Then the demon prince moved.

  Too fast. A blur of black and red and the sound of air begging for mercy. One moment the Black Grandmaster stood triumphant; the next, Tzaltheron’s claw backhanded him with the casual ease of a man swatting a fly.

  The impact was thunder.

  The Grandmaster vanished into a streak of shadow and velocity, crashing through two layers of yellow’s magic barrier before embedding in the stone beside White.

  I didn’t even have time to breathe before White’s fury hit the air like a hurricane. He snapped his fingers, and the dome filled with a shrieking gale that shredded the lingering steam into ribbons. “Form the ring!” he roared. Silver runes ignited around him, spinning faster and faster until they became a luminous barrier of slicing wind. “Contain it! We crush it here, or Altandai falls!”

  Purple was already on his mark. His staff hit the ground with a sound like a collapsing star. “Gravitas Convergence!”

  The ground buckled. Space itself folded inward, and the gravity spike hit so hard my knees buckled just from being near it. The air went thick, syrup-heavy, every breath a fight.

  Tzaltheron slowed… barely.

  Plates of his armor split with sharp, crystalline cracks, glowing red beneath, muscles bulging against the impossible weight.

  His growl rolled through the square, low and… pleased.

  Then Yellow joined the fun; his runes traced midair so fast they blurred into golden afterimages. “Solar Ward; release!”

  A sunburst erupted overhead, washing the dome in white-gold brilliance. Spears of pure radiance rained down, arcing toward Tzaltheron’s shoulders.

  I felt the timing in my bones.

  A sheet of ice snapped into being, redirecting the barrage, bending the light away. The spears carved across the demon’s right side instead of his heart, molten beams glancing harmlessly off the thickest plates.

  Tzaltheron slid right, his motion perfectly matched to mine; the flow exactly as Ul’vath Noerim demanded.

  He slowed, and I fell in beside him.

  Not behind; beside. The ground still trembled from his last strike, heat bleeding up through the soles of my heels. My lungs tasted of ash and frost at once. There was no time to think; the world had narrowed to a corridor of motion, a single beat repeating in my head.

  Flow. Cover. Strike. Flow again.

  He moved like a drunken German trying to remember how to dance.

  Each step cracked the stone, each exhale gusted molten air. I matched him; small, subtle movements inside his shadow, sliding into the openings his size couldn’t fill.

  He lunged; I pivoted.

  His arm swept wide; I locked my shield into the gap his motion left, ice reinforcing iron. Sparks rained around us where magic and metal scraped the air raw.

  White’s wind screamed back to life, slicing along the ground in silver ribbons. I felt them before I saw them; the air tightening, pressure biting at my skin. Tzaltheron didn’t dodge; he leaned in, claws ripping through the gusts as if they were nothing but silk. I threw my shield up behind him, catching the stray arcs that slipped past, each impact rattling down my arm like a drumbeat.

  Pain sparked nerves awake.

  Good.

  Pain meant alive.

  We surged forward again. Purple’s gravity pulse slammed down from above; the world went heavy, my knees buckled. Tzaltheron roared in delight. He drove his shoulder into the invisible pressure, muscles bunching under obsidian plates that cracked and sealed in the same breath. I mirrored him, pushing ice through my limbs, forcing my body to move even as the air turned solid around us.

  The technique demanded it; no hesitation, no mercy even for me. I was his shield; he was my sword.

  He took a hit to the chest, wind, gravity, light, who even knew anymore, and I was already there, ice flaring from my palms, sealing the fracture that spider-webbed across his torso. Steam hissed between us, full of the stink of burning stone.

  Then his laughter hit again. The sound made the grandmasters flinch. “Keep laughing,” I muttered through clenched teeth. “I’ve got your insurance policy right here.”

  He twisted, bringing both claws down in a cross-strike that split the square. Stone lifted like water, debris exploding outward in concentric rings. I rode the shockwave, knees bent, sliding along the frost trail my heels carved.

  The Black Grandmaster re-emerged from the wreckage, face half-hidden behind shadow, blood dark against his jaw. He vanished again, reappearing above Tzaltheron’s head, blade poised.

  “Not this time.” I snapped my wrist, ice snapping up in a spiral. The sword bit halfway through the coil before it locked solid; the recoil flung him sideways. Tzaltheron reached up lazily and backhanded him out of the sky. The impact sent the Grandmaster tumbling through what remained of the square.

  “No stopping,” I breathed.

  Tzaltheron didn’t answer. He was past words now; pure motion, pure hunger.

  He slammed forward, chains dragging through molten cobbles, the hooks whirling around him in glowing arcs. Each swing carved a trail of red light through the air. I stayed inside that storm, feet tracing the rhythm of his offense, every dodge timed to the sound of his chains.

  White and Purple regrouped, shoulder to shoulder. Wind howled; gravity folded. Their combined spell twisted the air into a spiral so dense it shimmered like glass. It tore chunks of reality loose—dust, shards, memories—anything not nailed down.

  We hit it head-on.

  The moment we crossed the threshold, every sound vanished. No wind, no roar, just pressure. My shield cracked, veins of frost crawling through the metal. I poured more mana in, teeth grinding.

  I’m now also a legendary NPC. If they can shrug this off, so can I!

  Tzaltheron’s claws sank into the vortex, raw power bleeding from his arms in crimson jets. Together we tore it apart, fragment by fragment, until it collapsed inward with a pop that rattled my teeth.

  The backlash threw both of us clear.

  I hit the ground, rolled, and came up already forming a new shield. The demon landed on all fours, chains gouging furrows in the ground, smoke hissing off his hide.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Yellow struck next; of course he did, opportunistic bastard. He hurled a spear of condensed sunlight the size of a ballista bolt. It aimed for the Tzaltheron side, but we were already doing technique nine, diverging paths, which meant it was my job to cover him.

