The ground split beneath Max's feet – not from force, but defiance. The world itself no longer obeyed its old rules.

Zagan raised her hand.

Instantly, the battlefield twisted.

The prayer stones shattered in unison, their fragments slithering into each other mid-air – forming skeletal serpents with mask-fractured skulls and ribs made of shrine wood. Trees convulsed in their roots and bled smoke from their trunks. The soil beneath Max's boots became a slick of tar-mirrors that shimmered with flickers of his own face, warped and twitching. The very air changed – heavier, metallic, humming with unnatural pressure. As if the oxygen remembered being something else, something better, and hated itself for it.

And through it all, Zagan simply… walked.

Her feet didn't touch the earth. Her presence alone was enough to shape it. Each step rewrote matter. Her gaze bent geometry. Her will was a blueprint that the world no longer resisted.

Max moved anyway.

He pushed off the tar-mirror ground, Hellfire bursting beneath his heels like jets. Blue-white flame surged around him, forming wings of radiance and ruin. Where Zagan transmuted matter into beasts and horrors, Max did not counter with elegance.

He unmade.

One of the bone-serpents lunged. Max didn't strike it – he passed through it, fire rippling outward. The creature's spine disintegrated mid-lunge, its mask shrieking as it evaporated. Not burned. Not broken. Erased.

Zagan's porcelain mask tilted as she watched him tear through her creations. The serpents, the prayerstone beasts, even the sludge-blooming vines she'd conjured from the dead roots of the forest – none of it held.

With every step Max took, he carved absence.

His Hellfire didn't scorch. It refused. It deleted everything it touched.

"You're adapting faster than expected," Zagan said calmly, arms folded inside blood-soaked sleeves. "That fire… it's not yours, is it?"

Max didn't answer.

He was too busy moving. Hellfire wrapped around his limbs like second skin. One beast – a stitched mass of foxes bound into a hulking body – charged from his right. Max turned his palm, and a line of fire lanced through the thing's chest.

No smoke. No corpse.

Just a hollow ring where something had existed a moment before.

Zagan paused.

She raised one hand and tried to transmute the flame itself – altering its geometry, weaving entropy into its atomic strands.

The fire screamed.

Then it snapped back, consuming the runes mid-cast. Her wrist bled light – not red, not gold. A flicker of something else. Something old.

She blinked.

Max kept advancing.

She murmured, "That shouldn't be possible."

Max's voice cut through the scorched wind like stone dragged across glass.

"This doesn't belong to you."

Zagan stopped walking.

And for the first time in a thousand years, she frowned.

…………………

The battlefield was a cage.

Zagan had created a lattice of flesh – not limbs but roots of bone-veined muscle, sinew stretched into spires. Pale growths twisted upward like the spines of buried giants, curling into knuckled claws that locked together overhead. They pulsed faintly, as if breathing. Some bore fingernails. Others wore rings. All reached not to grasp, but to divide. A living barricade, grown not to kill – but to separate.

They cleaved the battlefield in two.

Max on one side.

Everyone else – trapped beyond the wall of bone.

The sky above bled sideways – shades of red that weren't natural, weren't even colour. Cracks spidered through the heavens, and somewhere distant, thunder sobbed like a dying animal. The ground beneath Max's boots pulsed with warm wetness – not blood. Something older. The sanctuary was gone. The world was gone.

Zagan had made this place. And it obeyed her.

But not entirely.

Max exhaled. His breath steamed in the poisoned air. For a moment, just a breath, he glanced back – toward the wall of reaching arms. He couldn't see them – not Dan, not Victor, not Ying, Chloe or Alyssa.

But he felt them.

The fury. The fear.

The fight.

Could they survive without him?

Could Liz?

The thought almost stopped him. Almost.

But the moment passed – and Max stepped forward.

"You wanted me," he said aloud. "You've got me."

Zagan turned to face him fully now.

The coy detachment was gone. Her smile had cracked. Her mask gleamed, but the thing behind it was… sharper. More focused.

"I expected you to beg," she said. "Or at least break."

Max didn't answer. He moved.

The ground burst beneath his feet, blue-white fire driving him forward. Hellfire trailed from his shoulders like wings, his eyes blazing. He slammed into her – a punch that cracked the air. Zagan reeled, not from pain, but from surprise.

She brought her hand up – too slow.

Max ducked low and drove his knee into her stomach. Hellfire exploded on impact, launching her backward. She twisted in mid-air, landed on the wall of a broken shrine, and launched back at him, claws bared.

He met her mid-charge.

Fist met claw. Fire met alchemy.

She clawed at the air – and the world fractured. A wave of broken time lashed out, distorting Max's image like a skipped frame in reality.

But Max was already there.

He cut through it with a vertical arc of Hellfire – a pillar of blue-white light that split the distortion in half.

Zagan spun away, robes smoking.

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She hissed. A ripple of anger cracked her voice.

"You shouldn't exist."

Max's boots skidded against broken stone. He raised both fists, fire curling up his arms like serpents made of pain.

