My Infinite System.

The stone hallway shuddered, groaning like a living thing. Dust and bits of mortar rained from the ceiling. Lucian Black didn't flinch. He moved forward, a slow, deliberate pace that belied the storm of power coiling just under his skin. The air around him wavered, the very space bending, making the green-tinged ward-lights on the walls flicker and dance.

He'd cut a path through the Thorne estate, a straight line drawn in broken bodies and shattered architecture. He didn't enjoy it. It was a chore. A necessity. The only thing that mattered was the pull in his chest, the silent, screaming knowledge that his team was somewhere below, in the dark. Reia, Silas, Vyn. Their auras felt like guttering candles in the vast, oppressive dark of this place.

Ahead, the corridor opened into a wider antechamber, a crossroads of sorts before the final descent to the vaults. And there, a figure stood waiting.

He was massive, broad-shouldered, and he radiated a heat that made the air shimmer. He wore no helmet, but a featureless, polished steel mask covered his face, reflecting the distorted, shaking flames of the dying wall sconces. His arms were crossed, and golden fire licked lazily across his shoulders and down his arms, not wild, but controlled. A contained inferno.

Lucian stopped twenty paces away. The silence between them was heavier than the stone around them.

"You must be Marc," Lucian said. His voice was flat, devoid of curiosity. It was a statement of fact.

The masked figure didn't move. Didn't speak. The only answer was the low, threatening pulse of his thermal aura.

Lucian's eyes, cold and focused, scanned the empty space behind the man. "Where are they?"

Again, nothing. Just the silent, burning mask and the faint crackle of energy.

A faint, grim smile touched Lucian's lips. "Guess the boss told you not to talk. Fine." He took a step forward. "Then we can skip the part where I ask nicely."

That got a reaction. Marc's head tilted a fraction. He uncrossed his arms, his fists clenching. The golden fire flared, rushing down his limbs to wreath his hands. The stone at his feet began to glow a dull red, pooling like molten rock.

Lucian didn't wait for him to make the first move. He never did. With a sound like tearing fabric, the space between them compressed. One moment he was twenty feet away, the next he was right in front of Marc, his fist already swinging in a deceptively simple arc aimed at the center of that steel mask.

Marc was fast. Shockingly fast for his size. He didn't block; he met the blow with a palm wreathed in blinding heat. The impact wasn't a dull thud, but a concussive WHOMP of displaced air and released energy. The stone walls on either side cracked, webbing out like shattered glass.

Lucian flowed back, creating a few feet of distance. His knuckles were smoking slightly. "Heat absorption and projection. Interesting."

Marc finally moved. He didn't speak, but his body was a language of violence. He thrust both hands forward, and a concentrated beam of solar-yellow fire, thick as a tree trunk, erupted toward Lucian. It wasn't a wild blast; it was precise, controlled, and it carried enough force to vaporize steel.

Lucian didn't dodge. He raised his own hand, palm out. The space directly in front of him folded. The roaring pillar of fire hit an invisible lens and bent, splashing harmlessly against the ceiling and floor in a torrent of molten stone and steam. The chamber roared with the sound, the heat intense enough to bleach the color from the stone.

Through the steam, Lucian saw Marc already in motion, closing the distance. The big man was adapting. He wasn't just a brute; he was a tactician. He lunged, his movements economical and powerful, a fist aimed at Lucian's throat. Lucian shifted, the blow grazing his shoulder, but the contact was enough. A searing, numbing heat flooded through him, sapping the strength from his muscles. It was like being injected with liquid fatigue.

He grunted, stumbling back. Marc pressed the advantage, a series of brutal, close-range strikes. Each block Lucian made felt heavier than the last, his own energy being siphoned away, converted into fuel for his opponent's fire. He took a hard blow to the ribs that sent him skidding back, his boots scraping trenches in the stone floor.

"He told you to break me," Lucian rasped, catching his breath. The heat-numbness was already receding, his body fighting it off. "To drag me to him. Is that it?"

Marc paused, his head tilting again. The silent confirmation was all Lucian needed.

"You're just the guard dog," Lucian said, pushing himself upright. "I'm here for the master."

A low, guttural sound—the first noise Marc had made—rumbled from behind the mask. It was a sound of pure offense. The golden fire around him intensified, turning white-hot. The very air began to boil. He wasn't just projecting heat anymore; he was drawing it in. The torches on the walls guttered and died, their heat stolen. The red-hot stone underfoot cooled to grey in an instant, all of its thermal energy siphoned into the man in the center of the room. He was becoming a star, a singularity of destructive potential.

Lucian felt the pull, felt the warmth trying to leech from his own body. This was the real power. Not just throwing fire, but controlling the very concept of thermal energy.

Marc raised a hand, and the world turned white.

It wasn't a beam this time. It was an explosion. A silent, all-consuming wave of incineration that filled the entire chamber, leaving no room to dodge, no space to fold. It was pure, absolute overkill.

For a moment, there was nothing but light and heat.

Then, it was gone.

The antechamber was a smoldering crater. The walls were glazed and dripping. The air itself was dead, all of its energy consumed.

Marc stood, his chest heaving slightly. The mask stared into the clearing steam, searching for ashes.

He saw nothing.

A flicker of movement above. He looked up.

Lucian hung in the air, not flying, but standing on a platform of compressed space, a invisible disk that warped the light around it. He was unscathed. He hadn't avoided the blast; he had simply stepped outside of its effective range, using a localized spatial warp to put a few critical inches between himself and annihilation.

His eyes, however, had lost their cold detachment. They were now alive, sharp with a focused intensity. The game was over.

"My turn," Lucian said softly.

He dropped from his platform, not falling, but descending as if the air were solid. As he landed, he didn't lunge. He simply pointed a finger at Marc.

The space around Marc's right arm twisted.

It wasn't a physical force. It was the universe itself knotting around his limb. There was a sickening, muffled crunch of composite steel and bone. Marc let out a choked, ragged cry from behind his mask as his arm was wrenched and bent at an impossible angle, the armor crumpling like paper.

He retaliated on instinct, a desperate lash of fire from his good hand. Lucian didn't even deflect it this time. He sidestepped, the fire passing him by, and his finger moved again.

The space around Marc's left leg collapsed. He roared in pain and fury as his knee buckled sideways, dropping him to the floor with a crash that shook the room. The glorious golden fire around him sputtered, his concentration shattered by the agony of his mangled limbs.

Lucian walked toward him, his footsteps silent on the scorched stone. He stopped in front of the kneeling, broken figure. The featureless mask stared up at him, the reflection now a distorted image of Lucian's impassive face.

"You're powerful," Lucian acknowledged, his voice low. "But you think in lines. Beams. Waves. Heat." He leaned down, his face close to the cold steel. "I think in folds. You can't burn a fold in space."

He reached out, his fingers closing not on the mask, but on the space just in front of it. With a subtle wrenching motion, he peeled the mask away. The metal screamed as it was torn apart not by force, but by the spatial seam Lucian created, shearing the fixing points at a molecular level.

The mask clattered to the ground, revealing a man with a strong, brutal jawline, now clenched in pain.

"The hell?"