The Ashen Plains lay silent.
The wind had died.
The only sound came from the broken spire still smoldering behind Lian, where the third Forbidden Core pulsed faintly like a dying star. The Beast Tide was gone. The air still reeked of scorched flesh and molten blood.
Across the shattered ground stood Kael.
He hadn't changed—not really. His silver-black armor bore the crest of the Ashen Vanguard, polished to an edge that looked as if it could cut the sun itself. His blade was drawn but held low, almost casually, as if this wasn't the moment the world itself had been waiting for.
Lian stared at him, chest still heaving from the battle with the Alpha.
The brother who had once stood beside him when the world still had walls, when their father's palace had glowed with firelight and laughter… was now the man who had put a blade in his back.
The man who had burned it all.
"Lian."
Kael's voice was calm. Too calm.
"You carry the Tyrant's Heart."
The Oracle stiffened behind Lian, her staff glowing faintly. "He knows," she whispered.
Of course he did.
Kael had always known everything.
Lian gripped his sword tighter. "And you carry the blood of a traitor."
Something flickered in Kael's eyes—just for a moment. Then it was gone, shuttered behind steel and command.
"This isn't the time," Kael said. "Give me the Core. Before it consumes you like it consumed him."
Him.
The words dug into Lian like hooks. The tyrant whose heart now burned in his chest. The warlord who had made kings bow and worlds burn before the Nine finally struck him down.
The same power now flooding Lian's veins like molten fire.
"No," Lian said. His voice was low, steady. "You'll have to take it."
The Ashen Vanguard behind Kael shifted uneasily. They had fought the Beast Tide to reach this place too, and now two brothers stood on opposite sides of the dying sun.
But Kael didn't look at them.
His eyes never left Lian's.
"Then so be it."
The first clash came like lightning.
Kael moved first, faster than Lian remembered. His blade struck low, angled to sever the tendons of Lian's sword arm—a disabling blow, precise, controlled.
Lian blocked, sparks screaming from steel.
The impact sent shockwaves through the ash.
Kael pressed the attack. Each strike was surgical, aimed not to kill but to break. He moved like someone who had studied Lian's style a thousand times in the dark, who knew every habit, every opening.
Lian barely held him off, the Tyrant's Heart flaring hotter with each blow.
"Why?" Lian snarled, shoving Kael back for half a breath. "Why burn the palace? Why betray us?"
Kael's blade sang toward his throat. Lian twisted aside, felt the edge shear a lock of his hair away.
"Because I saw what you carry now," Kael said coldly. "I saw what it would make you."
The words hit harder than the strikes.
Kael had betrayed him… because he feared this?
The Tyrant's Heart pulsed like a drum inside Lian's chest.
He's in your way. Burn him.
Lian attacked then.
Faster, harder. Power flooded his limbs until the ground cracked beneath his feet. He struck with enough force to crater the ash where Kael had been standing moments before.
But Kael slipped aside, countered with a blow that nearly disarmed him.
The Oracle shouted something, her voice lost in the roar of steel and fire.
Lian barely heard her.
The Tyrant's Heart was drowning everything else out now.
Kael lunged. Lian met him head-on.
The ground exploded beneath them, a storm of ash and burning wind.
Lian drove Kael back with a swing that tore through his guard, grazing his side. Blood sprayed across the blackened earth.
Kael staggered, eyes narrowing.
"You're losing control," he said.
He was right.
The power inside Lian raged hotter with every heartbeat, searing through muscle and bone.
The Tyrant's Heart didn't care about Kael.
It didn't care about brothers, or betrayal, or anything else.
It only wanted more.
More power.
More destruction.
Lian roared, fire and star-energy lashing from the cracks now running along his arms like living veins of molten light.
Kael was driven to one knee, sword braced against the force pouring off Lian in waves.
"Stop!" the Oracle cried, runes flaring desperately around her. "If you keep going, you won't be you when it ends!"
For a heartbeat, Lian saw it—Kael on the ground before him, the palace burning again, his father's crown split in half by his own hand—
And the world kneeling before him in chains of fire.
He froze.
That was when Kael moved.
His blade slammed into Lian's guard, forcing him back with a surge of strength that didn't come from skill alone.
Kael's eyes burned with something more than anger now.
Something like fear.
"You're walking his path," Kael spat. "The Tyrant whose heart you bear—he started like you. Thinking he could control it. Thinking he was different."
He kicked Lian back, blade raised.
"And in the end, he wasn't."
Before Lian could answer, a shadow fell across the battlefield.
The Core King stood at the edge of the ash, his presence cutting through the heat like a blade of winter.
"That's enough," he said.
Kael's eyes flicked toward him.
The Core King's hand rested on the hilt of his greatsword. He didn't draw it. He didn't have to.
"Not here," the Core King said softly. "Not yet."
For a long moment, Kael looked like he might refuse.
Then he lowered his blade, blood running down his side where Lian's strike had landed.
"This isn't over," Kael said, voice cold as the grave. "Next time, brother, I finish it."
He turned and vanished into the ash with the Vanguard at his side, their silhouettes swallowed by the dying wind.
Lian stood alone before the broken spire, the Tyrant's Heart still burning like a second sun in his chest.
Next time.
He swore there would be no next time.
Before the final battle came, he would master this power.
Or it would master him.