Norvin moved as fast as his legs could carry him, supporting the Red Ghost. Her arm was draped over his shoulder, her frail body leaning heavily against him. Behind them, the battle between the Titan and the Nightmare raged on.
Cahir was in his element. For a Titan of the Wanderers, fighting a monster like the Astarey wasn't a terrifying ordeal. The Wanderers specialized in this. They were the exterminators of the unnatural.
But as Cahir slammed his iron fist into the Demon's jaw, something felt wrong.
The Astarey, a creature of pure instinct and biological supremacy, was distracted.
In the middle of their exchange, while Cahir was winding up a devastating punch, the Demon's eyeless skull snapped away from him. It looked toward the stairs. It looked toward Norvin and the Red Ghost.
It tried to disengage. It tried to leap past the Titan—the apex predator in the room—to chase the weaklings.
"EYES ON ME!" Cahir roared, grabbing the Demon by its mossy antlers and hauling it back.
Cahir swung his other fist, a haymaker that connected with the Demon's ribs, cracking them with a sound like a gunshot. The Demon stumbled back, hissing, but immediately its head swiveled back to the stairs.
Cahir paused, his iron skin flickering. This was highly unusual.
He knew the behaviour of the Astarey. They were not mindless beasts. In the Land of Foul Souls, these demons operated in packs. They developed complex military strategies. They were intelligent enough to flank, to ambush, and to prioritize threats. That was why the Kingdoms united to keep them contained—because an army of intelligent demons was a world-ending event.
And because they were intelligent, they respected strength. It was their religion. An Astarey would always, always focus on the strongest threat in the room. To ignore a Titan like Cahir was to invite death.
'Why is it ignoring me?' Cahir thought, dodging a lazy swipe of the Demon's claw.
Then, he saw it. A faint, rhythmic pulsing in the veins of the Demon's neck. A magical resonance.
'Mind control.'
Cahir's expression shifted from anger to disgust.
"The Bronze Falchion," Cahir spat. "They overwrote its mind."
The Ciphers of the tower were feeding commands directly into the beast's brain, overriding its survival instincts. "Kill the prisoner. Ignore the Titan. Kill the prisoner."
Cahir felt a sudden, strange pang of pity for the monster. It was a slave, just like the boy running up the stairs. It was being forced to die foolishly.
"You poor, hollow bastard," Cahir whispered.
But pity did not stay his hand.
"But a job is a job," Cahir grunted. "And you are still filth."
He charged again, his attacks not getting weaker, but more precise. He would dismantle this puppet, piece by piece, until it could no longer obey its masters.
"I... I can't," the Red Ghost rasped. Her feet dragged on the stone steps. "My energy... it's gone. I can't climb."
Norvin didn't stop. He didn't complain.
He shifted his grip. He bent his knees slightly and scooped her up completely.
He wasn't the weak slave boy who scrubbed floors anymore. The Numen flowing through his veins reinforced his skeletal structure and muscle fibers. Even though he was small, holding the body weight of a grown woman—especially one emaciated by years of torture—felt as light as holding a bag of feathers.
"Hold on," Norvin said quietly.
He began to run up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his breathing steady, his eyes focused on the darkness above.
Higher up in the tower, the destruction was methodical.
Chief Varic swung his massive warhammer, not at his opponent, but at the wall.
CRASH.
The masonry exploded. A support beam shattered. The ceiling groaned.
Chief Riven, bleeding from a cut above his eye, scrambled back. "Stop it, you lunatic! You'll bring the whole tower down!"
"That's the plan!" Varic roared, swinging again.
Riven parried, but he was losing ground. He knew exactly what Varic was doing.
The Serpent Chief wasn't just brawling; he was hunting. Varic knew that the Bronze Falchion kept a special weapon hidden in the structure. It was the artifact that powered the suppression cells and the barriers.
Varic was tearing the building apart room by room to find it.
"Protect the asset!" Riven screamed to his men, abandoning his offensive stance.
Riven rushed forward, trying to slow Varic down, trying to push him away from the hidden cache on the upper levels. He had held the upper hand in combat earlier, but now, forced to defend the building itself, he was sacrificing his advantage.
Varic grinned through a mask of blood. "Found a nerve, didn't I?"
