Calamity Awakens

Harold felt the world slow.
The vial spun end over end through the air, glinting crimson as it caught the light—an arc of inevitability.

"Lira!" he shouted, already reaching for her Brand. His mind snapped into the link, reaching for Tactical Recall, the skill flaring in instinct. He tried to pull her to him, to drag her through the bond and out of the blast radius—but his mana was gone. The attempt sparked and died, like flint without tinder. His soul ached, empty, hollow.

"Hal! Kelan! Jerric—stop it!" he barked through the link, his voice cracking with desperation.

Hal was already in motion, claws raking the sand as he tried to close the distance. Kelan staggered to his feet, still bleeding, trying to throw himself forward. Jerric raised a trembling hand, mana gathering, but too slow, too little.

The vial hit Lira's chest.

A pulse of red light, then the world erupted.

The explosion tore through the air with a sickening roar, bloodfire blooming outward like a flower of death. Lira threw up her hands, a reflexive shield of death mana flickering to life—thin, rushed, desperate. It held for a heartbeat.

Then it shattered.

The blast swallowed her whole. Flames curled around her form, washing over her robes, her hair, her skin. The shockwave hurled her back across the sand, slamming her into the barrier wall with a crack that silenced the crowd.

When the fire cleared, she was lying crumpled against the wall, smoke rising faintly from her robes, her staff lying broken beside her. The air stank of scorched mana and blood.

Harold's breath hitched, the sound half a snarl, half a sob. The link between them flickered in his mind—faint, distant, still there but fading fast.

"Lira…"

The heir was laughing, weakly, blood running down his chin. His body was breaking apart, his curse still unraveling under the remnants of her power, but the mad triumph in his eyes burned bright.

"One for one," he rasped. "Fair trade."

Harold's fingers tightened around his axe until the knuckles cracked. His body trembled, not with fear—but with something far older, far deeper.

The last thing the heir saw before Harold moved was his eyes—gone flat, gone cold.

Harold didn't think. He moved.

Pain, exhaustion, the flickering red of his near-empty health bar—none of it mattered anymore. His body was a conduit for something simpler, something older. Rage.

The heir stumbled toward him, his body a ruin—half-burned, half-unmade, bloodfire leaking from every wound. His blade still burned faintly, his sneer warped into something desperate and hateful. "Come on then, Calamity," he spat, staggering into a stance. "Let's end it."

Harold took a step forward, the sand crunching under his boots. His hand found his axe, but there was no thought to the motion, no form. The weapon rose as if on instinct, his knuckles white, his soul empty but burning.

The heir lunged.

Harold swung.

It wasn't a clean strike—nothing like the drills he'd practiced or the battles he'd won through cunning and patience. It was raw, wide, wild. Rage carried it, not skill. The axe carved the air, missing the heir's head by a breath, close enough for the wind to split the skin along his cheek.

The vampire laughed—mad, gurgling through blood. "Too slow—"

He didn't finish.

Hal slammed into him like a falling star, frost and fury exploding across the sand. The ashen pair followed, one leaping for his throat, the other for his arm. The heir went down hard, the blade clattering free as the wolves tore into him.

The arena filled with the sound of rending flesh and snarling jaws. The heir screamed once—high, sharp, and short—then it was over.

The wolves stood panting, fur scorched and smoking, blood and frost steaming in the air. Hal growled low, the sound more warning than triumph. His eyes found Harold's for a heartbeat, then flicked toward where Lira lay motionless by the barrier.

Harold let the axe slip from his grip. It hit the sand with a dull thud, forgotten. His legs carried him forward through the scorched circle that used to be a duel, every step heavier than the last.

The heir's body lay torn and still. Fire had no hold on him now. Whatever unnatural life had once animated that flesh was gone—unraveled by Death itself.

Harold didn't look at him. His eyes were already fixed on Lira.

The silence broke like glass.

For a heartbeat, no one moved—then the crowd erupted. Cheers thundered through the arena, shaking the very stone. Nobles, soldiers, spectators—they screamed his name, roared in triumph at the spectacle, at the blood, at the ending they'd been promised.

"Calamity! Calamity! Calamity!"

Harold didn't hear any of it. The noise faded to nothing behind the pulse in his ears as he stumbled forward, past the corpse of the heir, past the wolves standing guard over it. His legs felt heavy, unsteady, but they carried him to where Rysa was already on her knees beside Lira.

Rysa's hands were shaking so hard she nearly dropped the vial she was trying to pour between Lira's lips. "Come on," she sobbed, "come on, drink, please—" The potion ran down Lira's chin, pooling darkly on her burned robes. No reaction.

