Dmitry charges…

  The Vainqueurs’ Imbattables hit the enemy line like a black spear of inevitability.

  Dmitry rode at the tip, fire pulsing at his fingertips, a skeletal mount thundering beneath him as the enemy formation buckled under the first impact. Steel clashed, screams tore through the smoke, and the stench of scorched flesh filled the air.

  “Crush their flank! Circle!” Dmitry barked, eyes darting across the battlefield. His voice carried like commandment, and his elites obeyed.

  The Vainqueurs split around the edge of Lisa’s forces, riding in a crescent, using speed and mobility, baiting the enemy into overextending. Their skeletal steeds moved with precision, ducking under pikes, leaping fallen comrades. Lances slammed into backs and throats. Spells erupted in crimson arcs.

  Dmitry hurled a chain of firebolts, each one honed with the finesse of a company’s advisor. He didn’t waste power; he invested it.

  A soldier at the center of a command node?

  Burned.

  A healer behind a line?

  Sniped.

  A heavy bruiser charging toward one of his warlocks?

  Obliterated before the hammer fell.

  One hand cast. The other directed. He commanded with violence. “Break their back!” he roared. But the enemy didn’t break.

  They bled, yes, but they held. Lisa’s command group pushed forward with disciplined force, anchoring her line around two shield-bearing champions and a wall of conjured ice that slowed the Vainqueurs’ circular sweep. Still, they adapted.

  The Vainqueurs darted like wolves, lashing out, feinting, splitting into smaller strike groups. A spear pierced the ice shield, then a fire javelin from Dmitry shattered it.

  Another push. Another kill.

  But now, the enemy learned. They boxed his riders in, driving stakes, casting wide-range suppressions, predicting their loops. The battlefield became a cage.

  And one by one, his elites fell.

  A rider was dragged from his mount, screaming, then crushed beneath enemy boots. Another was caught mid-turn by a barrage of lightning spells, his charred bones crumpling to the earth like burnt paper. A warlock tried to summon support, but his chant was cut short by a glaive to the throat.

  Dmitry’s jaw tightened.

  He adjusted tactics, snapping out commands, “Pivot left! Burn their backline!” Even as he loosed another volley of precision fire. But there were too many. Too fast. Too coordinated.

  Another Vainqueur died. Then another. His formation fractured. He tried to rally them. Rode through the storm, slicing an enemy rider clean in two with a flame-slicked sword. He launched a wall of fire behind him to cover the retreat. But the trap had closed.

  He turned, only four remained.

  Then two.

  Then…

  None.

  Just him.

  Dmitry sat atop his bone horse, alone in a sea of blood and ash, surrounded by steel and hate and marching feet. His cloak burned at the edges. His staff was cracked.

  The line advanced on him like wolves scenting weakness. But Dmitry did not yield.

  He refused.

  His gaze lifted to the darkened sky. Somewhere beyond it, beyond this plane, he waited.

  Fire God. Patron.

  “It was a success,” Dmitry said under his breath, eyes smoldering. “I proved my worth.”

  And he had. He had delayed Lisa’s primary force. He had forced them to bleed.

  And now,now it was time to tip the scales.

  “Permission granted,” that strange voice agreed with his statement.

  Then flame roared.

  The fire didn’t erupt; it obeyed. The very air around him ignited in a pulse of pure force, a detonation of raw divinity. His staff reformed mid-crack, molten runes swirling up the wood like living veins. His armor glowed, scorched black and gold, plates reshaping to cling tight to his frame like forged destiny.

  His will screamed across the battlefield.

  A wave of pressure exploded outward, knocking back enemy troops within a ten-meter radius. Weapons slipped from hands. Mounts reared. Even the wind dared not touch him.

  Dmitry drew himself upright.

  His stats were no longer numbers. They bent to his will.

  He raised his hand.

  And the world obeyed.

  A cyclone of plasma erupted from the sky and carved a trench through the enemy ranks, twenty soldiers gone in a flash, no ashes left. He surged forward, a skeletal steed now moving with the grace of a lightning bolt. He parried three strikes in one movement, broke a fourth with his staff, then decapitated the attacker with his blade.

  He was everywhere.

  Lisa’s champions stepped forward. He blew them back with a gesture. Someone tried to cast a silence spell…

  Dmitry laughed.

  And burned them into nothing.

  The enemy no longer advanced.

  They hesitated.

  They watched.

  The man who had been outnumbered, surrounded, broken…

  Was now divine fire wrapped in mortal form. His voice thundered across the field, amplified by the godfire burning in his lungs. “I am Dmitry!” he roared. “And I do not fall!”

  —

  Stolen story; please report.

  The plan was ruined.

