[Volume 1 | Chapter 35: Siege (II)]

Pain gnawed at Apollo's left arm like the rancor of a rabid beast.

The wound from that girl's [Grilletto] had turned an ugly shade of purple-black as necrotic tissue spread outward from the entry point like ink bleeding through parchment. Each movement sent fresh waves of agony through his nervous system, but he forced himself to maintain his patrol along the warehouse perimeter. The trees provided decent cover, though their shadows seemed to twist and writhe in his deteriorating vision.

His breathing came in short, ragged bursts as he adjusted his position on a sturdy branch. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the evening chill. The laser-like spell of doom from that night had done more than pierce flesh and bone—it had introduced something wrong into his system, something that burned and spread and consumed. He could feel it in the way his Dread String wavered, the thousands of connections to his controlled civilians growing unstable. Soon, the carefully orchestrated traffic patterns he'd spent days perfecting would begin to unravel.

Ain't no time for whinin', he chided himself, though the southern drawl in his thoughts was slipping—another sign of his deteriorating control.

Boss needs this to work...I can't let a little scratch slow me down.

But it wasn't just a scratch, and some part of him knew it.

The rational thing would be to [Ley Line] with Malleus—to alert the boss that he was compromised. That's what any professional would do.

That's what the Arpeggio Family would have demanded of their scions—perfect judgment, perfect control, perfect results.

The family name sent a fresh wave of nausea through him that had nothing to do with his injury.

Some noble scion you turned out to be, Roy Arpeggio.

A dark, insulting voice that sounded too much like his kinfolk whispered from the depths of his consciousness. Evidently, the name felt foreign even in his thoughts, like trying on clothes that no longer fit. He hadn't used it since that day—since the moment they had made it abundantly clear that a third son with mediocre talent wasn't worth the resources to nourish.

"You're dead to us. To the Arpeggios. To the Empire."

They cut him loose, removed from the family registry, stripped of his rights to the family fortune, and cast out into the world alone, excising him from their records like a surgeon removing a tumor. That was the fate of an expendable Arpeggio, a defective cog in the machine.

The pain in his arm was nothing compared to the memory of that day.

He remembered standing in that vast marble hall, before the assembled elders. How the candlelight had caught on their rings and medallions—symbols of authority that he would never wear. His father hadn't even bothered to attend. Only his mother had shown any reaction at all, a slight tightening around her eyes as the verdict was read.

But she had said nothing.

Done nothing.

She just watched as another imperfect piece was pruned from the family tree.

Roy Arpeggio had died that day, and Apollo had been born in flame and spite, taking mercenary work across the lawless Desperado with a newfound appreciation for how the other half lived. He'd learned to wear his accent like armor, to let people underestimate the failed noble who played at being common. It had worked well enough, until—

"Interesting technique," the ashen-haired demon said, standing among the corpses of Apollo's former employers. "Those strings of yours...they're not just for control, are they?"

Nemesis had seen through him instantly. Demons could recognize other demons, and so, he recognized the hunger in him—not for power or wealth, but for connection. And Malleus, the brilliant and broken Malleus, had just laughed and declared that any family stupid enough to throw him away didn't deserve him anyway.

They were the first people since that day in the marble hall who had looked at him and seen him, not just another failed experiment in breeding the perfect noble line. When Nemesis spoke of his plans, of reshaping the very foundations of power that had discarded them all, Apollo had felt something he thought he'd lost forever:

Purpose.

That's why he couldn't tell them about the wound. They couldn't let them see how badly that girl's [Grilletto] had shaken him. He was their comrade now, not some disposable piece on a noble's game board.

He had to be worthy of that; it'd be too cruel for the world to deny him of such otherwise.

So instead of communicating to them, he adjusted his position on the tree branch, gritting his teeth against the pain. His left arm was almost completely numb now, hanging useless at his side. No matter. He was a professional; he could do this with one hand tied behind his back. Literally, if he had to.

He checked his watch—9 PM.

"Just gotta...hold it together," he muttered through gritted teeth, forcing himself to focus on the perimeter. The warehouse complex stretched before him like a metal labyrinth, its surfaces reflecting the last light of dusk. Everything seemed clear, but his vision kept blurring at the edges, dark spots dancing across—

The assault came from above.

A Prana Burst slammed into him, the impact driving him back against the tree trunk with devastating force. Stars exploded behind his eyes as his already-weakened body absorbed the shock. Before he could even process the pain, another spell wrapped around him like invisible chains—[Constricta], his addled mind supplied.

It was an Interference-type spell that turned the target's own perception against them, making them feel as if they were bound by steel wires.

