Reitz was exhausted.
He stood alone in the center of the scorched canyon, the air around him shimmering with residual heat. Every inhale rattled in his chest like loose stones in a metal pan, and every exhale escaped in short, ragged puffs of steam through the slits of his burning helm.
His side throbbed.
Not the clean, honest kind of pain he preferred—the kind that meant the wound was closing and the body was obeying him—but a dull, sickening heat that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
The stab had been deep.
And precise.
He pushed mana toward it again. Reinforce the tissue. Clamp the vessels. Slow the bleed.
Instead of knitting shut, the area felt… wrong.
Like pouring water into a cracked jug.
Mana seeped out of him in a thin, constant trickle and bled into the air before it could properly circulate.
Not a torrent.
Not yet.
But constant.
Every spell cost more than it should. Every adjustment of his armor burned more fuel. Even standing upright felt like holding a shield against a current.
A leak.
Reitz grimaced behind the helm.
Artifact.
Someone had equipped Allister with a cursed blade—an enchanted piece made specifically to maim mana flow. There was no other explanation that fit.
"That rat-bastard," he muttered, tasting iron.
He shifted his weight, armor creaking. The canyon floor under him was half-glassed from earlier fire, brittle enough to crunch at the edges.
He looked up.
Thirty-two mages.
They were spread across the basin and the lower ridges—not a mob, not a swarm, but a deliberate net. Grey cloaks. Mixed armor. Rock dust smeared over helms and masks.
Their auras pressed against his senses: dense and compact, a field of campfires against his weakening bonfire.
Baron level, most of them.
Third-circle earthwork.
A few flared hotter—fourth.
It was a terrifying force for anyone else.
Reitz snorted and spat a dark mouthful of blood onto the glassed ground. It hissed, evaporating at the edges.
Tough.
On a normal day, thirty Barons would've been a warm-up.
Today—wounded, leaking—his mana math wasn't trustworthy.
And bad math got you killed.
He forced his posture straight anyway. The Flame Armor flared brighter, licking up his shoulders and along the demon-face helm. The plates thickened just enough to look fresh.
A show.
Never let them see you sag.
He rolled his shoulders, lifted his chin, and roared:
"I'll let you little fuckers off if you get out of my sight right now!"
It was a bluff.
The sound boomed off the canyon walls, amplified by both magic and rage. For a heartbeat, even the dust-laden wind seemed to pause.
The mages hesitated.
They had watched him turn men into ash and glass. They had seen him erase comrades, hunt others down like dogs, and reduce Allister—traitor Knight, once trusted—into nothing.
Even wounded, the Ashbringer was an argument against close-range arrogance.
But they were professionals.
They felt the uneven pulses behind the flare. Ashbringer III
They saw the slight sway he couldn't fully hide.
He was bleeding mana as much as blood.
They knew it.
Two moved first.
They dashed forward, not to engage, but to draw his eye—light-footed, hands empty.
Bait.
Behind them, ten others slammed their palms into the ground.
"Sandstorm!" one barked.
The earth answered.
Dust and grit erupted from the canyon floor in a choking column, then collapsed outward into a rolling storm that swallowed half the basin.
Visibility vanished.
One moment he had silhouettes and spacing; the next, he stood alone in a whirling desert, heat and sand clawing at his senses.
Reitz narrowed his eyes behind the visor.
"Smart," he breathed.
Not just blinding him—diffusing his Field. Turning clean readings into noise.
And if he expanded his senses aggressively, the leak would worsen.
A slow bleed would become a hemorrhage.
Attrition.
These fuckers wanted to win by waiting.
Fine.
Reitz crouched.
The ground under his boots—already half-melted—sizzled.
Then he exploded upward.
The leap wasn't graceful. It wasn't meant toAshbringer III
be. He dumped mana into his legs and core and launched himself twenty yards into the air with a sound like a cannon.
Shards of glassed earth shattered from the force.