He smashed another pillar. The floor beneath them tilted dangerously.
The courtyard was no longer a battlefield; it was a theater of awe.
Mat stood with the remnants of the Serpent's Maw knights. They had stopped fighting. They stood near the ruined gates, their eyes fixed on the blurred images of two men destroying the world in front of them.
Lord Thane Cladaron and Sir Kine.
They moved like natural disasters. They smashed through stone bridges. They trampled the corpses of the fallen dragons from Aegis's earlier battle, turning the dead beasts into pulp.
Thane's Redstone Axe was a blur of red light. Kine's spear was a streak of silver.
Their armor was broken. Kine's hands were shaking violently now. There were deep cuts on Thane's body, his black coat shredded, revealing the blood-soaked shirt beneath.
But Thane's expression hadn't changed.
He wasn't grimacing. He wasn't struggling.
He was smiling.
A little blood loss meant nothing to the Captain of the Serpent's Maw. But he was holding back. He was conserving his strength. His eyes darted around the battlefield even as he parried Kine's lethal thrusts. He knew there were still enemies left.
But for Sir Kine, the reality was setting in.
Kine was a Prime. An S-Tier threat. He was confident when the fight began. He and Corell believed they could handle the Serpents.
But Kine was damned.
He realized now that he wasn't fighting a normal man. He was fighting a Captain of the Serpent's Maw.
In a Kingdom, the rank of "Captain" wasn't just handed out for years of service and loyalty. It was given to the strongest among them. It was a position usually reserved for Titans and Phantoms. For a Prime like Thane to hold that title meant his strength was an anomaly. It meant he punched way above his weight class.
Kine's legs trembled. He blocked an overhead chop from Thane, and his knees buckled. The sheer kinetic force was overwhelming.
'He's playing with me', Kine realized with horror.
High above, clinging to the side of the tower, Sir Corell was in the same boat. He was fighting Aegis, the Wind-walker. While Aegis flew freely, Corell had to use his Numen just to stick to the wall. He was exhausted.
The Primes of the Bronze Falchion were breaking.
Mat watched the battle, wiping sweat from his brow*. "We might actually get a breather,"* he muttered.
He was wrong.
From the direction of the town, a scream tore through the air.
"KILL THEM ALL!"
Gareth had returned.
He was without his dragon. He was battered, his golden armour dented from the crash in the town. But he was alive.
He led a fresh wave of Bronze Falchion knights who had regrouped. They charged the exhausted Serpents.
"Damn it!" Mat cursed. "Form up! Defend the line!"
The Serpents clashed with Gareth's forces. It was desperate. They were tired.
Thane saw this.
He parried Kine's spear and stepped back. He saw Gareth. He saw his men struggling.
"Well," Thane said, switching his grip on his axes. "Time to stop playing."
Thane launched himself at Kine.
He didn't use spells. He used planks and skips—footwork so advanced it looked like teleportation. He took a hit from Kine's spear—letting the blade slice his shoulder—just to get inside Kine's guard.
He was pushing the Prime back with pure, unadulterated violence. And he was laughing. To Thane, only a battle to the death offered this kind of excitement.
Inside the tower, the chaos had spilled into the stairwells.
The Wanderers, led by Cahir's initial charge, were filtering down toward the dungeons to help kill the Demon. The Serpents and Bronze Falchions were fighting everywhere else.
On the landing of the 3rd floor, Norvin kicked open a door.
"In here," he gasped.
He set the Red Ghost down on a bench in an empty holding cell. She slumped against the wall, her breathing shallow.
"My Awen reserves..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. "They ran dry breaking the chains. I... I need time. I need to gather ambient energy to fill the vessel again."
"Take your time," Norvin said.
He stepped out of the cell and closed the door. He locked it from the outside.
He turned around.
Blocking the hallway were four Wanderers.
They held curved scimitars. They wore the dark leather of their cult. They looked at the small boy covered in dust and blood, holding two simple axes.
"Look at this," one Wanderer sneered, stepping forward.
They couldn't see the Red Ghost's face through her matted hair. They didn't care.
"Kill the boy," the leader laughed. "Take the woman. She will be our Loot."
Norvin didn't back away.
The Wanderers laughed. They saw a child playing soldier. They saw an easy kill.
