Victor moved first.

The marble floor exploded beneath his feet.

The distance between them vanished so quickly that the launch crater appeared before the sound did, and the greatsword came across the hall in a devastating horizontal arc wrapped in layers of fire, ice, and compressed force powerful enough to tear through reinforced dungeon walls.

Kai watched it come before stepping aside. The blade passed so close that the wind from its passage stirred his coat. Then it hit the wall behind him and the entire side of the hall came apart.

Stone erupted outward, columns cracked, and dust rolled through the air.

Victor was already moving again. The greatsword reversed direction and came down from above with enough force to split the mansion in half. Energy extended beyond the physical edge.

The blade became a descending wall and Kai stepped forward. The massive strike crashed into the floor behind him. The impact shook the entire estate as the marble floor shattered even more.

A crater opened beneath Victor’s feet while Kai emerged from the explosion untouched.

Victor’s elbow came immediately afterward but Kai tilted his head. The strike missed and then Victor spun with him swinging his greatsword. But Kai simply jumped upward and evaded the strike that would cut him in half.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Each attack carried enough power to kill almost any Hunter in the city. Each attack destroyed another piece of the mansion. But none of them touched Kai as the difference between them was becoming visible.

Victor was fighting harder but Kai was fighting better.

Victor charged as the enhancement relics embedded in his armor flared at maximum output. Cracks spread across the floor beneath every step and his speed increased. No it was everything about him had amplified as his body glowed.

The greatsword descended.

Kai vanished.

The weapon smashed into the floor. The resulting shockwave tore through three support columns and collapsed part of the ceiling. Stone rained from above and Kai stood atop a falling section of debris.

With his hand in pocket as he stared down at the enraged form of Victor, something that he caused. Moonlight poured through the widening holes in the mansion.

Victor looked up. "LOOK AT IT!" His voice thundered through the ruined hall.

He drove the greatsword into the floor and energy erupted outward. The shockwave expanded across the mansion like an earthquake. The furniture disintegrated, windows shattered, and entire sections of marble lifted from the ground.

Kai remained above it all. Air Step carried him from one piece of falling debris to another. A silent figure moving through destruction.

Victor pointed the blade at him. "Look at what you did." The anger was still there. But there is also raw and unfiltered pain surging under it.

"Do you know how many people depended on me?" Victor charged again.

The greatsword carved through a support column. The upper half collapsed into an adjacent room.

"Do you know how many problems I fixed?"

Ice spread across the floor while frost raced across broken marble. Lightning crawled through the cracks and fire followed behind it. Three enchantments running simultaneously. Three elements merging into a single overwhelming offense.

"Do you know how many times I held everything together when nobody else would?"

Kai landed lightly on the edge of a shattered pillar but then Victor’s next strike obliterated it. He stepped away before the impact arrived. The pillar exploded and the mansion continued falling apart around them.

"You destroyed all of it!"

Victor’s roar echoed through the estate.

He swung again.

And again.

And again.

Each attack stronger than the last. Each attack carrying more desperation and more frustration.

Kai watched the denial on Victor face as he kept on trying to strike him over and over again. He didn’t say anything because he was noticing it, Victor was fully breaking down and coming to terms to all of it.

Not the excuses.

Not the justifications.

The truth.

Victor had not been fighting to save the guild and the version of himself that existed inside it. But all of that was now gone? He simply could not accept it and so Victor charged again.

This time Kai didn’t move as the ruined hall fell silent around them.

Victor accelerated.

The floor cracked beneath him and his relics burned brighter as his greatsword rose. Every ounce of remaining strength converged into a single attack.

Two meters.

One meter.

The blade descended.

Kai waited until the last moment before he moved with a double jump into the air and evade the descending strike.

Victor’s attack struck empty space and the greatsword crashed into the floor. The resulting explosion tore open the center of the hall. Stone fragments blasted outward and dust filled the air.

Silence followed.

Victor remained frozen, bent over the crater his own attack had created. Victor slowly turned around to see a sight he hoped never came into reality.

Kai stood behind him. Exactly three steps away with his weapons lowered and in a calm state with no damage on him.The difference between them had never been clearer.

Victor stared in disbelief and anger.

For the first time all fight, he truly saw it. No matter how much strength he used. No matter how much destruction he caused. He couldn’t reach him.

Kai met his gaze. "You had too many chances." The words landed harder than any attack.

Victor blinked before laughing, it was a broken one. Then he charged again and the greatsword swept across and Kai stepped inside the attack.

Null Fang rose.

The durability-denying blade touched the greatsword’s energy coating. The coating failed for a single instant and that was enough. Kai redirected the strike and Victor’s momentum carried him forward.

Tempest Fang activated before Kai’s sword smashed into Victor’s chest. The impact sounded like a cannon. The armor cracked as the air vanished from Victor’s lungs and then he was sent flying away.

The wall behind him exploded as Victor went through it. Stone and wood burst followed behind before half the exterior section collapsed. .

The ruined garden welcomed him violently.

He hit the ground hard enough to carve a trench through the earth. Kai stepped through the opening. Moonlight illuminated the garden and Victor was already rising.

Blood leaked from beneath fractured armor and his breathing had become ragged. Even his strong body had become slower. But he still raised the greatsword before a light shine from his figure.

