"I hope you know racism is now a crime, right?" Azel called out, his voice carrying across the water.

Merek closed the distance between them without answering and without slowing.

Despite his age, the old bastard could move. His feet barely touched the water's surface, gliding across it like he weighed nothing.

'He can hear me perfectly but can't detect my exact position.' Azel realized, shifting slightly to the left. 'So he's tracking by voice alone right now.'

That was exploitable.

Merek's thoughts raced behind his ruined eyes.

The sockets were still empty, blood streaming down his weathered face in twin crimson rivulets that dripped onto his bare chest.

The circuits there would need another minute, maybe two, to heal completely. Until then, he was functionally blind.

Which meant Azel wasn't using mana to cloak himself.

'He's shrouding his presence with aura? Preposterous. How can one being wield both magic and aura at this level? In my era, such a thing was considered impossible. The pathways are fundamentally incompatible unless...'

The old mage did what he'd done before with mana sensory… he began replicating his aura detection system throughout every circuit in his body, creating a distributed network of sensors that would let him perceive movement,

CRACK.

Azel's boot connected with his stomach before the network finished activating.

The impact was devastating.

Every ounce of air left Merek's lungs at once. The strike carried not just physical force but divine energy that bypassed his destruction armament entirely, hitting his core directly.

He doubled over involuntarily, his body betraying centuries of battle-hardened discipline.

He stumbled backward three steps, his arms flailing desperately for balance. His feet barely caught the water's surface before he regained himself and lashed out with a spinning back kick, channeling destruction magic through his leg to compensate for his lack of vision.

Azel parried it effortlessly, deflecting the kick with his forearm then he drove his fist into Merek's face.

Aura exploded on impact and the energy didn't just hit him… it detonated against his skull. Merek's nose shattered like glass.

The cartilage crumbled and blood sprayed across the water in a fine mist.

The sheer force sent him spinning backward through the air, his body rotating three complete times before he caught himself.

He hovered just above the water's surface with blood dripping from his ruined nose.

'He caught me off-guard twice in succession,' Merek thought, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

The coppery taste filled his mouth. 'That won't happen again. I'm giving him too much respect. He's just a half-breed with stolen power.'

As he steadied himself and shot backward to create distance, he sensed movement to his right.

Anastasia.

She was running across the water's surface with impossible grace, each footstep was perfectly balanced, not disturbing the surface even slightly.

Even without functional eyes, his mana sense painted her position clearly. He could feel her killing intent like heat radiating from a forge.

Destruction magic came alive in Merek's palm. This destruction was concentrated enough, compressed enough, and powerful enough to burn through divine protection completely.

He fired without hesitation.

Seven orbs erupted from his hand in rapid succession, each one glowing with sickly purple light.

They spread in a calculated pattern designed to cover every possible escape route… above, below, left, right, diagonal angles.

Each orb was capable of killing a Great Mage outright if it connected. The air itself warped around them from the concentrated destructive force.

'Let's see you dodge this, Elf Queen. Show me the limits of your vaunted speed.'

Anastasia's eyes tracked each orb as they screamed toward her, her enhanced perception breaking down their trajectories in fractions of a second.

She calculated angles, velocities, and intercept points.

She changed direction instantly, her body responding before conscious thought finished processing.

She veered right at a sharp angle and the first orb passed within centimeters of her shoulder, close enough that she felt the heat radiating from it.

The second orb she ducked under without breaking stride, her body folding at the waist with perfect flexibility.

The third, fourth, and fifth formed a tight cluster meant to create an inescapable kill zone… but she burst through the impossible gap between them.

Her body twisted mid-run, threading the needle with millimeters to spare on all sides. The orbs detonated behind her in sequence… BOOM BOOM BOOM.

They turned into massive purple explosions that sent shockwaves rippling across the water's surface but she was already clear, already closing the distance.

And she was right in front of Merek's face.

Azel whistled from his position floating in the air, genuinely impressed despite himself. "Damn. That was actually cool. Remind me not to piss you off."

Anastasia's leg came down like a guillotine blade and her entire body weight was behind it.

Merek raised both arms to block, catching her heel against his crossed forearms.

The impact sent shockwaves rippling across the water in concentric circles, waves spreading outward from the point of contact.

His arms shook from the force but he held firm. His feet sank an inch into the water from the pressure.

'Blocked. Now I can counter and—'

Runes.

They flowed from the point of contact like living ink spreading through water, glowing faintly blue as they traveled across his arms in intricate, interconnected patterns.

They were not just sealing runes this time... These ones were different and more aggressive.

