"Have you recovered already?" her voice drifted down from above, mocking and careless, the tone of someone who believed the fight had already ended long before his body hit the ground. She was relaxed, her posture loose, her knives still glistening faintly with his blood as though they were trophies rather than weapons.

Jacob gave her no answer. His gaze was steady, his breathing quiet, and though he looked defeated, something subtle was taking shape behind his back, a faint glow sketching itself into existence across the palm of his hand.

A rune was forming, his mana feeding into its lines not in reckless bursts as it once had, but in measured trickles, each second stretching as his lips pulled into a slow and growing smile.

The woman leaned closer, bending until her eyes met his, still savoring the taste of blood as her tongue brushed the edge of her blade. "Shall we start again?" she whispered, almost playfully.

"Gladly," Jacob replied, and his voice, far from strained, carried the weight of certainty. His hand came forward, the rune complete. Unlike the reckless attempt he had made at the banquet, he did not pour everything into it, he had learned better.

His mana was scarce, and he understood now the need to ration it. Only the minimum, only what was required. And as he released it, he felt it, the click, the shift, the subtle acceptance where once there had been rejection.

Boom.

Fire erupted, not in controlled streams but in a raw torrent, bursting from his palm as though it had been waiting for this moment of freedom. Red flames tore through the air, too close and too sudden for her to evade. They struck her head-on, swallowing her in heat and light, and her mocking composure shattered in an instant as a shriek cut through the air. She leapt back, landing hard on one knee, her body scorched in places, her movements no longer so careless.

Jacob was breathing heavily now, though not from exhaustion but from exhilaration. His chest rose and fell with uneven rhythm, his hand trembling slightly as he lowered it, and he could feel it, his mana rushing through him with a speed and vigor it had never once shown before, no longer sluggish, no longer half-asleep, but alive, surging, burning. Despite the blood pooling beneath him, despite the gaping wound under his ribs and the countless cuts across his body, he felt joy.

His lips curled wider. He raised his hand again, beginning to trace another rune, the lines flickering into shape as a soundless laugh shook his shoulders. But she was not about to allow him that luxury. With a flick of her wrist, the remaining five knives lifted into the air, hovering for a breathless second before launching forward in streaks of silver and intent.

'I expected as much,' Jacob thought, his mind already at work. His eyes tracked each knife, not just their current flight but their possible paths after a miss, the angles, the weight of force behind them, their inevitable adjustments.

The calculations came instantly, far faster than he could have managed before, his thoughts flowing with a precision that startled even him, it was as though his mind itself had ascended in rank.

Still shaping the rune with his free hand, he pushed himself up from the ground, his body twisting at the last possible moment, and the first knife cut harmlessly through the space where he had been.

Gritting his teeth until his jaw ached, he forced back the urge to scream and tightened his grip on the knife he had stolen earlier, his torn left hand trembling as he swung it in a desperate parry that sent a second blade drifting harmlessly away.

Without hesitating, Jacob pushed himself forward, lowering his body and ducking just as another knife cut the air near his neck, the steel whispering past his skin. He shifted his weight and rolled to the side in the same motion, narrowly avoiding the returning arc of the knife he had already deflected.

'Faster, I need to move faster,' he thought, every nerve in his body burning with urgency. He drove the last of his strength into his legs, adjusted his centre of gravity, angled his body downward like a sprinter at the starting line, and dashed forward.

The blades closed in from every direction, yet his movements, sharpened by the clarity of his altered mind, seemed almost precise enough to belong to someone else entirely. He twisted, bent, and turned with uncanny timing, his dodges so exact that only the few he could not completely evade struck shallowly at places of little consequence.

"Damn you!" the woman's voice cracked with frustration, her composure slipping as she thrust her hands upward. At once, a red glow gathered around her palms, thick with the cloying scent of faith, and with a noise that resembled the tearing of flesh her fingernails were ripped from their beds. Jacob saw them, thin and shining, streaking forward faster than any knife could ever move, too fast for him to escape.

But instead of fear, he felt exhilaration. His lips pulled into a grin as his right hand rose, his entire body trembling not from weakness but from anticipation. The rune was complete, the lines etched perfectly into the air, and he poured his mana into it without restraint. A wave of ecstasy swept through him as fire erupted once more, roaring outward in a torrent that consumed every nail in its path and forced the woman to retreat, her figure darting away from the searing heat.

The reprieve was short. Even as the flames died down, another knife came whistling toward his arm. She had planned for this; she knew his rhythm now, knew he would parry and that the brief pause needed to draw another rune would leave him exposed. She was already preparing her next strike, her attention fixed on the opening she believed was hers.

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And then came the sound she had not expected, not steel against steel, but the soft, wet tearing of flesh. The smell of blood thickened in the air. Her eyes widened and her head snapped up, too late.

Instead of parrying, Jacob had thrown his own blade. The knife cut across the narrow distance and sank into her chest with unflinching accuracy, piercing deep enough that the tip brushed her heart.

Her scream tore through the air, raw and animal, filled with pain and hatred. For a vampire, the heart was the one place they could not afford to leave vulnerable. Even the smallest wound upon it carried dire consequences, weakening them beyond recovery.

Jacob said nothing. He had waited for this precise moment, the instant when her focus was consumed by the attack she was shaping, when she assumed he would do as he had done before, parry, delay, survive. He let her believe it, and in that fraction of a second, he turned her certainty against her. He took the strike, and in return he gave her something far worse.