Harold dropped to one knee beside her, the sand still burning beneath his boots. His hands hovered uselessly before he pressed two fingers to Lira's neck. No pulse. Her skin was cooling fast, pale as wax.

"Rysa," he said, but it came out as a whisper.

"She's not—she can't—" Rysa choked on the words. She pressed both hands against Lira's chest, as if sheer will could restart what was gone. "She's the strongest healer we have! She can't—she can't just—" Her voice broke, and she folded over Lira's body, sobbing into her shoulder.

Hal approached slowly, the pack hanging back in uneasy silence. Even the crowd's cheering seemed distant, muffled behind the dome of grief that had settled around them.

Then Harold felt it—subtle at first, a faint tremor through the air. The lingering weight of mana. Not life, but death.

Lira's body still held energy, cold and quiet, coiled deep within her chest. The death aspect of her Dao hadn't vanished; it clung to her, faint as dying embers.

Rysa noticed it too but shook her head through tears. "Just a consequence of her affinity," she murmured bitterly, wiping at her face. "Sometimes it lingers when they… when they're gone."

Harold didn't answer. His hand rested lightly over hers, still feeling that faint, unnatural chill under his palm.

The crowd's cheering rose again, the sound of a world celebrating what it didn't understand.

Harold just knelt there beside Lira, the cheers fading into meaningless noise as something colder and older began to stir beneath the quiet.

The crowd's roar swelled into a fever, a thousand voices folding over one another like surf. Somewhere in the high stands a noble banged his cup in triumph; elsewhere the common folk whooped and waved. They had come for blood and spectacle — and the spectacle had been served.

Harold stayed on his knees beside Lira until the sound reached him, then he rose slow, sand grinding beneath his boots. He turned, not to the judges or the Matriarch, but to the gilded terrace where the nobles sat like loaves of soft bread grown too fat on other people's labor.

The Matriarch moved to his side. For a breath the marble calm of her face softened; she dipped into a brief, old-fashioned bow, cloak whispering. "You won the duel fair and square, Harold Greyson. The Bloodnight family is yours to command," she intoned — formal, cold, an offering wrapped in ceremony.

"Fair," Harold spat, the single word sharp as a knife. He let it hang, then let the rest follow, hot and merciless. "Fair. If by fair you mean some gilded rat slipped him a noble's concoction, or the way he was raised on privilege so rotten it thinks power is birthright, then fine. But don't call that fairness. There is nothing fair about the systems you hide in silk and coin."

He stepped forward, voice rising so the terraces could feel it. "You nobles — forever meddling, forever grasping. You peddle your titles like excuses. You split the city into ledgers and ledgers are how you sleep. You hoard, you bribe, you preen — and then you have the gall to crawl out in broad daylight and demand explanations like you've earned the right to ask. You haven't. You earn nothing by bloodlines. You earn what you make of your hands or you die trying."

There was a ripple of shocked outrage from the nobles — faces tightening, some standing, some turning pale — but much of the crowd tensed to him like a bowstring drawn. He let a strange, bitter smile touch his mouth. "As Nietzsche said, 'He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.'" He paused, letting the aphorism fall. "I've fought monsters. Maybe I walk close to them. But at least I know what it costs."

Above them, the sky changed. The first cloud unrolled like charcoal over ink, a sweep of sky that swallowed sun. Thunder knitted itself into the city's bones, a low roll that made everyone's teeth hum. Lightning split a moment later, striking the stone a good distance off with a report that made a dozen heads jerk. The crowd's uproar cracked into a nervous chorus; the nobles muttered about omens.

The Brands answered like hounds to a scent. Harold felt them — the hum of kelan's steady resolve, the burn of Lira's life-and-death temperaments, the pack's coiled readiness — all tuning to the tone of his blood. His anger was a drum and the Brands beat with him.

Hal stepped out from the ring's edge and threw his throat open. The wolf's howl cut through the murmurs: bone-deep, cold, a sound that set teeth on edge and made the light in the sky look menacing. The ashen leaders raised their heads and answered; the pack's nanosecond chorus was the sound of hunting dawning.

"Hal," Harold called, low and absolute. "Call your pack. Hunt them down." He didn't need to shout — the order slid through the bond and through leather and bone into the wolves' fast minds.

He turned his head to the Matriarch, voice carrying a new, terrible calm. "Marroween — we don't leave this city standing. Not after what we've seen, not after what he tried to do. Flush the rats from every gutter. Take their gold, take their names, rip the councils down until they sit in the dirt with the rest of the rot. Lionheart City will not be the same after today."

