"J-just got to... start the fire," he rasped, the voice trembling in the pitch-black.

  He was exhausted beyond the limits of human endurance. A hollow, nauseating cramp violently twisted his gut, forcing him to double over onto his hands and knees. The freezing mud soaked instantly through his torn clothes.

  He raised a violently shaking hand, trying to force his dormant mana circuits to spark.

  "I-IGNIS MYTH..."

  Nothing happened. His arm gave out, and he collapsed sideways.

  __________

  "Tell me, Hero," Kaelen whispered, the sadistic trap springing shut. "Will you kill me? Or will you save them?"

  The sphere ripped through the air toward Riko and the others at an astonishing speed. Eila's eyes darted toward the explosive anomaly.

  For the Hero of Aethelgard, the world suddenly slowed to an absolute crawl.

  The ten seconds were almost gone.

  "CONCEPT: CREO!!"

  Eila screamed, his vocal cords tearing as he forced the universe to add to reality. He visualized extreme gravitational mass and forced it into existence directly above the glowing Orbash. The sheer pressure slammed the explosive sphere into the polished floor, instantly cracking the stone beneath it.

  Eila's arm violently twisted. The veins beneath his skin flared a screaming, blistering purple as the overwhelming pain of the Paradox Debt surged through his system. His bones emerged and blood streamed out.

  But he forced his bleeding arm to move one last time. Drawing on the very last fraction of his mana, he manifested dense walls of raw space-time around three sides of the explosive.

  He left exactly one side open. The side facing Kaelen.

  For the first time, Kaelen's pristine mask of arrogance slipped. His eyes went wide.

  "LOGIC: LYS—"

  BOOOM.

  He was too late. Stripped of its structural integrity, the Noxara wasn't as strong as before. The compressed Orbash violently detonated. Guided by Eila's gravitational walls, the blast was aimed outward in a single direction, annihilating the left side of the throne room. A devastating shockwave of shattered Noxara and jagged minerals ripped through the air.

  Shielded by the blast's direction, the kneeling Cinders survived the shockwave, thrown harmlessly against the far wall.

  Eila did not. The redirected shrapnel brutally pierced his right arm and leg. His mana circuits completely fried under the Paradox Debt, triggering immediate immobilization. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed into the ruined ash, completely unconscious.

  "Eila!" Riko and Kian screamed, scrambling through the settling dust to his bleeding body, while Kaito frantically tore at Lucio's shattered iron shackles.

  He had broken the one rule of the pill: do not incur any more Paradox Debt.

  "We need to pick him up and get the hell out of here!" Kian roared, his voice barely cutting through the ringing in their ears as heavy footsteps violently echoed down the main hall.

  Riko didn't hesitate, hastily securing Eila's unconscious, bleeding body into the spatial chest. The blast had ripped a gaping, smoking crater into the left side of the throne room, but the drop to the dead gardens below was a sheer, fatal cliff.

  Their only option was through the main double doors.

  "RUN!" Kaito screamed.

  The Cinders sprinted desperately for the heavy oak doors. But before they could even cross half the distance, the massive double doors were violently kicked inward.

  A suffocating tide of pristine silver armor flooded the chambers. At least forty Vanguard knights poured into the room, instantly forming an impenetrable wall of drawn steel.

  And stepping through the center of their ranks, blood still trailing down his scarred face, was Sir Levon.

  He cracked his neck, the sickening pop echoing in the sudden, tense silence as he smoothly leveled his serrated saber at the cornered rebels.

  "The Hero falls, and leaves me with nothing but scrambling, cornered rats," Levon sneered, his voice dripping with absolute disgust. "Did you truly think you could profane the King's chambers and just walk away? Drop your weapons. I promise your executions will be swift."

  "Ugh... haven't we had enough of this already?"

  The voice was dead. Completely devoid of the chaotic, cheerful energy that defined her.

  "R-Riko...?" Kian whispered, a cold dread washing over him as he sensed the sudden, unnatural shift in her aura.

  Riko slowly raised her head. The bright, emerald innocence in her eyes was entirely gone, replaced by a hollow, luminescent yellow. She raised both hands, her fingers trembling slightly under the strain.

  "Too much Noxara smog in here," she muttered, her tone clinical and cold. "Distract them. I need to use the full incantation to bypass my circuit limits."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Kaito didn't hesitate. He drew his twin blades and launched himself directly at the Vanguard, vaulting high into the air to drop right onto Sir Levon. "GLADLY!"

  Sir Levon smoothly raised his saber, parrying the heavy strike and instantly aiming a brutal counter-kick. But Kaito vanished, his speed bordering on teleportation, appearing directly behind the Captain to plant a kick into his armored spine.

  Levon barely shifted his weight, catching Kaito's leg mid-air and violently spinning him away. Kaito skidded across the stone, landing gracefully on his feet.

  "You aren't too bad, kid," Levon smirked, adjusting his grip on the serrated blade. "Tell you what. Surrender, and I can offer you a position in the Vanguard."

  Kaito blurred forward again, moving in erratic, dizzying zig-zags. "LIKE HELL I WANT YOUR WEAK ASS POSITIONS!"

  Behind them, Riko had her hands thrust toward the ceiling, her luminescent eyes locked onto the floor. Sweat dripped from her chin as she forced her weak mana circuits to process an overwhelming calculation.

  "Let the world bear my oath. Logic is my presence and my light. I defy no rules, I obey all laws. My passion allows me to synthesize; the logic becomes the source. Allow me this manifestation, and my obedience shall be absolute."

  As her eyes snapped completely open, Kaito backflipped desperately out of the Vanguard's ranks, his eyes alight with manic, panicked laughter. He knew what was coming.