He tried to cry out, to activate Dread String, but his body wouldn't respond. All those thousands of connections he'd maintained, all the careful manipulation of Windsor's external traffic… dissolved like mist in morning sun.

Through his rapidly dimming vision, he watched two figures drop from higher branches with seemingly rehearsed grace.

The noble with the Contender—Leila Trafalgar—landed first, her eyes glowing with that cursed Birthright of hers. The Irregular boy followed, advancing with the silent confidence of someone who had spent his life learning to strike from shadows.

"Target secured," Leila stated outloud. "The necrosis progressed exactly as calculated. He never stood a chance."

"We need to move," the Acacia brusquely replied, already turning toward the complex. He knew the takedown was far too loud for experienced assassins like Malleus and Nemesis to not have noticed.

As his consciousness began to fade, Apollo felt something that might have been a laugh bubble up in his throat. Here he was, the great "Revolver of the Bloodhounds," taken down by a couple of kids because he'd been too proud, too sentimental to admit he was injured.

The last thing he saw was their retreating figures, moving with the determination of those who thought they understood what they were walking into. He hoped, for their sakes, that they were wrong.

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Because Nemesis didn't just plant traps; he planned revelations.

And some verities were worse than any wound.

The wind howled.

The world went white. Air pressure surged, warping sound and light alike, shattering glass and bending metal.

This air lacked the gentle whispers that normally danced through Windsor's valleys, nor even the fierce gales that sometimes swept down from northern mountains. This was something else entirely; it was a primal force that turned air itself into a weapon of mass destruction. [Gran Tempesta] erupted from Elias like a bomb, a spiraling vortex of compressed wind that shattered windows and tore chunks from buildings with indiscriminate fury.

She told the boy to rage, for him to abandon all knightly principles he had built up from his childhood. And yet, as Malleus stood within that maelstrom, she found herself laughing—laughing not at Elias, but at herself.

At the foolishness of thinking that this pampered noble child, so carefully groomed by his family and the Empire, could ever truly understand the depths of his own anger.

And yet…

If he hadn't contained it, hadn't poured every ounce of his concentration into keeping the tempest focused in a narrow corridor, the spell might have flattened all of Windsor. Even now, he could feel it straining against his control like a leashed beast, hungry to expand, to devour. Windwaker screamed in his blood, reveling in this loss of restraint.

For the first time in a long time, Elias Scryer stopped trying to be perfect.

But when the dust settled and his vision cleared, Malleus still stood.

Blood ran freely from dozens of cuts where debris had struck her, yet she made no move to wipe it away. Instead, she watched it flow with an expression approaching reverence. The crimson droplets floated, suspended in the air around her like macabre ornaments. As Elias watched, they began to glow with an inner light that had nothing to do with his wind.

"Beautiful," she breathed with a blush that resembled excitement, and her voice carried an echo that didn't belong in a human throat. "You actually made me bleed. Do you have any idea what a gift you've given me, little knight?"

The blood burned brighter, and with it came understanding. All those people she'd drained earlier, all that stolen prana—she'd been preparing for this.

The blood refused to fall.

Each crimson droplet hung suspended in the air around Malleus, defying gravity through principles that violated the natural order. The conversion had already begun; prana stolen from thirty victims underwent a metamorphosis that shouldn't have been possible.

In proper Thaumaturgy, prana could neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed through calculation and equivalent exchange. But Bloodflame transcended those limitations by using the most primordial catalyst of all: life itself, distilled into its basic components. The mechanism was elegantly horrific. As her blood made contact with air, hemoglobin began to break down at the molecular level. Iron separated from oxygen, creating a cascade of reactions that transformed the very structure of her cells. The stolen prana, still carrying traces of its original owners' life force, rushed to fill the vacuum created by this decomposition. In that moment of merger—when foreign energy met destabilized blood—something new emerged.

The droplets began to glow.

First deep crimson, then brilliant auburn, then an unknown shade that existed somewhere between red and violet. Heat radiated from them in visible waves as the stolen prana underwent its final conversion. Temperature readings would have shown alarming numbers—heat so intense it should have vaporized the very air, yet somehow contained within each floating sphere of corrupted blood.

Elias felt it in his bone. It was a wrongness that transcended danger. Windwaker screamed warnings about atmospheric disturbances that shouldn't exist, thermal patterns that violated every natural law. The air grew thick with the scent of copper and ozone as reality seemed to warp around Malleus's twisted experiment.

Then the catalyst completed its work.

"[Incendio]."

The Strategic Class spell erupted as combustion given form. Every floating droplet of blood became a focal point for chain reactions that rippled outward. Air ignited, and molecules split apart only to recombine into something that burned with the stolen essence of thirty souls.