The dust storm fell away beneath him, a swirling grey-brown sea.
Up here, the air was thinner.
So was their cover.
He could finally see.
They moved below like ants—dark figures darting through the haze, shifting positions, spreading, trying to encircle what they assumed was still on the ground.
"Got you," he hissed.
Reitz extended both hands.
The Flame Armor over his forearms thinned and flowed backward, feeding the spell. Mana rushed forward—hot, eager—condensing in front of his palms.
He began to chant.
\[ Fires that blaze forth, and burn everlasting! ]\\
\[ Scorch and burn those that seek mine life! ]\\
\[ Infernal Blaze! ]
The words locked the construct.
His armor flickered again, protection draining away from chest and helm to fuel the forming torrent.
A river of fire erupted downward.
It wasn't a neat beam. It was a flood—liquid heat pouring from his hands, hitting the swirling dust and igniting it instantly.
The storm became fuel.
For an instant, the canyon looked like someone had poured the sun into a bowl.
The screams were immediate.
Earth bulwarks flared up too late. Stone went red, then slumped into slag.
Flesh and cloth followed.
Reitz cut the spell off before it ate more mana than he could afford.
The storm was gone.
In its place was a glowing crater of rolling heat, the air itself burning and the canyon stinking of cooked stone.
Impact.
While he was still mid-air—before he could orient for a controlled landing—something slammed into his side.
A stone projectile, the size of a cannonball, howling like a runaway comet.
Compressed density.
Third or fourth circle.
Guided with surgical precision.
It struck the exact point Allister's dagger had found.
The world flashed white.
Reitz choked—an ugly wet sound—and blood burst past his teeth, spraying the inside of his helm.
His Flame Armor guttered for a heartbeat.
His mana sank.
Too much.
His vision doubled.
Sniper. Outside the net. Tracking my arc.
He hadn't been shot.
He'd been predicted.
His body spun, momentum and gravity taking over.
Sweat formed on his forehead and turned to steam.
"It shouldn't have cost this much," he rasped, not sure if he said it aloud.
The canyon floor rushed up.
And the earth moved.
His landing zone split open.
Stone didn't crack; it peeled back along a controlled seam, forming a jagged maw.
Spikes erupted from the walls of the new chasm like teeth.
They'd mapped his fall.
"Of course you did."
Reitz's hand snapped to his hip.
He unsheathed his physical sword and threw it in a short, brutal motion.
Clang.
The blade embedded itself in the far wall of the crevice, just above the spike bed, hilt jutting out like a rung.
Reitz twisted in mid-air, flared his Field only enough to nudge his trajectory, and brought his boots down hard on the sword hilt.
Metal screamed.
The hilt buckled.
But it held.
A heartbeat.Ashbringer III
He kicked off.
The improvised platform launched him sideways.
The spikes rushed past beneath him—close enough that he felt their cold, dense aura scrape against his heat.
He cleared the chasm by a yard and hit the ground beyond in an ugly tumble.
He rolled, armor screeching, and came to a stop on his back, staring at the dizzy sky.
He wheezed.
Every small act of mana use—every brace, every adjustment—burned more than it should.
"Can't jump anymore," he muttered, a bitter laugh bubbling under it. "They've got the air mapped. Ground it is."
The earth answered by shaking again.
Spikes erupted around him in irregular patterns.
Reitz moved on instinct, dancing between them, Flame Armor scraping and hissing.
He could feel them now that the dust had cleared—little anchors of pressure along the canyon walls and floor.
They were shifting.
Tightening.
His formation—his men—were distant now, muffled by ridges and earthworks.
He was isolated.
He scanned his reserves.
About a third.
Less, if he counted the leak.
His hands trembled inside the gauntlets. The armor felt heavier than it had in years.
Slow down, some sane part of him insisted. Stabilize.
The canyon shook harder, cutting the thought in half.
Disorientation.
