The night split apart when Kael raised his blade.
A single motion.
And the Ashen Vanguard moved as one.
Hundreds of riders surged forward, silver weapons igniting with the glow of captured star fragments. The earth shook under their charge, dust and ash lifting in a rolling wave toward the broken spire where Lian, the Oracle, and the Core King stood.
It wasn't chaos.
It was precision.
Kael had turned killers, mercenaries, and Core Hunters into a war machine that moved like a single creature.
The Oracle grabbed Lian's arm.
"You can't fight all of them!" she shouted over the roar of hooves and steel.
But Lian had already drawn his weapon.
Because the Tyrant's Heart inside him wasn't afraid.
It was hungry.
Kael himself didn't move yet.
He simply stood at the edge of the charge, cloak snapping in the wind, Hunters' Six spreading out beside him like wolves circling a wounded beast.
Each one radiated power that made the fragments inside the Vanguard look like sparks compared to firestorms.
The first wave hit.
The Vanguard's riders closed in, silver lances dropping toward Lian's chest—
And the Core King finally moved.
He didn't draw a weapon.
Didn't shout a battle cry.
Didn't even step forward.
He simply raised one hand.
The ground obeyed.
Stone spires tore upward in a jagged ring, intercepting the charge like teeth snapping shut around the ruins. Horses screamed, riders crashed into walls of living earth as the terrain itself rebelled against them.
The Core King's voice carried across the chaos, calm, cold, absolute.
"Leave."
Half the Vanguard didn't even hear him before the ground split again.
This time the stone didn't just rise—it moved.
A wall became a fist.
A ridge became a hammer.
Riders were flung like leaves before a storm, weapons scattering as if a giant had walked among them unseen.
Lian had seen power before.
The Tyrant's Heart was raw, wild, a star caged in flesh.
But this…
The Core King was not wild. He was inevitable.
"Who is he?" Lian shouted over the chaos.
The Oracle's eyes never left the Core King.
"The first Core Hunter," she said quietly. "The only one who lived long enough to stop hunting."
The Vanguard regrouped fast, archers drawing back silver-fletched arrows glowing faint blue with captured fragments.
Dozens loosed at once, a storm of light meant to cut through stone and flesh alike—
The Core King didn't even look at them.
The arrows never reached him.
They slowed midair, light dying, fragments turning black before dropping harmlessly into the ash.
The Hunters' Six finally moved.
Six black-cloaked figures leaping forward in perfect silence, their weapons carrying whole fragments instead of shards.
Each one burned like a miniature star.
The first Hunter landed before Lian in a blur of motion, twin blades crossing in a storm of steel and silver fire.
The Tyrant's Heart roared inside Lian's chest, flooding his limbs with strength until his own blade met the strike with a scream of metal.
The impact cracked the stone beneath them.
But the Heart's power was still too wild.
The second swing burned down Lian's arms like liquid fire, forcing him back even as his blade sheared through the Hunter's weapon entirely.
Both men staggered apart.
The Hunter grinned behind his mask.
"You'll burn out," he said simply, before vanishing in a blur of motion.
Two more Hunters closed on the Core King.
The earth itself tried to rise against them—spears of stone erupting upward—but the Hunters were faster, one wielding a glaive that cut through rock like paper, the other unleashing a wave of frozen air that turned half the battlefield white with ice.
For the first time, the Core King actually moved his feet.
He met them in silence, not with walls or hammers but with a single upward gesture that turned the frozen air itself into razors whipping back toward its master.
The glaive-wielder's weapon shattered under one blow, the man sent tumbling through three stone walls before landing limp in the ash.
Kael still hadn't moved.
He was watching everything, calculating, eyes narrowing each time Lian swung his weapon, each time the Tyrant's Heart unleashed another burst of wild, burning strength.
"Three Cores," Kael murmured softly. "But still drowning in power you don't understand."
Two Hunters came at Lian together now, one wielding chains of silver that burned when they struck stone, the other carrying a spear tipped with a shard so bright it left afterimages when it moved.
The Tyrant's Heart poured fire through his veins again.
He met the chain-wielder first, his blade smashing through links that screamed like living things, before he caught the spear on his shoulder, heat searing bone beneath flesh.
The Oracle raised her staff, chanting words that glowed gold against the dark.
A barrier snapped up around her in time to stop two Vanguard riders aiming lances at her chest, their weapons sparking harmlessly off the ward as she slammed her staff down, a shockwave hurling both men away.
One of the Hunters finally fell under the Core King's hand, armor crumpling inward as if the air itself had collapsed around him.
Another was buried under a stone fist bigger than a house.
The Vanguard was breaking, chaos spreading as horses screamed, men shouted orders, fire and ice and stone clashed under a sky slowly filling with stars.
But Kael finally raised his blade.
The Vanguard stopped instantly.
The Hunters froze mid-motion.
The entire battlefield seemed to hold its breath as Kael's voice carried across the ash.
"Enough."
Even the Core King turned toward him now.
Kael stepped forward slowly, eyes fixed on Lian.
"You're not ready," he said softly. "You think the Cores make you strong, but they're eating you alive from the inside."
Lian's grip on his blade tightened.
Kael's voice didn't rise.
"You're my brother," he said simply. "I'll give you one chance to hand them over before they kill you."
The Tyrant's Heart burned in answer.
It didn't want to surrender.
It wanted war.
The Oracle's voice was low, urgent at Lian's side.
"He's not lying. The Cores will consume you if you take too many before your body evolves enough to hold them."
But Lian didn't lower his weapon.
Because Kael had given no mercy on the night of fire.
And this time, neither would he.