  Lisa sat frozen in the saddle, fingers clutched tight around her reins, the polished leather digging into her palms. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to hold the line. She was supposed to stop the enemy.

  Stop him.

  But, as always, Dmitry had outmaneuvered her. He was smarter. Stronger. Colder. And worse, he knew exactly how to distract her. He had baited her, dangled his threat like a threadbare ribbon in front of her, and watched her unravel.

  And she had.

  She’d led poorly. She could feel it in the gaps between their lines, in the uneasy shifting of soldiers too unsure to commit and too proud to retreat. Their formation was fraying. Her hands shook, not from fear, but from fury, directed inward.

  You’re such a child, she thought bitterly.

  And now, when they finally had him cornered, finally had him exposed and alone, wounded and out of tricks…

  Dmitry laughed.

  It was a sound that split the air, dry and clear, cutting through the smoke and steel. Not joyous. Not mad. Certain.

  Fire didn’t just light around him. It answered him. The world tilted, and her horse, her new poor, trained, enchanted mare, whinnied and stumbled back, as if recoiling from a truth too bright to bear.

  Heat slammed into Lisa’s face, flattening her hair against her shoulder. Her cheeks seared red, and her lips cracked from the sudden dryness in the air. Magic. Divine enchanted magic. It flooded the battlefield in a wave of blinding white-gold, pulsing with a heartbeat that was not hers.

  Her vision swam.

  No, no no no.

  Her soldiers faltered, and she felt it like a lurch in her stomach. “Shields!” she cried out, forcing her voice above the roar. “Hold the line!”

  The front staggered into position. Shields raised, trembling. A wall of steel and will, hastily reinforced by conjured barriers, glowing weakly against the tide. Lisa rode along the edge, her staff flaring in her hand, sparks trailing like stars in a whirlwind.

  “Support the middle flank! Rob—pull back! Reinforce that breach, no, the other breach! Hurry!” Her voice cracked. She was giving too many orders at once. Everything was moving too fast.

  Focus. Focus.

  But it wasn’t enough. Time for her last ace. With left hand she started casting [When The Time Comes].

  Dmitry moved like a storm unbound. Wherever she sent her forces, he was already there, slicing through champions like ribbons. The line wasn’t holding. It was breaking. Folding in on itself like wet parchment.

  Rob was a second too late. Fire engulfed him.

  Dmitry had noticed. Not the charge. Not the defiance. He noticed her. Noticed that she was watching Rob. That she was giving him precise orders. That he mattered to her.

  So Dmitry killed him.

  No glory. No final strike. One moment, Rob was charging with everything he had, and the next, there was only flame.

  Then ash.

  And a crumpled heap of molten armor, all that remained.

  “No! You monster!” Lisa clenched her jaw, raised her staff high, and channeled.

  Flames erupted from the sky, twisting into a column of golden fire that arced toward Dmitry, but it dispersed before touching him. His aura, his presence, consumed the spell like it was no more than morning mist.

  He didn’t even glance at her.

  Another wave of pressure hit, this time a shockwave of pure, condensed heat. Her soldiers were flung back like dolls, shields clattering to the dirt, their battle cries turning into pained howls.

  Lisa’s ears rang.

  Her eyes burned.

  And still, she refused to fall back.

  “Regroup!” Lisa called out, her voice raw, but still steady. “Form on me!”

  The robe she wore flickered, its living flames dimming under the crushing heat pouring from Dmitry like a second sun. Her soldiers were scattered, wounded, low on strength, but not yet gone. Not yet. He was powerful. Terrifying. But he wasn’t a god.

  “Pull back!” she ordered, raising her staff high, the crystal at its tip trembling with unstable light. “Let me face him alone. Peter, Natasha! Take the others. Get them to the wall. Help them hold.”

  “But—” Natasha’s voice cracked, resistant and afraid.

  Peter reached for her hand, healing light already spilling from his fingertips. “We will,” he said gently, guiding her away.

  Lisa smiled at them, soft, brief, almost private, and turned back toward the inferno.

  With her right hand wrapped tight around the staff, she slammed it into the ground. Magic surged outward. A golden barrier bloomed before her, stretching wide enough to shield every soldier still standing. The dome flickered to life, runes dancing along its rim like a final prayer. It cracked almost instantly, fractures spider-webbing across its surface like frozen lightning.

  But it held.

  Because she held.

  She’d learned in the cave. Learned from the heat. From the fire. From him. She had endured. When even the stone walls melted, she remained. Her soldiers moved. Ran. Fled. Good. They had to. Because the moment the barrier broke, she knew this was her stand.

  “For the cute princess!” Lisa shouted, voice cracking with force and fury.

  The sound of Dmitry’s laughter slithered through the battlefield like oil on water. “You think I’ll let them flee?” he roared, already moving. “Foolish girl!”