The ground rolled under his boots like the deck of a ship. Loose stone slid. Cracks opened and sealed in quick succession—never wide enough to swallow him, but enough to throw him off rhythm.
Reitz staggered.
Three boulders shot toward him from three angles—left, right, and straight ahead.
Synchronized.
There was only one narrow gap.
He took it.
He threw himself through the window, Flame Armor flaring to cushion near misses as stone thundered past him.
Zip. Zip. Zip.
Three stone bullets—fist-sized but compressed to absurd density—screamed in from the opposite side, timed to catch him as he exited.
They hit his wounded side.
Tzzt. Tzzt. Tzzt.
The Flame Armor vaporized them into dust on contact.
But mana wasn't steel.
Energy went into him.
It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer three times.
Reitz grunted, knees buckling.
His armor dimmed.
The plates around his side warped further.
The leak widened.
He forced himself upright, panting.
Three shooters were visible now on a ridge, hands still outstretched. Their expressions were hidden behind masks, but their auras spiked with brief satisfaction.
Pinned, they thought.
Mistake.
Reitz didn't chant.
He didn't call a spell.
He simply extended.
He ripped mana from his legs and outer armor and funneled everything he could into his right arm.
The gauntlet brightened, the flame sharpening from hazy orange to clean, brutal white.
A blade of coherent plasma erupted.
Twenty-five yards of compressed fire.
A line that hissed as it cut the air.
Reitz swung.
The arc carved through the ridge.
The three mages didn't even have time to scream.
For a heartbeat they were silhouettes in blinding light; then their bodies were neatly bisected, top halves sliding from bottom halves along cauterized lines.
Reitz let the blade vanish.
He dropped to one knee.
The edges of his world darkened.
His core—normally a roaring furnace—flickered like a candle in draft.
"Fuck," he whispered. "Am I going to die here?"
It wasn't fear.
It was arithmetic.
He counted.
Twenty-four left.
They were moving again, tightening the circle.
His reserves? Maybe a fifth.
Less, with the leak.
The remaining mages circled at range like wolves around a wounded bear.
Ten of them began encasing fists and shins in stone—close-combat earth style.
They were going to beat him to death.
Reitz watched them, lips peeling back in a grin that had no business on a man in his condition.
"You want to kill me?" he rasped. "Then you fuckers…"
His grin widened.
"…have to die with me."
He closed his eyes.
For the first time since he'd flared his armor, he let it die.
The flames dimmed to embers, then receded entirely, leaving him in charred metal and cloth.
The roaring aura that had terrified the canyon contracted, coiling inward.
He stopped feeding mana to his limbs.
Stopped reinforcing bone.
Stopped wasting power on the leak.
He pulled everything in.
Every scrap.
Every stubborn flicker clinging to the corners of his core.
He condensed it into a single point before his chest.
Delayed Cast.
The air wavered.
A small sphere of light flickered into existence, hovering inches from his breastplate.
Marble.
Coin.
Child's fist.
It wasn't flame.
It was white.
Too white.
The kind of brightness that hurt to look at.
He began to chant.
\[ The brightness of ten thousand dying stars… ]
The globe swelled.
Armor creaked under the pressure radiating from it. Dust lifted from the ground around him. Pebbles vibrated, drawn toward the light as if by jealous gravity.
The ten gauntleted mages saw it and hesitated.
"Stop him!" someone screamed. "Interrupt the cast!"
Too late.
It wasn't fire anymore.
It was a miniature singularity of mana—heat, light, and pressure coiled into an impossible knot.
Reitz opened his eyes.
He smiled, manic and serene.
\[ SUPERNOVA! ]
He released containment.
BOOM.
The world vanished.
The explosion wasn't like his earlier Fire Implosion. That had been directional.
This was excess.
The shockwave hit like a physical wall, flattening terrain in a wide radius.
Stone turned to glass, then shattered from the force, fragments whipped outward in a razor storm.
The ten rushing mages were erased.
Not killed.
Erased.
