"Did you think I’d let you ravage my lands and level up until you decided to come for me, Villain?!" The voice that left him was deeper and wetter than it had any right to be, scraped from a throat rebuilt alongside everything else, and that pupil-blown stare found Quinlan across the slope with nothing behind it that resembled sanity.

<He underwent a dark ritual, irreversibly twisting his existence for a short-term boost. The undead allies of his must be behind this. Even as a demon... What an ugly thing he became.> Nyxara’s disgusted voice cut through the bond with an edge that stripped every trace of warmth from it. <My Ruin, you should evacuate. You and the girls aren’t ready for this.>

Easier said than done. Undead were already tearing into his flank, Serika and Vex met the dwarven shields with marks blazing and the Reservoir fueling every strike, and the fortress garrison behind them hadn’t stopped shooting just because the real threat had arrived.

More dwarven infantry poured through the tear with every passing second, shields locked and war hymn rising from their ranks as they filled every gap the girls carved before the bodies hit the ground.

From behind the tear, ranks of archers kept the fire up in disciplined volleys through the portal. Their shafts arced over the dwarven advance and rained across Quinlan’s lines with a precision that should have been impossible for shots fired blind through a dimensional rift.

Iris fought at the edge of the chaos with her sigil dim on her skin and the Reservoir untouched, every hit she took feeding her class instead of the family’s blood, too stubborn to draw from power she hadn’t earned on her own.

"[Runeforged Impact]!" Kaelira’s shout cut through as her hammer hit a dwarven shield with the weight of a mountain behind it.

The earth element she’d channeled through the rune on her smithing arm compressed into the point of contact and detonated, and the blow launched the dwarf off his feet. He skidded ten meters back with the blacksteel shield he’d trusted his entire career bent inward like parchment, and the look he gave the elven smith who’d done it was pure disbelief.

A cluster of arrows immediately aimed at her, which she blocked with her shoulder through a heavy grunt. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"They’re tracking us through some artifact... Despite the darkness of the tear, they can ’see,’" she hissed, her blacksmith brain already searching for the source.

Across the field, Kaede’s gaze found Lilith and Lilith’s found hers in the same heartbeat. Kaede stood among the council’s forces with the Fujimori at her back.

Lilith stood behind the Primordial Villain with the Scarlet Lilies at hers. Neither woman had known the other had switched sides.

"What are you doing?" Kaede’s voice cut across the distance, flat and cold. "We had an agreement, Lilith Ravenshade. Join us or I’ll kill you."

"Just taking a look at the other side... I haven’t betrayed you. Yet. But if you threaten me ever again, I will be the one to kill you, Kaede Fujimori." Lilith shrugged, then returned the question. "What are you doing? With Quinlan Elysiar and Black Fang out of reach, you should’ve returned to Greenvale to hunt Consortium members. Yet you’re now allied to Elvardia? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Kaede’s eyes narrowed at the disrespectful words, but she answered nonetheless. "For our shared goal and the future the Fujimori ancestors have envisioned, that man must be eliminated. Everything else comes after."

"Was my poisoning and enslavement also part of ’the future the Fujimori ancestors envisioned’, little sister?"

Ayame’s voice cut through the chaos, and the blue eyes that found Kaede across the field were alight with cold fury.

Kaede’s gaze slowly shifted from Lilith to Ayame, and she stepped forward.

The aura that rose from her was nothing that belonged on a human body, dark energy bleeding from her skin, her silhouette warping taller and sharper than the woman inside it.

Her hand found the hilt of the blade at her hip.

"That did not happen." The conviction behind the words left no room for performance. "I defeated you in a fair duel, sister of mine. I spared your life when the elders wanted you executed. I gave you a warrior’s future, and you spat on my mercy at every turn, standing in my way."

Ayame’s eyes widened for a breath.

"What nonsense are you even saying...?" she muttered through her teeth.

Then her katana slid into the scabbard with a clean whisper of steel, and the blue eyes that had widened went hard and certain. She walked forward, hand settling at her hip where the hilt waited.

"Fine, discussion is useless. Let’s settle this once and for all the way the ancestors you so adore intended. I demand a rematch!"

"I accept," came the ice-cold words.

The battlefield seemed to part as two young Fujimori swordfighters walked toward each other through the carnage.

At the same time, Quinlan’s eyes were on the tear. ’This is bad... The girls will be overwhelmed, and now there’s no Black Fang to tip the scales...’

The column hadn’t stopped. More infantry poured through, more undead, more chanting shields filling every meter the girls cleared, while the eyeless archers behind the seam kept their volleys coming. His magma was already answering the call for a second cage.

Then the ground ahead of him cracked.

*KRAAAKOOOM!*

Ragnar came up through the earth like a siege round fired from below. The stone split and bent in a circle twenty meters wide around the point he’d compressed himself into, and the shockwave that preceded him reached Quinlan’s boots before the dwarf cleared the surface, carrying a force that was wrong for anything living inside a mortal body.

[Synchra] blazed across Quinlan’s body, the anima-grade armor hardening to maximum density as every part of her layered itself between him and the incoming impact.

He had learned to read the weight of a threat before it landed.

Wind erupted beneath his boots and hurled him sideways. In the same motion he threw everything he could between them, a compressed gale aimed at the dwarf’s center mass and a wall of stone, tons of heavy rock.

Ragnar’s head hit the stone.

The wall exploded outward in a spray of shrapnel that peppered the slope, and the dwarf came through the debris without slowing, skull trailing dust and his remaining eye locked on Quinlan through the cloud. The wind hit him a fraction later and broke around his frame like water striking a mountain, his ascent not wavering by a single degree.

But Quinlan was already clear, hanging in open air with the distance he needed, and the Harbinger of Aeons class answered.

The elements ignited across his body at once. Fire wreathed his leg from hip to heel in a sheath of white heat, earth compressed around the boot until its striking mass tripled, wind spiraled down the limb in bands tight enough to warp the air, and lightning crackled through the seams between them in bright arcing veins.

His entire frame blazed with the full might of a class that had given one man dominion over the elements like the world had never seen before, and the kick he loaded carried every point of Strength and Agility he had to his name through a single point of contact.

The boot met Ragnar square in the face, and the crack that followed silenced fifty meters of combat in every direction.

Blood and teeth left Ragnar’s mouth in a spray that caught the light, and the force behind the blow would have outright decapitated any living creature on this continent. Quinlan felt the cheekbone give beneath his boot in the fraction of a second, but the body didn’t go backward.

The neck rolled with the impact instead of coming apart, muscles rebuilt by dark ritual absorbing what should have been fatal with a wet crack of realigning bone. His eye found Quinlan through a mask of its own blood, blown wide and burning with a fury that had nothing human left in it, and the grin that tore across Ragnar’s face was wide enough to split the stretched skin at the corners.

There was nothing sane left behind it.

His hand closed around Quinlan’s leg before the kick could retract. Fingers thick as pitons dented [Synchra]’s plating with a grip that had no business existing, and the anima-grade armor that had weathered siege rounds screamed under the pressure as fractures spiderwebbed from each fingertip.

"NO MORE SKY FOR YOU, VILLAIN!"

He screamed triumphantly, and pulled.