Robert’s aura hit me like a physical force the moment the countdown appeared in the air. The number 8 glowed above us. His power surged outward in a violent bloom of crimson light. The ground cracked beneath his feet. The air rippled out with hurricane-level winds.

  I summoned Ember in Sparks Mode. Blue fire snapped across my arms and coiled around my wrists as the twin blades formed in my hands, each one humming. My helm materialized next, locking into place with a sharp metallic click that steadied my breathing. I focused on letting Foresight take hold.

  I started Limit Breaker off at Times two before the fight even began. My muscles tightened. My heartbeat accelerated. I was as ready as I was going to be.

  I would need to start strong, or I would be overwhelmed immediately by our sheer level disparity. Robert clenched his fists, his entire body beginning to shake as dark red energy sparked off his skin. He threw his head back and roared out. “Crimson Form!”

  His frame warped and expanded, muscle piling onto muscle. The transformation was violent, bones cracking as his clothes stretched barely containing the sudden growth. In seconds he shot past my height, climbing well over seven feet, then eight. By the time the energy settled, he towered over me like a living fortress of crimson power.

  The number 7 flashed.

  Robert’s armor formed. Thick grey-red plates crawled across his body like molten stone cooling into shape. The armor sealed around him with a deep, grinding rumble. An open-faced style helm formed. The twin axes he summoned began to glow the color of molten lava, each one now wrapped in a swirling red energy that made the axes hiss like burning oil.

  He rolled his shoulders, eyes calm as he twirled his axes. “I will take no chances with you, Outlier, consider yourself honored. It has been some time since anyone has seen me in this form.”

  6…

  “You are a decade too soon to take me on,” he said. “I have no idea what that old bitch was thinking sending you against me as you are now. But worry not, I will not break you too badly. I can’t have my new member unable to fulfill his future duties after all.”

  I lowered my stance, blades angled behind me, sparks dancing along the edges. “Let’s see if you talk so tough when the fighting starts.” His eyes narrowed. I made my breathing steady. My mind narrowed to a single thought. I must win this.

  5…

  The pressure of his aura grew heavier with each tick. I felt my Defiant Flame title kick in and with it some of the pressure lessened. The fact that it didn’t go away completely told me this guy was truly on another level.

  4…

  3...

  Robert took his stance and charged his axes.

  2…

  1… BEGIN!

  Robert moved first. A blur of red metal charged my way. I met him blade for axe as our weapons connected.

  Shockwaves from the impacts blasted out blowing the lake water and ground away in waves of water and rock.

  He batted one of Ember’s blades away. Causing me to go to Times Three to dodge or let one of the glowing axes connect with my chest.

  I barely slipped aside, Sparks Mode and Foresight guiding my movements as I dodged.

  Robert stomped down, causing the ground to crater, trying to mess with my footing.

  I launched myself into the air and formed an aura platform to stand on.

  I breathed out, trying to loosen up, but I felt tight all over. Running Limit Breaker at times two continually was causing my trigger gauge to deplete faster than normal. This fight had barely started, and I was a quarter down already.

  Robert didn’t leap the way I had. Instead, he started running on his own aura, each step creating a solid crimson platform the exact size of his foot. The moment he pushed off, the platform vanished, replaced instantly by the next one. It was effortless for him, almost casual, and it told me everything I needed to know.

  After our brief exchange, after seeing that level of aura control, it was obvious he surpassed me in both power and mastery.

  I wasn’t discouraged.

  I would grind him down one strike at a time. If I had to carve him apart with a thousand cuts, then that was exactly what I would do. It was time to show this oversized bastard who he was dealing with.

  I angled myself downward, teeth clenched, aura flaring hot around me.

  The words ripped from my throat as I launched off my own platform. “Times Four!”

  Air cracked around me. I shot toward the Mystic Juggernaut like a cannonball wrapped in blue fire.

  He crossed his axes to a guard position, and I brought down twin Eclipse Strikes to meet them.

  The platform he had made for himself shook but held. A shockwave exploded outward from the impact, causing crimson and sapphire auras to go wild in every direction.

  I pushed absolute trigger to the maximum and watched my gauge drop in my peripheral as I appeared at his side. I repeated my twin Eclipse strike.

  I felt the blades connect, but instead of carving through his torso, Robert’s armor absorbed the impact with ease. The force of my blow still was able to launch him off his aura platform and send him crashing toward the ground, but it wasn’t the decisive hit I needed.

  I formed another platform to pursue, but Robert had already hit the ground and recovered. He spun his axes in a tight, controlled arc, waiting for me to commit. I abandoned the dive and let myself drop instead, landing hard but upright.

