Dane left the cavern with a faint smile. He felt accomplished; he had done what he had set out to do and still had two weeks to spare.

  Zeph let out a bark of laughter that carried over the blackened stone. His broad chest heaved, sweat shining under the dim glow, but his grin was bright enough to cut through the haze. He clasped Dane's shoulder with his clawed hand, shaking him so hard that Dane nearly lost his balance.

  "By the flames of the Ancestors, you did it!" Zeph's voice was raw, trembling between disbelief and pride. "You really did it, brother. I knew I smelled the wind on you, but this… this is different. You've climbed higher than even Draka."

  "What do you mean, higher than Draka?" Dane asked in confusion.

  "You didn't just get the treasure; they gave you a boon. That hasn't happened since my Grandfather."

  Dane's faint smile broadened into a wide grin that cracked his dry lips.

  Mummers cut through the sense of accomplishment. Low, simmering, dozens of voices stirring at once. The priests who had lined the walls of the cavern began to shift. Their gold and crimson robes whispered as they turned toward him, their faces pale in the volcanic glow.

  "Blasphemer…" one hissed. "Thief of the gods," spat another.

  Zeph stiffened beside him, hand dropping from his shoulder. His grin faltered, confusion knitting his brow.

  "What are you saying?" Zeph demanded, raising his voice at the cult. "You saw him! He endured the trial. He earned the feather!"

  The head priest stepped forward, his robes thicker, his golden collar gleaming with etched symbols of fire and rebirth. His eyes burned with a fanatic's certainty.

  "No," he said, his voice sharp as a blade. "The trial was not his to claim. He defiled it. The gods test their chosen. This one has stolen their judgment. He is not a victor. He is a heretic. I sense no greater understanding of the cycle in you. Whatever tricks you used to pass will not work on me."

  Dane tightened his grip on the Executioner Axe. His shoulders rolled back, the weight familiar, grounding him. It was never that simple. The Phoenix had tested him and found him worthy. These men hadn't been there, so why did they have such strong views? Did the Phoenix set him up?

  The priests' chanting swelled like a tide. Dozens of voices, rising, their hands lifted in unison as crimson fire bloomed in their palms.

  Zeph drew his blade in one smooth motion, his voice rising above the roar. "Then let the gods judge us in steel and blood."

  The first wave hit them like a storm. Dane met it head-on.

  His Executioner's Axe carved through the first priest with a crunch of bone, its blade glowing orange as steel met conjured flame. He flowed with the momentum, pivoting on his heel as the haft spun in his grip. Another priest lunged, and Dane's axe split his staff in two, the wood igniting from the near molten steel before the man's body joined it on the stone.

  The rhythm came to him quickly: strike, pivot, follow-through. The weapon was heavy, but in his hands it moved like a rapier, each swing feeding the next. He chained the movements into a relentless dance, and each foe was cut down savagely.

  Lyra stumbled near the cavern's edge, her bow trembling in her hands. She loosed an arrow that glanced harmlessly off a shield of flame, her eyes wide with panic. She was only level eighteen, her shots barely scratching the enemies before her. A priest broke through, lunging toward her with fire wreathing his staff.

  Dane snarled, slamming the axe into the stone to halt his momentum before he changed direction and lunged toward them. The blade caught the priest in the ribs, ripping through cloth and flesh. Dane planted his boot against the corpse to wrench the axe free.

  "You're not touching her," he growled.

  The chanting thickened, the air alive with heat and smoke. The cult's head priest raised his staff, the gold band at its tip flashing. Fire ignited in the corpses littering the floor. One by one, the fallen priests lurched to their feet, wounds knitting, eyes hollow and blazing with unnatural light.

  Zeph cursed, hacking down one of the reanimated priests. "They're using resurrection magic!"

  Dane's Judgment Strike refused to activate. These men believed the nonsense that they recited utterly. To them, he was the monster. Perhaps they were right; he killed them all again.

  The realization left Dane somber. His axe felt slower with every swing, each blow catching against shields and staffs before breaking through. Sweat stung his eyes, his lungs burning from the exertion. He needed to conserve stamina. The large axe was taking a toll on his resource pool.

  The head priest tried to bring the others back to life once more, but his magic crackled, and the bodies refused to get back up. With no other option, he drew his ceremonial knife from its sheath. For being a mage, he was surprisingly agile, the dagger in his hand looking more like an assassin's blade than a sacrificial knife.

  He slipped through the chaos like a blade through water, his blade carving a streak of flame. Zeph turned too late, and the weapon drove into his side, piercing through the stolen armor.

