Story:

Bel's left hand pointed backward—one elegant, unhurried gesture toward the shadow rift direction —and Black Rose read it instantly: retreat.

His other hand had already moved, more subtly—flexing its pale fingers, calling back the dark cores of Yoshiro and Miu.

Two motes of guttering hell-light tore free of the fallen bodies across the square—one from a skull cracked by gunshot, one from a broken kunoichi coughing blood into the rubble—and streaked into his palm, where he closed his fingers over them like a merchant pocketing coin.

Dead, defeated—but salvageable. Summonable again, in a friendlier hell, when the flesh was rebuilt and the shame worn off.

"MY LORD!" Black Rose cried, falling back to his side, whip coiling.

"Home, my Rose," Bel said pleasantly, over the roar of Violet Witch's incoming storm. "We've had our dinner."

They turned as one and unleashed the covering fire: Black Rose's black rose petals exploding outward in a wide-spreading storm of razor blossoms, Bel's blood spears raining behind them in crimson volleys.

They formed a wall of suppressing death thrown between themselves and every pursuing enemy, forcing Violet to raise shields, Kicho to dance behind her blade, Nobunaga to hack the petals out of the air mid-charge, the twins to cover the fallen.

And through the storm of thorns and blood—the two dark lords stepped and fled, the portal snapping shut behind their heels like a mouth closing.

In a blink of eyes, the dark lords and demons devastating the Yamato Shrine were gone.

The square fell silent except for the settling of rubble, the crackle of fires, and the moaning of the wounded under the still-drowned red sky.

Nobunaga stood amid the drifting petals, Heshikiri lowered, scowling at the empty air where the portal had closed.

"...Cowards," he said flatly. "They always run once the arithmetic turns. I've sieged men like them."