9th Floor Underground
Norvin was running.
He ran away from the door. He ran because the fear was primal.
CRASH.
Behind him, the metal door flew off its hinges.
Norvin didn't look back to see what emerged. He just sprinted toward the staircase at the far end.
"I have to finish the mission. I have to save the Red Ghost. Thane will give me my reward. I can't die here!"
THUD.
The ground shook so hard Norvin lost his balance and fell.
He scrambled to turn around. He looked back.
Standing in the ruins of the cell door was the Astarey.
It was ten feet tall. Its body was covered in green, matted fur that looked like it had crawled out of a swamp abyss. Its head was a bleached deer skull, the antlers dripping with moss. The aura it radiated wasn't just power; it was a curse.
Norvin felt the fear grip his heart. He had never seen a demon. He hadn't even known they existed until the Red Ghost told him days ago. And now, he was trapped in an underground abyss with one.
The Demon didn't have eyes, but its skull tracked Norvin.
ROAR.
It wasn't a voice; it was a deafening shockwave. The Demon dropped to all fours and charged.
Norvin scrambled up. He reached the stairs.
'Up?' If he went up, he could escape. He could live. 'Down?' The Red Ghost was down.
The Demon was closing the distance.
Norvin's mind flashed to the fire. To his promise. To the gold. To Thane's deal.
"Save the Red Ghost."
"DAMN IT!"
Norvin turned and ran down. He vaulted down the stairs to the 10th floor.
He hit the bottom landing. This floor was identical to the one above, but darker. He raised his head.
In the opposite corner, there was another prison cell. Another metal door.
"That's it. That's where she is."
CRASH.
The ceiling above Norvin exploded.
The Demon hadn't used the stairs. It had punched through the floor.
It landed directly between Norvin and the exit. Debris rained down.
The Demon swung its limb. It was a blur of green fur and bone-crushing muscle. The strength behind it was absolute.
Norvin was a pebble in the path of a landslide.
He couldn't dodge.
WHAM.
The blow connected with his side. Norvin flew. He was launched across the corridor like a ragdoll.
THUD.
He smashed directly into the metal door of the Red Ghost's prison.
He slid down the cold metal, leaving a streak of bright red blood. He hit the floor hard. Blood poured from a gash on his head, blinding one eye. His vision swam.
The Demon began to walk toward him.
Inside the suffocating darkness of the tenth-floor cell, the woman hanging in the shackles jerked her head up.
She was a ruin of her former glory. Layers of grime and soot coated her once-elegant features, masking the ethereal beauty she was known for. Her ribs pressed starkly against her pale, translucent skin, telling the story of months without a proper meal. Her long hair, usually a flowing mane of crimson energy, hung limp and matted around her face, reeking of stale sweat and the rot of the dungeon.
She heard the crash. She heard the wet, sickening thud of a body slamming against the metal of her door.
Pain flared through her wrists as she strained against the iron, but she didn't care. She bit her lip until it bled, summoning the last scrap of her drained vitality from the marrow of her bones.
"See him", she commanded herself.
A faint, trembling wisp of red mist seeped from her pores, sliding through the cracks of the door like blood in water.
She sensed the Demon's overwhelming malice, a towering inferno of biological hate. And beneath it... she sensed a small, broken heartbeat. Fading. Terrified.
Her eyes, wide and bloodshot with horror, snapped open.
"NORVIN!" she screamed, her voice tearing through her parched throat as she pulled uselessly against the chains.
Norvin lay in a heap. He could barely see.
The Demon loomed over him, raising a massive fist for the final blow. It was going to crush him into paste.
Norvin tried to move his arm, but he couldn't feel it.
The thought hammered into his skull, final and devastating.
"I failed the mission again."
"I was this close."
He closed his eyes. The fist began to descend.
The courtyard of the Obsidian Tower had become a graveyard of ambition.
The Serpent's Maw knights, the elite enforcers of the Roric Kingdom, were reduced to a trembling defensive line. Their shields were locked, their Awen barriers overlapping in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable.
Facing them was Sir Kine.
The Prime didn't look like a monster. He looked like a bored executioner punching a time clock. He stepped forward, his simple steel spear resting casually on his shoulder.
Thwip.
A Serpent knight on the flank collapsed, gargling blood, a hole the size of a coin punched neatly through his throat. Kine hadn't even appeared to move.