Jacob himself was far from unscathed; his knees gave way and he sank to the ground, the steady loss of blood coupled with the mental exhaustion of forcing the rune into existence weighing heavily upon him, and though every part of his body screamed at him to remain still, to simply collapse and surrender to unconsciousness, he knew that stopping now was the same as death, and so he forced himself to breathe, to think, to stand again.

The woman, on the other hand, saw no reason to hurry. She could read the state of his body, could see him weakening with each passing moment, and to her the path forward seemed simple: endure, survive, and watch him waste away until he destroyed himself. Yet as that thought formed, another followed 'I, once a rank three, reduced to thinking of retreat, of hiding from a mere child.' It was the sensible path, the logical one, and still she could not bring herself to take it, for people were seldom ruled by logic alone.

Her bloodlust surged outward, unrestrained at last. Her teeth lengthened into sharp fangs, and the blood that spilled from the wound in her chest no longer dripped uselessly to the ground but gathered at her feet, swirling around her as though alive.

The dull red glow of faith bled from her body, her very life force feeding the storm she summoned, and with deliberate, furious steps she rose to her feet once more, her gaze fixed on Jacob as though willing him to collapse where he stood. She had chosen not survival but vengeance, to burn even her life away if that was what it took to kill him.

"Jacob Skydrid," she snarled, her voice ragged, "sinner who dares raise his hand against me, I will tear you apart." As she spoke, the blood that had been circling her burst outward, separating into streams that lanced toward Jacob like arrows.

But Jacob's hand was already moving. Another rune was completed, and this time he did not settle for the bare minimum required to spark it to life. Instead he poured half of what little mana he still possessed into the shape, so much that the edges of the rune itself seemed to shudder under the weight, his once-white mana staining a violent red as if corrupted by the force.

With a shattering burst, a torrent of fire erupted, not a stream but a sea, colliding with the woman's blood and meeting it in a violent, thrashing clash that sent sparks and droplets hissing into the air.

"I am not dying here," Jacob roared, his voice ragged with strain, and even as the flames threatened to falter beneath the weight of her attack he forced his trembling fingers to draw again, scratching out the lines of a new rune with desperate speed.

'Faster, faster,' he urged himself, his mind racing, yet the blood was already overwhelming his fire, surging toward him in a tide that could not be held back. His new rune was barely half completed.

'Faster.' Blood welled from his eyes, hot on his cheeks, his skull felt as if it might split from the pressure, and though his enhanced mind had carried him through countless impossible calculations, even it began to stagger beneath the strain.

Still he pressed forward, biting down hard enough on his teeth that pain cut through the haze, and with a roar that was equal parts fury and desperation "FASTER!" he dragged every last fragment of mana from his heart.

The rune snapped into completion in an instant. The air itself seemed to convulse; heat bled into the surroundings, thick and suffocating, while the scattered threads of mana in the environment were sucked into his palm as though called by command. The woman's surging blood hesitated mid-flight, shuddered, then began to boil, shrinking rapidly as though devoured by an unseen flame. Jacob had not even activated the rune, and already its dormant pressure alone carried such force that it bent the battle around it.

Blood streamed freely from Jacob's ears and mouth, each drop a reminder of the unbearable strain pressing against his body, yet he forced himself further still, dragging every shred of mana from within and without, emptying the reserves in his veins, the scattered fragments lingering in the air, and pouring it all into the rune that trembled at the edge of completion.

The woman felt it before she even understood it; a chill, sharp and final, washed over her like the shadow of a blade at her throat, and she knew with the clarity of instinct that if the rune struck her she would die, utterly and without return.

Every part of her screamed to run, to flee the certainty of death, yet pride or hatred or perhaps a twisted sense of inevitability forced her legs to move not away but forward. The faith that burned within her, the blood that drenched her chest, even the fraying threads of her own life, all of it carried her in one final burst of speed, a desperate charge that tore her muscles apart and sent her heart hammering until it felt it might rupture.

She closed the last distance, her hand stretched forward, trembling, her eyes locked on his wrist where the rune flared, intent on severing it before he could unleash it.

"Fire," Jacob whispered. His voice was low, hoarse, a single word dragged from the depths of exhaustion, and yet it carried the weight of everything he had forced into the rune.

The woman's eyes widened, trembling with horror, for before the flame even touched her she was already burning, her skin blistering and blackening from the sheer heat that radiated outward. Then the pillar itself struck, not vast and overwhelming as his earlier torrents had been, but narrow, focused, no larger than her body, and in that concentration lay its cruelty.

There was no time for her to scream, no chance to thrash or resist, the fire consumed her in less than a heartbeat, her form collapsing into ash that scattered on the heated air, leaving nothing behind but the faintest trace of smoke.

The mana that had been ripped from the world returned all at once, surging back into the atmosphere in a sigh of release, and Jacob, shaking, forced his body forward. One step toward the gate, then another, then another, each movement heavy, each breath shallow, his blood dripping steadily onto the stone.

He had gone far past his limit, and every part of him ached for rest, yet a thin smile pulled at his lips as he pressed on, for that flame, that spell, it had been his, shaped by his hand, born of his will.

And now, at last, it was time to leave this prison behind.

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