One moment they were charging, mouths open in war cries.
The next, they were silhouettes inside a blooming sphere of white.
Then nothing.
No bodies—only warped glass and drifting grey.
The pressure wave kept going.
It smashed ridges and boulders, pulverizing loose stone and collapsing half-formed bulwarks.
Four of the more distant mages died on the spot—pulped by overpressure.
Three more were flung like dolls, slamming into rock faces and collapsing in broken heaps, auras guttering.
Silence fell over the crater.
Not true silence—the mountain still groaned, distant battle still existed somewhere beyond the ridges—but in the immediate circle around Reitz, sound collapsed into a thin ringing.
He lay on his back in the exact center of the devastation.
His armor was cracked and blackened. The helm had warped, demon-face twisted into a lopsided snarl.
Steam rose from seams in thin, ghostly threads.
He tried to move a finger.
Nothing.
His mana was gone.
Not low.
Gone.
He stared up at the dusty sky.
"Well," he wheezed. "It was a gamble."
His Field was quiet.
Nearly all hostile signatures were gone or dim.
But not all.
Seven.
Seven mages still standing, battered and shaken but alive.
They were walking toward him.
Reitz let his eyes slide shut.
"It was a good run," he murmured.
His mind drifted.
Not to the Western Front.
Not to the Tribunal.
To the nursery.
To the boy with the serious eyes, brow permanently furrowed, trying to reconcile a world that refused to behave.
To Ezra standing in the crib, tiny hand raised, saying in that strange, too-clear voice:
"Could you teach me magic, Father?"
"Damn," Reitz thought, an ache that wasn't physical tugging at his chest. "I should've talked to you more, boy."
He saw Ezra stumbling through the study, dragging books bigger than his torso.
"I should've shown you how to hold a sword," he thought, half-delirious. "Taught you how to break a man's stance. How to cheat at dice. How to drink without puking."
Some distant intact corner of him laughed.
"I wish I'd had one more minute with you," he admitted—to the image, not the sky. "One more stupid joke. One more time Aerwyna hitting me with a parchment for corrupting you."
"Ezra…" He could almost feel a small hand gripping his thumb. "You show these fuckers who's boss someday."
His thoughts slid to his wife.
Aerwyna—ice and paranoia, soft hands and steel spine.
Standing in the doorway with a ledger tucked under one arm, scolding him for wrestling on the nursery floor when he should be in the war room.
"Aerwyna…" he thought, the words heavy and simple. "Forgive me for dying here. Take care of our little boy."
His vision dimmed further.
The seven mages stopped ten yards away.
He couldn't see their faces, but he could feel their auras—trembling with fatigue, sharpened by fear and grim determination.
They began to chant in unison.
They kept their distance.
They didn't know what Reitz was still capable of, and they weren't stupid enough to find out up close.
Their voices overlapped, a harsh cadence that made the air vibrate.
The sky directly over Reitz distorted.
Stone didn't just rise—it condensed.
Dust, shards, gravel, and flecks of shattered rock surged together, drawn into a tightening ball.
It swelled and darkened, layers compressing until what hovered there was a boulder larger than a carriage, dense enough that the air around it warped.
Reitz watched through half-lidded eyes.
At least I took most of you with me.
He smiled.
The boulder dropped.
CRASH.
The sound was deafening—stone slamming into stone.
Not the wet crunch of a body.
Reitz blinked.
The boulder hung there inches from his nose, held aloft on a jagged wall of earth that had erupted between him and certain death.
The wall was black.
Obsidian-dark, saturated with mana.
Its surface was ridged and rough like cooled lava.
A shadow fell across him.
Bootsteps crunched on the new-made rampart.
A man stood atop the wall, cloak fluttering in heated wind, looking down at the terrified mages with eyes like cold granite.
Reitz's throat worked. His voice came out as a rasp.
"You're late, Aaron," he wheezed, and somehow found a grin. "You little fuck."