  I had already burned through multiple Eclipse Strikes and pushed Limit Breaker to times four, and all I had to show for it was a single grunt of discomfort from the Faction leader.

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  Robert must have read the frustration in my stance, because he let out a low, amused laugh. “You hit like a child. That is why none of your attacks do anything.”

  He came down with both axes in a brutal overhead chop. I darted aside; the ground erupted where I had stood. Dirt and stone blasted upward in a violent plume.

  I zipped behind him and struck again. And again. And again.

  My blades flashed like lightning.

  Each hit landed. Each hit sparked.

  Each hit did nothing.

  Robert turned slowly, as if bored. “Are you finished?”

  I didn’t answer. I lunged in again, pushing my speed to the limit. My blades became streaks of light. I hammered his armor with everything I had, carving arcs of blue fire across his chest and shoulders.

  Robert grunted once more, but his stance never wavered.

  He shifted from laughter to violence in an instant. One axe rose high, red energy spiraling around the blade like a gathering storm. The air trembled under the pressure, a warning my instincts didn’t need to translate.

  Before I could consciously react, Ember responded for me. Sparks Mode collapsed, the twin blades folding back into the weapon’s original form. The sword settled into my grip with a heavy finality, its aura flaring outward to blanket my body in a protective sheath of heat and light. It felt like Ember was bracing with me, preparing for the strike.

  Robert’s shadow loomed larger as the storm around his axe reached its peak.

  It appeared he was finished playing. He slammed it down.

  The world detonated.

  A shockwave blasted outward, ripping through the ground and hurling me backward like a rag doll. I hit the dirt hard, skidding across broken stones. My ribs screamed. My vision blurred.

  Robert’s shadow fell over me.

  “Now I have you.”

  He was on me before I could rise. His axes hammered down in a relentless rhythm. Each strike shook my bones. Each impact sent pain lancing through my arms as I blocked.

  “You are going to love being part of my faction,” he said, voice thick with amusement. “Just love it. And the first thing I will do is build you up and send you out to destroy everything that traitorous Turtle has.”

  His next strike nearly shattered my guard. The impact rattled straight through my arms and into my spine, a brutal reminder that I couldn’t keep absorbing hits like this. I was already burning hot, already pushing myself, but Limit Breaker surged inside me again, clawing for more, begging to be unleashed.

  I pushed it as far as I dared.

  “Times four,” I growled through clenched teeth.

  Power tore through my body in a violent rush, my aura flaring bright enough to sting my eyes inside the helm. The world sharpened, every sound and movement stretching into razor clarity as my muscles screamed under the strain.

  I braced myself.

  Robert wasn’t slowing down.

  My heartbeat thundered in my ears, each pulse a heavy drumbeat against my ribs. My muscles screamed in protest, but the power flooding through me was impossible to resist, a wildfire tearing through every vein.

  I slipped out from beneath him in a burst of motion so sharp it felt like the air itself split around me. Absolute Trigger’s gauge slammed to empty the instant I moved, the Talent burning out in a single, desperate flash.

  I reappeared behind him, Ember blazing in my hands, its heat rolling up my arms like a living thing ready to strike.

  “Sunder!”

  The word tore from my throat as I swung with everything I had. The blades connected with his armor in a violent explosion of force. The impact sent a shock wave through the clearing. Robert’s massive body lifted off the ground and flew across what remained of the treeline, smashing through trunks like they were brittle glass.

  I dropped to one knee, gasping. Sweat was pouring down my face inside the helm. My arms trembled violently.

  I was exhausted. I had wanted to give chase, but when I tried to move, my knees buckled. I slowly forced myself to stand and take up a combat stance.

  The dust thinned, and to my dismay a massive silhouette pushed through it, step by deliberate step.

  His armor was cracked. Not shattered. Not broken.

  But cracked.

  “I guess that’s something,” I muttered.

  Robert stopped about twenty feet away and looked down at the damage, then lifted his gaze to me with a wide, almost delighted grin.

  “Well,” he said, brushing debris from his shoulder, “you Outliers are really something. I actually felt that one.”

  He cracked his neck, the sound like boulders grinding together.

  “Good. Now that I know you have another level. I can stop holding back.”

  His aura surged again, swelling until the ground split beneath his feet. The air warped around his massive frame, heat and pressure rolling off him in waves. My stomach dropped. He wasn’t bluffing. He really had been holding back.

  I tightened my grip on Ember and forced myself upright. I tried to move, tried to trigger another burst of speed, but Absolute Trigger refused to respond. My limbs felt locked, frozen under the weight of his power.