Marroween's eyes glittered like a knife. For a moment there was only the hush of agreement — the elders' cloaks whispering, barons straightening as if about to take a knee to a banner. Then she inclined once, slow and absolute. "Then let it be done," she said.

"Calamity is upon you," Harold said finally, the words a vow and a weapon. He raised his voice and it rolled over the arena like thunder made human. "We came to take what you hoard. We came to name the names of those who thought their deeds would never meet daylight. Hunt them. Drag the rot into the open. Tear this city down!"

Hal's howl answered, multiplied by the pack—an ululation that shook the rafters. The crowd's cheers fragmented into screams, into the flurry of men on balconies and the clatter of troops seizing weapons. The nobles' banners fluttered like wounded birds. Thunder broke again, closer this time, lightning running the terraces in stark silver lines.

The Matriarch's gaze cut toward the nobles' terrace, her lips curling into a faint, feral smile.
"Elders—all of you. Kill them."

They moved like hunger given form.
The air itself recoiled as the Bloodnight host surged forward—dark cloaks snapping, armor gleaming with infernal crimson light. They didn't march; they descended, gliding and leaping with the predatory grace of ancient beasts long denied the hunt.

The nobles' soldiers scrambled to meet them, hastily forming a shield wall across the marble steps. Their officers shouted, their baron bodyguards—Tier 4s, men and women of wealth and bloody oaths—stepped forward, a dozen small suns flaring as their daos lit the rain-slick sky.

It wasn't enough.

The Matriarch reached them first. Her form blurred, a streak of crimson shadow that split the front rank apart like parchment. A baron lunged at her with twin sabers glowing gold—both blades shattered on contact. Her hand shot through his chest, the wet crack of ribs echoing across the terrace.

Another baron swung a massive glaive wreathed in storm qi. Marroween caught it mid-swing and tore the weapon from his hands before bringing her knee up into his ribs. His body folded around the blow. Lightning flashed again—then the man was gone, torn into mist.

Behind her strode the Bloodfire Baron, one of her own—a walking furnace wrapped in obsidian armor. Flames bled from the joints of his gauntlets, licking the rain into steam. Every step he took left molten footprints in the stone. He waded into the nobles' guards, each swing of his greatblade a conflagration. Shields and men alike melted under his strikes, the scent of scorched metal mixing with rain and blood.

"Push them back!" a noble captain shouted, his voice cracking. "Protect the council!"

Elder Cassian appeared at his side. One blink he wasn't there, the next he was—materializing from a ribbon of shadow that slipped beneath the man's guard. His blade slid through the captain's throat so smoothly it made no sound. Cassian tilted his head as the body fell. "I've wanted to do that for years," he murmured, and vanished again into the dark.

The terrace was collapsing into panic. Nobles tripped over one another, silks dragging through blood, their bodyguards breaking rank as the Bloodnights advanced. A storm of claws, fire, and shadow tore through marble and flesh alike, lightning painting every moment in silver and red.

Then the Matriarch herself landed among them, her aura blooming like a solar flare gone crimson. Three Tier 4 barons tried to intercept her. She met all three.
One she disarmed with a flicker of her hand.
The second she impaled through the gut.
The third she tore in half, her fangs flashing in the stormlight.

When it was done, the nobles' terrace was a ruin—blood pooling in the rain, banners torn and smoking. The Matriarch stood in the wreckage, eyes alight with cold satisfaction.

Down below, Daran appeared beside Harold, blood already splattered across his cloak.
"Orders, sir?" he said, calm, blade still wet.

Harold didn't take his eyes from the slaughter above. "Lira wanted the slave cages torn down," he said quietly. "Ensure that's done. Anyone willing may come with us. Anyone who won't… stays behind."

Daran nodded once, like a man accepting a truth instead of an order. "Understood."

He vanished into the chaos, his silhouette swallowed by rain and fire.

The Matriarch's laughter rolled across the storm, joined by the howls of the wolves and the rumbling of distant thunder.

Through the thunder and the screaming, one sound reached Harold clearly—ragged, human, and small.

He turned from the slaughter above to find Jerric on his knees beside Lira's still body. The young thief's hands were shaking, his fingers stained with blood and potion residue. His shoulders hitched with each broken sob.

"She's not moving," Jerric choked out, voice cracking. "I—I tried—she's not breathing, Harold. She's not—"

Harold knelt beside him, the storm dimming around the edges of his awareness. He laid a hand on Jerric's shoulder, steadying him. The thief folded under the touch, pressing his forehead to Lira's arm, shoulders trembling. "She healed me, she healed everyone—why couldn't she—why couldn't she save herself?"