  My mana surged down, and I forced a thick sheet of ice between the mean sunlight and the prince.

  Yuki’s sun magic is better anyway!

  On contact, it detonated in a burst that blinded half the square. The heat seared my lungs, but the ice held, and I forced heal on both of us. Ul’vath Noerim wasn’t pretty. It was survival math: one attacks, one defends, both destroy everything in the way.

  We pushed again.

  Tzaltheron’s laughter came ragged now, more snarl than sound. His body leaked red light from a dozen fractures, every movement spattering molten ichor across the ground.

  He didn’t slow. Neither would I.

  I followed his lead, matching every motion. When he pivoted, I stepped in. When he lunged, I slid under his arm to cover his flank.

  We moved like a single organism stitched together by all the stupid techniques. Purple tried to trap us again, slamming his staff down, but Tzaltheron caught the spell mid-manifest, literally grabbed the collapsing space in his claws and ripped it apart.

  The sky screamed.

  The shockwave blew my hair across my face; I spat grit and laughed breathlessly. “Good boy!”

  The demon’s head turned, eyes gleaming with a mix of amusement and madness. White was already preparing his next spell, runes coiling up his arms like serpents. I felt the mana build, a hurricane waiting for permission.

  “On my mark,” I whispered.

  Tzaltheron crouched. I mirrored him, planting my feet, sword angled low. The Grandmaster thrust both palms forward. The wind hit like a wall of razors.

  “Now!”

  We surged through it. I raised my shield, freezing every blade of air that touched it; the barrier shattered instantly but absorbed the first impact. Tzaltheron barreled through the rest, using my frost as footing, launching himself off it with a roar.

  He crashed into White like a meteor. Runes flared; bones cracked. The Grandmaster went tumbling backward, blood arcing across the stones.

  The ground trembled beneath us.

  Yellow was chanting again, a sun forming between his hands, growing brighter, brighter; until the light turned painful. I sprinted, leaping onto Tzaltheron’s back, using the chain stumps as handholds. From up here the battlefield was just light and ruin. “Left!” I shouted.

  He obeyed instantly, veering as the sun-blast tore a new crater where we’d been. I flung my arm out, weaving a lattice of ice in the afterglow.

  The residual heat turned it to steam, masking our movement.

  We emerged through the smoke behind Yellow. His eyes widened just before Tzaltheron’s claw closed around him. The crunch echoed like breaking stone.

  My mana was burning faster than it could regenerate, muscles trembling from constant reinforcement. But the rhythm wouldn’t stop; it couldn’t.

  Purple was the only one still standing at full strength.

  He saw what was coming and screamed a final incantation. Gravity convulsed outward, warping the horizon. I felt my feet drag backward, ribs compressing under the weight.

  Tzaltheron laughed through it. He reached into the distortion and dragged the Grandmaster out by sheer force, claws clutching air that had become solid.

  The man screamed, his runes flickering, his bones bending in impossible ways.

  I didn’t let myself think. I thrust my sword forward, frost exploding from the tip. The ice wrapped both of them; demon and man, locking the magic between them for one fatal second.

  “Now!” I yelled.

  Tzaltheron’s body ignited, every crack glowing molten red. He tightened his grip and crushed the space itself, shattering the frozen sphere in a burst of light and silence.

  When the glare faded, the square was unrecognizable. The ground looked like cooled glass, webbed with glowing veins. Only two figures remained standing amid the ruin.

  Him. Me.

  Steam rose from my armor; every breath felt like swallowing knives. My shield was half-melted, my sword a stub of ice.

  But I was still on my feet.

  I glanced at the grandmasters.

  They were dragging themselves upright, silhouettes framed by the ruin we’d made. Their robes were shredded, their faces gray with exhaustion and disbelief. The arrogance was gone — no more taunts, no smug speeches about destiny or purity. Just the raw, ugly truth of survival.

  Half-dead, the lot of them.

  Then again, so were we.

  My armor steamed in the cold, cracked along the joints; my lungs burned like I’d swallowed the sun. Tzaltheron crouched beside me, shoulders heaving, obsidian plates fractured and glowing red beneath the fissures. He looked… ecstatic. A beast on the brink, drunk on battle, on pain, on living. His four eyes flared brighter as he fixed them on the broken circle of grandmasters.

  He wasn’t done. Not even close.

  Then the notifications hit.

  Of course, Cloudy had to get his sparkly fingers in it. I swatted the notification away before he could finish, like batting a fly out of my face. “Yeah, thanks, rainy cloud,” I muttered. “Really needed that right now.”

  The message disintegrated into shards of light. My hand still tingled with the afterglow.

  I looked back at the grandmasters, the grin already pulling at my mouth. They were bleeding, staggering, but still standing. For now.

  Tzaltheron shifted beside me, the cracks along his chest glowing hotter, breath rolling out in metallic clouds. I could feel the hunger radiating from him through the bond; a wordless pulse of want, not for food, not even for victory.

  Fine by me. I wanted more too.

  I raised my sword, frost spiraling along its edge, and took a step forward. “Alright,” I said under my breath, smiling wide enough to taste the blood at the corner of my lip. “Let’s finish this.”

  And then, through the din of crackling mana and the hiss of cooling stone, a distant howl cut the air.

  A wolf’s howl.

  It echoed off the shattered square, rolling across the ruins like a call from another world.

  “Girly!” The voice was rough, familiar, full of amused outrage, like she’d just caught me stealing whiskey from the divine minibar.

  I blinked. The grin faltered just long enough to let surprise slip through, and I shivered. “…No way.” But the sound came again, closer this time, cutting through the hum of battle near the edge of the square.

  “Girly! You’d better still be alive!”