The main hall was a charnel house, a tomb being actively forged in fire. The stench of ozone, burnt flesh, and blood was a solid thing in the air. The initial waves of Vipers and Church soldiers were gone, reduced to still forms on the floor or trapped in glittering amber. Only the Beyonders remained, locked in a dance of annihilation.
Karl braced himself, his breath a ragged saw in his chest. The steam-revolver shot in his thigh was a constant, throbbing fire, and the bloody stump where his ear had been sent dizzying pulses of pain through his skull with every heartbeat. Across from him, Reverie Noire stood amidst the wreckage, her beige coat still impossibly pristine save for the seared slash on her shoulder. She was a monument of relentless, oppressive power.
"Wind."
The word was a whisper, but its effect was immediate. A current of air, visible as a shimmering distortion, enveloped her whole. When she moved, it was with a blitzing speed; it was a blur. She closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, her hand already rising for another spell.
'She's speeding herself up, is there something she can't do?' Karl's mind, honed by countless back-alley brawls and supernatural duels, reacted on instinct. He didn't try to meet her head-on. Instead, he dropped into a crouch, slamming his flaming palms against the oil-soaked, burning floorboards. 'If I can't hit her directly, I'll hit where she's going to be.'
He wasn't summoning fire; he was injecting it. Threads of incandescent orange energy, like liquid magma, shot through the wood, racing along the ground in a complex web directly beneath Reverie's path.
She saw it. Her enhanced speed allowed her to react. Just as the veins of fire reached its critical point below her, she leaped, a graceful, powerful arc that carried her high into the air, over the impending eruption.
But Karl had anticipated the dodge. The moment her feet left the ground, he was already moving. His right hand swept up, condensing the ambient heat and his own dwindling power into a solid, six-foot spear of pure, hot flames. He didn't aim; he just threw, putting all his remaining strength into the toss, targeting the center of her airborne silhouette.
Reverie, still in mid-air, was not defenseless. Her hands wove through another gesture. "Mighty Breeze!"
A torrent of wild, concussive wind erupted from her palms, a horizontal storm meant to swat the spear aside like a gnat. The flaming projectile wavered violently, its trajectory bending away from her heart, destined to fly harmlessly past.
It was then that the Baron acted.
He had been conserving his energy, a spider at the edge of his web, his missing hand a constant drain. His good hand twitched, his focus laser-sharp on the interaction between wind and fire. He didn't try to stop the gale; that would have been impossible. He found a smaller, more critical flaw.
"Distort."
The command was a strained whisper, but its effect was precise. The angle of the wind's deflection warped by a single, critical degree.
The flaming spear, instead of being shoved completely aside, was nudged. Its course altered just enough. The tip, blazing with infernal heat, grazed Reverie's opposite arm—the one not already wounded.
It was not a deep cut. But it was a statement. The fabric of her sleeve blackened and curled away, and a thin, angry red line appeared on her skin. A hiss, this one of pure, undiluted fury, escaped her lips. She had been touched. Again.
The Mighty Breeze, its primary task technically successful, continued on its path. Deprived of its main target, the full force of the wild windy gale slammed into Karl.
He had no defense left. The wind hit him like a physical wall, lifting him off his feet and hurling him backwards. He crashed into the stone wall near the corridor with a sickening crunch, the impact driving the air from his lungs. He slid to the floor, a broken doll, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He tried to push himself up, but his arms buckled.
Reverie landed lightly, her eyes burning with cold fire. She glanced at the fresh, minor burn on her arm, then at the Baron, who stood pale and swaying, the cost of his last distortion evident. Finally, her gaze settled on the nearly incapacitated Karl.
"Its over, surrender, you are done, filth" she stated, her voice flat and final. She raised a hand, her fingers beginning to curl into the configuration for a spell that would end it. The air began to hum.
With a mighty effort that felt like tearing his own soul in two, Karl forced some of his remaining spirituality to the surface. From his outstretched hands erupted not a single, concentrated attack, but a flock of Fire Ravens. They were smaller, less potent than before, but numerous. They cawed with sounds of crackling embers, swirling through the smoky air in a chaotic, distracting dance. They flew near Reverie Noire, weaving around her head and shoulders, their heat washing over her, but never striking. Their purpose wasn't damage; it was confusion, a desperate screen of flickering motion and scorching air to buy a few precious seconds.
"Freezing Light" A beam of clear blue light erupted from Reverie's right hand, as she pointed at and eliminated the ravens one by one.
'Just a moment. Just need a moment.'
Using that distraction, Karl pushed himself off the wall, his body screaming in protest. He stumbled to his brother's side, his gait a lopsided, painful shuffle. "Gunther..."
The Baron's face was a mask of ashen pain, his gaze fixed on the inferno consuming his empire. "Karl... this fire. It's too widespread, too... structural. This isn't just from our fight." His analytical mind, even now, was picking apart the flaws in the situation. "Where is Lutz?"
Karl coughed, a wet, painful sound. "With my senses... I heard a fight. In the back. Before the ceiling started coming down. It was intense. There must have been another team from the Church. A second breach. He was holding them off." It was the only explanation that made sense. Lutz, the loyal, deadly operative, making his last stand in the rear, buying them time.
The Baron's flint-like eyes narrowed. He tried to figure something out, find a flaw in this situation that would allow them to escape. He looked at the fire raging through the rafters, at the specific way a support beam near the back was burning with an unnatural intensity.
He looked at Karl, his voice dropping to an urgent, blood-flecked whisper. "Karl. Fireball. The biggest one you can. At the ceiling." He pointed a trembling finger not at Reverie, but at a specific, heavy crossbeam near the center of the main hall, one that was already groaning under the strain.