Harold didn't answer. He was staring at her chest, at the faint, almost imperceptible shimmer beneath her skin—the echo of the Brand.

It hadn't faded.

He reached inward, not with his hands but through the bond that connected all of them, the living thread of his class. Kelan's presence was dim, hurt but steady. Hal's was a cold, sharp edge in the back of his mind. But Lira—Lira's Brand still pulsed. Weak, faint as candlelight in a gale, but undeniably there.

He felt her.

Not just the memory of her—her.

Harold's breath hitched. His fingers brushed over the sigil burned into her collarbone, and the connection pulsed again. Her death qi was still there, quiet, coiled tight, almost dormant. Something was holding her—between.

"She's still branded," Harold murmured, voice almost reverent.

Jerric lifted his head, eyes swollen red. "What?"

Harold's hand hovered above Lira's chest, the faint silver of his Brandlight flickering to life along his fingertips. "The Brand hasn't gone out. She's still connected. I can feel her."

Jerric's voice broke. "Then bring her back! Please, gods—just—"

Harold didn't look away from Lira. His jaw tightened, a thousand thoughts moving behind his eyes. He didn't know if this was mercy or some new cruelty of the system, but the bond wasn't lying. The connection was there.

And that meant she wasn't gone. Not yet.

Harold's hand lingered over Lira's chest a moment longer, feeling that faint pulse through the bond. Then his eyes hardened, and he turned to Jerric.

"Summon what you can," Harold said, voice steady but raw. "You'll need to protect me."

Jerric blinked, still shaking, his throat working to form words. Then he swallowed hard and nodded, wiping his eyes with a trembling hand. "Aye… aye, I've got you."

He slammed a palm into the sand. The summoning circle bled to life beneath him, flickering and weak from exhaustion but holding. Two smaller frost wolves materialized in wisps of frost, huffing steam as they crouched protectively around Harold and Lira. Jerric drew a dagger and knelt between them, eyes scanning the chaos that still churned beyond the arena's edge.

Harold exhaled once, long and slow, and let his focus sink inward.

The world fell away—sound first, then light, then sensation—until only the hum of the Brandwright's domain filled him.

He stood within the soulspace of his class: an endless black expanse lit by threads of silver light. Each thread pulsed to a rhythm he knew by instinct. Kelan. Hal. Jerric. The Matriarch's vow. And there—thin, trembling, yet unmistakable—Lira.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He reached for her Brand and felt resistance. Not rejection. Just… distortion. Like something had taken the frequency of her existence and tuned it half a step off.

When his consciousness brushed against it, he felt her condition as data, sensation, and emotion all at once. Her health bar was gone—bottomed out, every digit reading 0—yet the Brand persisted, flickering in soft tones of violet and grey.

Her death qi was active, moving through her body like smoke through glass veins. But it wasn't still—it was changing. Reworking itself, realigning to some other flow. It wasn't the cold, annihilating silence of true Death; it was something close to it, but bent, refracted. A nearby radio signal bleeding across frequencies.

Lira wasn't dead. Not exactly. But she wasn't alive either.

He pushed deeper, past the boundary of the Brand, watching as the lines of her spirit shifted, rethreading themselves in patterns that didn't belong to the living or the dead. Her Life and Death aspects weren't balancing—they were collapsing into one another, merging into something else entirely.

Harold's stomach turned. She's changing.

Her death qi writhed and coiled through her soul's outline, not consuming her—but claiming her, folding the concept of Death into the self instead of being consumed by it. She was remaking herself.

But into what?

Harold's pulse raced, his body trembling outside the soulspace. The strain of staying submerged this long clawed at the edges of his mind, but he couldn't stop. He forced himself to listen through the hum of the Brand, to the rhythm that was once Lira's heartbeat. It was still there—slower, distant, but steady.

"Lira," he whispered into the dark. "Whatever you're doing… hold onto yourself. Don't let it take you."

The silver light of her Brand pulsed once, weak but definite, like a heartbeat answering back.

Within the void of the Brandwright's domain, Harold's awareness sank deeper into Lira's light—what little remained of it. The thread pulsed faintly, guttering, but never going dark.

He could see her now—see her, not as flesh, but as a shifting weave of energy. The pattern of her mana was unraveling and reknitting itself, fracturing into twin spirals of Life and Death qi. They circled one another, wild and unstable, burning through what little she had left.

The only thing holding her together was the Brand.
His Brand.

It wrapped her like a binding thread, keeping her soul from scattering, her essence from slipping into the nothingness beyond. But it wasn't made for this. It was a tether, not a cage—and her transformation strained it to breaking.

