Three days had passed since Martin had orchestrated the musical hostage negotiation. Word of the settlement spread fast through Varncrest—partly because of the harp's absurd cultural value, and partly because Fenice Phoenix had, in full public view, sworn to end Martin's entire bloodline over it.
Predictably, Martin remained unmoved.
He was seated on a stone bench beside the central mana fountain, its cascading threads of energy humming like lazy wind chimes. The late morning sun hovered behind a gauze of mist, casting spectral halos across the plaza. Floating glyphs flickered overhead—tracking attendance for some lecture on mana-field elasticity. He ignored them.
His focus was on a notification hovering just above his palm. A duel acceptance.
"Oh, she finally accepted," he murmured to himself, flicking the glyph away with a smirk.
One hour later, the arena lights were pale blue, signaling a sanctioned match. Students gathered in clumps around the viewing balconies, murmuring as they spotted Martin entering the field—holding a large reinforced suitcase like a violinist with a grudge.
His opponent stood at the other end.
Diemo Nidas.
A quiet, wiry girl with flame-scarred arms, her white hair braided back and trembling slightly in the wind. She looked calm, but her eyes betrayed it—each flicker carrying a wildfire of instincts and fragmented training.
She frowned. "Why are you challenging me?"
Martin tilted his head. "To see if you're the same as the rest of your dead kin."
Diemo blinked. "What?"
A whistle blew. Match sanctioned.
"You know the Blood-hand," Martin said, voice flat.
Diemo didn't flinch. But her pupils shimmered—not with mana, but Animus: raw, personal soul-energy. The currency of willpower, the marrow of true magecraft. Dangerous. Volatile.
Her kind didn't store mana. They burned themselves.
She didn't cast a spell. She didn't draw a blade.
She bit down on her lower lip until blood welled up, and screamed.
"HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT NAME?!"
A pulse erupted from her chest. Martin felt it in the air—like heat rippling off stone.
Heart of Havoc. The central graft that gave Blood-hand units their terrifying speed and strength. A biomechanical spell-node installed in the cardiovascular system. It allowed the user to override natural limits and weaponize pain thresholds.
She blurred forward—faster than a charging warhorse—her first strike a low sweep, aimed to shatter his legs from beneath.
Martin clicked open the briefcase.
Iron stakes exploded outward, inscribed with burning runes—red fire, shaped and precise. They impaled her mid-lunge and cauterized the wounds in the same breath.
Blood streamed from Diemo's gut and shoulder. She coughed, collapsed—but even as she fell, steam hissed from the punctures. Her tendons spasmed. Her muscles flexed and reknit. Her spine clicked back into alignment with a wet, nauseating crack.
Martin sighed, adjusting his collar.
"Hah," he said softly. "This brings back memories."
"You… how did you do it? Who are you?" Diemo snarled, voice thick with blood.
Martin met her eyes with terrifying stillness. "The doom of your kin."
Diemo shook her head slowly, disbelieving. "You lie. The project wasn't public. Even most mages never—"
"I know." Martin stepped forward, voice low. "That's what made it so easy to burn."
A flicker of something crossed her face—rage, confusion… and somewhere in it, happiness.
"I was supposed to be that fire," Diemo whispered.
"Pardon?"
She moved again, faster than before—blurring into afterimages. He couldn't use the same trick twice. He raised the suitcase in defense and sketched a glyph mid-air with one hand.
A wall of compressed air snapped into place—thin, sharp, solid. Diemo's punch struck it, and the force redirected her into a backward somersault.
She landed in a slide, spun on her heel, and flung something.
A knife.
But not physical.
It was Animus, shaped like a blade, flaring bright purple as it sailed through the air.
It hit the edge of Martin's coat—and fizzled.
He frowned. That was new. Pure Animus projection. Experimental. Highly unstable. Borderline suicidal if improperly regulated.
"I don't care what they did to me or what you did to them," she said between gulps of breath. "I'm not like them."
"Revenge plots are overdone," Martin muttered.
"No. You're overdone."
She charged again—this time sharper, more precise. Her feet didn't touch the ground for long. Her hands moved like whips.
Martin sighed and swung the briefcase onto his shoulder.
The lower half snapped open. Two ring-like blades—razor-thin and inscribed with layered sigils—shot out with the whine of collapsing pressure fields.
They severed both her Achilles tendons.
Diemo collapsed face-first, her momentum tripping over her own disconnection.
Martin extended a hand and fired a blast of condensed sound directly at her ribcage.
She screamed—loud, raw, guttural. Blood fountained from her mouth.
"End the match," Martin said, eyes on the announcer.
Nidas lay there, her regeneration spasming out of sync. Her body began rejecting its own repairs—blood, bile, and fragments of old grafts spilling from her mouth and sides as medical mages rushed in.
"We'll talk later," Martin said coolly, watching her get carried off—kicking and screaming.
In the stands, Belisarius crossed his arms, amused.
"Well," he said. "Looks like I won the bet."
"That brute of a child," Bellarine fumed, arms folded. "He doesn't know how to treat a lady."
"That's what you get for sending a hatchling," Belisarius replied.
"Not all of us get to raise monsters in the wild," she snapped.
They both paused, eyes on Martin's silhouette.
"We both know the boy hasn't peaked," Belisarius said quietly. "If he had, I wouldn't have brought him back."
Bellarine nodded. "He hasn't faced a good opponent in months."
"The bet is still on, right?" Belisarius added.
"Fine," she growled. "You can use the other hole."
Back in the arena, the crowd had mostly dispersed. The air was still, save for the faint smoke curling up from Diemo's bloodstains.
Martin stared down at the faint glow where she had projected that Animus knife.
"She's not a Blood-hand survivor," he murmured. "She's a failure."
He knew the true strength of those monsters. Nidas didn't even come close. Her regeneration was wild, her technique untamed. She had power, but not the discipline or cruelty the originals had.
"If she isn't the one that went MIA…" Martin trailed off, pulling out a small crystal slate from his pocket and scanning his private archives.
Then whose record had he found?