Kai felt overwhelming power flood through him as he smashed Selenia down into the streets of Hermil.

  Stone shattered at the impact.

  The ground caved in, forming a wide crater that sent dust and broken debris rolling through the streets. Cracks spread outward like spiderwebs, tearing through roads and nearby buildings.

  And yet, at the same time, Kai felt blank.

  It was a strange feeling. He was facing a creature he had never seen before, one clearly allied with Maleficia, one who even carried the mark of Malefic—the dragon—burned into her flesh, if he guessed right. This should have been tense. Dangerous. Uncertain.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because Kai knew, with absolute certainty, that there was no way he was going to lose now.

  The spell he had cast was one of the strongest fire-aspected spells in existence. It didn’t just increase a Mage’s power—it gave them the strength and presence of a dragon itself. With it active, Kai was without question the strongest being in Lancephil and the neighboring countries for the next ten minutes.

  There was no contest.

  Selenia seemed to realize that as well.

  Slowly, painfully, she peeled herself out of the crater. Broken stone slid off her body as she rose, hovering shakily in the air. She looked up at him, and for the first time since the battle began, terror was clear in her eyes.

  That fear hadn’t been there before. Not to this degree.

  Kai had expected her to stay down. He had expected the impact to end it. But as she hovered there, still breathing, still alive, he understood one thing clearly.

  He would need to hit harder.

  Selenia lifted herself higher into the air. For a moment, Kai thought she was about to run. But instead, she opened her mouth, her voice carrying upward through the smoke and ruined streets.

  “Why do you do this?” she shouted. “Even if you kill me today, Maleficia will hunt you. The rest of them will come. Nothing will stop them from ripping your heart out.”

  Kai smiled.

  He knew it for what it was—a stalling tactic. She was buying time, letting her body recover even as she spoke.

  Still, he answered.

  “Maleficia has hunted me from the moment I chose where I stand,” Kai said calmly. “They would have come for me no matter what I did. And I don’t care about your threats.”

  His smile sharpened.

  “You know exactly what happens when I will clash with Maleficia.”

  She shook her head slowly, her wings trembling as she hovered in the air.

  “You will lose,” Selenia said. “No one can stand against the Great Lord.”

  Kai did not raise his voice. He did not hesitate.

  “I will win,” he said simply. “I know it.”

  His gaze hardened.

  “And sadly, you won’t be there to see it. Today is your last day in this world.”

  Selenia opened her mouth to speak again.

  Kai did not let her.

  The massive dragon opened its jaws, and a torrent of flames erupted outward. The fire struck her head-on, swallowing her in an instant. Selenia beat her wings frantically, trying to pull herself out of the path of the breath, but Kai only poured more power into it.

  The flames intensified.

  She was driven straight down, smashed into the streets below, and her scream tore through the city, drowning out every other sound. The dragon’s breath burned through her skin, then the flesh beneath it, then deeper still—cell by cell—until black and red smoke began to rise from her body and stain the sky above.

  Kai did not understand what he was seeing. The way her body burned was wrong. The smoke was wrong. But he did not stop. He focused only on one thing.

  She had to be reduced to ash.

  But then, without warning, something unexpected happened. Selenia’s body detonated.

  A massive explosion tore through the street, flattening nearby buildings and sending fire and debris surging outward in a wide, violent wave. The shock rippled through the ground, and flames leapt high into the air.

  Kai’s eyes widened.

  He immediately canceled the spell.

  The dragon body vanished in an instant, leaving Kai suspended in the air. Without wasting a second, he raised both hands and formed massive sheets of ice high above the streets.

  He burned through them at once, shattering them into heavy rain that poured down over the flames below.

  It wasn’t enough to fully drown the fire, but it slowed it. It stopped the blaze from spreading any farther.

  As the last of the ice rain fell, Kai looked down and saw movement below.

  Soldiers were already pouring in from the broken walls, rushing toward the burning streets.

  All of them had heard the explosion, and Kai knew the soldiers would be able to deal with the aftermath. He did not slow down for them. Instead, he turned in the air and flew straight toward the castle in the distance.

  As he moved, he kept wondering what had just happened.

  Selenia had not simply burned away like she should have. She had exploded. Kai knew his spell well enough to be certain of that. He had meant to destroy her body, to melt and erase it piece by piece, not reduce her to scattered blood and flesh in a violent detonation that left nothing behind to examine.