Her qi and mana—what was left of them—moved like storm clouds across her soul. The pattern was wrong. It wasn't human anymore. The energy felt like the undeath that sustained vampires—cold, recursive, self-feeding—but purer, more natural. It didn't take from others to exist. It was remaking itself.

Yet even as he watched, it began to slow. The flow weakened, the colors dimmed. The process was stalling.

Harold's thoughts raced. She's running out of energy.

Time passed strangely here—seconds or hours, he couldn't tell—but he felt the change falter, the delicate balance teetering on collapse.

"Jerric," Harold said, voice echoing across both worlds. "I need the heir's body. Now."

Outside, Jerric startled. He didn't question it. He whistled to his frost wargs, and they dragged the charred, broken remains of the vampire heir across the blood-soaked sand. The corpse smoked faintly from the earlier fight, its armor cracked open like a ruined shell.

"Got it!" Jerric called. "What the hell do you—"

Harold didn't answer. His focus was gone—drawn back into the Brand's weave.

He didn't see the world shifting around him.

The children and kids Jerric had rescued earlier—thin, wide-eyed, clutching each other—had wandered into the arena. Some carried weapons thinking themselves grown. The dwarven blacksmith Kelan had branded was already hammering together scrap and stone, building quick walls to shelter them from the spreading storm. Rain already lashing down from the still growing storm above.

Kelan himself sat nearby, pale and sweating, his hammer across his knees. Blood seeped from his body around him still. The battle with the heir still not healed. The earth around him pulsed faintly with his Dao, expanding his claim to shield those within it.

The Arena Master and his staff, calm as though all of this were routine, had joined the effort. His long coat was torn, his expression serene as he handed out food from satchels that hadn't existed moments before. "Stay calm, little ones," he said softly. "Stay outta the rain."

Families—dozens of them—were beginning to arrive, clutching belongings, herding frightened children. Some carried makeshift weapons, others carried hope and nothing else. Rysa was organizing them into sections and writing down occupations.

Daran was the next to arrive, his cloak torn, and his remaining platoon screening the freed slaves following behind him in ragged lines. "We've got them!" he shouted to Harold. "Every last one of them free!"

Above, screams split the air. Steel clashed against steel. The storm had fully broken—roaring winds and thunder swallowing the city as vampires and wolves tore through the nobles contingent on the streets.

None of it touched Harold.

He was kneeling in the blood and sand beside Lira's still body, his hands trembling as he pressed against her Brand.

"Just a little longer," he muttered, eyes glowing faintly as he sank back into the weave. "I'm here, Lira. Just a little longer."

And then he was gone again—his consciousness diving into that fragile silver thread, ignoring the world as it fell apart around him.

Harold's awareness steadied in the cold dark of the Brandwright's space, the endless black threaded with faint veins of silver.
Lira's thread was flickering faster now, her essence grinding between stillness and motion—like an engine starved of fuel but refusing to die.

The heir's corpse lay beside her in the physical world, still reeking of bloodfire and decay. Through the Brand's sight, Harold could see it as a smoldering pit of undeath qi, still cycling through the ruined flesh. The same energy that had cursed him now lingered, hungry and unused.

He felt the answer rise in his gut. It's the same structure… the same energy that's keeping vampires alive long after their time. If I can move it… just move it into her… it might sustain her until the transformation finishes.

Harold pressed his palm against her Brand, then reached with his other hand toward the heir's corpse. Mana flowed easily—muscle memory now. He cast the channels, bridging the gap, trying to force the undeath energy across.

It didn't move.

The undeath qi sat heavy and inert, like oil beneath water. It resisted his mana, recoiled from it. His spell cracked apart with a noise like glass under strain. The energy refused to flow; undeath wasn't life. It didn't respond to command.

Harold growled, frustration curling in his chest. "Fine. Not by force, then."

He thought, mind flicking through what he knew, what he'd seen. Lira's death qi was motionless because it was locked in equilibrium—neither feeding nor decaying. The heir's qi was opposite: unbalanced, cyclical, feeding on itself.

They needed connection—movement.

"Then I'll make you move," he murmured.

He set his will between them and began to form negative pressure, pulling—not pushing. Instead of commanding the energy to cross, he drew a vacuum between them, shaping the void like a funnel between two pools.

The undeath qi stirred. Slowly.

It began to creep from the heir's body, thick, black, and sluggish as tar, drawn toward the void Harold had created. It curled around his hands, chilling them to the bone, then began to drift toward Lira.

Her Brand pulsed weakly in response. The energy touched the edges of her aura—and stuck.

