragmented blade and then drops once, twice, thrice in power. Her final form to her ascendant form, her ascendant form to her magical form, her magical form to just a normal girl. The team follows suit.

“I'm guessing from your expressions that Pyara did this first.”

Mahana's tone is slightly bitter. The team has grown past calling her Pyara and today's display puts rest to any ideas of them being the same person. The team catches up. Between Aran's effort and Oktusha's obnoxious goofs, morale eventually settles back to normal.

❖⟐❖⟐❖⟐❖

dissonant discord emerges from her hiding spot. Though her question about Mahana and Pyara didn't quite have the undermining effect she was hoping for, the team's reaction to Mahana in the arena was more than enough for her. Perhaps she didn't need to artificially introduce tension.

There's a good chance the Lovely Hearts will do that all by themselves.