Then the air changed.
It happened like a shift in gravity.
A pressure rolled down the grand staircase, heavy enough that even veteran fighters — men who'd brawled in alleys and basements their whole lives — snapped their attention up without knowing why.
The Iron Saints stopped chanting.
The Dragons stopped mid-strike.
Silence cracked open down the hall.
Then he appeared.
He was huge.
Magnus Virel, the Iron Titan — commander of the Iron Saints, second strongest in the entire slums — stood at the top of the ruined marble steps, watching the war below him with an expression that wasn't anger.
It was disappointment.
He was built like reinforced scaffolding given flesh. Wide shoulders, corded arms, neck like it had been carved out of industrial cable. His skin looked dense — not armored, not plated, but layered with the kind of conditioned hardness you only get by surviving impact after impact after impact until your body learns to answer back.
His jaw was squared, scarred, dark stubble across it. His eyes were cold steel. No jewelry. No theatrics. Just menace.
He walked down the stairs, each footfall a dull, heavy THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The marble under him splintered like old wood.
Men stepped out of his way without being told.
He stopped at the center of the hall, looking slowly from one side of the battle to the other, taking everything in: the fallen Saints catching their breath on the floor, the Dragons standing where they had no right to stand.
Then he looked at her.
"You," he rumbled.
Bia stood across from him, calm, relaxed, hands at her sides. Her coat still sat perfect on her shoulders. Her breathing hadn't changed.
"Me," she said.
"You did this?"
"Yes."
"You broke my gate?"
"Yes."
"You walk in here with fifteen hundred and think you can take four thousand trained men in one night?"
"No," she said.
And then she smiled.
"I think I can take four thousand trained men in one hour."
A few of the Dragons behind her grinned despite themselves. Riku muttered, under his breath, "Badass"
Magnus exhaled through his nose. It sounded like pressure venting from a pipe. "You talk a lot for someone your size."
Bia tilted her head. "They all say that."
He rolled his shoulders. The motion was slow, deliberate, and every muscle across his arms and chest tightened, power knotting under his skin.
"You've got one chance," Magnus said. "Turn around. Walk out. Keep your little army. I won't chase. I'll even pretend this didn't happen."
"No," Bia said simply.
Magnus's shoulders rose. "Then you break here."
Bia's eyes warmed.
"Try."
He moved first.
Despite his size, Magnus was not slow. He covered ground like a collapsing wall, a forward drive with so much weight behind it that the air itself buckled — VMMMM— — as he swung a heavy, short-range hook meant to end fights in one blow.
Bia didn't evade.
She raised a hand and caught his fist.
THUD.
The room shook.
The floor cracked in a spiderweb from the point of contact.
For a moment, Magnus' eyes sharpened with approval. "Good footing," he said. "Most people fly on that."
"Thank you," Bia said.
Then she twisted.
Her wrist rotated no more than a fraction, guiding his punch a few inches off its line — and entire rivers of force bled uselessly out of his arm. She guided his own weight past its anchor, stepped in, and touched his sternum with two fingers.
Not a strike. A point of contact.
WHUMPF—
Magnus staggered backward three full steps, boots gouging ruts in the marble.
He blinked.
The entire mansion inhaled.
"Oh," Riku whispered, hungry. "Oh, this is gonna be good."
Magnus set his stance again. This time he didn't test — he committed.
He launched forward with a driving shoulder meant to crush her core and pin her to a column. In the same motion, his opposite elbow rose, a follow-up meant to slam down on the back of her head if she tried to duck.
That combination would have shattered a car.
Bia slid a half-step to the left. His shoulder blew past, hitting nothing but a rush of air. As his elbow came down, she brought up her forearm, catching that downward strike with a perfect angle — KLAKK — and redirected it off her frame like she was redirecting water.
He snarled, pivoted, brought a knee around toward her ribs — FWOOM—
She stopped it with her palm.
Just placed her hand there and held.
His knee, a weapon that had probably dropped men twice her size in one blow… didn't move her.
Magnus' jaw clenched.
"You're not normal," he growled.
"No," she agreed.
And then she stopped playing.
Her eyes flashed.
She let exactly five percent of her force leak into her body.