  Ember’s aura flared suddenly, hot and sharp. An old man’s gruff voice barked inside my skull. “Move, dummy!”

  I didn’t have time to question who the hell was yelling at me. Robert launched himself at me in a blur of crimson metal and killing intent. I did the only thing my body could manage.

  I braced. And knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  I never even saw the strike. One moment he was in front of me, the next my entire world exploded. Pain tore through my ribs as I was ripped off my feet. The impact sent me flying, tumbling end over end through the air. I hit something smooth and hard, skipped across it like a stone, and then felt myself plunge into something cold and wet.

  My armor must have been busted because I felt freezing water hit my body that was so cold that it stole my breath away.

  And somewhere above the water’s surface, I heard Robert’s heavy footsteps closing in. A wolf?bear’s roar split the air, followed by my sister screaming my name as the darkness closed in around me. Not her. Not because of me.

  A voice snapped through my mind like a slap, jolting me back toward consciousness.

  “Hey, idiot. I thought I soul?bonded with a warrior, not a skipping stone. I finally wake up and what do I find? My bond getting the piss kicked out of him. And I mean that literally. When you hit the water, you actually pissed yourself.”

  “Wha…” was all I managed before the voice cut me off again, sharper and louder.

  The voice mocked me, dragging the word out in a whiny imitation. “Wha… wha… wha…”

  Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision. My thoughts slipped. My body felt as if it were sinking deeper into cold mud.

  A jolt of energy slammed through me, snapping my senses back.

  “Don’t you dare pass out! We’re not done yet! Are you hearing me?! Get your ass down here to your soul tree. I can’t keep your mind sped up like this forever!”

  The darkness recoiled under the sheer force of that furious, gravel?voiced presence. I focused, clung to the sound, and the world twisted.

  The soul?realm shimmered into focus around me, and this time it wasn’t just my soul tree waiting in the quiet glow. An ethereal presence stood beneath its branches, as if it had always been there and I had simply never been sharp enough to notice.

  He wasn’t fully solid, more a figure sculpted from shifting silver fire and blue luminescence. His outline flickered like a candle fighting a breeze, but the shape was unmistakably male: broad?shouldered, wiry, and tall.

  His hair was a mane of drifting silver strands, each one glowing faintly, and his beard was a jagged cascade of blue?white embers that crackled whenever he moved.

  His eyes were the brightest part of him, two burning sapphire coals that looked equal parts furious, disappointed, and begrudgingly invested.

  I looked down at my hand. Ember appeared there, the blade forming in a smooth pulse of light. The moment it did, the figure flickered violently, as if pulled into sharper focus by the weapon’s presence. Realization came over me then. I knew who this old man was.

  The old man nodded once, gruff and satisfied.

  “That’s right,” he said. His voice was gravel dipped in lightning. “I knew you weren’t a total loss. Quick on the uptake, after all.”

  He jabbed a thumb at his own chest, the motion sending ripples of silver flame rolling across his form.

  “The name’s Ave. But you also know me as Ember.”

  The soul?realm pulsed in response, the light around us tightening as if holding its breath. My heart hammered. My thoughts scrambled to catch up. And Ave, Ember in his true form, just stared at me with the look of a man who had been waiting an excessive amount of time for me to finally get my shit together.

  The soul?realm steadied around me, silver mist drifting between the branches of my soul tree. Ave stood there in his flickering silver?and?blue form, arms crossed, looking like a man who had been irritated since before time learned how to move.

  He didn’t waste a second.

  “Alright, quick version,” he said. “Because I was not messing around about not being able to keep your mind sped up like this. Bottom line? Something jolted me awake. I’m here now.”

  A thought flickered through my mind of my grandmother holding Ember, the blade glowing faintly in her hands before she passed it back to me.

  Ave snorted. “So that’s what that was.”

  I blinked. “You… saw that?”

  “Yes, that’s what it was. And yes, our compatibility is high enough that whatever you see, I see.” Ave waved a hand dismissively, as if the entire subject bored him. “Now stay with me, Riven. Focus. I’ve got a way to even the playing field now that I’m awake. A way for you to actually fight this bastard on equal footing, assuming you can handle the pain.”

  Silver-blue light rippled across his form as he stepped closer, voice dropping into a gravelly growl.

  “But I can’t make us hold the form for long, and it’s going to hurt like hell while were in it. For both of us.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you planning to do?”

  Ave smiled. Not kindly. Not reassuringly. More like a man who had known a trick he wasn’t supposed to use anymore.

  “Simple,” he said, almost casually. “I’m going to set our souls on fire.”