Gwen hung in the air for a split second — the breath driven clean from his lungs — then landed on his feet, boots tearing up the molten road as he skidded backward.
He looked down at his chest. Then up at Moto.
His expression was blank. Then a smile cracked his face, widening into a laugh, manic and entirely genuine.
"Yeah! That's more like it!"
"You think this is a game?!" Moto's voice cracked with it.
"You're finally taking this seriously!" Gwen spread his arms, fire flaring along his shoulders. "Of course I'm excited. It's boring when the target doesn't fight back."
He charged.
This wasn't the lazy ranged work of before. Gwen came in with a flurry of flaming kicks and punches, and Moto met him in the middle — parrying a burning fist, ducking a high kick that singed his hair, driving a knee into Gwen's ribs. He was inside the guard and he stayed there. Palm strike to the chin. Elbow to the collarbone. Gwen stumbled, the arrogance converting into something more urgent as he was physically forced back, unable to find room to breathe, let alone cast.
"You've gotten stronger," Gwen grunted, blocking a chop to his throat and vaulting backward to create distance. He landed on a high ridge overlooking the road. "But I know your weakness."
He raised his hand. The fire shifted — spinning, flattening, compressing into a razor edge.
"Fire Sport: Discus."
The disc of compressed flame screamed across the road.
Moto reached behind his back. Smoke condensed in his grip, solidifying around a core of black volcanic glass, and he drew the obsidian blade in one fluid motion and slashed upward.
SHING.
The blade split the Discus cleanly. Both halves sputtered and died as they flew past. The obsidian reacted instantly — glowing angry red, then white, the absorbed heat pushing the glass toward its melting point.
"Oh?" Gwen raised an eyebrow. "You use swords now." He sounded genuinely pleased. "You've grown a lot since the arena, kid."
Moto held the weapon, but the smoke binding it was evaporating. The glass was fading, burning bright as it went.
"It's a shame," Gwen said, his voice dropping. "You'll have to die before you reach it."
Moto charged the ridge. The sword crumbled in his grip, turning to dust and then to nothing, and he discarded the hilt.
"Back to basics!" Gwen grinned, firing a volley of small fireballs. "Come on — use your fire. Don't you want to burn me?"
Moto wove through the blasts. "I don't need fire to beat you."
"Is that what you told yourself when you left your sister behind?"
Moto stopped.
Gwen pressed it immediately. "Douglas knows everything. Did you think you were hiding? He knows about Amber. He has plans for her."
"Don't speak her name."
"He'll use her the same way he used you," Gwen said. "The same way he used Sheu's father." He let that land. "You know how that story ends. We regret to inform you that your brother died on a patriotic mission. Then Amber goes into the pipeline, and we expect the same from her."
The pieces connected in the silence.
Sheu's father — dead on Douglas's order, his grief weaponised, used to bind her tighter to the crown. And now Amber, sitting in Nyika, protected by the same man.
The injustice of it wasn't just anger. It was something older and more complete than anger.
The lock broke.
"Raaaagh!"
The fire erupted from his elbows to his fingertips — crimson, uncontrolled, violent. The heat was blinding. He charged the ridge, a screaming comet of rage, and Gwen laughed and vaulted backward up the slope to a higher plateau, easily out of reach.
"That's it! BURN!" Gwen cackled from above. "I wanted revenge for the humiliation, but this — watching you cook yourself inside your own fire? This is better!"
Moto clawed at the rock face. The fire was eating him. His bare skin blistered, his own flames doing Gwen's work for him. He wasn't hurting anyone but himself.
I'm doing it again.
If I burn out here — Amber is alone.
He didn't ask the fire to stop. He clamped down with sheer, desperate willpower and forced it back.
Stop.
The flames died.
He fell backward and hit the dirt hard. His chest heaved. His arms were raw and shimmering with residual heat, but the fire was gone. He lay on his back and looked up at Gwen with hateful, clear eyes.
Alive.
Gwen's laughter cut off. He stared down, expression souring.
"You stopped," he said. "Boring."
He sighed, shaking his head. "Fine. If you won't finish yourself, I will."
He crouched at the edge of the cliff and spread his legs wide, boots digging into rock. The fire exploded outward — then snapped back in, condensing, solidifying. Bulky glowing shoulder pads formed over his own. A heavy grilled helmet encased his head. Massive greaves covered his legs. He looked like a titan made of magma, a lineman loading for a final drive.
"Hell's Sport: Second Down."
A sphere of fire formed between his hands. He compressed it further, pouring heat into it until it turned white — a ball of pure destruction, the air in front of it already scorched.
Moto looked up. His arms screamed. He couldn't move.
Gwen launched himself from the cliff.
He didn't fall — he drove downward, the armoured weight adding mass to his descent, the white-hot ball searing the air ahead of him. From the ground, the grilled face of the helmet grew larger and larger, consuming the sky, the heat arriving before the impact—
Moto closed his eyes.
Black.