"Too slow," Harold hissed, the effort starting to shake his shoulders. He needed to ease it, make it flow smoother. The only thing he had that could alter energy paths was his Dao—Freedom. It had always bent rules, blurred boundaries.

So he did the reckless thing.

He let Freedom flow from him into the undeath qi, coating the siphon in his own essence, pushing his Dao through the bridge to loosen its flow.

It worked—at first. The energy began to move more easily, seeping into Lira's aura, feeding her transformation. The dull flicker of her Brand brightened.

Then the reaction came.

Freedom and undeath didn't mingle; they repelled. One was boundless movement, the other endless recursion. When they met, the energies strained against each other, twisting, vibrating through his hands like a living wire.

Pain ripped through Harold's arms, his soul screaming as the forces bucked and thrashed. The bridge between them threatened to tear apart.

He gritted his teeth, holding the funnel together with sheer will. "Come on… take it, Lira. Take it all before it kills us both."

The undeath qi shuddered—and began to move again, slower this time but steady.

Harold's arms trembled, his veins burning black beneath the skin, but he didn't stop. Through the pain and chaos, he could feel Lira's Brand stabilizing. The flicker evened out. The flow was starting to take.

It wasn't enough yet—but it was working.

For the first time since she fell, Harold dared to hope.

Harold's fingers dug into the sand beside Lira's body as the funnel of energy wavered. The undeath qi shuddered between his palms like a living storm, black and slick, refusing to obey him. He could feel his soul creaking under the strain.

He closed his eyes and tried to steady his breathing—slow inhale, long exhale. The way Lira had taught him. He remembered the quiet evenings they'd spent together in the settlement, her hand resting over his as she guided the rhythm of his mana flow.

"You can't force mana, Harold. You shape it. You coax it. It wants to move, you just have to let it."

He'd been clumsy then, too used to brute control. But now, her voice came back as clearly as if she stood beside him. He shaped his mana carefully, forming the funnel between her and the heir's corpse. The structure was precise—outer layers of mana to stabilize the shape, inner currents spinning counterclockwise, and at the center, a vacuum.

A void meant to pull.

The undeath qi responded, sliding forward in thin ribbons, sluggish but moving. He could feel the energy's texture—wrong, heavy, like trying to move water that didn't want to be water anymore.

He infused his Freedom qi into it, hoping to loosen its flow, to make it more like wind than sludge. It stirred the motion, yes—but also the resistance. Freedom qi and undeath weren't meant to coexist.

The moment they touched, the air around him crackled with unseen tension. The energies hissed like predators forced into the same cage. The undeath qi clawed at the Freedom qi, trying to devour it, corrupt it—turn it into something still and eternal. Harold had to keep it moving, keep his will rotating the flow or it would consume him from the inside out.

His arms shook violently. His vision dimmed. The air filled with the smell of ozone and decay. But he held the funnel, sweat and blood running down his face as the undeath qi finally began to pour into Lira's form.

Her Brand pulsed once, weak but alive.

He could see it happening through the Brandwright's sight—the transformation taking hold. Lira's body was changing, but so was her soul. The undeath qi threaded through her like frost weaving across glass, filling in the cracks that Death had left behind. It was saving her—and unmaking her at the same time.

Where there had once been color, light, laughter, Lira, there was now only stillness. Her soul, once radiant and warm, was growing quieter, smoother—like glass being polished until all detail was gone. She had died, and what rose in her place was something colder, something reshaped by the undeath trying to claim her.

Harold's heart lurched. "No," he breathed. "Don't lose yourself. Not like this."

His vision blurred, the Brand space flickering. The funnel wavered; the forces threatened to snap. He forced himself to breathe, to keep the rhythm, to keep the energy from collapsing entirely. But it was too much. His soul trembled under the strain, his hands slick with sweat and blood.

He came out of the trance gasping, his whole body shaking. The storm outside still raged, thunder echoing through the torn sky. Someone had built a shelter around him without him realizing. Around him, people moved—children huddled under makeshift shelters, Daran shouting orders and organizing the masses that showed up, injured wolves healing around the perimeter.

Harold's gaze darted wildly until he found Jerric still standing nearby, surrounded by his summoned beasts.

"Elira," Harold rasped, voice cracking from strain. "Jerric—find Elira. I need her. Now."

Jerric hesitated for half a heartbeat—saw the desperation in Harold's face—and bolted, sprinting across the arena toward the gates.

Harold turned back to Lira, her body still faintly glowing, her soul suspended between life and unlife. The energy moved through her now on its own, but she was fading, her vibrancy bleeding away with every second.

"Hold on," he whispered hoarsely. "I'm not letting you go like this." She had enough undeath within her now to sustain herself but the transformation was leeching her of..her.

