Ercale didn't give Arkanis space to breathe.
He closed the distance and went in hard, twin astral blades extending from his palms, the edges humming as he carved through the air in tight, aggressive arcs. He fought up close, forcing Arkanis to split his focus between erecting barrier spells and parrying with the astral blade formed along his staff. Each impact sent ripples of violet light across the translucent shields, each deflection ringing with a sharp, resonant hum.
"You have less astral energy than me," Arkanis observed evenly while rotating his staff to catch another strike, a fresh barrier flaring into place just in time to absorb a thrust aimed at his ribs. "Are you sure you want to keep doing this?"
Ercale answered with motion instead of words.
He swung wide with the blade in his right hand, a deliberately overcommitted arc aimed at Arkanis's shoulder. Arkanis shifted to intercept, staff rising and barrier thickening on that side—
—but the swing wasn't meant to land.
Ercale twisted at the last second, stepping inside the defense and dragging the opposite blade across Arkanis's chest in a sharp, clean slash. Astral energy flared on contact as the edge bit through cloth and into flesh.
"Just 'cause you have more doesn't mean you'll win," Ercale shot back, already disengaging. "It just means you'll lose slower!"
He vanished in a crack of lightning just as Amara finally thrust her hands forward.
The condensed fireball she had been compressing screamed as it launched, a dense sphere of white-hot flame tearing across the street toward Arkanis. He turned immediately, staff snapping up as he began to dispel it mid-flight.
Amara smirked. "Ta da!"
The fireball didn't detonate.
It burst apart into a swirling cloud of literal fireflies—each one a tiny, flickering ember. They scattered and swarmed around Arkanis in a tight sphere, colliding against the barrier he reflexively threw up around himself. Each contact produced a sharp pop of contained flame, dozens going off in rapid succession. The layered explosions blocked his view and forced him to hold position to maintain the barrier's integrity.
Through the flashes, he felt it.
Danger.
Behind him.
He pivoted sharply just in time to catch Clara's descending halberd. The flaming blade crashed down against his staff with a burst of sparks, the force driving both of them down a fraction of an inch into the cracked street.
"Ugh, just let me land a hit!" Clara complained, teeth gritted as she pushed against the lock.
She stomped the ground.
The stone beneath Arkanis ruptured, molten cracks spiderwebbing outward before a surge of lava exploded upward in a violent plume. Heat blasted outward in a wave.
Arkanis disengaged instantly, teleporting upward to avoid being engulfed. He reappeared several meters above the battlefield, hovering just long enough to take in the full picture—Amara recovering her stance, Clara below amid cooling magma, and Annabel off to the side, hands moving as she muttered under her breath.
*Recovered already?* he thought.
He angled his staff toward Annabel.
On the ground, she abruptly threw her hands up. "Sorry, still not recovered," she said plainly.
*A distraction!*
The realization hit a split second too late.
A lightning lance tore in from the side and struck him squarely, the impact snapping his body backward and sending him skidding through the air several feet before he stabilized his hover.
Below, Ercale stood atop a fractured rooftop, arm still extended from the cast.
"All of that to land one hit," Arkanis said calmly, adjusting his grip on the staff as residual lightning crackled off his armor. "Are you sure you all do not want to give up?"
"We've already been through this," Ercale replied.
He drew both hands inward and chanted, "Astral Chains!"
Four small rifts snapped open around Arkanis in a rough square formation. From each tear in space, a chain of condensed astral energy shot outward, links forming as they extended, whipping toward him from multiple angles at once.
Arkanis did not retreat.
He raised his staff and intoned, "Astral Ignis."
Astral flames erupted from his body in all directions—violet-white fire that roared outward in a spherical surge. The chains struck the expanding blaze and began to deform, their links softening and breaking apart under the intense heat, not burning in the traditional sense but destabilizing as the astral construct unraveled.
The surge was wide enough that even Amara and Clara were forced to dive behind broken stone and collapsed walls to avoid being caught in the expanding wave of flame.
"Is that all?" Arkanis asked.
He lowered from his hover just enough to stabilize himself midair and leveled his staff at Ercale. Astral light gathered along the length of it, condensing toward the tip into a narrow, lethal point. The beam was moments from release.
Up on the fractured rooftop, Ercale smirked and slowly shook his head. "Not at all."
He drew in what little breath he could steady and raised one hand toward the sky.
"Cosmic Lightning!"
Arkanis's composure fractured for the first time. His eyes widened and he immediately thrust his staff upward, erecting multiple layered barriers above himself in rapid succession, translucent shields stacking one atop another in a dome.
The sky answered.
From beyond the cloud layer—far beyond—something snapped downward. Lightning, but not of this world. It was laced with astral current, a blinding column that tore through the atmosphere in a perfectly straight descent. The air split around it, screaming from the pressure.
At that same instant, the radiant sphere suspended high above the city flared in violent response.
The 'second sun tightened', its surface compressing as its light concentrated along the same vertical axis. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the entire battlefield was caught between two descending forces—one divine, one cosmic.
Then both struck.
The lightning hammered into Arkanis's stacked barriers just as the heavens themselves blazed white. The first layer shattered instantly. The second fractured in a spiderweb of cracks before imploding. The third held for half a breath before the astral current punched through. The impact drove downward into the street, engulfing Arkanis in a column of crackling energy so bright it erased all detail.
The world went pale.
Stone liquefied at the center point. The street cratered again, debris blasting outward in a violent ring. Electricity crawled across nearby walls and along shattered ironwork, snapping and arcing between surfaces. The roar was layered—thunder from above, rupture from below, and the continuous scream of overcharged energy tearing through air and matter alike.
Then the light began to fade.
The crackling remained.
As vision slowly returned, Arkanis was no longer hovering.
He stood on the ground within a fresh crater, one knee slightly bent, leaning heavily on his staff. His body trembled. Smoke curled off his body in thin trails. The staff itself was visibly cracked along its length, fissures glowing faintly where the astral current had stressed it.
Above, on the rooftop, Ercale had fared no better.
He was on his hands and knees, chest heaving, fingers digging into broken tile to keep himself upright. Each breath came ragged and shallow. That had been his strongest damaging spell, cast in its weakest viable form, and it had drained nearly everything from him. He could feel the emptiness where his mana should have been—barely an iota remained.
"Don't just stand there!" he yelled hoarsely at Amara and Clara.
They snapped back into motion.
Amara thrust both hands forward and unleashed a broad wave of fire that rolled toward Arkanis like a tidal surge of flame. Clara shook her head sharply and launched the fire-forged chains from her armor, the hooked ends whipping toward the Demon Lord from opposing angles.
Arkanis nearly stumbled as he shifted his footing inside the crater, but he steadied himself. With his free hand, he twisted the incoming wave of fire, bending its trajectory and reversing it outward in a violent flare that split to either side of him. At the same time, he swept his damaged staff in a tight arc, the astral blade along its edge flashing as it sliced cleanly through Clara's chains, severing them mid-flight.
He exhaled slowly through clenched teeth.
He could still fight.
It was simply costing him.
"I'm not going down yet," he whispered.
Right then... A shard of ice punched into his back.
It wasn't deep—just enough to pierce through his skin and draw a sharp line of frost across the impact point—but it was clean. Precise.
Arkanis staggered forward a step from the surprise.
Everyone turned.
At the edge of the battlefield stood Calvinel, one hand extended, residual frost curling around his fingers. Behind him stood the Guard Commander, blade drawn and stance firm, and beside him a visibly battered Prince Mark, armor dented and stained but upright.
"Looks like you all can use help," Calvinel said.
Reinforcements had arrived.