Destructive runes.

Conditional magic designed to activate the moment they attached to his circuits, the moment they found their targets.

'No—!'

The runes attacked the magical pathways in his hands and legs simultaneously, flooding them with hostile mana specifically calibrated to overload his circuits.

His pathways tried to compensate, tried to absorb and redirect the foreign energy…

They couldn't.

BOOM.

Merek's right hand exploded into crimson mist, blood and fragments of bone spraying outward.

BOOM.

His left hand followed a split-second later.

BOOM. BOOM.

Both legs detonated at the knees.

Blood sprayed across the ocean surface in arterial bursts, staining the water deep red in an expanding circle.

Merek's limbless torso dropped backward onto the water with a heavy, wet splash.

Steam rose from his cauterized stumps where the destruction had been so violent it had partially sealed the wounds.

He tried to summon destruction magic.

Nothing happened.

The runes were already moving deeper, flowing through his remaining circuits like poison through veins, like invasive roots spreading through soil.

They bypassed every defensive barrier he'd spent centuries constructing and perfecting, dissolving them like paper held to flame and they attached to his heart.

The main circuit… The core of his entire magical system and the nexus from which all his power flowed.

His heart stopped but his eyes had finally healed.

Vision returned in sharp clarity, and the first thing Merek saw was Anastasia's face looking down at him.

He tried to laugh but coughed up blood instead.

"You may have won this time..." he managed, each word was a struggle as blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth. "But you have no idea what calamity is about to befall this world."

His body was sinking now and the water crept up his sides.

He smiled through the blood.

"I will enjoy seeing your look of despair from he—"

Something flashed in his peripheral vision.

A dagger.

It punched through his forehead and buried itself in his brain.

Merek twitched once then stopped moving entirely.

The dagger yanked itself free with a wet sound and flew back through the air, landing in Azel's open palm. He twirled it once before making it vanish.

Merek's body sank deeper into the ocean, consciousness fading. Memories surfaced as water filled his lungs… or would have if his body still needed air.

He could finally remember who that woman was… he could finally remember her face… He could see it…

A black haired woman who was smiling at him, her features were a bit blurry, but he knew her name somehow.

'Gwendolyn...'

The thought echoed in the darkness as the ocean swallowed him completely.

'I miss you.'

Then there was nothing.

…

"Why did you kill him like that?"

Anastasia turned to Azel with her cheeks puffed out in annoyance, looking almost childish despite having just won a brutal fight.

Azel shrugged, still floating in his referee tuxedo. "He was talking too much. Besides, nothing's going to happen."

He glanced up at the red sky, squinting against the crimson light.

He'd had this theory… completely baseless that Merek was somehow responsible for the sky. The old man was an Archmage, after all. Maybe this was some kind of apocalyptic spell he'd cast before getting sealed.

So Azel waited for the red to recede… and he waited…

The sky remained blood-red.

If anything, it looked deeper now, as if the color was intensifying and bleeding further into reality.

"Alright," Azel said, his confidence wavering slightly. "Let's leave the ocean."

They walked back toward the shore together. The area they'd fought in was completely destroyed then Anastasia raised one hand.

Life energy flowed from her palm in visible waves of green-gold light. It spread across the ruined landscape like water finding cracks, seeping into every destroyed surface.

Before Azel's eyes, the forest regrew.

Trees erupted from the scorched earth, growing from saplings to full height in seconds. Grass carpeted the ground, flowers bloomed and even the ocean behind them seemed cleaner somehow.

Within moments, the entire area looked pristine.

Well, except for the crimson sky overhead. That made everything look vaguely apocalyptic.

"Anastasia," Azel said, dismissing his tuxedo back into his normal clothes. "How do you feel?"

She raised her hand, examining it.

Her fingers looked longer and more elegant.

"How do I feel?"

She pressed her face into his side without warning, nuzzling against him.

Azel froze.

"I feel amazing," she murmured against his shirt. "I feel... complete."

Then she pulled back and looked him directly in the eyes. Her emerald gaze was intense like a predator looking at her prey.

"I also feel the need to kidnap you so only I will have you."

Azel took a step back. "Okay, that's—"

Her expression shifted abruptly.

She looked down at herself with wide eyes, then squeezed her legs together.

"I think..." She started hopping in place, hands on her backside. "I want to pee."

Azel gave her a flat look.

Of all the things she could've said after that declaration...

"Well, go do it behind one of those trees," he said, averting his gaze and gesturing vaguely at the forest.

She did, disappearing into the treeline with surprising speed.

