The village of Oakwood was silent, save for the rhythmic, hungry crackle of the fires devouring what remained of the huts. The hundreds of mana arrows Virelle had summoned remained for a few heartbeats—pillars of cold, white light impaling the goblin corpses—before dissolving into a fine, glittering mist.

  Aiven stood in the center of the square, his right hand gripping his left forearm. The Armvil Mark 3 was humming, a low, grieving vibration that seemed to mirror the hollow ache in his chest. He looked at the bodies of Bran and his family, then at the ash-covered ground. He wanted to say something, to offer a prayer or a promise of justice, but the words felt like lead in his throat. The tragedy was too large, too sudden.

  "Master," Virelle said softly, her feet finally touching the soot-stained earth as she drifted toward him. Her expression was uncharacteristically somber.

  Aiven opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden, familiar chill lanced up his spine. Behind Virelle, the air itself seemed to bruise, turning a deep, sickly violet before tearing open into a jagged portal.

  "Virelle! Look out!" Aiven screamed.

  Six heavy, purple-glowing chains shot from the rift, their links clinking with the sound of grinding teeth. Virelle reacted with the grace of a falling star, spinning mid-air as the chains hissed past her, missing her by mere inches. The metal tethers slammed into the dirt, their jagged tips digging deep before a sharp tug from within the portal pulled them back into the darkness.

  From the rift stepped a figure Aiven had hoped never to see again. The vampire adjusted his high-collared coat, his blood-red pupils fixed on Aiven with a look of profound, twitchy frustration.

  "Hi there, filthy human," the vampire greeted, his voice dripping with venomous boredom.

  Virelle didn't waste a second. She didn't offer a greeting or a threat. She simply raised her hand, and a horizontal blade of pure, concentrated mana lanced through the air. It was a move of blinding speed—a mana slash that bypassed any defense the vampire might have prepared.

  His head was gone before he could finish a sneer, spinning into the shadows of a burning barn.

  For a second, there was hope. Then, a wet, squelching sound echoed through the square. From the stump of the vampire’s neck, a flurry of crimson sinew and bone sprouted, knitting together with unnatural speed. Within seconds, a new head had formed, the vampire’s hair perfectly in place.

  "How rude," he said, rolling his neck until it clicked.

  Rysa, standing guard over the two cowering village women, let out a choked gasp. "What the... I’ve never heard of regeneration like that. That shouldn't be possible even for a vampire."

  The vampire ignored her, his eyes narrowing at Virelle. "I underestimated you previously. Toyed with you far too much. It resulted in... complications. This time, I shall waste no time."

  He snapped his fingers.

  Two portals tore open simultaneously. One opened directly above Virelle, and the other aimed straight for Aiven’s chest. The purple chains erupted once more, a dozens-fold increase in volume, lashing out like hungry snakes.

  Virelle’s orb flared. With a deafening boom, she blasted away the chains targeting her, turning them into scrap metal before they could touch her skirts. In the same breath, she thrust her palm toward Aiven. A shimmering violet barrier materialized in front of him just as the chains struck, the impact creating a shower of sparks that illuminated the ruins.

  "I have figured out your trinkets, blood-drinker," Virelle said, her voice echoing with cold clarity. "The last time, your chains latched onto me first. They absorbed my mana, becoming an extension of my own power, which made them nearly impossible to destroy with a spell of equal strength. But now? Without a target to feed on, they are nothing but cold iron and cheap enchantments."

  The vampire’s expression soured. He clicked his tongue, his fingers twitching. "I truly hate quick-witted individuals. They make the harvest so... tiresome."

  "Who are you?!" Aiven shouted across the barrier, his mechanical arm whirring as he took a defensive stance. "Why are you doing this to these people?"

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  "There is no need for a mere human to know about anything," the vampire replied dismissively. He raised both arms, and the shadows around him began to writhe. Hundreds of chains materialized, not just focusing on Virelle, but sweeping across the entire group in a massive, crushing wave.

  Before the chains could make contact, Virelle’s mana surged into a blinding lavender flash. Aiven felt a sharp tug at his navel, the world blurring as the heat of the burning village was replaced by the cool, damp scent of pine.

  Aiven stumbled onto the solid ground of the forest, the two village women collapsing beside him. Rysa was already on her feet, scanning the perimeter. "W-what happened? Did we teleport?”