  The more he thought about it, the colder his chest felt.

  His thoughts returned to the mark on her chest—the dragon insignia that had flared just before everything went wrong. It made too much sense. The mark had likely reacted to her death, triggering the explosion to ensure that nothing of her body remained. It was probably a tactic to make sure no one could study her body.

  If that was true…

  Then Regina would almost certainly have one as well.

  Kai pushed more mana into his [Flight] spell and surged forward, tearing through the sky toward the castle.

  He did not need to search for Regina.

  As soon as his eyes spotted the gardens, he saw everything at once.

  The ground was soaked in blood, the green grass completely dyed red. Broken stone and shattered debris were scattered everywhere, along with pieces of severed tendrils that still twitched faintly before going still.

  Killian stood in the center of it all.

  His armor was torn open in multiple places, cracked and bent from heavy blows. Blood ran down his arms and stained the side of his chest, yet he was still standing upright, breathing heavily, his blade clenched tight in his hand. His eyes were locked forward, filled with fury and focus.

  Opposite him stood Regina. Or what was left of her.

  She was barely upright, somehow still standing on two legs despite one of her arms lying several meters away on the ground. Dark blood poured from the stump, pooling beneath her feet. Her body was covered in wounds, her tendrils reduced to broken remnants scattered across the garden.

  There was one more figure in the garden.

  Kai recognized him instantly.

  Knight Roderic lay to the side, motionless. His body was twisted unnaturally, a cut moving across his neck. There was no need to check. He was already dead.

  Kai did not linger on him.

  As soon as Regina and Killian noticed Kai hovering above them, both of them looked up toward the sky.

  She scoffed first, blood spilling from her mouth as her lips twisted into a crooked smile. As Kai began forming a spell structure with whatever mana he had left, she spoke through ragged breaths.

  “No matter what I do,” Regina said hoarsely, “you always crawl back alive. How?”

  Kai did not stop shaping the spell. His eyes stayed on her as he answered calmly, “You never sent someone strong enough to kill me.”

  Regina laughed, the sound wet and broken. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you’re just a monster. Maybe even more than me. Valkyrie was the same.”

  As the words left her mouth, tendrils burst from her body and shot toward Kai.

  He did not move.

  Before the tendrils could reach him, lightning flashed.

  Killian stepped in.

  His blade carved through Regina’s body in a single, brutal arc, lightning tearing through flesh and bone. Her body split apart, and for a heartbeat the tendrils froze in midair, suspended as if time itself had stopped.

  But when Kai looked at Regina's face, she was smiling.

  And then he saw it.

  Through her torn clothes, a familiar mark burned to life on her stomach. The dragon insignia flared, glowing with violent light as Regina collapsed to the ground.

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  Killian staggered back, his eyes wide.

  “Lord Arzan—” he started.

  Kai moved instantly.

  He had almost nothing left—barely a fraction of his mana remained—but he did not hesitate. He swept down, grabbed Killian, and pulled him into his arms, ignoring the man’s injuries as he surged upward into the air.

  The explosion came a second later.

  The ground beneath them vanished in a roar of sound and fire. The shockwave slammed into Kai’s wind armor, tearing it apart in seconds. Heat burned against his skin as the air itself screamed.

  He forced every last drop of mana into his [Flight] spell and pushed forward, gaining just enough distance to not get engulfed completely in the flames.

  Behind him, the castle began to collapse.

  The stone shattered. Towers folded in on themselves. The sound of destruction was endless and deafening.

  And then the explosion caught up to him.

  Kai lost control in the air and began to fall, twisting his body to keep the flames from swallowing him whole.

  Killian screamed in his arms as fire licked up his legs. The sound cut straight through Kai’s chest, but he did not let go. His grip tightened even as his own strength failed.

  “I won’t let you die,” Kai said through clenched teeth. And did the one thing he could.

  He hurled Killian as far as he could, throwing him away from the blast with every last bit of strength he had left. At the same time, Kai tried to force out a final burst of mana to push himself aside, but nothing answered him.

  His mana reserves were empty.

  The world dropped away beneath him.

  With no spells left, Kai burned his life energy instead.

  Pain ripped through his body as he forced that precious energy to move him, just enough to gain distance before another explosion thundered behind him.

  The shockwave slammed into his back and flung him through the air like a broken doll.

