The dragon's soul-fire breath should have killed him. Dante saw his death coming, a wall of white light which was blue-greenish energy that would erase him from existence. He didn't even have time to dodge.

CRASH!

A wall of black ice materialized between him and oblivion. It held for exactly one second before exploding into crystalline fragments, but that second was enough. The death beam deflected skyward, harmless.

Dante collapsed, his skin blistered and smoking. Across the battlefield, Masha crumpled to the ground. She'd thrown that barrier from fifty feet away while barely conscious, spent her last reserves saving the man who'd led them into hell.

The dragon's attention snapped to her like a predator spotting wounded prey. 'YOU DARE INTERFERE!'

"Masha!" Jin sprinted toward her fallen body, but the dragon was faster. Its massive form charged, each footstep shaking the island.

Erica threw herself into its path, unleashing a desperate barrage. Plasma lances, fireballs, everything she could muster. The attacks splashed uselessly against fossilized bone, but they accomplished something crucial. They made the dragon turn.

Its jaws snapped at her. She dove aside, the teeth missing her by inches. "Can't keep this up!" she screamed.

But Dante was watching the dragon's movements, and understanding clicked into place. It had abandoned him completely the moment Masha interfered. Then shifted to Erica when she attacked. The pattern was obvious now. Simple.

The dragon wasn't thinking anymore. It was reacting. Attacking whoever caused it pain, whoever drew its attention. Pure wounded-animal instinct.

And instinct could be exploited.

"EVERYONE STOP!" Dante's command cut through the chaos. Somehow they heard him, somehow they listened. "The dragon isn't strategizing! It's going after whoever hurts it last! We can control its focus!"

Lana's eyes widened. "You want to use that?"

"Split the team!" Dante pushed himself upright, ignoring the burns covering his body. "Team Alpha—Masha, Jin, Erica! You keep it here! Make it focus everything on you! Team Beta goes down, finishes the heart while it's distracted!"

The implications settled over them like a death sentence. Team Alpha would face a god alone, three wounded fighters buying time with their lives.

Jin looked at Masha barely conscious in his arms, at Erica shaking with exhaustion. Then at the dragon. "How long do we need to last?"

"However long it takes."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

Jin's jaw tightened. Then he nodded once. "Understood."

"Team Beta! Lana, Talia, with me!" Dante turned toward the side tunnel entrance.

The dragon's head tracked his movement, recognizing the real threat. It started toward him, abandoning the others.

"HEY, FOSSIL!" Erica gathered the dregs of her mana, shaped it into a concentrated lance, and fired directly at the dragon's skull. The plasma struck between its eyes with surgical precision.

CRACK!

A hairline fracture appeared in the ancient bone. Tiny. Insignificant. But visible.

The dragon went completely still. Then rotated its massive head with terrible slowness until those soul-fire eyes fixed on Erica alone.

'You... marked me...'

"What are you going to do about it?" Her voice cracked with terror, but she held her ground.

The dragon's roar shook the entire island. It charged her with murderous single-minded fury.

"GO!" Jin yelled at Dante.

They ran. Dante sprinted for the tunnel with Lana and Talia behind him. The dragon saw them moving, started to pivot. Jin was there instantly, his cracked blade striking the leg joint.

"Forget about them! Face me!"

The dragon's tail whipped around. Jin barely dodged, felt the displacement of air as bone passed inches from his skull. But those seconds were enough.

Team Beta vanished into darkness.

THE BAIT

"How long do you think we have?" Erica asked quietly.

They stood in a rough triangle, backs to each other, watching the dragon circle them like a cat with cornered mice. Masha had regained consciousness but could barely stand.

Jin's sword was more crack than blade. Erica's mana reserves scraped absolute bottom.

"Does it matter?" Jin replied.

"I suppose not."

The dragon struck without warning. Its massive claw swept down. They scattered, barely avoiding being crushed.

Masha threw up an ice wall on instinct it shattered instantly, but bought her two seconds to roll away. Erica fired weak plasma bolts that splashed harmlessly off bone. Jin charged in close, striking at joints and gaps that might as well have been solid steel.

They couldn't hurt it. Couldn't even slow it down. But they could annoy it, distract it, keep its full attention locked on them instead of the tunnel entrance thirty yards away.

The dragon's tail caught Jin across the ribs. He felt bones crack, tasted copper. Hit the ground hard and forced himself back up. Keep moving. Keep fighting. Every second counts.

Masha tried to create another barrier. Nothing happened. Her mana pool was empty, scraping past reserves into the void beyond. She had nothing left but determination, and you couldn't freeze a dragon with willpower alone.

Erica stood in front of both of them, the last one still capable of offense. Her flames guttered like dying candles. "Just a little longer," she whispered. "They just need a little more time."

Jin's blade shattered completely. CRACK! The steel broke clean through, leaving him holding a useless hilt. He looked at it for a moment, then threw it at the dragon's face. A futile gesture. A defiant one.

The dragon loomed over them, finished toying with its prey. Its jaws opened wide.

'You fought well. But your end is here.'

"We knew that when we stayed," Masha said through bloody teeth. She smiled. "But we bought them what they needed. That's enough."

The dragon paused, ancient intelligence finally understanding the trap. Then it felt the disturbance. Deep below, in its heart chamber. Something terrible was happening.

[TEAM BETA]

The tunnel was coming apart. Cracks spiderwebbed across walls. Chunks of bone fell from the ceiling.

"Move!" Dante commanded.