  Zeph screeched out in pain, sounding more eagle than man. He staggered, his sword clattering to the ground as blood sprayed out of the hole in the armor. He collapsed, breath ragged, and his feathers lying flat.

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  "Zeph!" Dane's voice cracked with fury.

  The priest smirked, wiping his bloody knife and putting it back in his scabbard. He picked up a charred staff that was cut in two from the ground. "The gods reclaim what is theirs."

  Something in Dane snapped.

  He surged forward, axe in hand, the weight dragged him down, but he refused to stop. The cult leader was fast, too fast. Each strike missed by inches, the priest moved like a wildfire.

  The axe slipped in Dane's sweaty hands; it was too heavy. Dane's chest heaved, every muscle screaming. He couldn't match this speed, not with brute strength.

  The clang of metal rang across the cavern, silencing even the priests for a heartbeat.

  Dane reached for his belt, drawing his dagger. He had changed the Primal style to use Temporal flow. He didn't need a smooth wave right now. No, what he needed was a crashing Typhoon. His hand shook with the dagger in it, the old instincts rising from his core.

  The world narrowed. His breath slowed. His vision sharpened.

  The cult leader lunged again, fire flashing. This time, Dane slipped past it with the grace of a predator, the dagger carving a clean line across the man's arm. He pivoted low, stabbing up into his ribs before rolling clear.

  It was the old style, like the feral rhythm of the hunt. Fast. Brutal. Unrelenting. The beast inside him howled, clawing at his ribs, begging to be let loose. His skin blistered with heat as horns split through flesh, jagged and raw. For a heartbeat, the monster surged forward. Then Dane wrenched it back, teeth clenched, sweat burning his eyes. He chained the beast, keeping its power in check and preventing it from taking over.

  They clashed again and again, blades sparking against the hardened sticks, strikes too fast for the eye to follow. Blood spattered the volcanic stone, each man collecting wounds, neither giving ground.

  Their weapons began to falter. Dane's battered dagger snapped in half, the broken blade clattering to the floor. The priest's staffs splintered under the relentless assault, leaving only jagged fragments of wood.

  The duel devolved into brutality. Dane was out of stamina, and he had started burning into his HP to sustain his movements.

  Dane drove his shoulder into the priest's chest, knocking them both to the ground. They crashed into the stones. Dane reacted just a second faster and took full mount. He started to rain down blows. Dane's knuckles split against bone. The priest's face was now fully uncovered. The priest was a bird beastman just like Zeph. The resembalance made him angrier, and he didn't let up. The priest clawed at his face with his talons.

  Every strike drained Dane further. His body screamed, vision blurring, muscles failing.

  The priest laughed through broken teeth, spitting blood. "You'll never...be good enough... for the gifts you've stolen."

  Dane roared, slamming his fist into the man's face again and again until the laughter stopped. Until the priest's body went slack beneath him.

  Breathing ragged, Dane raised his fist one last time...then stopped.

  He lowered it slowly, his chest heaving. He would not grant this zealot the release of death.

  Instead, he shoved the broken man aside, dragging himself upright. His gaze snapped to Zeph's pale form, blood pooling beneath him.

  Dane staggered forward, dropping to his knees beside him. Lyra rushed to his side, her small hands shaking as she pressed rags to the wound.

  "Help me lift him," Dane rasped, his voice more growl than words.

  Together, they heaved Zeph's body up. Dane slung the larger man over his back, his legs nearly buckling beneath the weight. He wished his friend had been conscious so that he could lighten up his bone density.

  The holy site now reeked of blood and sulfur, the priest groaning in the shadows. It was a massacre; all but one of the priest lay dead, their blood soaking into the basalt.

  All that mattered now was getting Zeph out alive.

  The weight on Dane's back was crushing. Zeph was a mountain of an eagle, but unconscious, bleeding, and limp; it felt as though the earth itself had been draped across Dane's shoulders. Each step was fire in his thighs, a lance through his spine. His lungs tore themselves apart for air, but still he stumbled forward.

  Lyra was at his side, her hand pressed against Zeph's wound, her face streaked with blood and soot. She whispered things Dane couldn't hear, words meant for herself, or the gods, or maybe for Zeph. He couldn't tell anymore.

  The altar site opened into the jagged slopes of the volcano, the sky above a smothered crimson, with clouds of ash glowing faintly in the light of the molten lava. Dane's vision swam. He blinked once, and the volcano was gone.

  He saw his sister.

  Small, light brown hair tied back the way she always wore it when she meant business. She was standing at the edge of the communal zone, holding the broken rapier in her hand and a wooden practice sword at her side. Her eyes were fierce. She was preparing for her proving.

  "Don't look at me like that," she said, her voice clear despite the haze. "I don't need you anymore. You were supposed to save me, but you never came back."

