Malrick collapsed to the ground, his body crumpling like a broken statue. The impact stirred a sharp gasp from Rayan, but what followed was not sorrow. It was fury.
That fury ignited within him like wildfire, racing through his veins, thick and blistering, dark and ancient. His breath grew ragged, his eyes narrowing into slits of burning intent. Around him, the air began to shimmer with rising heat.
Yet beside him, Orien remained as cold and still as a mountain peak in winter. His voice came low and controlled, like the calm before a blizzard.
"Rayan," he said, his tone like ice against fire. "Follow my lead. This is your moment."
Then Orien moved... swift as a shadow crossing moonlight. With a surge of raw, glacial magic, he summoned the cold from the deepest reaches of the world. Frost clawed at the earth, the air turned brittle, and in an instant, a shell of shimmering blue-white ice encased Zayran's body, halting him mid-step. His form froze in place like a statue carved from winter itself.
But the spell was not meant to end there.
Rayan stepped forward, his hands trembling not from fear, but from the sheer magnitude of what he was about to unleash. The shadows around him began to churn. Heat rose in violent gusts, and then.. without warning.... his aura erupted.
Darkness bled into flame, flame into shadow, until the very air around him twisted into a roaring maelstrom of fire and black mist. It was beautiful and terrifying. A storm born of wrath and purpose. The ground trembled beneath him as ash fell like black snow.
"This..." Zayran's voice cracked as he gazed skyward in disbelief, his frozen lips barely able to form the words. "This is a fusion spell...!"
Rayan didn't answer. There was no need.
With a guttural cry, he thrust both hands forward, channeling every ounce of power, every shred of pain, into a single, devastating wave. The fire surged forward, laced with darkness so dense it seemed to consume the light itself. The blast engulfed the field. Unstoppable, merciless.
And as it struck, Zayran's frozen form shattered beneath the onslaught, his scream lost in the roar of flame and shadow. The world held its breath as silence fell.
Only the fire remained, crackling low and defiant, the final echo of a spell that should not have been possible.
From the heart of fury, Rayan's eyes burned crimson. Not just red—but the deep, glowing red of a dying star, a color that whispered of destruction beyond redemption. His entire body trembled with unleashed power, the very air around him warping from the raw force pulsing beneath his skin.
But then...
For the first time, Orien faltered.
His expression, always calm, always unreadable, cracked into something Rayan had never seen before, fear. Genuine, cold fear.
"How... how is this possible?" he whispered, as if the truth itself might collapse if spoken too loudly.
The inferno of black fire, the spell that should have erased Zayran from existence, began to twist, no, to bend. The flames coiled inward, spiraling unnaturally, and from their core... something emerged.
Zayran.
Unscathed.
He stepped forward from the chaos, not limping, not broken—but reborn. Not a single wound marred his flesh. The fire clung to his silhouette like it worshiped him, and the darkness around him deepened as if the world itself refused to shine where he walked.
His voice cut through the silence, low and filled with strange reverence.
"This... is for you, Samantha."
And in that instant, Rayan felt something he hadn't known in years—doubt.
Zayran raised his arms slowly, like a man waking from a dream. Or rising from the dead. But these were not the hands of the man they had fought. No. His form had changed. His body seemed taller, leaner, carved from shadow and rage. And his hands... were wrapped in writhing bolts of black lightning. Each crackle echoed like a scream in the distance, and the sky itself seemed to flinch at their sound.
He had returned not as a man, but as something else.
Something reborn through fire, vengeance, and a name whispered like a curse: Samantha.
And as the storm of dark lightning gathered above them, the battlefield fell silent, not with peace, but with the breathless pause before the next storm.
The true battle... had only just begun.