"So, thou already k whither to go." Isaiah said, his tone carrying a dry sort of amusement as he followed Burn’s supersonic speed, his own dragon wings slig effortlessly through the sky. In this world, there were few—if any—who could keep up with this man. He, perhaps, was the only one.

  Burn didn’t so much as g the abandoned carriage—the st pce the royals had been before they were taken. He didn’t o. He already knew where they were. Isaiah took said nothing.

  Something was off about Burn today. The man, usually full of sharp remarks and easy sarcasm, had gone near silent. No biting jokes. No unnecessary chatter. Even his usual smirk had been repced with something harder, colder. As expected, evero had their ots—just as dragons had their fatal scale.

  "Let me handle Aroche myself, as agreed. The others are yours."

  Isaiah let out a hum, granting his approval. "I shall be here shouldst thou have need of aught, Brother. And should folly tempt thee into some most reckless deed, be thou assured—I am more than able to stay thy hand."

  That word—Brother.

  He had heard it from this man’s lips before, but only in the text of a disguise. It meant nothing then. But now? Now, it carried a differe entirely.

  When was the st time someone had called him that a it?

  One brother had died by betrayal. Another had died by his own hand. And now, a man from his wife’s ‘family’ had e along and called him the same.

  It seemed he owed Ma another debt.

  ***

  Failed.

  Man spun just in time as the dark tendrils shot toward her heart. But this time—this loop—she was ready.

  A pulse of holy light fred from her fiips, golden runes snapping ience arouhe curse, a writhing mass of living shadows, smmed into the radiant barrier with a hiss, its momentum halting inches from her chest.

  BLAST!

  The forpact sent a shockwave rippling through the battlefield, kig up dust and scattering embers in the air.

  "Master!" Yvain's voice rang out, but not in despair—this time, in relief.

  Man gritted her teeth, hands trembling as she pushed back against the festering corrupti to invade her body. The shadows cwed and shrieked, seeking a vessel, but she would not let them through.

  Holy glyphs spiraled from her palms, weaving tighter and tighter as she forced the curse to the surface, preventing it from sinking into her soul.

  Then, just as the dark magic threateo sh out again—

  "Allow me."

  A powerful surge of mana flooded the air, cold and anding.

  Vd raised a single gloved hand, firag an are sigil in the air. In an instant, his mana ed around the cursed tendrils, freezing them midair.

  The bed mass struggled violently, twisting against the invisible s that now bound it, but between Man's holy light and Vd’s refined trol, the curse had nowhere left to go.

  “These crazy bastards,” the demon lord’s voice rasped, thick with amusemee the blood bubbling up his throat.

  His body vulsed, petrified hands crumbling into dust as the st remnants of holy judgment burhrough him.

  “It… wasn’t me!” Bir’s voice cracked, hoarse with desperation. “It flew out of me, but it wasn’t… me!”

  Man’s hands tightened, her magic sealing the st remnants of the curse into the glowing runes between her palms. This time, she did not fall. She did not bleed. She did not die.

  Lached it all unfold, his power stretg across the battlefield like an all-seeing eye. Man Le Fay, stabilizing Bir. Burn, hunting down Lo and Nahwu and him like wolves to wounded prey.

  It couldn't be just that they were strong, right? There had to be something else, some trick, some ht in his calcutions. But no matter how he tur over in his mind, how else could he expin it?

  Man Le Fay—the so-called inal Saint—had just stopped his surprise attack. The curse he had painstakingly woven into the greatest masterpiece he had ever created—ralized. Blocked. Denied.

  Granted, it might had taken most of her power to pull off, but still.

  Bir screamed, a sound that cut through the air like gss shattering. She vulsed, twisting and writhing as though her very soul was being fyed from the i. And, in a way, it was. The curse hadn’t left her ly—it had ripped its way out, taking pieces of her with it. Again, it was withdrawal syndrome.

  Yvain caught her before she crumpled pletely, his grip steady even as raw panic flickered across his features. No holy energy to speak of, yet he poured healing spell after healing spell into her, as if sheer desperation could override reality.

  "Stay with me, Yhness. Stay with me!"

