Heat bent the air into a wavering sheet, ash riding it like snow that had forgotten how to cool. The Lord of Destruction stood thirty paces out, cloak of flame drawn tight, hammer head low enough to score the cobbles with a glowing groove. His armor was cracked now—real cracks, not cosmetic—molten seams hissing where Lyra's shots and Inigo's rockets had bitten. He was still inevitability given shape, but inevitability bled.
Inigo thumbed a fresh magazine from his vest and dragged two quick sigils along the brass with a dirty fingernail—simple augmentation marks, the kind he could etch by touch and push power into without a chant. Conventional brass, jacketed lead core, standard propellant—nothing exotic. The magic didn't conjure new physics; it shoved the existing ones harder: straighter flight, tighter grouping, a moment of extra drive across armor seams. He seated the mag, racked the M4, and felt the faint hum in the receiver like a live wire.
"Left," he said.