The lightning outside flashed again, throwing the arena into sharp relief—Harold kneeling beside Lira's half-transformed form, the air humming with unnatural power, and the echo of something ancient and wrong creeping into the world.

Harold's hands stayed locked over Lira's Brand, but his mind drifted—unmoored, pulled backward through the threads that had led him here.

Vero.
He could still see the god's calm, unreadable eyes as he spoke of the Calamity. This Calamity. This city. These people. Gerold's sly little conditions stitched into the seams like traps. Harold had thought he understood it then—had even believed he'd been clever in accepting.

He'd had the means to end it in the forest. He could have crushed the seed before it bloomed. No nobles, no arena, no dead wolves. No Lira—lying here on the edge of something unnatural.

Freedom. It wasn't just movement or power; it was choice. Always choice, even when the choices were bitter. That was what made it real. He'd chosen to bring his branded here, chosen to move like a hammer instead of a knife. Those choices had consequences—and the unseen ones cut deepest.

Anger rose in him, hot and hollow. Anger at himself, at the nobles, at the inevitability of it all. Of course they would interfere. Of course they'd reach for poison when power failed.

He looked down at Lira. The flicker of her soulspace was dim now—gray and cold, her vibrancy draining away with every second.

Branding.
He thought of it not as a skill, but as a wound. Tearing a portion of his own soul, attaching it to another, grafting his essence to theirs. He gave them strength, protection, a path—but they chose to accept it. That was the paradox. A binding born of freedom.

His soul was on her. He could feel it—threaded through her like a heartbeat in a fading echo.

My soul on her… can I…

The thought cut off when footsteps echoed behind him.

"Harold!"

Jerric skidded to a stop, frost steaming from his summoned beasts. Elira stumbled in after him, panting, her green hair wild from the run, eyes wide as they took in the scene.

He looked up at her, his face pale and hollow from the effort. "Elira…" His voice cracked. "Lira is… changing. Into something undead. But it's draining her soul of everything that makes her Lira. The process is leeching her emotions, her vibrancy. She's still here, but she's fading."

Elira's lips parted, horror flickering across her face.

"I can hold the Brand," Harold went on, forcing steadiness into his tone, "but it's not enough. I'm going to have to expend my soul again to anchor her. To pull her back. I need you—your Dao, your emotions—to pour light into her as I work. We're going to light up her undead soul before it's gone."

Elira blinked, then nodded once, jaw tight. "Tell me where."

"Here." He gestured at the shimmering lattice of the Brand, his hands trembling. "Put your hands over mine. Match my rhythm. Feel her. Don't push your qi—share it."

Jerric crouched beside them, summoning another frost beast, eyes darting to the edges of the arena. "I'll keep you covered," he muttered.

Harold turned back to Lira, the thread of his soul flickering within her, the black tide of undeath still creeping. "We're not losing you," he whispered. "Not like this."

Elira placed her hands over his. For the first time since the duel, the Brand pulsed bright—not with death, but with a spark of something living trying to push back the dark.

Harold pressed his palms against Lira's chest and sank inward, deeper than before—past the screaming ache of his body, past the tremor of mana and the burning of nerves. He fell through the thread of her Brand, diving through the tether that tied their souls together.

The Brand wasn't just ink or light. It was the scar of a promise, the physical tattoo of a stitch he had sewn between their souls the day she'd chosen him. A seam that joined two beings for as long as either endured.

Through it, he saw her.

Not her face, not her voice—but her soul. Torn, warped, trying to remember its own shape. Death qi had remade her outline, sculpting it into something smooth and cold—too smooth, too perfect. The edges of her humanity were being filed away, one breath at a time.

Her aura pulsed faintly, colorless light flickering where laughter used to live. The energy wasn't decaying; it was converting. Transforming her into something that neither lived nor died.

Harold drew a shaking breath. "Then I'll just give you more to become."

He opened himself.

The pain was instant—sharp, ripping, raw. His soul, already abused and splintered from everything he'd done today, cracked wider. The sound of it was silence—the kind of silence that only the dying or divine ever heard. His body convulsed, but he held the opening steady, forcing his essence to pour through.

The vacuum he'd made between them caught it immediately. His soul streamed through like molten light, funneling into Lira.

And then—another path joined it.

He felt Elira.

Her Dao came through the Brand like a floodgate bursting—vibrancy, sorrow, anger, joy—a kaleidoscope of emotion so strong it almost blinded him. Every feeling collided inside the vacuum, slamming into the cold, recursive undeath qi like sunlight striking oil.

The reaction was instant.

