"You bitch," Lady Stolas hissed, voice raw silk over broken glass.
Rosalina's lips curved in a smile as cool as moonlight. "A bitch, you say?" She crossed one leg over the other, elbow settling on the bar rail. "You flatter me. Though I suspect you'd prefer I roll over and heel."
Indraea bristled. "You dare mock me after disgracing my son before half of Hell?"
"A disgrace of his own making." Rosalina lifted her glass in apathetic salute toward the holoscreen. "Dante merely supplied the mirror."
A new presence slammed into the tension—her brother, Indris Phenex, flame‑haired and flushed with indignation. "Rosalina! Enough."
She didn't bother to glance his way. "Stuff it, ash mound. Your little wager to barter my hand has turned to soot. I am free."
Indris sputtered. "You would abandon family duty so easily? After Father trusted me with the house—"
Now her eyes ignited—pure white flame flaring in irises of liquid gold. Even Lady Stolas recoiled from the heat. "Our father's last wish," Rosalina said, each word a blade, "was that his children live unbound. You twist that dream into chains and call it duty."
Indris paled. He, bearer of ordinary crimson fire, could not match the Phenex white flame that crowned only the line's greatest prodigies.
Rosalina rose, skirts whispering like drawn steel, and stepped closer to Lady Stolas, who stood rigid, pride battling fear. "A wager is a wager, my lady. Your son has fallen to Initiate. The contract dissolves." She placed a finger against Stolas's collarbone, light as snowfall yet scorching with promise. "Claw at me if you must, but the claws will come away burned."
Lady Stolas's jaw trembled; words died unspoken.
Rosalina pivoted to her brother. "Send a courier to the registry. Strike my name from that agreement before dawn, or I will invoke Father's codicil and strip you of the lordship you wear like ill‑fitting armor."
Indris tried to marshal outrage, but the threat hollowed him. He saw, perhaps for the first time, the sovereign fury in his sister—the heir their father might have chosen had tradition not bound his hands. He swallowed. "Very well… sister."
A hush fell. Even the bartenders stilled, sensing history tilt.
Rosalina lifted her glass once more. Wine caught the torchlight, glowing like captured fire. "Consider the flames unshackled," she said, and drained it in one elegant swallow while, on the holoscreen above, Dante raised his spear to a crowd that howled its approval.
Freedom, she thought, heat and hope mingling in her blood. Now let's see what I can become.
Indris Phenex stood hollow‑eyed, silence blossoming between himself and his sister. Not a true lord… The judgment echoed inside his skull until resignation finally settled in his bones. Rosalina watched that realization take root—felt a dark, well‑earned satisfaction bloom in her chest.
Across from them, Lady Indraea Stolas trembled—not with enlightenment but with rage incandescent enough to warp air. "Indris, you coward," she spat. "You yield to your younger sister? What kind of man are you?"
Indris exhaled, shoulders sagging. "A man who has seen the chasm he dug for himself," he answered, voice hoarse. "I bowed not from fear but from truth. Our father's credo—freedom above chains—I trampled it when I bartered Rosalina's future. That dishonor ends now."
Lady Stolas's face twisted, beauty poisoned by fury. Her gaze flicked to the holoscreen above the bar just as a data overlay appeared: Power Output – Dante Vale Gremory. Tactical readouts scrolled past, numbers spiking beyond accepted norms. The Shadow Heir's metrics glowed like indictments.
His fault, she thought, venom pumping through every vein. That low‑born upstart ruined everything. If Brinyalf had triumphed, the Phenex alliance would have snapped neatly into place; two noble houses yoked for the "True Lord." Now that future lay in crystalline shards at her feet.
Failure curdled into fanatic resolve. If she could not claim the Phenex broodmare, she would at least strike a blow for the Old‑Satan faction— and, as sweetest vengeance, incinerate Rosalina's new champion in the process.
With a measured breath she slid a manicured hand into the hidden pocket of her sundress and withdrew a gem the size of a dove's egg: a Detonation Rune, its facets pulsing malignant crimson.
Rosalina's eyes widened first, face blanching. "You—traitor!" she hissed, divine white fire already licking at her fingertips. Indris lurched forward, equally aghast.
Lady Stolas answered with a smile that bled cruelty. "For the Old Satans," she whispered—and crushed the gem in her fist.
The rune's containment sigils vaporized. A column of raw hellfire swallowed her form, expanding in a spiral of red sigils that raced outward like a dying star's corona. An instant later the holoscreen flickered, switching feeds to the arena floor.
Dante, still surveying Brinyalf's unconscious body, snapped his gaze downward just as a coruscating flare erupted beneath the fallen heir's armor. Time seemed to slow: veins of molten light webbed across Brinyalf's chest, converging into a singularity of white‑hot power.
Then everything accelerated.
WHUMMMM—
The first blast blossomed—a corona of sunfire that vaporized sand and stone in concentric rings. Audience screams lagged half a heartbeat behind the shockwave that punched upward through the grandstands. Dante blurred, teleported—or was hurled—into a cyclone of debris.
But the rune had been twin‑cored.
A second detonation—larger, hungrier—ignited. For a breathless instant, a new sun rose at the heart of the crucible, turning steel supports to slag and casting demonic banners into ash. Light devoured shadow; sound became obliteration.
Back in the lounge, glassware shattered in symmetric ripples along the bar. Heat rolled through ventilation grates like dragon breath. Patrons dove for cover.
Rosalina didn't flinch. White wings of flame unfurled behind her, shielding Indris and half a dozen civilians from razor shards of glass. Her gaze never left the inferno raging on screen. Dante…
Indraea Stolas, consumed in the rune's first flare, vanished—body, name, allegiance—leaving only a memory of fanatical hatred.
Sirens wailed through marble corridors. Security wards cascaded to life, sealing doors, diverting crowds. Above the carnage, the holoscreen struggled, static crackling, before stabilizing on a single image: a lone silhouette, spear braced, standing against a horizon of fire.
Dante lived—but the arena was now a war zone.
Rosalina inhaled, flame‑wings guttering with fury and fear. The taste of freedom had been sweet only seconds ago; now it mixed with the copper tang of imminent catastrophe.
"This isn't over," she murmured, voice trembling for the first time that night. "Not by a long shot."