Fire. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Ice.

Lightning.

All three enchantments ignited again.

He was unleashing everything remaining.

Victor came forward and Kai met him. For the first time, he attacked with the Fractured Blade and intercepted the greatsword.

The impact froze the garden.

Then a terrifying shockwave swept through the area, shattering the ice around. Then came the scattered sparks as the Fractured Blade and the Greatsword clashed over and over.

And then Kai dismissed the blade, making Victor stumble in surprise.

Then Null Fang slipped through the opening. The blade found the crack in Victor’s armor and pierced through it. It wasn’t deep but enough to stagger Victor and make it gasp in pain. Kai then struck again with Tempest Fang which released another stored burst.

It crashed into Victor and sent him backward.

This time there was no wall to break or structure to destroy. Only open ground that he crashed into before rolling over the ground. Victor tried to move but he couldn’t and could only lay on the garden floor in a daze.

The garden fell quiet.

The mansion behind them continued collapsing and the first light of dawn touched the horizon.

Kai slowly walked over and stood over him. "The guild was gone before tonight."

Victor said nothing.

"The only difference is that you refused to accept it."

The dawn light spread slowly across the sky. Victor watched it. For a long time neither of them spoke. The battle was over.

He was quiet for a long moment. "I know," he said.

The words came out easier than they should have. That was the strange part. After three weeks of fighting it, after every meeting and every conversation and every desperate attempt to save what was already ending, the words came out like they had been waiting there the whole time and were relieved to finally leave.

Because they had been. Waiting.

"I knew before the investigation," he said in a tired tone. He was genuinely tired, the first honest exhaustion in weeks. "I knew when Park left. When Jae put the badge down." He looked at the sky. "I kept thinking if I fought hard enough, saved enough of it, held on long enough, it would stop being true."

He closed his eyes.

"It was always true," he said. "The whole time. I just kept moving so I wouldn’t have to be still long enough to say it."

He was quiet again.

Then, softer, almost to himself: "It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud."

The greatsword was still in his hand and his hand tightened on it. The energy coating came back, slower than before, but it came. White and gold and whatever remained after everything spent, building in the blade with the specific quality of a final output.

Victor opened his eyes.

"One more," he said and drove the sword into the ground.

The energy released downward and then redirected, the blade wave launching upward and outward in a corona, the final technique, everything stored and everything borrowed and everything left in one movement.

A gunshot echoed out.

It came from behind Kai.

Victor heard it at the same moment the energy release completed. The blade corona launched upward and Kai moved one step.

The Ashen Seal activating.

The bullet’s trajectory altered.

The blade corona’s angle shifted.

Kai stepped through the gap between them.

The bullet found Victor.

The blade corona found Adrian.

The greatsword dropped from Victor’s hand. The pistol dropped from Adrian’s. Both men went down. Victor hit the ground and stopped moving while Adrian sat against the garden wall and was still.

For a moment everything was still.

Then Victor moved. His hand found the ground and his arm pushed and his body dragged itself forward, the armor scraping against the broken stone of the ruined garden, the blood trail behind him visible in the dawn light that had started coming over the city’s edge.

"No." Victor’s hand found the ground and his arm pushed.

His body dragged itself forward on one arm, the other pressed against the wound, the armor scraping against the broken stone.

He covered three meters.

He reached Adrian.

He looked at the wound and then the pistol on the ground. At the trajectory of what had happened in the space of two seconds.

"Uncle." The word came out small and almost a breath. Like he had not intended to say it out loud and it came anyway.

Adrian did not move.

"Uncle!" Victor shouted desperately. He put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder and his other hand came away from his own wound and he used both of them.

"Hey! Look at me! Look at me!"

Adrian’s eyes opened and looked at the ruins. At the sky with the dawn coming in at the edge of it. Then his eyes found Victor and stayed there. The expression that came across Adrian’s face at that moment was not the expression of the man who had spent forty years building an invisible empire. It was not the expression of the architect who had assessed Kai across a ruined hall and stepped aside.

"You did well," he said.

Victor’s face broke.

Kai finally understood. Adrian Voss wasn’t just Victor’s partner but also family. He always wondered why Adrian worked with Victor and had an equal relationship.

Adrian looked at Victor and then his eyes closed and his hand dropped and he was still. Victor held his shoulder for a while after that. He did not say anything. The dawn kept coming over the city, the light changing the color of the broken garden and the ruined walls and the smoke still visible in the far districts.

Then Victor lowered his head and was quiet for a long time. When he finally looked up, all Kai saw was a broken man. He looked at Adrian before his body relaxed by degrees. The effort of holding itself upright giving way, the armor settling against the ground, the hand on Adrian’s shoulder going still.

He closed his eyes.

And did not open them again.

Kai didn’t say anything for a minute as the realization that one of his other big problems was finally dealt with.

Then he glanced around to see the estate was ruined behind him. The garden was ruined in front of him. The network Adrian had spent forty years building was smoke in six districts and rubble in a dozen more.

Victor Hale, who had been the most powerful guild master in Mythal and who had tried to have Kai killed in the moment after the third Mythical gate sealed, was on the ground with his hand on his uncle’s shoulder.

The dawn finished arriving over the city.