"That makes two of us."

Zagan surged forward again, slashing low – a feint. Her other hand came up in a flare of transmutation, runes glowing, ready to twist bone into salt.

They touched.

The spell hit.

And recoiled.

Max's body shuddered. A visible ripple of agony tore through him – his veins glowed, skin cracking along the shoulders. But it didn't transmute. Didn't change.

It refused.

He shouted – not in pain, but rage – and struck again.

Their fight devolved into pure brutality. No elegance. No style. Just limbs and light and raw fucking fury.

Punches cratered stone. Claws tore fire. Blood – real blood – hit the air in steaming arcs.

Max pressed harder. Zagan fell back.

She wasn't used to this. Not anymore.

She made worlds. She rewrote people. She didn't fight.

Not like this.

Max gave her no room to think.

Just pain.

Just fire.

…………………

They clashed in the heart of the ruined sanctum – a scorched ring of broken prayer stones and blackened grass, the air stinking of burnt offerings and blood. No more armies. No more gods. Just him and her.

Max moved like fire poured into flesh – relentless, ragged, all edge. His fists hammered into her defence, left-right-left, each blow lit with white-blue Hellfire. Zagan swayed beneath the onslaught, her elegant footwork unravelling step by step. The sash at her waist had torn. Her sleeve was smoking. Her smirk had died three punches ago.

The fourth strike cracked against her ribs. The fifth grazed her temple. The sixth – a rising knee laced with flame – sent her staggering back, one heel skidding through the ash.

Her tails flared wide. Defensive. Unsure.

And for the first time, Zagan hesitated.

Max didn't stop.

He drove her back with a spinning kick that shattered a spine-like pillar behind her. His knuckles were split. His arms shook. But the fury didn't waver.

Zagan's mask tilted. There – a flicker. Surprise?

No. Something sharper.

Fear.

A pulse jumped in her throat. She tasted iron behind her teeth – the unmistakable tang of fear, sharp and shameful.

She tried to shift again – space warping at her fingertips – but Max slammed his palm into her jaw, forcing it shut mid-incantation. She reeled back.

He was faster.

He caught her wrist, twisted, and drove his knee into her gut with enough force to crater the earth beneath her. Bones cracked. Her porcelain mask jolted sideways, fine fractures blooming across the edge.

Zagan let out a sound that wasn't a scream – not quite. A hiss. Sharp and rattled.

Max followed through.

An elbow into her shoulder. A kick into her shin. A brutal hook into her ribs that lifted her off the ground. Her body was too light, too fluid – like she wasn't fully flesh anymore. But even she couldn't negate force.

She hit the ground hard. Rolled.

Max was already on her.

He grabbed her by the throat.

Hellfire burned in his grip, searing her silks to ash. She clawed at his forearm – not to slice, but to push him off. Her eyes wide now, animal-wide.

He squeezed harder.

"Come on," he growled. "You're not fragile. Fight me."

Zagan spat blood. "I am."

She slashed her hand through the air – and her tails answered. Dozens of razor arcs. Blades of fur and bone and time itself.

They found flesh.

Max grunted as a dozen cuts opened across his side, thigh, jaw – glowing hot with fire instead of blood. The pain flared, licked across his spine. He staggered one step, clutching his ribs.

But his eyes never left her.

And in that moment – he felt it.

She was unsure.

He pressed his bleeding hand to the earth. "Time to end this," he whispered.

Hellfire surged.

From deep within – beneath the flame, beneath the scars – something older stirred. Max opened his chest to it. Let it burn.

The wind turned.

A low, metallic hum sang out as gold light erupted from his back – spectral, divine, impossibly bright. Not wings. Not fire.

Chains.

Not iron. Not steel. Forged from the marrow of the world – golden soul-light braided with streaks of Hellfire, burning not with heat, but with memory. They sang as they burst from Max's back – a sound like temple bells cracked in mourning. Each link shimmered with weight not meant for mortals.

They burst outward like judgment incarnate – six of them, then eight, then more, writhing and snapping toward her.

Zagan moved – too slow.

They struck her mid-lunge, wrapping her wrists, her ankles, her tails – coiling tight with sacred weight. Her feet hit the ground – and didn't rise again.

"No," she hissed.

The gold bled into her – and began to pull.

Her body twitched. Her shoulders locked. The glow beneath her skin began to leak outward, siphoned in threads of white and red and something blacker than shadow. Essence. Her soul.

Zagan gasped – a true sound, raw and breathless. "That's… my power—"

Max met her gaze. His voice was low. Cold. Not triumphant.

"Now you know how it feels."

…………………

Zagan screamed.

Not with pain – not yet – but rage. Something primal. Animal. The sound carved through the battlefield like broken crystal and choking silk.

Golden chains burned into her limbs, searing her illusions away. Her wrists cracked where they met spectral metal – not physically, but deeper. Soul-deep. Her robes writhed in protest, layers of silken scripture blackening, crumbling into drifting petals of ash. One of her arms – her true one, hidden beneath layers of glamour and flesh – splintered before Max's eyes.