Elias's enhanced perception—a gift of his Birthright—caught the disruption in wind patterns microseconds before the flames reached him. He [Fluxed] backward whilst riding currents of his own creation away from certain immolation. But even that desperate retreat couldn't fully shield him from the horror of what followed.

A pillar of blood-red flame rose from where he had stood, so intense that it turned night to crimson day. The heat alone would have killed any normal human instantly, cooking them from the inside out as water in their cells flash-boiled. Life twisted into death, existence perverted into destruction, all contained within a column of impossible flame that reached toward heaven like a god's accusing finger.

When Elias looked into that inferno, he didn't see fire.

He saw faces.

The faces of the thirty people whose prana had been stolen to power this abomination. Their agony distorted into a grotesque parody of humanity as their energy fueled Malleus's terrible creation. The pillar of Bloodflame twisted like a living thing, distorting the very fabric of space around it. Where it touched concrete, the ground sublimated, skipping the liquid phase entirely as molecules broke down under unimaginable heat. The air filled with a sound like screaming, though whether it came from the fire itself or the prana trapped within its crimson light, Elias couldn't tell.

"[Ignis]."

The spell erupted from the pillar's base without warning or mercy. Unlike the straightforward flames of [Fiamma], it was a lance of concentrated hellfire that moved faster than the eye. Only Windwaker's perception of the air gave Elias enough warning to throw himself sideways, rolling across scorched earth as crimson death passed within inches of his heart.

Not fast enough…!

Fire licked across his left shoulder, and pain unlike anything in his experience erupted through his nervous system. The burn was filthy, corruptive, eating not flesh but soul. His body tried to scream, but his lungs refused to draw breath as agony drowned out everything else. This was wrong, like his very cells were being rewritten by the corrupted energy. His enhanced winds couldn't fully disperse the lingering heat that seemed to burrow into his flesh like hungry insects.

Spell after spell, the Bloodhound unleashed hell. He barely dodged the next one, and then the next. [Ignis], [Flammonis], [Fiamma]—she hurled them all successively, turning the area into a crucible of superheated air and ash with each and every one of his last-second evasions.

"I was saving this, you know. All this power, all these sacrifices—they were meant for her. But you've forced my hand, little knight!"

The pillar began to collapse inward, the energy condensing around her form like a second skin of living flame. Thirty souls' worth of twisted prana were ready to be unleashed upon the world.

Elias's right hand tightened around the grip of his sidesword. His other arm barely had range of motion and his shoulder smoldered with something that went beyond mere flame. He didn't answer with words. Instead, his prana surged, coalescing around his sword with a sound like a thunderclap. The wind howled in response, bending and twisting to his will.

As if they were a red and green comet, the two Thaumaturges charged.

Elias moved like a force of nature, his sidesword becoming a blur of silver and emerald as he unleashed a storm of thrusts. All strikes carried enough compressed air to slice through steel, and every movement flowing into the next with inhuman precision. The wind sang around his blade, transforming simple steel into an instrument of divine retribution. One thrust became ten, became fifty, became a hundred—an avalanche of assaults that should have overwhelmed any defense.

But Malleus was no longer bound by human limitations.

She moved through his onslaught like smoke through fingers, her form wrapped in that second skin of living flame. Where his blade passed, she wasn't there—always a fraction of a second ahead, always just beyond reach. The stolen prana enhanced her every movement, turning simple evasion into an art form that bordered on precognition.

"Is this all? Is this your limit, little knight?" she sneered and taunted.

Elias didn't waste breath responding, yet he grit his teeth in vexation. He poured more prana into his assault, forcing the very air to bend to his will. His sword became a conductor's baton, orchestrating a typhoon of slashes that filled every possible angle of approach. He turned the space around them into a killing field of compressed air and howling wind.

But still, she moved unscathed.

"Let me show you."

It was a whisper, just loud enough to carry over the maelstrom.

And suddenly she was there, inside his guard, [Fiamma's Edge] blazing in her hand.

"The difference between determination and destiny."

The blade of vibrating Bloodflame took him just below the heart.

The Scryer scion felt the heat before the pain—a earing warmth that spread through his chest like molten lead. His legs betrayed him, knees striking scorched earth as the sword fell from nerveless fingers. He tried to draw breath, but his lungs refused to expand, refused to acknowledge anything except the burning sword that had pierced his core.

Malleus stood over him, apricot eyes reflecting neither triumph nor regret. The flaming blade hummed as she raised it for the final strike.

"For what it's worth, you danced magnificently."

The blade descended.

And the night exploded.

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