"You think you can fight?"
"Go home to your mommy, kid."
Norvin looked at them.
He felt the rage boiling in his gut. The grief for Remus. The fear of the Demon. The humiliation of being a slave. It was all there, a pressurized container waiting to burst.
And this... this was the perfect vent.
Norvin didn't say a word. He didn't scream a war cry.
He launched.
The Wanderers' laughter died instantly.
Norvin moved with the speed of a seasoned killer. He ducked under the leader's lazy swing.
THWACK.
He buried his left axe in the leader's kneecap. The man screamed. Norvin didn't stop. He spun, using the momentum to drive his right axe into the man's throat.
One down.
The other three Wanderers froze. Their eyes widened.
Norvin pulled his axes free. Blood sprayed across his face.
He looked at them. And he smiled.
"Come on," Norvin whispered.
"Get him!" the remaining three shouted, their faces twisting in rage and fear. They charged him together.
Norvin didn't budge. He took them head-on.
It was a dogfight. It was messy. A scimitar grazed his arm. A fist connected with his jaw.
But Norvin didn't care. He cut everything that came into his vision. He hacked. He slashed. He dodged.
He felt the Numen singing in his blood. For the first time in his life, he felt the essence of strength. The bliss of having the power to protect what was his. Even if it meant destroying the enemy. Even if it meant bathing in their blood.
Minutes later, silence returned to the hallway.
Norvin stood panting. Four bodies lay twisted on the floor.
He turned and unlocked the cell door.
The Red Ghost was sitting up, staring at him. She saw the boy covered in red. She saw the carnage behind him.
And she saw his smile.
Outside, the earth shook.
Thane Cladaron decided it was time to end it.
He caught Kine's spear shaft with the hook of one axe. He pulled, unbalancing the Prime.
"Good fight," Thane whispered.
With his other hand, he delivered a mighty overhead blow with the Redstone Axe.
CRUNCH.
It struck Kine's neck with so much force that the Prime's head was torn from his shoulders.
The head flew. It spun through the air, traveling meters, before landing with a wet thud amongst the fighting knights.
Everything stopped.
The Bronze Falchion knights froze. They looked at the severed head. They looked at the body of their Prime, Sir Kine, collapsing into the mud.
Their hearts filled with ice.
They looked up at Thane.
He was standing over the corpse. He was panting slightly, but he was still smiling. He looked like a demon who had just finished a satisfying meal.
Thane lifted his gaze. He scanned the terrified crowd of enemies.
"Where is Gareth?" he asked softly.
His voice carried across the silence.
A Serpent knight, emboldened by the victory, raised a trembling sword and pointed toward the back of the enemy line.
Gareth felt his heart skip a beat. Then it stopped.
He saw Thane looking at him.
Thane started walking.
He didn't run. He walked straight toward Gareth.
Between them stood twenty Bronze Falchion knights. They held spears. They held shields.
But as Thane approached, they didn't attack. They flinched.
Thane swung his axes.
SPLAT.
A knight was cut in half at the torso.
CRUNCH.
Another was decapitated.
Thane walked through them as if they were tall grass. He bathed the Serpent knights nearby in the blood of their enemies.
"Help me!" Gareth screamed, backing away. "Kill him! Someone kill him!"
He looked at his elite guards. "ATTACK HIM!"
But no one moved. They were paralyzed by the sheer, overwhelming aura of death radiating from the Captain. They dropped their weapons. They stepped back.
Thane reached Gareth.
Gareth tried to draw his sword, but his hands were shaking too hard.
Thane reached out and grabbed Gareth by the throat. He lifted the Golden Knight off the ground with one hand.
Gareth kicked and clawed, his face turning purple. "Please... I can pay you... I can—"
Mat, seeing the enemy paralyzed, roared. "KILL THE REST!"
The Serpent knights surged forward, cutting down the Bronze Falchion soldiers who were too terrified to fight back.
Thane ignored the slaughter around him. He stared into Gareth's bulging eyes.
"One head down," Thane whispered.
SNAP.
He twisted his wrist. Gareth's neck broke with a dry crack.
Thane dropped the lifeless body into the mud and stepped over it, ordering one of his frightened female knights to keep the body with her.