It was not blood inside.

It was glass.

Bone-glass, light-wet and hollow. It shattered at the elbow. A fracture ran all the way to her shoulder, humming like a scream with nowhere to go.

Zagan convulsed.

Not wounded – unravelled.

Max stepped forward, the fire in him burning blue-white, violent, calm. A holy contradiction.

Zagan twisted, tried to turn. Her tails lashed, but the chains caught two more mid-swing. They froze mid-arc – then began to dissolve, piece by piece, into golden smoke that curled backwards toward Max. Into him.

Her essence.

Her power.

Her self.

He was stealing it. No – reclaiming it. She felt it in her marrow. The pull. The vortex of soulfire dragging her inward, siphoning centuries of mastery, of transcendence, into the furnace she could not understand.

For a breath – just one – her wrath gave way to terror. Not because she was losing. But because she finally understood what Max was.

A mirror. A mistake. An end she hadn't accounted for.

Around them, the world held its breath. The bone canopy overhead had stopped shifting, its roots frozen mid-grasp like supplicants turned to stone. Even the flames beyond the flesh-forest seemed subdued – as if reality itself paused to witness what came next.

The porcelain mask cracked across the cheek.

Max didn't flinch.

Zagan's voice broke through clenched teeth. "You dare— You dare take what I—"

She tried to speak an unmaking, but her words caught in her throat. Her tongue split. Her voice failed her. Her own magic recoiled from the chains like a beast recognising the cage.

And still he advanced.

Another step. Another chain igniting into being behind him, wrapping her ankle. Her leg folded inward like collapsing marble.

Zagan's eyes went wide. Her body flickered.

She tried to transmute – to become beast, bird, something beyond touch.

But the chains burned through her spell. Anchored her.

She was suffocating. Not in air.

In loss.

Her aura collapsed around her like a dying lung. The ground beneath her warped in protest, unable to rewrite fast enough.

Max stood before her, heat rippling from his skin, Hellfire in his breath.

He stared at her – bound, unravelling, all her illusions burning away – and for a moment, he almost felt pity.

Almost. But pity was a luxury the dead couldn't afford.

He leaned close.

His voice was quiet. No echo. No rage.

Just truth.

"You're not a god," he said.

"You're just next."

…………………

The chains pulled taut.

Zagan's body convulsed once more – and for a moment, it seemed she might shatter completely. Fractures spiderwebbed across her remaining mask. Her tails thrashed in silent agony. Her silhouette buckled like wax in a furnace. Something sacred – or at least once revered – was coming apart.

And then she smiled.

Not in triumph.

In understanding.

"…I see," she whispered, blood trailing from her lip. "I understand now."

The cracks in her skin pulsed gold. Her mask – already broken on one side – shattered like a lie told too many times. And beneath it, there was no face – just the beginning of something truer. Something older. Her reflection, finally exposed.

And with a gasp – sharp, desperate – she let go.

Her body detonated into golden mist.

The chains snapped closed on nothing.

They whipped through the air, searing the ground behind Max as the mist curled skyward – weightless, escaping. Soulfire hissed where it touched her remnants but could not catch.

Smoke through bars.

Mist through hands.

She reformed thirty feet away – flickering, hazy, her edges blurring like heat distortion. Her shrine maiden robes hung torn, soaked in her own essence. One hand clutched her side, the other lifted slowly – fingers trembling as they held the last fragments of what Max had taken.

Stolen light shimmered across her palm. It wasn't whole anymore. It bled.

She stared at it with reverence. Then laughed – soft, breathless, and broken in the middle.

"You are not the opposite of me," Zagan murmured. "You are my reflection."

She looked up.

The fire behind Max burned higher, wreathing him in pale blue and gold.

She bared her teeth – no longer smiling.

"And this fire?" Her voice cracked. "It's not yours."

Max didn't answer. Couldn't. Because she was right. And it didn't matter. He didn't need it to be his. He just needed it to burn.

The world dimmed.

Not from light but meaning. The battlefield bent, warped. Shadows coiled behind her – too thick, too alive – and her form twisted.

Nine tails unfurled behind her. Not fluid this time, not elegant.

Violent.

The bones inside them cracked into shape as flesh bloomed in reverse, pulled from air and memory and wrath. The ground trembled.

The shrine whispered its fear.

And Zagan rose – no longer maiden, no longer mask.

But Queen.

Her nine tails began to rise.

Not gently. Not with grace. They snapped upward like spears, splitting the air, casting shadows across the battlefield. Each one throbbed with devouring light – not gold, not fire, but something ancient and hungry, carved from the marrow of the world.

Her silhouette stretched impossibly tall. Her robe twisted around her like flayed silk. Smoke poured from her mouth as her spine cracked, vertebrae reforming into something no longer human.

The air shivered.

And then her eyes – what remained of them – locked on Max.

They burned with something far worse than hate.

Recognition.

As if looking at a reflection in still water – only to see something crawling beneath the skin.

Something that should not exist.

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