The block was flattened.
Where a narrow merchant street had once run—lined with awnings, balconies, and gossip—there was now a smoking wound. Buildings on either side had folded inward like paper, their facades blown apart, beams jutting out at sick angles. A crater of fused stone and burning rubble sat where the heart of the street used to be.
The air was a wall of heat.
Half the soldiers caught in the blast had simply ceased to exist—armor and flesh vaporized in a white flash. The others lay scattered at the edges of the kill zone, groaning or ominously still, armor warped and half-melted, skin blistered where plates had failed.
Four of the Knights were dead.
They had done exactly what Knights were supposed to do when a threat appeared near their Lady—they'd lunged straight for the source, hoping to pin Catalyna down while Aerwyna finished her chant.
They never reached her.
Catalyna had been charging a delayed spell—a compressed \[Supernova]—and detonated it the moment they crossed the invisible threshold of her kill zone.
Only Aerwyna and the Riverrunners closest to her were still upright.
Even that was not a given.
Two Riverrunners had moved on instinct the instant they recognized the words. While their comrades curled around the fleeing heir, these two planted themselves on either side of their mistress and threw everything they had forward.
A wall of pressurized water howled into existence in front of Aerwyna, a shimmering barrier that drank the initial wave of impossible heat.
It boiled in a heartbeat.
Steam slammed into them like a hammer. The two Riverrunners screamed as their own spell cooked them from the inside out. They stayed on their feet long enough to keep the wall dense, long enough for Aerwyna's \[Glacial Armor] to absorb what the water could not.
Then they fell.
Of the ten Knights who had gathered on the surrounding roofs, only three remained standing.
The rest were lumps of metal and meat on the rubble.
Across from Aerwyna, Catalyna was still standing.
Casual—but not untouched. The color had drained from her cheeks, replaced by a pale, iridescent sheen that caught the firelight wrong. The glow of her aura had thinned to a tight, harsh edge.
She huffed once, slow-trying to cover up for ragged breathing.
Her calmness didn't match the cratered ruin behind her.
As if she hadn't just transformed a public thoroughfare into a slaughterhouse.
The tiles beneath her had been stripped away, leaving bare, cracked stone. Bodies lay in a rough circle around that point, as if some invisible radius had decided who lived and who burned.
Catalyna had not led them on a chase to escape.
She had led them to gather.
Her outer leather was scorched in places, her braid singed at the tips, but there were no obvious wounds. What protection lay beneath that armor—whatever strange underlayer smudged her aura—had done its job.
Her mana flared around her in tight, terrifying pulses.
This had been the plan.
Catalyna had not led them on a chase to escape. She had led them to gather. She needed them clustered in one dense, urban target where a single high-yield spell would do the most damage—forcing Aerwyna to choose: cover her son and retreat, or stand and weather the firestorm.
Catalyna had gambled that the Lady of Fulmen would cover the child.
She had been right.
Aerwyna dragged in a breath.
Her \[Glacial Armor] was a spiderweb of fractures, steaming where the heat had forced it almost to its limit. Cracks crept across her breastplate and down her left pauldron; flakes of blue ice dropped from her gauntlet in shards.
She moved a hand, and the armor creaked. Pain flared deep in her ribs; something inside her felt torn and scorched.
She had recognized the spell too late to cancel her own, but early enough to survive.
As soon as the first words of that forbidden pattern left Catalyna's lips—Aerwyna had felt it. Not the warmth of Fire. Not the steady pressure of Earth.
The shape of it.
A archduke-ranked pattern. A doctrine spell. The kind of incantation the Rex Imperia's reserves wrote into their bones with years of disciplined horror.
Aerwyna had thrown herself backward three paces, braced, and flooded her own barriers with power.
The Riverrunners beside her had made the difference between "staggering" and "dead."
Steam curled off her shoulders as she straightened. Even with mana pouring into \[Glacial Armor], parts of it had simply evaporated on impact. She was alive—but one, no, two more exchanges like that would break her.
"How?" Aerwyna wheezed, teeth gritted as she forced her armor to knit itself back together with a gesture. "Only the Augmenti and a handful of maniacs like Reitz are taught that spell."
Her voice cut through the roar of lingering flames.
"Who are you?"
Catalyna turned her head slightly, regarding Aerwyna over the heat shimmer.
"You used a classified technique," Aerwyna went on, disbelief and fury sharpening each word. "That was \[Supernova]. A spell reserved for the Emperor's own reserve forces. Only the cream of the crop is allowed to touch it."
Catalyna rolled her shoulders, as if shrugging off the question along with the drifting ash.
