Kany stood alone.

  His eyes hardened.

  “This is not your lucky day,” he said quietly.

  “You monster.”

  He stepped forward.

  Dense flame wrapped both his hands, not wild but compressed—bright orange at the edges, white-hot at the core. The flares climbed as high as his head, streaming backward like burning cloth in a storm. He kept walking forward, steady and controlled.

  Across from him, the beast’s ruined chest twitched, then sealed. Flesh knitted. Bone reformed. Scales crawled back over fur. In seconds, the wound was gone.

  It raised its head and growled.

  Blood and saliva spilled from its jaws in thick strings that hissed on the hot ground.

  Kany did not stop.

  When the distance between them became a single lunge, the monster moved first.

  A foreclaw scythed toward him.

  Kany slipped to the side. The claws tore air where his throat had been.

  One serpent tail struck from behind.

  He ducked.

  A second snapped for his ribs.

  Kany caught it by the neck with his left hand. Flame detonated around his grip. Scales blackened, then split. The serpent shrieked and withered in his grasp.

  The third tail whipped at his knee.

  He pivoted and drove a kick into its jaw hard enough to fold it sideways.

  The monster pressed in again, relentless.

  So did Kany.

  He fought and spoke at the same time, voice low, almost conversational between impacts.

  “Do you know what I learned about you while I was standing back there?”

  The beast roared and came with both claws.

  Kany slipped inside their arc, flames trailing. He burned through another serpent neck with a slicing palm and spun clear before the body crashed down.

  “First,” he said, breathing steady, “your regeneration isn’t constant.”

  A tail shot at his face.

  He leaned back. Fangs snapped an inch from his nose.

  “When I burned your tail the first time, it took longer to regrow. When Kael and Aeris severed your heads, you healed faster for a while.”

  The head he had just burned writhed on the ground, trying to reform.

  Kany watched it for half a second as he parried another strike with a wall of fire.

  “And now?” he said. “You’re slower again.”

  The monster lunged.

  Kany vanished under its jawline, Stormstep-like footwork carried by pure technique rather than lightning. He came up near its shoulder and slashed his burning hand across a serpent face. Flesh charred. The creature recoiled.

  “So that’s your limit,” he said. “You can heal—but not infinitely fast.”

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  It answered with fury.

  All three tails attacked in staggered rhythm, forcing him left, then right, then low.

  Kany flowed through it, each dodge tighter than the last.

  “Second,” he continued, voice hardening, “every time Aeris aimed for your face, you shielded it.”

  A claw hammered down.

  He rolled beneath it and rose beside the beast’s flank.

  “You protect your head like it matters more than anything else.”

  He planted one foot on a jut of scale, then another on the creature’s shoulder as it twisted, using its own body as a staircase.

  “So if I’m right—”

  He vaulted upward.

  “—your weak point should be around there.”

  Midair, Kany drew both hands together.

  Flame compressed between his palms into a spinning sphere, larger and denser by the heartbeat. It grew to nearly half his own height, a compact sun humming with pressure. The technique was Kael’s—refined, stabilized, and now carried by Kany’s ruthless control.

  The monster looked up too late.

  Kany drove the fireball straight down.

  The beast tried to shield itself, crossing both foreclaws over its skull while all three serpent tails wrapped forward to cover the same point.

  Impact.

  The sphere detonated in a pillar of white-orange flame.

  Fire punched through tails, claws, and crown, drilling down its body in a screaming tunnel of heat. The blast hurled Kany backward. He landed in a crouch and skidded across wet ash, opening distance again.

  The monster staggered, fully engulfed.

  Flames climbed over fur and scale, eating everything they touched.

  Still, regeneration answered—raw tissue knitting beneath burning skin, muscle reforming where fire had just devoured it.

  Kany watched without blinking.

  The blaze began to thin.

  Charred skin peeled away.

  Fresh flesh emerged.

  Its torso closed. Limbs restored. Even shattered tails started to reform.

  But not evenly.

  At the base of its skull, where neck met spine, healing lagged—ragged, incomplete, pulsing behind the others.

  Kany exhaled once.

  “Looks like I was wrong about the head,” he said softly. “The weakness is your neck.”

  He raised his right arm.

  Flame stretched from fist to forearm, lengthening, flattening, hardening—until a sword of condensed fire burned into shape. Its edge shimmered blue-white.

  “That’s all I need.”

  He rushed.

  The monster met him with everything it had left.

  Claws slammed down.

  Kany rolled under them.

  A serpent tail stabbed for his back.

  He cut it in half without looking.

  Another head came from the side.

  He ducked and split its lower jaw open as he passed.

  The third wrapped in to bind him.

  He twisted through the coil, shoulder scraping scale, and carved a burning line across its throat.

  He never broke pace.

  Every strike trying to stop him became another opening.

  Every opening took him one step closer to the neck.

  Then he was there.

  Inside the guard. Beneath the raised claw. At the one place still struggling to heal.

  Kany drove forward with his whole body, both hands on the flaming hilt, and swung.

  The sword of fire cut clean through flesh, tendon, vertebrae, and scale.

  For a heartbeat, nothing moved.

  Then the head separated.

  It crashed to the ground with a sound like a fallen boulder.

  The body took one blind, shuddering step.

  Two.

  Then collapsed.

  Silence rolled over the clearing, broken only by the crackle of flames.

  Then the body twitched.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Burned flesh at the neck began to crawl and knit again.

  From the ragged cut at the base of the monster’s neck, something slipped free and dropped through the fire.

  Kany froze, eyes widening.

  A red shard.

  It hit the ground with a sharp, crystal sound and rolled, glowing like a coal in the ash.

  Kany stared at it in shock for half a heartbeat.

  Then understanding struck.

  He lunged forward and drove his heel down.

  The shard shattered.

  A dry crack split the clearing.

  The monster’s body jerked violently—then stopped.

  The half-healed flesh at its neck withered and collapsed inward. The twitching ceased. The regenerative pulse vanished.

  This time, no wound closed.

  No breath came.

  No movement followed.

  The beast lay still as the flames consumed what remained.

  Kany stood over the burning carcass, chest rising and falling, his flaming sword fading into drifting sparks.

  The clearing fell silent except for the crackle of dying fire.

  Then—

  A single clap echoed across the clearing.

  Slow. Deliberate.

  "Well done."

  Kany spun.

  Kaji stood at the edge of the scorched battlefield, hands still positioned from the clap, expression unreadable beneath his calm, measured gaze. His coat was clean. Not a scratch. Not a smudge of ash.

  Kany's jaw tightened.

  "So you finally showed up," he said, voice sharp. "Where the hell were you? And why weren't you answering?"

  Kaji tilted his head slightly, unfazed by the bite in Kany's tone. "I arrived earlier, actually," he said. "But seeing you taking down that monster, I stopped." A pause. "Before that, I found something interesting in the denser mana region of the forest. Because of the denser mana, I couldn't communicate with you."

  Kany crossed his arms, eyes narrowing. "But how did you track us?"

  Kaji raised one hand and tapped the edge of his coat. "I can track anyone wearing my accessories."

  Kany glanced down at the bracelet on his wrist—simple, unassuming, enchanted. He'd nearly forgotten it was there.

  Kaji's gaze shifted past Kany toward the edge of the clearing where the others had taken shelter.

  "It's about time we head back," Kaji said. His tone didn't soften, but something in it shifted—practical, decisive. "We'll talk after they've recovered."

  He raised his hand.

  And snapped his fingers.