  He crashed into a rooftop, tiles shattering beneath his weight, then rolled and fell again, slamming hard into the street below.

  Something cracked in his head.

  Blood spilled down his face, warm and blinding. His vision went white at the edges, and every potion on his belt shattered on impact, glass and liquid bursting uselessly across the ground.

  Kai forced himself to turn his head.

  He focused, just barely, and felt a wave of relief when he realized he had escaped the explosion. He was alive.

  But when he saw what remained of the castle, that relief faded.

  The street was ruined. Mansions burned and collapsed, their walls splitting apart as fire crawled through them. In the distance, the royal castle continued to fall, massive sections breaking loose and crashing down in clouds of dust and flame.

  It had stood for centuries.

  Now it was falling.

  Kai did not feel victory. He did not feel satisfaction that Regina was finally dead. All he could do was stare at the destruction she had left behind, the scars carved into the city by her final attempt to kill him.

  His body grew heavier by the second as he watched.

  Exhaustion crept in, deep and absolute. His eyes refused to stay open no matter how hard he fought it. The sounds around him blurred, the world fading into dull echoes.

  Kai tried to stay awake, but he failed, and darkness took him.

  ***

  As the capital of Lancephil burned and broke apart, far away—deep beneath the mouth of a mountain—something stirred.

  Not because it wished to. Not because hunger gnawed at it after centuries of sleep. Not even because destruction called to its nature.

  No.

  It stirred because something had gone wrong.

  Two marks vanished.

  One moment they were there, steady and unquestioned. The next, they were gone—one after the other—snuffed out without warning. The being felt it clearly. Those marks had been carved directly onto the soul. No force in the world could erase them. No spell. No god. No trick.

  There was only one reason they could disappear.

  The marked servants were dead.

  Their bodies had failed, their souls torn free from this plane. The being did not mourn them. It had never cared for individual servants. They were tools, nothing more. Just replaceable tools.

  But they were useful.

  They were meant to prepare the world. To weaken it. To soften it for what was to come. With them gone, the preparation would slow. The awakening would be delayed.

  By how much, the being did not know.

  A year. Ten years. More.

  Time meant little to it. Time had never mattered.

  But waiting did.

  It had already slept for far too long.

  Its awakening was close—closer than ever before—and now someone was interfering. Someone was hunting its servants down, tearing away pieces of the plan before it could rise.

  That could not be ignored.

  Slowly, carefully, the being stirred further. Not fully. Not yet. It could not afford that. But even in slumber, it still held power. Enough to look. Enough to peek beyond its prison and sense what had happened.

  Other servants panicked around him.

  They whispered. They trembled. Some even bowed instinctively, mistaking this shift for the beginning of its awakening.

  Foolish mortals.

  It ignored them, treating them as nothing more than infants, and focused its attention.

  The being looked into the final moments of its two servants and felt them. The panic. The fear. The dread that came with death. It dismissed those emotions immediately. They were small, worthless things, not even worth its consideration. Death was as natural as life, and only fools feared its embrace.

  Instead, it watched what truly mattered.

  Their surroundings.

  A city in ruins. Fire spreading through stone and steel. Towers collapsing. Blood and ash staining the ground.

  And then—it saw him.

  A man, standing amid chaos, mana raging around his body. Another mortal reaching upward, trying to defy the laws of the world and climb toward immortality. Normally, such beings were nothing more than insects destined to be crushed.

  But something felt wrong.

  Both servants had seen him. Both had died because of him.

  The being tried to dismiss the feeling, ready to mark him as a temporary obstacle. But as it watched more closely, understanding dawned.

  There were no threads around him. No strands of fate. No bindings to the world’s end.

  He was fateless.

  The being knew of such existences. Ancient knowledge spoke of them, beings whispered about in forgotten ages. Things that were never supposed to exist.

  And yet, here he was—killing its servants.

  The vision could not be false. It was too clear. Too consistent.

  The scene ended in an explosion, fire swallowing everything. But even after the vision faded, the being did not grow calm.

  It stirred again. And again.

  The mountain trembled as its presence shifted, stone grinding under unimaginable weight. For the first time since its birth, Malefic—the Endbringer—had seen something that could threaten its existence.

  A man who would not die with the world.

  And in that moment, Malefic knew what it would do when it finally awakened.

  It would kill him first.

  Then, it would end the world.

  ***

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