They ran at full sprint, leaping gaps, sliding under debris. Behind them, muffled by stone and distance, came the sounds of battle. BOOM. BOOM. Team Alpha fighting. Dying. Buying them time measured in seconds and blood.

"We need to hurry!" Talia's voice was tight.

"We're already hurrying," Lana snapped back.

They burst into the heart chamber and stopped dead.

The damage Kael had done was healing. The massive cracks were visibly smaller, the crystal structure regenerating before their eyes. Already 80% repaired. The black diamond pulsed with renewed strength, its power returning.

"No." Lana's usual confidence cracked. "We're too late."

"We're exactly on time." Dante walked forward, studying the heart. The defensive wards were regenerating too, stronger than before. They needed overwhelming force to punch through, to destroy the heart so completely it couldn't regenerate again.

They didn't have that kind of power. Not even close.

Unless.

"How much mana do you both have?" Dante asked.

"Maybe thirty percent," Lana estimated.

"Less," Talia admitted.

"It'll have to work."

Dante raised his hand and called across the veil. His shadow army manifested one by one. Eric's spectral shield. Rina's ghostly healing. Lucien, Draven, Garron, Thorne, Derek, the Guardian, Veyrion. Every lieutenant he'd collected. And finally Kael, newest and strongest, his form crackling with copied abilities.

"Edgar. Full combat analysis."

His analyst materialized, processing faster than thought. Numbers flooded Dante's consciousness. The wards required 50,000 mana to break. The heart needed another 100,000 damage to shatter permanently. Total: 150,000.

His assembled army could output maybe 80,000. Not even close.

But if he summoned his S-rank god-beasts simultaneously. If he channeled his own remaining power. If he burned his life force as fuel. The math might work. Barely.

"You'll die," Lana said flatly, reading his face. "Your body can't handle that much output."

"The heart dies first. That's what matters."

From above, a scream. Raw and desperate. Someone from Team Alpha.

No more time.

"Ouroboros. Hephaestus." The summoning tore at his soul. "Come forth."

FWOOSH! FWOOSH!

The seven-headed Abyssal Shadow. The magma Juggernaut. They manifested in a surge of power that made the temperature spike and plunge simultaneously. The chamber barely contained them.

Dante felt his mana draining like an open wound. Maintaining all of this—entire shadow army plus both god-beasts—was impossible. Literally impossible. His body was already shutting down from the strain. He pushed harder anyway.

"Everyone." His voice resonated with command. "That heart is our only target. Destroy it. Everything you have. Nothing held back. Don't stop until there's dust."

The army moved like a single organism.

[BACK TO DRAGON]

Ouroboros struck first, seven heads descending in sequence like hammers of the apocalypse. Each head wreathed in different energy—lightning, void, shadow, frost. They slammed into the wards with devastating force.

Hephaestus followed, its magma fists burning with heat that made the air shimmer. BOOM! The impact sent shockwaves through stone.

The wards blazed brilliant blue-green, holding. But they were designed to counter individual threats, not coordinated armies.

Eric's shield became a battering ram. Lucien's blood magic corroded magical structure. Draven found microscopic weaknesses and exploited them ruthlessly. The entire army focused with laser precision on breaking through.

CRACK!

The first ward shattered. The army surged forward.

Dante collapsed to his knees. Blood ran from his nose, his ears. Every cell in his body screamed for him to stop. He didn't. "More. Everything."

Lana and Talia added their power to the assault, firing concentrated beams into the maelstrom of destruction.

The second ward broke. Then the third. Then the fourth.

Each one pushed Dante closer to death. His vision swam. His heart stuttered. But through failing consciousness, he saw the final ward crack.

"NOW!"

Ouroboros's seven heads struck in perfect unison, not biting but devouring. Consuming the heart's fundamental essence. Hephaestus brought both fists down in a meteor strike that made the chamber shake. The shadow army poured through the opening, a flood of death and destruction.

Inside the crystal, Kael's spectral form activated Mana Burst. The explosion from within was catastrophic. The heart couldn't withstand simultaneous assault from outside and inside.

The black diamond fractured. Rapidly. Terminally.

Dante was barely conscious. Blood poured from every orifice. His body was failing on a cellular level. But through the darkness closing in, he saw it happen.

The heart shattered.

Black crystal exploded into fragments that dissolved like morning mist. The glowing threads connecting it to the ceiling went dark one by one. The chamber fell into shadow.

His army vanished, dismissed automatically as his consciousness fled. Lana caught him as he fell.

"We did it," he whispered with his last breath before darkness took him.

THE DRAGON'S REALIZATION

The dragon froze mid-strike. Its jaws were inches from Masha when it happened.

'No.'

The mental voice went small. Weak.

'NO!'

It abandoned them completely, wheeling around to lunge for the tunnels. But even as it moved, its body betrayed it.

The soul-fire in its eyes flickered erratically. Cracks spread across every bone like lightning frozen in stone. Its movements grew sluggish, uncoordinated.

'My heart... my existence...'

Jin, Masha, and Erica stared in disbelief as the god that had nearly killed them began falling apart.

"They did it," Jin whispered. "They actually killed it."

The dragon lifted its head and roared. Not rage. Acceptance. An ending centuries delayed finally arriving.

'Well played, little mortals...'

Then the roar twisted into something else. Pure agony as its body began tearing itself apart. Ancient bones cracked louder. Soul-fire burned brighter, more chaotic.

The dying god began its final rampage.

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