  His presence crushed the world around her, heat bending the air, the ground beneath her boots beginning to bubble from proximity alone.

  Lisa didn’t flinch.

  She lowered her gaze, whispered a single breath: “Master… please…” And the runes in her left-hand lit. She felt it. Deep and sure, in the marrow of her bones. Approval. Not gentle. Not warm.

  But true. Her fight. Her defiance. Her rebellion. It had been seen. “[When The Time Comes]!” she finished the spell.

  The world around her stilled. It didn’t shift. It shattered.

  The instant Lisa invoked the spell, heat erupted from within her, not borrowed, not summoned, unleashed. Flame tore through her body like a storm given shape. Her staff cracked from the force, the runes in her palm pulsing white-hot, too bright to bear.

  She gasped, not from pain, but from the sheer right-ness of it. Like this fire had waited for her. Like it had always been hers.

  Is this only a game? She questioned a reality.

  Power rushed through her veins, raw and wild, a flame without chains. Her hair whipped upward, caught in the updraft of pure magic. “I can also use free-form! Take this!” Her eyes burned, no longer soft green but molten, alive.The surrounding ground seared into glass.

  For a breath, Dmitry hesitated.

  And in that breath, she moved.

  Lisa dropped her barrier, let it fall to ash, and launched forward. The fire didn’t obey her. It resisted, snapping and snarling like an unbroken steed. But it moved with her. Not because she demanded it, but because she ran with it.

  Dmitry swung first, a whip of plasma that carved the air into smoke. She spun beneath it, the trail of her robe igniting mid-turn, the sparks painting glowing circles in her wake. She answered with a blast of flame from her palm, not precise, but furious. Unshaped, untamed.

  It crashed into Dmitry’s spell and split it.

  His control buckled for a moment, the outer edge of his fire unraveling where hers touched it. He frowned. Not out of fear. Out of confusion. Lisa grinned, teeth bared. “Can’t chain what refuses to kneel.”

  He didn’t answer, just raised both hands. The sky cracked. Pillars of fire erupted behind him, descending like spears. Lisa raised a hand, too slow, and a lance of plasma grazed her shoulder, searing fabric and skin. She didn’t scream. She didn’t have the air to scream.

  Instead, she poured it all into the fire inside her.

  It roared in reply.

  Not elegant. Not efficient. It burst from her like defiance. No shape. No school. Just fury. It collided with his pillars mid-air, shattered them into spirals of white heat, the shockwave flattening the ground around them.

  Dmitry advanced.

  So did she.

  Their fire met, again and again. His was cutting. Refined. A blade forged over years.

  Hers?

  Hers was wild. It howled. It didn’t ask permission.

  He blasted a stream of condensed flame toward her chest. She met it with both palms open, and screamed as hers rebelled, surged against her bones, out, not as a wall, but as a rebuke.

  The fire collided.

  Dmitry’s spell should have pierced through. It had more structure, more energy. But Lisa’s flame twisted through it like wind through cracks, fraying his control, burning not hotter, but freer.

  Dmitry’s eyes widened. And for the first time, he looked uncertain. “You’re not stronger than me,” he spat, throwing a wave of plasma that cracked the air.

  “No,” Lisa agreed, breathless. She raised her staff again, half-charred, shaking, and pushed herself forward. “I’m just not yours. Nor is she.” Her fire surged, not as an attack, but as a scream.

  It rose from the ground, from her skin, from the very air. It didn’t strike, it devoured. It wrapped around Dmitry’s flames, not extinguishing them but pulling them apart, like a wind unraveling thread. His control slipped. She saw it in the way his hand twitched. The spell stumbled. The way his skeleton horse reared and shrieked beneath him.

  And then his fire broke. Just for a moment. A flicker. A fault line in the heart of his power. Lisa charged. This time with no finesse. No perfect spellcraft.

  Just fire.

  It swirled around her like a cloak, flames kissing her cheeks, trailing from her fingertips, daring him to touch her again.

  He tried.

  A blast straight to the chest. She walked through it. The flames parted. And then hers struck. A single burst. Centered from her core. It erupted in a pillar around him, not to destroy, but to drown. His magic buckled.

  The divine fire in him resisted.

  And lost.

  Dmitry’s staff flew away. His armor cracked. His flame collapsed inward with a hiss, sucked into the roar of hers like it was nothing but dry leaves.

  He fell to one knee.

  Lisa stood before him, trembling, smoking, bloodied, but upright. The fire still poured from her, but softer now. Not a scream.

  A whisper. Dmitry met her gaze, dazed. “Foolish… girl. You lost.”

  She tilted her head. Her voice, when it came, was quiet. “It’s you who lost.” And then the fire vanished, like it had never been there.

  Just ash.

  And silence.