  Dane opened his mouth, but the words came out wrong, slurred. “You’re… not ready…”

  Her gaze sharpened, and she set her jaw in that stubborn way he remembered too well. "Neither were you."

  The ground shifted beneath him. Heat flared against his cheek. He blinked again.

  A volcanic spider was on them.

  It lunged from the slope above, a twisted creature of ash and sinew, its fanged mouth stretched wide. Lyra screamed, fumbling with her bow. Dane had no axe, no dagger, nothing but Zeph's weight crushing him.

  His hand scrabbled against the ground, closing on a jagged piece of obsidian. He hurled it with a feral snarl, every muscle tearing with the effort. The glass struck the beast's skull with a wet crack.

  The creature collapsed in a heap, twitching once before going still.

  Warmth flooded Dane's body, a surge of EXP.

  He staggered on, teeth clenched.

  He blinked, and the village was around him.

  Not the village they were traveling to, but home on the first floor of his barony. The way it had been before the tower rose, before the world broke. The air was heavy with smoke from cooking fires, children's laughter echoing in the streets. And he saw the house that he and Amelia built together.

  Light spilled from the windows. Inside, Amelia sat alone, her shoulders trembling, hands clenched around a crumpled note. Dane's note. The one he had left when he set out. Her face was streaked with tears, her lips moving in soundless words he could not hear.

  Just outside her door, Jason stood like a sentinel, arms folded, back straight as a pike. His face was stone, but his eyes never left, scanning for threats. He was a wall, a protector, a man who would not move until death pried him away.

  Dane reached out, wanting to knock on the door, to tell her he was there, that he hadn't left her behind. But his hand passed through the wood, through the wall, through the image.

  The dream dissolved.

  Zeph groaned on his back, a wet sound, rattling and weak. Dane jolted back to himself, feet dragging across loose stone. Lyra's hand was still pressing on Zeph's wound, her face pale with effort.

  "Stay awake," she begged, though whether she meant Zeph or Dane, he couldn't tell.

  Dane's legs buckled. His vision went black.

  And then he was a boy again.

  The proving fires burned in front of him, the elders watching, his father's face nowhere in the crowd, but he still searched for it like he was at a 5 am wrestling tournament. He stood with nothing but a hatchet in his hand, then the scene shifted, and he was back in the woods when the cataclysm first happened, the forest pressing in close around him.

  "You're not strong enough," someone whispered. "You'll die like the rest."

  He gripped the hatchet hard until his knuckles re-split. "Then I'll die standing."

  A shadow moved through the trees.

  "Dane!" Lyra's voice dragged him back.

  The shadow was real; it was a forest wolf, gaunt and twisted, slipping from a bush, its eyes glowed with hunger. Lyra tried to notch an arrow, but her hands shook too violently.

  Dane roared and drove forward, Zeph's body nearly pulling him down. His shoulder smashed into the beast, his fist hammering into its jaw. Teeth tore across his arm, but he wrenched the wolf's head back and slammed it into the rocks until bone cracked.

  Blood sprayed across his chest. The wolf went still. Dane staggered upright, chest heaving, every nerve aflame.

  He was losing pieces of himself with every step.

  The world swirled again.

  He stood in a room he recognized but couldn't place. A long table. Broken dishes. The faint smell of apples. His mother was there, younger than he remembered, her hair pulled back the way she would finally do something in the house. She looked at him the way only she could, with both disappointment and pride, as though she had expected nothing from him but still wanted everything.

  "You're carrying too much," she whispered. "Even the strongest back will break."

  "I can't stop," Dane said, though his lips barely moved. "Not yet."

  She reached for him, but her hand was smoke. He staggered through it.

  The gates of the village loomed ahead.

  He didn't remember walking there. He only had fragments of the trip. When he recalled the pieces he had, it was as if he was watching someone else pilot his body. He was stumbling toward the wooden palisade, Zeph's dead weight dragging him down. The guards atop the wall shouted, voices muffled through the haze.

  "Open the gate! Open it, now!"

  The world tilted. Dane collapsed, his knees slamming into dirt, and Zeph rolled from his back.

  Figures loomed over him, blurred silhouettes shouting words he couldn't make out. He felt hands on his arms, his chest, his face. He was being lifted, carried.

  Through the blur, his sight caught on one thing.

  A building, its crest painted clearly against the wall, a phoenix, with wings spread, rising from flame. Zeph was being carried toward it, blood trailing behind.

  Lyra's face bent over Dane, her lips moving. He strained to hear, to catch the words, but they were lost in the ringing.

  Darkness rushed up to meet him.