I was running on the ragged edge of my reserves. Every breath felt like cold glass in my lungs, but I wrapped my fists in armored ice and walked forward anyway.
Silas slid back one foot and changed his stance into something that refused to read like a pattern. I lifted my arm, waiting for the obvious strike. I searched the corridor for the first flash of blood to read his aim. It never came. He leapt instead, closing distance with a speed that ate timing, his hands grappling mine. We tumbled together and hit the mud in a tangle of armored limbs.
His fist, sheathed in hardened, blackened blood, hammered my face. I coughed up the taste of iron and it answered his will, a thin dark spray he guided into both his fists as if to double their weight. This was his limit made visible. He could craft blood with mana, but the cost would be the thing that broke him. He was using me to force the bleed.
I shoved my iced forehead forward and slammed it into his face. Blood spurted from a slit on his nose and immediately knit like steam. He did not look wounded.
Silas' hands closed over my arms and pinned me flat. He bared teeth. When he bit my shoulder I felt life siphon out in a hot thread. Panic clawed up my throat, but the battlefield still belonged to me if I could gamble correctly.
Ice exploded from the frozen ground around us. A spike as tall as my ribs drove up through my gut and pierced my belly. Pain and cold fused. The spike went on and on and, impossibly, impaled him too. He howled and blood fell from the wound in thick ropes.
He shattered the column with a bare fist and staggered back, a wet smear across his chest. We both pushed to our feet, hands slick. I pressed a palm to my stomach and froze the cut there. The pain was a roaring tide, but I could stand. For now.
My lungs felt full of blood. Each inhale tasted heavy. I felt it settling, a weight on the back of my throat. I knew the clock in me was short.
My eyes widened because I saw, then, what I had not expected. Silas' wound knit like nothing had happened. Flesh stitched itself in slick, steam-slick motion and closed over the slash. He straightened and moved with the same power as when the duel began. His arm, still smeared with my ice and his own blood, flashed into claws and lashed out. The fist cut into my chest like an unmaking.
I stumbled. Light left my vision in the periphery. He had taken from me more than flesh. He had taken a fraction of my vigor. I spat and tasted my own blood. "How…?" escaped me.
Silas wiped his lips with the back of his wrist and answered as if reciting weather. "A general has fallen. Strength has shifted to compensate. Your blood is potent." He smiled like a blade.
Blue mana hammered into the space and blew Silas back in a clean gust. Virgil stood at the edge, his face unreadable. He watched us with the cold, distant look of someone measuring a battlefield. I did not need his pity. I had given all I could. If this was the end, then let it be mine.
———
Cain hit the far wall with the sound of a boulder. Reid's fist had traveled right through him and flung him into a room whose far side looked like it had never known sunlight. He spat black ichor onto the flagstones and found his feet with a grin that was half pain, half hunger.
"You could not kill me yourself, so you had to bring help," Cain sneered, tail flicking with contempt.
Rin's jaw was a line. "You brought this on yourself. For what you did to the towns and to people, you will pay." Her voice carried a chill that did not belong to the air.
Reid cracked his fingers and smiled the kind of smile that preceded breaking things. "For a general, you are a talker. Regeneration is one thing. Is that all you have?" He darted forward. His fist met Cain's jaw and the impact drove him clean through a wall into another corridor.
Cain staggered up, claws ready, his scales catching the torchlight. He shook plaster from his hairless brow. "Do not get cocky," he rasped, and the air around him tasted like salt and iron.
They circled in the debris-choked room. Reid breathed steady. Cain wound a limb and lunged, a quick strike meant to test. Reid slid like water, avoiding the first swipe, then countered with a low hook to Cain's ribs that folded him in half. The general answered by snapping his tail, a bone-club that smashed into a support pillar and sent stone raining.
Rin moved like a shadow, stepping into the periphery and baiting with a flare of black flame that licked Cain's flank. The creature hissed; exposed places steamed. Reid used the opening, pressing forward with a barrage of short, knuckled blows designed to break rhythm rather than plate. Each hit aimed at joints and soft spots where scales overlapped.
Cain's regeneration began to look less like instant repair and more like stubborn knitting. He healed, but the wounds left shallow, stubborn seams where new tissue refused smoothness. The repeated attacks slowed that knit. Reid kept pressure. He angled low, then high, never letting Cain rest, and the general's grin thinned into a snarl.
Cain clapped his hands together, the sound cracking like thunder. Vines burst from the dirt and coiled around Reid's arms, dragging him down until his knees hit the ground. The air thickened with earth and mana. Cain spun, his arm sweeping through the muck as his magic pulled at the terrain itself. The ground tore free in slabs that whistled through the air before crashing toward Rin.
The impact shook the corridor. The blast threw her through a wall. She raised her arms to block, but the shockwave still slammed her chest and forced blood from her mouth.
Drain him with flames. Burn his strength away so Reid can finish it.
Cain lunged onto Reid before he could rise. His claws plunged into Reid's side, cutting through flesh until red sprayed across the dirt. Reid screamed and tore against the vines, muscles straining until they snapped apart. Both his hands shot up, gripping Cain's face. "Rin!"
Rin's fire climbed the ceiling like living veins. She thrust her hand to the ground, commanding the flames to collapse downward. The inferno dropped, roaring into the two figures below.
Reid slammed Cain's head into the floor and dove backward as fire washed over them. The heat kissed his uniform and blackened the edges, the air itself shimmering around him.
Cain staggered upright, the torrent still burning against him. His scales cracked and sizzled. "You'll drain yourself, woman! How do you expect to defeat anyone else? Stop this or you'll die! Stop it!" His words twisted into desperation.
Rin rose to her feet, breathing unevenly. The flames dimmed and then died, retreating into smoke.
Cain knelt in the ash, his body covered in molten cracks that refused to close. "For years I neglected to master regeneration," he said, voice low and trembling. "I thought it too simple to perfect. But challenge… brings truth." He pushed himself upright and grinned, teeth bright against charred skin. "And this is my truth."
Reid burst forward, but the walls came alive. Vines whipped out, coiling around him and flinging him across the floor like a doll.
Cain laughed as his skin reformed, the flesh sealing cleanly. "I'll surpass you, Silas. I'll overcome your strength!" His scales regrew in thicker, layered plates that shimmered like polished stone.
Rin fired another burst of flame, but the blaze broke against him. When the smoke cleared, his body was unmarked. "The same weak trick?" he said. "You'll have to be more creative than that, pathetic human."
He blitzed forward, a red blur. His claws tore across Rin's arm before she could raise her guard.
She rolled through the dirt, dodging the next blow as shards of stone rained around her. She sprinted toward Reid and stopped by his side, holding her bleeding arm. "Reid… what the hell do we do now?" Her voice trembled as her eyes widened.
"I… I don't know." Reid crouched low, his breath ragged. "He's not the same anymore, is he?"
Rin shook her head slowly. "When he regenerated, he adapted to my flames. That's never happened before." Her words faded into the crackling silence that followed.