…

'I don't want to die.'

'I want to live.'

'I want to get revenge... for my mother.'

The thoughts echoed through darkness, through the void between life and death, through the space where consciousness clings to existence by the thinnest thread.

Sylvia's headless corpse twitched.

The contestants gathered around her body… Alvinus, Feliora, the Arclight daughter who had lost her axe and was now gripping her oversized hammer with white knuckles, and their respective partners watching with wide, horrified eyes all froze mid-conversation.

They had come back to evacuate but suddenly..

Sylvia's body twitched again.

Her fingers spasmed, curling and uncurling and her torso arched upward off the blood-soaked ground then her head began to regenerate.

It started at the neck stump, the flesh knitting itself back together from nothing.

Layers formed in reverse… It was the bone structure first, the vertebrae clicked into place, then muscle tissue wrapping around the skeletal framework like clay being molded by invisible hands.

Veins and arteries wove themselves into intricate networks and skin stretched over everything perfectly.

Hair sprouted in golden waves that cascaded down her shoulders.

The entire process took five seconds.

Five impossible, horrifying seconds.

She sat up suddenly with a violent gasp, and pressed one hand to her chest where her heart hammered against her ribs.

Blood spilled from her lips as she coughed violently, her body expelling fluids that had pooled in her lungs during death.

"What... is happening?" Sylvia whispered hoarsely, looking down at her own hands like they belonged to someone else.

Her fingers trembled. "What is this...?"

Her body twitched once more and something dark spread through her veins like living ink being injected directly into her bloodstream.

It moved beneath her skin, branching and spreading with terrible purpose.

It was destruction magic.

'Surrender your body to me,' a voice whispered in her mind. 'I'll use this vessel to completely destroy this world. Your flesh will be my instrument of annihilation.'

Merek.

Even in death, even dissolved into the ocean, his magic lingered like a curse, trying to possess her corpse as a final act of spite.

The destruction magic coiled around her heart, squeezed her lungs, and tried to seize control of her motor functions.

"You failed to honor your deal," Sylvia muttered.

Her eyes hardened with fury. "And you tried to kill me. You used me, manipulated me, promised me power and revenge, then discarded me the moment I was inconvenient."

Her own magic flowed through her body in response, rising from somewhere deep within her core.

It was strange, completely unfamiliar… something she'd never felt before… but it made her feel powerful.

"And now you want my body?"

The destruction magic fought back, trying to consume her from within but her new magic rose to meet it, and the two forces clashed silently inside her veins.

Her magic won.

The remnants of Merek's destruction were expelled from her body in wisps of purple smoke, dissipating into the air.

Sylvia finally felt in control but her relief lasted exactly two seconds.

Starlight screamed toward her face.

She leapt right on pure instinct, the beam missing by inches and carving a molten line through the ground where she'd been sitting.

All of them were staring at her and their expressions were filled with pure hatred.

"Fuck," Sylvia said eloquently.

"You..." Feliora's voice was cold. "You manipulated my dear Azel into doing your dirty bidding. You almost led to his death. You caused the partial destruction of Elun'varis."

She stepped forward, lunar magic gathering around her fists.

"You won't be getting off easily."

"I'm sure you orchestrated my brother's banishment as well." Alvinus added, starlight crackling louder around his hands.

The Arclight daughter raised her oversized hammer, the weapon almost comically large for her frame. "Witch!"

Her partner nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, what they said!"

Sylvia smiled grimly.

Her new magic flowed through her body. She didn't understand it yet but she knew one thing.

'I need to get out of here. I'll go to where my ancestor died and retrieve that weapon. Then I can see if it will be enough.'

But they wouldn't just let her leave so she'd have to fight her way out.

Sylvia shot forward with wind magic boosting her speed. Without Azel to protect her, without backup, without any real plan… She was naturally at a disadvantage.

"Lunar Illusion."

Feliora's voice was soft but devastating.

The world shifted and colors bled into each other.

Sylvia felt herself being pulled into the illusion, her consciousness dragging toward sleep. Her eyelids grew heavy and her movements became sluggish.

She tried to fight it but it was too late…

WHAM.

The Arclight daughter's oversized hammer connected with her face with the full force of enhanced strength.

Sylvia's entire world became pain and spinning motion.

She flew backward through the air like a ragdoll, spinning end over end before slamming into the ground on the opposite side of the courtyard.

She didn't get back up and was completely down for the count.

"Yesss!" The Arclight daughter pumped her fist in the air. "We defeated the traitor!"

They gathered together and performed a group high-five.

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