  Lance exhaled through his nose, his amusement tempered with something dangerously close to pity. "Give up," he drawled, voice curling through the air like smoke. "Without my influence, she’ll never trol her soul. You ’t save her, inal Saint."

  Man Le Fay—devastatingly beautiful and even more devastatingly unimpressed—let out a slow, deliberate sneer. "Don’t worry about her, Lankor." Her voice caressed his name like a bde against silk. "You o worry about yourself."

  She tilted her head ever so slightly, as if sidering whether or not to feel sorry for him. She didn’t.

  "My husband is ing for you."

  La out a slow breath. She brought out the big gun right away.

  His knees buckled, a the ground hard, barely catg himself as his own body betrayed him. His hands—no, his arms—were disiing, the ash of his existence peeling away bit by bit.

  That spell. That spell. The ohat had nearly wiped out the first Demon Lord five turies ago. Not just a on—the on. A spell so massive it should have taken days, maybe weeks, to prepare.

  She had unleashed it in under a minute.

  Beside him, a woman trembled, eyes wide with somethiween terror and disbelief. She looked at him.

  Her voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper.

  “…Lance… are they going to kill us?”

  And wasn’t that just the question of the hour?

  Lance’s eyes so Burn, trag his every move. The bastard had e straight here, to his base, faster than he should have been able to—as if he already kly where to find him.

  There was no time.

  The body possession spell required more preparation than this. There was no way he could—

  BLAAAAAAAST!

  The impact shook the very foundation of the base.

  He was here.

  “Bring everyoo hold him back!” Lance barked, watg as his hen scrambled to intercept the ining force.

  If it had been anyone else, he might have risked a direct frontation. He might have bluffed, maneuvered, schemed his way to victory.

  But this man?

  This man was like the inal Saint—someone he couldn’t afford to face head-on, even if he wao.

  This man was the reason he became Lankor.

  The reason he had to hide his identity.

  The reason his grand pn to openly seize this world had been forced into the shadows, deyed and disrupted at every turn.

  How? How did one man—a man with Soulnaught Syndrome, no less—bee a force equivalent to a demigod?

  Lance had spent years twisting the politidscape of the ti into his palm. He had maniputed, killed, and maneuvered his way into the upper echelons of nearly every nation.

  A, no matter how carefully he wove his schemes, no matter how thhly he pnned—

  Soulnaught kept getting in his way. Over and ain.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

  Not after what he had seen five years ago at the Wall of Logres.

  A chill ran down his spi the memory, but he pushed it aside. Focus. He had to focus.

  Ahlgrath, the only subordiill at his side, spoke, voice tight with unease. “Sir, I don’t think just us stop him.”

  Lance’s jaw ched. No, of course not.

  “Use Aroche Leodegrao distract him,” he said coldly. “He won’t be reckless if it es to him. Go.”

  He couldn’t waste any more time. He had to leave.

  He had to take Evere, Nahwu, and Lo ahem out before it was too te.

  Before he lost everything.

  “Let’s go, my love, we must leave now—”

  RUMBLE—CRASH!

  The ceiling shattered.

  Dust and debris rained down around him, the force of the colpse sending a deep tremor through the floor beh his feet.

  And from the settling wreckage, from the choking cloud of dust—

  A shadow emerged.

  A t figure, seveall, his long bck hair whipping in the wake of his dest. A massive spear rested in his grip, its edge gleaming even through the haze.

  And atop his head—one broken horn, the remnant of a once-proud pair.

  SWISH!

  The spear sliced through the lingering dust with ease, revealing the mah it.

  A legend. A nightmare.

  Isaiah, the Dragon of the East.

  His golden eyes fixed on Lance, unreadable yet pierg.

  “…Verily, he spoke true,” Isaiah murmured, his voice a low rumble, steady as the turning of fate itself. “Had I heeded his sel, I wouldst find mih to this very chamber.”

  Then, those eyes narrowed.

  “Thou,” he intoned, voice cutting through the air like a bde, “art he who hath taken up miher’s cursed throne.

  The sed demon lord.”

  His voice was steady. Iable.

  And Lance—Lance found himself standing at the precipice of something far worse than failure.

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  ------------------------------------------

  They ain't wasting time :'v