  "LOGIC: SYNTHESIS: GRANATUM!!"

  Riko looked up, her expression completely devoid of empathy, replaced by an unsettling, malicious deadpan. She hadn't summoned fire. She had forcefully commanded the heavy, ambient Noxara smog in the room to fuse into a hundred hyper-compressed, unstable orbs of violent friction.

  She looked over her shoulder at Kian and Kaito.

  "I would've died with you, but I kinda have duties to attend to," Riko stated coldly. "Good luck, losers."

  She pushed her hands forward, the hundred unstable orbs charged directly into the Vanguard's ranks.

  BOOOOOOM.

  The polished stone beneath them shattered like glass.

  The concussive shockwave of the GRANATUM blast shattered the foundation of the hall, plunging the Vanguard into the lower levels in a violent avalanche of crushed silver armor and jagged masonry. The Cinders plummeted right behind them, instantly engulfed in a suffocating, blinding cloud of pulverized Noxara ash.

  At the epicenter of the smoking crater, Sir Levon slowly pushed himself up from beneath a collapsed pillar. His pristine armor was charred and dented. He raised his right hand, his fanatic eyes narrowing at the twisted, dripping metal of his gauntlet.

  He had raised his saber just in time to deflect the main concussive wave, but the sheer friction had completely vaporized his index finger.

  "What are you, little rat...?" he growled, a terrifying smirk pulling at his scarred face as blood dripped onto the stone.

  But as the heavy dust finally settled, the ruins were empty. The Cinders had already vanished into the smog.

  _____________

  "Y-YOU ALMOST BLEW ME UP TOO!" Kaito shrieked, his voice cracking as they sprinted through the thick fog of the night forest.

  "I- I said sorry, okay?!" Riko panted desperately. The terrifying yellow was gone, her bright emerald eyes wide with panic as she struggled to keep up with the taller boys. "I-It happens when I lose control! Why are you blaming me? Big Stupid!"

  "WHA—?!" Kaito sputtered, almost tripping over a massive, twisted root in sheer disbelief. "You literally didn't even wait for me to come back safely!"

  "Quiet, both of you," Kian hissed, taking the lead and slashing a path through the dead, ashen brush. "We can't afford to let the guards hear us."

  "J-Just a little farther to the left," Lucio stammered, pulling a crumpled, hand-drawn map close to his face to read it in the dim smog. "It should open up to a lake soon."

  "How do you even know where he lives anyway?" Riko wheezed, practically jogging to match Kian's strides.

  "H-He mentioned that Kaelen attacked his hut in the forest once," Lucio replied, his eyes darting nervously at the oppressive shadows of the trees. "And according to the old maps... there is only one hut left in this sector."

  They burst through the heavy, dead brush, stumbling into a wide clearing. The gentle, rhythmic lapping of the dark lake was the only sound, a jarring contrast to the violent ringing still echoing in their ears.

  "W-Wading through the shallows will help wash away our scent... and shake off our trail if the tracking hounds are following," Lucio gasped, his eyes darting nervously toward the tree line.

  Riko fell to her knees at the water's edge, desperately cupping the dark liquid to her face. "Ugh... freezing," she shivered, wiping ash and blood from her chin.

  "Where is the damn hut, anyway?" Kaito snapped, his twin blades still gripped tightly in his hands.

  "Approximately fifteen minutes from here following the shoreline," Lucio replied, squinting at his crumpled map.

  ____________

  A frantic, heavy knock rattled the wooden door.

  Imara, who had been pacing anxiously by the table, bolted upright.

  "Eila! Did you—" She threw the door open, the desperate hope dying instantly in her throat.

  Instead of her Eila, she was greeted by four battered, bleeding, and soaking-wet strangers shivering in the smog.

  Riko peeked out from behind Kian's tall frame, offering a bright smile. "Hello! You must be The Wife."

  Imara stared at them, her breath hitching as her eyes frantically scanned the darkness behind them. "Where... where is Eila?"

  Kian stepped forward, his expression grim and hollow. Without a word, he unslung the spatial chest from his back and placed it heavily onto the wooden floorboards.

  With a heavy click, the seal broke.

  "W-what..." Imara's hands flew to her mouth. She slumped to the floor, her eyes locked onto Eila's mangled, unconscious body. His chest was covered in dark, drying blood, and the veins on his arm radiated a sickly, dying purple.

  She instantly dissolved into a sobbing, shaking mess, completely paralyzed by sheer terror and helplessness. Riko dropped to her knees beside her, wrapping her arms tightly around the weeping woman.

  "D-Don't worry..." Riko whispered, her voice cracking. "I-I'll make him alright again! I promise!"

  Suddenly, the heavy wooden door violently burst open.

  Panic instantly flooded the room. Kaito dropped the wooden chair he was holding, his twin blades flashing into his hands. Lucio scrambled backward in sheer terror, his glasses slipping from his face and shattering on the floorboards with a sharp crack. He didn't even try to pick them up.

  Even Imara choked on her sobs, freezing in place. Kian's mouth fell open, his hand hovering over his weapon.

  But it wasn't the Vanguard standing in the doorway.

  Stepping out of the freezing, grey Noxara smog was a ragged, filthy silhouette. He was weakened, hunched over, and extremely frail—yet an undeniable, unyielding aura of pure authority radiated from his very bones.

  "H-Holy..." Kaito breathed, slowly lowering his blades.

  "I-It's..." Kian stammered.

  Riko slowly stood up, her emerald eyes widening in absolute disbelief. "Master Orlon..."

  A single tear slipped down her ash-covered cheek, falling to the wooden floorboards and shattering in the dead silence.