"Tighten the formation!" a Knight screamed, dragging the corpse backward to fill the gap.
But the gap was filling with fear.
Behind Kine, the remaining Bronze Falchion knights—those who had survived the initial assault—were regrouping. They had stopped attacking, content to let their Prime dismantle the enemy. They stood panting, swords lowered, watching the slaughter.
The Serpents knew the math. They were barely surviving Kine alone. If the fifty Bronze Falchion knights behind him decided to charge now... the Serpent's Maw would be wiped out in under a minute.
"Mercy!" a younger knight cried out, his shield splintering under Kine's casual strike.
"Mercy in war is a fool's choice," Kine replied, his voice devoid of emotion. He spun the spear. The blunt end crushed the young knight's skull.
The line buckled. Every Serpent knight, from the hardened veterans to the fresh recruits, began to pray. They didn't pray to the Gods. They prayed to the one thing scarier than death for them.
"Lord Thane... please."
While the slaughter happened outside, the interior was descending into anarchy.
Cahir, the Titan, had abandoned his duel with Corell to hunt the Demon. He smashed through the main doors, leading a fresh wave of Wanderers who had retreated from the courtyard. They flooded the hallway, screaming praises to the Goddess of Night.
Sir Corell, clutching his bruised ribs, sprinted after them.
"You don't get to run, Titan!" Corell shouted.
He prepared to lunge, to cut down the stragglers and catch Cahir. But as he reached the threshold of the tower, a shadow fell over him.
It wasn't a cloud. It was a man floating directly above the archway.
Corell skidded to a halt, looking up. His eyes narrowed as he recognized the ragged, bloodied figure hovering in the air.
"Sir Aegis," Corell said, his voice dropping the playful tone he had used with Cahir. "It is... nice to meet you. After all these years."
Aegis Kazar, the Windwalker, looked down with cold, fanatic eyes. "I do not feel 'nice' meeting you, Sir Corell."
Corell lowered his Yellowstone sword slightly. "I know what happened, Aegis. I know about your family. The fire. The loss."
Corell took a step forward, ignoring the chaotic battle raging inside the hall behind him.
"But this?" Corell gestured to the Wanderers rushing past. "Joining a suicidal cult? Fighting for the extinction of races? This isn't the right path. You were the Captain of the Blazing Lords. You were the Windwalker. You could achieve so much more with the Ever-Burning Torch Kingdom than with these... rats."
Aegis didn't blink. The wind around him sharpened, whining like a buzzsaw.
"I don't care what you think," Aegis replied. "I don't care what the Kingdoms think. I care only for the will of the Goddess of Night."
He raised a hand.
"Goath Mur."
A barrage of wind spears shot down.
Corell didn't dodge. He deflected them with his sword, the dense Yellowstone blade shattering the compressed air. But he didn't stay on the ground.
Corell ran. He ran up the vertical wall of the Obsidian Tower. He channeled Numen into his boots, creating intense friction, defying gravity through sheer physical speed and grip.
"You stubborn fool!" Corell shouted, launching himself off the wall to meet Aegis in the air.
They clashed twenty feet off the ground. Sword against Wind.
"I have seen men like you!" Corell grunted, parrying a wind blade that aimed for his neck. "Losing your family is the greatest loss a man can face! But it broke you, Aegis! It made you a monster!"
"I am no monster!" Aegis screamed, spinning in mid-air, blasting Corell back toward the wall. "I am the Windwalker of the Night Sky!"
BOOM.
A stray wind cutter missed Corell and sliced through a massive section of the tower's outer masonry. Tons of stone detached and began to fall.
Directly below the aerial duel, the fight between Lord Mat and Dion had reached a stalemate of exhaustion.
Mat was leaning on his broadsword, his armor cleaved in three places. He was bleeding from a deep gash in his thigh. The forest vines lay dormant around them—Dion was too tired to keep whistling, too drained to command nature any longer.
Dion wasn't faring much better. His rapier arm was trembling. His breath came in ragged gasps.
They stared at each other, locking eyes. Neither wanted to fall first.
CRACK.
Above them, the shadow grew. The massive chunk of the tower wall, dislodged by Aegis's attack, plummeted straight toward them.
Mat looked up. Dion looked up.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to.
In perfect synchronization, they moved. They didn't turn their backs on each other—that would be suicide. Instead, they both leaped backward in a semi-circle, keeping their eyes locked on the enemy while putting distance between them.