"You are correct," she said lightly. "The Legio Imperia Elita can use it."
Her gaze flicked over the crater of dead men and shattered buildings.
"But you are mistaken if you think they are the only ones."
She took ten measured steps backward, never once turning her back. Not fleeing—resetting the angle.
Aerwyna glided after her, panting.
She didn't bother to run. She skated.
Each breath she exhaled turned to mist as if the dead of winter. Ice blossomed beneath her boots, forming a thin, flawless surface in the space between one heartbeat and the next. She rode it forward like a ghost, shards scraping underfoot as she closed the gap.
She raised her right hand.
The water in her hands coagulated.
It twisted into a solid column above her palm.
Condense.
It flashed into diamond-blue ice—dense and deadly.
She threw one. \
Two.\
Three spears—measured, merciless.
They screamed across the ruined street, leaving vapor trails in the superheated air.
Catalyna moved.
She dropped low under the first, twisted sideways around the second, and leapt over the third with a graceless-looking hop that still carried her clear by inches. Behind her, the spears punched through collapsed walls and half-standing chimneys, exploding them into powder.
Aerwyna's eyes narrowed behind the faceted slit of her helm.
The wench is faster than I expected.
Catalyna's lips were already moving.
Her hands traced small, precise shapes as she backed farther down the ruined block, gaining space. The cadence of her muttering wasn't quite right for a full invocation. The intervals between breaths were off.
Shift-casting.
Aerwyna's mind parsed the pattern automatically. The words were being built and discarded and rebuilt, like a blade being sharpened mid-swing.
Viscount-tier. Third circle or fourth, she estimated.
Thirteen seconds, if Catalyna didn't cut corners.
An eternity in a duel like this.
"There," Aerwyna thought, feeling the opening widen. "You can't defend and build a big spell at the same time."
She loosened her stance.
The water clinging thickest around her armor sloughed off, pouring down her legs in a liquid sheath. She flung it outward, not as a blast, but as a rolling tide that surged down the street toward Catalyna's ankles.
Flood the footing. Freeze it. Slow her down, then close in—
Mistake.
The chant cut off mid-syllable.
The glow around Catalyna's hands winked out like someone had snuffed a candle.
She cancelled the higher-circle spell and snapped into a basic one instead.
She stomped once, anchoring herself against the incoming water, and slammed both palms forward.
\[Stone Bullet.]
A first-circle spell.
A fist-sized chunk of brick tore itself from the half-collapsed wall beside her and launched forward at obscene speed, riding the collapsing edge of Aerwyna's own wave.
Crack.
It hit Aerwyna squarely in the stomach.
The \[Glacial Armor] held. The stone didn't pierce; it exploded in a shower of shards.
The kinetic impact, though, was vicious.
Air punched out of Aerwyna's lungs inside the armor. Her back foot skidded. The ground lurched under her as the redirected water surged past, thrown off by the sudden interruption.
Catalyna was already moving.
She darted in as Aerwyna doubled over, swept her leg low, and hooked the Lady's ankles.
Aerwyna went down.
The world tilted as she flipped.
Her back hit broken tile and ice-hard stone. For a fraction of a second, all she could see was sky and steam.
She didn't panic.
Her hands slapped down.
As she fell, she sent a pulse of mana into the water she'd spilled. It answered, freezing solid in jagged patterns under Catalyna's feet.
Catalyna landed to follow up—
—and her boots locked.
Catalyna's weight shifted wrong. She had enough control to keep her balance, but not enough to step away.
Aerwyna twisted, using the momentum of her fall.
Her leg snapped up, mana reinforcing muscle and bone.
Her boot smashed into Catalyna's face.
The impact made a sound like cracking ceramic.
Catalyna's head snapped to the side. The force yanked her feet free of the ice and flung her backward. She flew into a half-standing wall of burning debris, hit hard enough to send a spray of embers skyward, and vanished in a cough of smoke.
Aerwyna rolled to her feet, breath still uneven.
The ground jumped.
Catalyna's palms hit the street.
\[Earth Shake.]
The cobbles buckled in a wave, shuddering like the skin of a waking beast. Cracks spidered outward; chunks of stone heaved. Aerwyna staggered, one knee dipping as her footing betrayed her.
"Enough!"
Her shout ripped from her throat raw and furious.
She poured mana into the environment.
Until now, she had focused on water—on what she could see and call directly. Now she reached wider, deeper.
She didn't just freeze the puddles and spray.
She froze the air.
Heat bled away in a rush. The roar of the lingering flames choked mid-growl as their fuel was ripped from them. Fire shapes solidified in place, captured mid-flicker in grotesque sculptures of opaque ice—frozen tongues licking at nothing.