  Aiven spun around, the had indeed teleported away, but he couldn’t find Virelle.

  The forest clearing was suffocatingly quiet. The damp scent of pine and wet earth should have been a relief after the acrid smoke of Oakwood, but to Aiven, it felt like a vacuum.

  He scrambled to his feet, his right hand gripping the bark of a cedar tree so hard his knuckles turned white. "We have to go back," he rasped, his voice cracking. "Rysa, she’s back there alone with that... that thing. The chains, the regeneration, I'm not sure she can take him down."

  Rysa moved faster than he expected. She stepped into his path, her bandaged hand pressing firmly against his chest. Not a blow, but an anchor.

  "Aiven, stop," she said, her green eyes hard and steady. "Look at me. Did you see what happened back there? That vampire... he’s playing a different game than us. He’s not a D-rank monster. He’s something else entirely."

  "Exactly!" Aiven shouted, his mechanical arm whirring in a panicked, erratic rhythm. The white light of the mana stone flickered like a dying candle. "That’s why I can’t leave her! She stayed behind because of me!"

  "She stayed behind because she’s the only one who stands a chance," Rysa countered, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly pragmatic tone she used when a quest went south. "She teleported us away because we are liabilities.”

  Aiven’s strength left him all at once. His hand slid off the tree, and he sank onto a mossy log, his head dropping into his hands.

  Liability. The word tasted like copper in his mouth.

  He looked down at the Armvil Mark 3. The brass was scuffed from the cave floor, and the white light was dimming. He had thought that with Marnie’s engineering, he could finally stop being the one who needed saving. He could be the hero Lyra thought he was.

  But the world was imbalanced. For every step he took forward, the shadows seemed to grow miles taller.

  He remembered the look on Virelle’s face back in the thickets—not when she was fighting, but the moment after he had lost his arm to the four-armed kobold. She had looked at him with a gaze so hollow, so filled with a rare, shattering helplessness, that it had hurt worse than the injury itself. She was a goddess of magic, a theatrical nuke, and yet she had been forced to watch him break.

  He was tired of that look. He was tired of being the anchor that kept her from flying.

  "You’re right," Aiven whispered into the silence of the woods. He looked at the two village women, who were huddled together a few feet away, weeping softly. "If I go back, I’m just giving that vampire another target to chain."

  Rysa exhaled, the tension leaving her shoulders as she sat on the dirt across from him. She began to re-wrap a loose bandage on her knuckles, her movements methodical and calm. "It’s a bitter pill. But sometimes the best way to help is to stay out of the way of the person swinging the hammer."

  "I just... I thought I was getting better," Aiven said, his mechanical fingers twitching.

  "You are better," Rysa said without looking up. "The goblin you slammed in the cave? An F-rank with a sword would have been dead in ten seconds. You’re moving up. But the world doesn't wait for us to catch up, Aiven. It just keeps getting weirder."

  Aiven leaned back against the tree, staring up at the canopy. The worry for Virelle was a physical weight in his stomach, a cold knot that wouldn't loosen.

  "We wait here," Aiven said, his voice hollow. "But Rysa... if she isn't back by the next hour, I don't care about the plan. I'm going back to that village."

  Rysa paused her wrapping, looking at the determined, miserable look on his face. She gave a small, dry nod. "Fair enough.”

  Aiven sat in the shadows of the pine trees, the rhythmic hum of the Mark 3 the only thing keeping him from disappearing into his own fear.

  Back in the ruined village, the vampire stared at the spot where the humans had vanished. He let out a long, frustrated hiss, but his red eyes narrowed as he realized the elven mage hadn't left with them. She remained suspended in the air, her prismatic orb glowing with a light that pushed back the smoke of the fires.

  “A nuisance,” the vampire muttered, his fingers twitching toward the chains. “But at least the variables are gone.”

  Virelle looked down at him, her lips curling into a slow, contemptuous smile. She didn’t spare the forest a glance—her full attention was reserved for the creature foolish enough to offend her Master.

  “You speak as though victory is still within your grasp,” she said. Her voice rolled across the shattered ruins like distant thunder. “How fortunate for me… there is no longer any need to hold back.”

  Power stirred around her, wild and unrestrained.

  “I may now wreak havoc freely,” she finished, eyes blazing as she leaned in just enough for him to understand.

  “Any last words, mosquito?”