The energies weren't meant to exist together. Freedom, undeath, emotion—they repelled, tore, exploded. The vacuum convulsed, shattering into shards of energy that screamed across the soulspace. The collision detonated in white fire, a blast of color and cold that sent both Harold and Elira reeling.

But Harold didn't pull back.

He pushed forward, throwing himself into the center of the explosion, forcing his remaining soul energy into it. His essence—tattered, dim, but burning with purpose—slid into the heart of the reaction. It soothed the clash, calmed it, wove the chaos together into fragile harmony.

His energy melded with Lira's, coating the cracks in her soul, giving structure where the undeath had hollowed her. The light spread through her like dawn through frost. Her chest rose faintly. The glow from her body softened, no longer dead gray but a pale, luminous gold rimmed with silver.

He could feel her pulse again—not steady, not human, but there.

But it wasn't her.

He could sense it in the weave—the laughter, the warmth, the teasing voice, the small contented sighs she made over shared tea. All those tiny, living sparks that had made her Lira—they were shadows now. Echoes.

She might feel again. She might walk, speak, even smile. But the texture of her soul had changed. The death qi had rewritten her nature, and even the energy he'd poured into her couldn't rewrite that truth.

He could have let her go. Let her die, or let her become what she was becoming. Both choices had been open to him. But he interfered—again.

Freedom, he thought bitterly. Freedom of choice… even when every choice is wrong.

She would rise again—vibrant and hollow all at once. Surrounded by those who could still feel warmth, still laugh like she used to—but not like her. Never like her again.

Harold's body slumped forward, his forehead pressing to her chest as the last of his soul's light dimmed to embers. "I'm sorry, Lira," he whispered hoarsely. "You'll live… but I don't know if you'll ever forgive me for it."

The air around them shimmered faintly—the first quiet breath of something returning.

The world returned in pieces—first the weight of his own body, then the pain, then sound.

Harold gasped as he came out of the trance, the link to Lira severing like a drawn wire snapping free. The air in the arena felt heavier now, charged and humming with the aftertaste of something unnatural.

Elira collapsed beside him, her eyes glassy, lips pale. Daran caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her against his chest. She was breathing, barely, but the effort of pushing her Dao into Lira's soul had wrung her dry. Daran held her like something fragile, one hand steady on her shoulder, the other gripping the hilt of his sword as though daring the world to test him.

Harold blinked, dazed, and looked around.

The arena was different now. Quiet. The air still smelled of ash and blood, but the frenzy had burned itself out.

The Matriarch stood at the edge of the pit, her surviving elders gathered around her. Two were missing—their absence noted only by the dark stains where they'd fallen—but her expression was one of grim satisfaction.

A younger vampire near her—a Baron, his armor cracked and slick with gore—tipped back a wineskin and drank greedily. The liquid that ran down his chin was too thick, too red, too alive to be wine.

Harold stared at him, his voice rasping low. "Monsters we've become…"

The Matriarch's crimson eyes flicked to him, unreadable for a moment, then softened into something almost human. "Perhaps," she said. "But monsters that live, nonetheless."

Her gaze swept the arena, the toppled stands, the nobles' dais where blood still dripped from the broken marble. "The nobles are dead or scattered. What remains of their council is in ruins. It will take years for their power to return—if it ever does."

One of the elders chuckled darkly. "Their estates already burn. Their vaults are open."

She nodded. "As we speak, my retainers are combing the city and their compounds. We take everything we need to start over. Gold, arms, knowledge, slaves turned free. Everything they hoarded will serve something better now."

Thunder rolled again above them, faint at first and then close—so close that the flash of lightning illuminated the shattered sky above Lionheart City.

The Matriarch's cloak fluttered in the charged wind. "The adventurers have already begun to gather," she continued. "Some out of fear, others for glory. Your name is on their lips, Calamity. The one who broke the rules of the duel, who lost his lover, and felled a city in a single night."

Her lips curved into a sharp, knowing smile. "They call you the Storm of Lionheart. The Calamity that brought lightning and fire upon the proud."

Another rumble rolled through the heavens, echoing like a heartbeat.

Harold looked up at the streaking clouds, the forked veins of lightning cutting through them. He could still feel the storm—his storm—answering him like a reflection of his rage.

The Matriarch's voice lowered, almost gentle. "Give us a day," she said. "One day, and we will be ready to go back. To go home."

Harold exhaled slowly, glancing toward where Lira lay beneath a pale shroud of mana, her chest faintly rising. "Home," he murmured. "If it still wants us."

Lightning cracked again above, illuminating the ruin, the survivors, and the dawn of something both terrible and new.