The scent of smoke vanished, replaced by a hard, biting cold that stabbed the lungs.
The terrain became hers.
She moved.
On ice, Aerwyna was a rumor.
She skimmed across the ground without friction, every twitch of her ankle turning into a sharp change of direction. The ice in front of her liquefied and re-froze in patterns shaped by her will—ramps, slopes, shallow bowls to redirect force.
A ridge of ice surged up under her boots, launching her into the air.
She rose in a smooth arc, spear forming in her hand as she moved. Water condensed out of what little humidity remained; it froze into a massive, barbed javelin, the point honed to a molecular edge.
She aimed for Catalyna's heart.
Catalyna met her.
The former wet nurse smashed one hand into the street as Aerwyna leapt. Rock surged up around her arm, encasing her forearm and fist in jagged stone.
She twisted and punched upward.
Ice and rock met with a detonation of force.
The shockwave spread out in a visible ring, shattering already-weakened walls, knocking loose shingles from surviving roofs. Aerwyna's spear splintered into a hail of shards; Catalyna's stone gauntlet cracked, chunks flying.
Aerwyna landed in a crouch on the far side of the street.
She didn't wait.
She flung her hands out.
A storm of ice shards roared into existence—needle-fine, razor-edged. They tore forward in a cone, shredding the air with a sound like a thousand broken panes.
Catalyna moved through them.
She blocked some with forearms still encased in rough stone. She ducked behind a jut of rubble for a heartbeat, letting the worst of the flurry slam into the makeshift cover. A dozen shards still found her—slicing leather, drawing thin lines of red across her cheek and shoulder.
She retaliated by driving her heel into the street.
The ground under her erupted upward, lifting her on a jagged earthen platform. It tilted, flinging her into the air like a catapult.
Mid-flight, she thrust both hands toward Aerwyna.
\[Infernal Blaze]
Fire roared from her palms—not the all-consuming sun of \[Supernova], but a focused torrent, a rolling column of orange-white heat that slammed down where Aerwyna stood.
Aerwyna crossed her arms, \[Glacial Armor] thickening reflexively over her chest and helm. The Blaze hit, crawling around her in a skin of fire. Steam exploded outward again, obscuring everything.
The three surviving Knights chose that moment.
They charged through the steam, shields up, spears cocked back. They couldn't see clearly, but they knew the arc of Catalyna's jump and the likely landing zone.
They threw.
Two spears went wide, gouging chunks from the broken street.
The third grazed Catalyna's shoulder as she came down, tearing through leather and leaving a line of blood that soaked quickly into the fabric.
She hit the ground in a roll, came up with her hands slamming down.
\[Earth Wall.]
Stone surged up between her and the Knights, swallowing the follow-up and buying a precious second.
The street went still for a heartbeat.
Steam curled and thinned.
Both women were breathing hard now—Aerwyna from exertion and the cumulative shock to her body; Catalyna from sustaining multi-element spells and a suicidal opening gambit.
Their auras clashed invisibly in the center of the ruined block, cold and heat grinding against each other.
"You fight like a high noble," Aerwyna shouted, anger riding her words. "I can't even tell if Earth or Fire is your primary element."
She took a step forward, ice creaking.
"How did someone like you endure being a servant for three years? Washing dishes. Hauling water. Why hide under my nose as a wet nurse?"
Her voice sharpened.
"A woman with power like yours could have lived in velvet," Aerwyna went on, voice cutting through the hiss of ice. "So don't insult my intelligence with any unlikely stories you come up with..."
Her spear tip lifted a fraction.
"And don't pretend this is yours, either."
She jerked the spear toward the cratered street.
"Someone taught Imperial spells. Hidden in restircted vaults. Someone gave you a timetable. Someone told you which throat to reach for."
Aerwyna's jaw tightened.
"If your masters wanted House Blackfyre broken, they'd do it the way the Empire always does—through the ladder."
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
"Under Aufsteigfrieden You bleed a House by stripping its standing, choking its bonds, forcing it into duels it can't win."
She took another step.
Ice creaked.
"And if they wanted Reitz dead, they wouldn't need Ezra. They wouldn't need three years in my kitchens. They'd have put poison in his wine, or a knife in his sleep, and called it a night."
Her voice dropped, colder.
"So why take my son?"
"Are they afraid to face my husband? Or are they using Ezra as a hook—something to drag Reitz into an Ascent trap when the Roll opens? That doesn't even make sense. Reitz's liege lord is the Emperor himself."
She leaned forward a fraction, fury turning razor-sharp.