CRASH.
The debris slammed into the earth exactly where they had been standing a second ago, sending up a cloud of choking dust.
The fight was over. A tactical retreat.
Mat limped back toward the Serpent lines. Dion turned and vanished into the dust, retreating into the tower.
Dion stumbled into the main hall. It was a madhouse. Wanderers, led by Cahir, were fighting the Serpent knights who had breached with Varic, while the Bronze Falchion guards fought both.
"Lord Dion!" a panicked Falchion knight shouted, running up to him.
Dion didn't have the energy for stupid questions. He shoved the knight aside. "Get out of my way."
Before he could catch his breath, two Wanderers screamed and charged him with curved scimitars.
"Filth," Dion hissed, raising his tired rapier. The chaos was absolute. The Serpents, who had momentarily gained the upper hand against the Falchions inside, were now flanked by the incoming Wanderers.
The defensive line was gone.
The Serpents were now a disorganized huddle. Sir Kine had killed four more men in the last minute. Even after killing so many, he looked like he was playing around.
The Bronze Falchion knights behind him raised their weapons. They smelled blood. They were ready to charge and finish the job.
The Serpents were deadlocked. They couldn't attack Kine—he was an S-Tier threat. They couldn't retreat—Thane would execute them. They were trapped in a purgatory of steel.
One Serpent knight—a young woman with a cracked helmet and tears streaming down her soot-stained face—couldn't take it anymore. She looked at Kine, who was pulling his spear out of her friend's chest, and she screamed.
It was a scream of pure, desperate entitlement.
"CAPTAIN! WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO LONG?!"
The battlefield went silent for a heartbeat. The other Serpent knights glared at her in horror. 'You don't summon the Devil. You don't yell at Thane.'
But then, a voice answered.
It came from the direction of the town, carried on the wind, but it sounded as if he was whispering right in their ears. It was calm, arrogant, and utterly terrifying.
"I gave you one order... to kill them. And you guys are instead getting killed?"
The temperature in the courtyard seemed to drop ten degrees.
The female knight's legs gave out. She collapsed onto the bloody grass, not from Kine's pressure, but from the sheer overwhelming relief—and the sudden terror of the scolding to come.
"He's here," she sobbed. "He's actually here."
Kine stopped.
He pulled his spear from the corpse and turned slowly toward the ruined city gate. His bored expression vanished, replaced by the sharp, intense focus of a master recognizing a rival.
Walking through the smoke was Thane Cladaron.
He dragged his Redstone Axe behind him, the metal carving a furrow in the stone. He didn't look like a savior. He looked like a punishment.
"Thane Cladaron," Kine said, straightening up. "It is an honor. A duel of Primes."
Thane stopped ten paces away. He looked at Kine. He looked at his pathetic, trembling men. He looked at the Bronze Falchion knights.
"Just talk with your spear," Thane said.
There was no countdown. No signal.
CLANG.
They vanished.
To the naked eye of the Anchors and Ciphers watching, the two Primes simply disappeared.
Sparks erupted in mid-air in the center of the courtyard. Then ten feet to the left. Then near the wall.
Clang. Clang. BOOM.
The sound of metal on metal was continuous, a high-pitched ringing that hurt the ears.
Thane's Redstone Axe was a heavy, brutal weapon, but he swung it with the speed of a dagger. Kine's spear was a tool of precision, aiming for the joints, the throat, the eyes.
They reappeared for a split second.
Thane had the axe handle hooked around Kine's spear shaft. Kine twisted, using the leverage to vault over Thane, kicking him in the jaw. Thane didn't even blink; he headbutted Kine's boot in mid-air, forcing the Prime back.
They landed and vanished again.
The Serpent and Bronze Falchion knights watched, mouths open. This was the realm of the Primes. It wasn't fighting; it was physics being violated. The speed, the precision, the sheer kinetic force... it was a level of violence that made their own war look like children playing with sticks.
Thane was fearsome not just because he was strong, but because he was laughing. Amidst the deadly duel, amidst the sparks that flew close enough to blind him, the Captain of the Serpent's Maw was smiling that terrible, wolfish smile.
"Is that all?" Thane taunted, parrying a thrust that would have pierced a tank. "I thought you were S-Tier!"
Kine's eyes narrowed. He thrust faster.
The duel of the monsters had begun, and the mortals could only watch and pray they didn't get stepped on.