The temperature in the room seemed to change. The air felt heavier. Even the Dragons — who had seen her erase reinforced iron like chalk — straightened unconsciously, instincts howling that this was different.
Magnus tried to wrench his leg free.
Bia didn't let him.
Instead, she leaned in and struck.
One strike.
Open palm.
Short distance.
No wind-up at all.
BOOOOOOM—
The sound shook the entire front wing of the mansion.
Magnus went airborne.
Not lifted. Not pushed.
Launched.
His body crashed through a support pillar in a shower of fractured stone and dropped into the marble floor hard enough to crater it, lines fracturing out from the impact point like lightning burned into stone.
Saints froze.
Dragons went quiet.
Magnus sucked in breath through his teeth, bracing one hand against the ground, refusing to stay down.
He was tough. Ferociously tough. His body trembled from the impact, not in fear — in shock — at being hit by something that felt like a wrecking charge compressed into a hand the size of her own.
He stood.
Slowly.
Grinding his jaw, he rolled his neck once, twice, then squared his stance again. His eyes burned like heated steel.
"Again," he growled.
Bia's lips curved at the edge.
"You can't win," she said softly.
"I don't care," Magnus spat. "I won't kneel."
"Then I'll put you down," she said, "and you'll wake up already sworn."
And this time she moved.
She was simply gone and then present.
Her heel drove into his thigh — THUMP — shutting down his base. Her elbow tapped his ribs from the opposite angle — TOK — folding his center. Her hand slid up, palm against his jaw, and she turned his entire body with one smooth spiral of motion, redirecting his mass down and across.
He didn't fall like a ragdoll. He fell like a mountain collapsing.
THOOOOOOOM—
He hit the ground again, hard enough that dust rained from the broken chandeliers above.
Magnus lay on his back, eyes wide, chest heaving, his breath caught somewhere between a groan and disbelief. His arms tried to push him back up. They shook. They failed.
Not because of injury.
Because she had shut off his leverage.
She had simply taken the fight away from him.
He stared up at her.
Bia stood over him, calm, hair untouched, breathing steady. Golden light pulsed faintly beneath her skin, soft and beautiful and terrifying.
She spoke quietly.
"Magnus Virel," she said. "Iron Titan of the Saints."
His jaw flexed.
"You are strong," she said. "Stronger than most mortals will ever dream of being. You built four thousand men into something that can stand against flood and famine and the mercenaries the rich send down here at night to 'clean up' what they call a stain."
His eyes flickered. He said nothing.
"You're not my enemy," Bia said. "You're mine."
He swallowed once.
"You bow to me," she said, voice low, even. "You will become a Dragon. All of your men become Dragons. You get my protection. My power. My banner. I will not break you to take you. I will lift you."
She crouched, meeting his eyes.
"And in return," she whispered, "you help me build a throne for the Monkey King."
A muscle in Magnus's cheek twitched.
"The Monkey King," he said slowly. "That old story?"
"Not a story," she said. "My lover."
He stared at her. Searched her face for a lie. Found none.
He let out a long breath through his teeth, eyes narrowing in thought, in calculation, in the kind of survival sense that had kept him alive through wars these streets had already forgotten.
Finally, he exhaled.
"Fine," he muttered.
Then, louder — voice carrying to every Saint still standing:
"I kneel."
And the Iron Titan — second strongest man in the entire slums — lowered himself to one knee before the Goddess of Force.
The mansion shook with the weight of four thousand Iron Saints' shock.
Then, like steel giving way to forge heat, they followed.
One after another, then all at once, the Iron Saints dropped rank by rank, knee by knee, heads bowed.
The entire second-strongest army in the slums bent to her.
The sound of it was not fear.
It was acceptance.
It was inevitability.
It was history breaking and reforming around a single point.
Bia straightened, looking over them all — Dragons old, Dragons new, Dragons in the making.
Her eyes glowed gold.
Her voice was quiet when she spoke, but it traveled like law.
"Three down," she said.
"One left."
Her gaze tilted up, past the shattered chandeliers, past the cracked marble ceiling, past the broken symbols of the slum mayor's false rule, toward the city above.
"The Black Flame is next."
Outside, in the distance, thunder rolled.