"Who commands you, Catalyna? Primarch Lauferk? The Officium?"
The questions weren't tactics now.
They were triage.
If Catalyna's power was even half what it seemed, someone should have noticed. Someone in the Primarch-Seat tier should have recruited her or killed her. Instead she'd been pretending to be a cook who knew how to hold a baby.
"That is none of your business, Aerwyna," Catalyna replied from behind the \[Earth Wall].
There was an audible huff, her breath heavy from the last clash.
Her voice was calm. No hint of strain, even if her breathing was heavier.
"If you don't want half your remaining soldiers to die," she continued, "if you don't want this pretty little domain of yours to crumble, then hand Ezra over. I have no intention of harming him. Your son will be kept safe. Fed and Treated well."
"You are insane," Aerwyna hissed.
Her aura flared, cold biting at every exposed surface.
"You will have to kill me before you lay a finger on my baby boy."
"Milady, watch out!" one of the Knights roared.
The warning came an instant before the earth beneath Aerwyna's feet exploded.
The wall had been a decoy.
Catalyna wasn't cowering behind it; she had already gone under.
The ground lurched violently as something massive surged up from below. A boulder the size of a cart wheel erupted under Aerwyna's last position, shattering ice and sending shards of rock and frost flying.
Aerwyna threw herself sideways, \[Glacial Armor] cracking further as the edge of the blast caught her.
The shockwave rolled outward through the damaged street.
The explosion woke Ezra.
One moment he was floating in thick, dreamless dark.
The next, he was jostled awake, his cheek pressed against cold metal, his body bouncing in a controlled, rhythmic way he recognized as someone running very fast.
He blinked, eyes gummy.
Noise hit first—muffled shouts, the distant roar of collapsing stone, the high, ragged keening of a structure finally giving up and falling.
Then the tremor rolled through the bones of the city.
Dust drifted down from an overhanging eave as they ducked beneath it. A window somewhere shattered.
That was a high-yield detonation, Ezra's mind supplied automatically, still half-fogged. It probably blew the entire block. Catalyna, then. Mother is still fighting.
He twisted in the grip holding him.
Evan's breastplate filled his vision—soot-streaked, a Blackfyre crest warped slightly by heat. Evan's jaw was clenched, his eyes fixed ahead as he ran along a side street, away from the column of smoke.
"Please," Ezra rasped.
His throat hurt. His whole body felt leaden, like he'd been asleep for days. It hadn't been mana depletion; his reserves, when he probed inward, were diminished but not empty.
His body had simply hard-crashed after too much AMP, too much adrenaline, too much sprinting on muscles that technically shouldn't exist yet.
He tugged weakly at Evan's armor.
"Sir Evan."
The Knight startled, glancing down.
"Milord?" he blurted.
His orders were clear. Get the heir back to the castle. Guard him. Protect the line.
But the heir was awake.
And talking.
Again.
"We have to help Mother," Ezra said.
His baby voice came out thin, but there was a steel thread in it. The sound didn't match his size.
"My orders are to return you to the keep," Evan said tightly. "Lady Aerwyna commanded—"
"That explosion was Catalyna," Ezra insisted, forcing the words out. "She used something big. Mother might be injured."
He looked up; his eyes, unfocused a moment before, sharpened.
"We need to go back."
"But, Milord…" Evan began, torn.
They were almost clear of the worst of the chaos. The castle walls were in sight now—distant, but reachable. Turning back meant running toward the plume of smoke and ice, toward the place where spells like the one that had just shaken the ground were still flying.
Ezra stared at him.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing of an infant in his expression.
"I command you," Ezra said. "As the firstborn son of Reitz Blackfyre, Lord of Castle Blackfyre, Protector of Fulmen—the Ashbringer."
The titles were ones he'd heard the heralds used he was now using as leverage.
Evan froze mid-stride.
The city noise seemed to drop away for a breath.
The authority in the child's voice didn't come from volume. It came from certainty. From the way it hit the same cadence Reitz used when he declared sentence in the training yard.
"Please," Ezra whispered, pleadingly.
Sir Evan looked from the burning skyline to the boy in his arms.
He saw fear there, yes. But also something terribly like Reitz's resolve, honed into a tiny, exhausted body that had already done far too much for a six-month-old.
His jaw worked.
Duty warred with duty—the direct order of his Lady, and the command of her heir.
"As you command," he said at last, voice rough.
He pivoted.
The castle walls fell out of his peripheral vision as he turned back toward the rising plume of steam and smoke.
"Hold on, Milord," he murmured.
Then he ran toward the fire.