Karl stared, bewildered. "What? Gunther, that will bring the whole—"
"Now, Karl!" the Baron's voice cracked with a finality that brooked no argument. It was the voice of the older brother who had saved him from bullies, from poverty, from death itself. Karl trusted that voice more than he trusted his own judgement.
In that exact moment, Reverie Noire, having dissipated the last of the annoying Fire Ravens with a contemptuous wave of her hand, fixed her gaze on them. She saw the brothers conferring, saw the desperate look in Karl's eyes. She would allow no more schemes. Her hand rose, a single finger pointing skyward.
"Lightning."
A single, blinding bolt of pure white energy lanced down from the smoky heights, aimed directly at the space between the two brothers. Instinct and a lifetime of fighting together saved them. The Baron threw himself to the left, Karl to the right. The lightning struck the floor where they had stood, blasting a charred, smoldering crater into the wood and leaving the air smelling sharply of ozone.
There was no more time. As Karl rolled back to his feet, he began the process. He didn't just draw on his own power; he pulled. He reached out with his affinity for flame and drew some of the very fire consuming the warehouse into himself. Tendrils of flame peeled away from the walls and beams, streaming towards his outstretched hands, feeding the growing sphere of annihilation. It swelled, larger and brighter than any he had conjured before, a miniature sun pulsating between his palms, its light throwing their desperate faces into sharp relief.
Reverie saw the build-up of power and recognized the threat, even if its purpose was a mystery. She would not let it complete. Her hands came together in a sharp, clapping motion.
"Ensnare."
The floor around Karl erupted. Not with the thin vines from before, but with thick, woody roots and thorny weeds as thick as a man's wrist, bursting through the floorboards with terrifying speed, aiming to wrap around his legs, his arms, his torso, to crush him and disrupt his concentration.
The Baron was ready. His good hand shot up, fingers contorting into a claw. The strain was visible; he cried out, blood trickling from his nose. "Distort!"
He didn't try to stop the spell's creation. He twisted its target. The grasping roots, surging upward, suddenly wavered. Their mystical guidance was corrupted. Instead of finding living flesh, they coiled instead around the nearest solid objects—the bodies of dead Vipers and Church soldiers littering the floor. The roots tightened with crushing force around the corpses, making them burst in a bloody spectacle, a macabre garden of the dead, leaving Karl untouched.
It was the opening he needed.
With a final, guttural roar that tore at his injured throat, Karl heaved the colossal fireball. The sphere of condensed fury soared upward, following the path the Baron had indicated, and struck the central crossbeam dead center.
The sound was not an explosion, but a deep, groaning WHOMP of pure, concentrated heat and force. The beam, already compromised by Lutz's pyre and fire, did not just break. It vaporized at the point of impact. A massive section of the ceiling, freed of its central support, let out a final, agonized groan.
Then, it fell.
The world dissolved into a roaring, fiery avalanche. The central crossbeam, vaporized by Karl's infernal fireball, could no longer bear the weight. With a groan that shook the very foundations of the warehouse, a massive section of the ceiling gave way. Flaming timber, shattered roof tiles, and chunks of masonry crashed down in a deafening torrent, slamming into the floor between the Vogler brothers and the Deacon. A wall of fire and wreckage, impassable and roaring, erupted, cutting the main hall in two.
'It worked. We bought a second.' The thought was a fleeting spark of triumph in Karl's mind. He turned, his eyes seeking his brother through the shower of sparks and dust.
But Reverie Noire had acted in the split second before the collapse. Her voice, though drowned out by the sound of the structural demolition, had formed the words. "Starlight Pillar."
As Karl and the Baron looked up at their falling world, a column of shimmering, silent stardust began to coalesce around the Baron's position. It was beautiful and utterly mystical.
The ceiling finished its fall. In the sudden, relative quiet that followed the crash—a silence filled only by the crackle of the new, greater fire—Karl's voice tore through the air.
"GUNTHER!"
The Baron heard the scream and felt the wrongness in the air a moment too late. His head snapped around. The shimmering outline of the pillar was already solidifying. He tried to run, to throw himself clear, but his body was broken, his spirituality utterly spent. There was nothing left for a distortion, not even a whisper of one.
He managed a single, lurching step.
It wasn't enough.
The Starlight Pillar fully materialized. There was no sound, only a silent, perfect erasure. The Baron's left leg, from the hip down, and a significant portion of his left side, simply vanished. The line of dissolution was clean, surgical, as if the universe itself had decided that part of him should no longer exist.
A scream was ripped from the Baron's throat, a raw, animal sound of such profound agony that it dwarfed all the pain that had come before. He collapsed, his body hitting the floor with a sickening, unbalanced thud, his lifeblood pouring from the impossible, smooth wound.
"BROTHER!" Karl scrambled over the burning debris, ignoring the searing heat on his hands, his eyes wide with horror. He slid to his brother's side, his own wounds forgotten. He looked at the ruin of Gunther's body, at the space where a leg and half a torso should have been. There was no searing this. This was a death sentence.
"Karl," the Baron gasped, his voice a thin, reedy thread. 'This is it, isn't it? Shit!' The Baron's thoughts fell into despear, before rapidly accepting his destiny, and thinking what was left for his brother.
His face was the color of chalk, his lips tinged blue. "Listen to me. You need to go. Go to the treasury. Take everything and go away. Somewhere else, start again, like we did back then..."
"HELL NO!" Karl roared, tears of fury and despair mingling with the soot on his face. He clutched his brother's remaining shoulder. "I'm not leaving you here, Gunther! We're surviving this! We're surviving like we always have!"
"KARL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, LISTEN TO ME!" A gulp of blood came out of the Baron's mouth along with the words.
The Baron's voice changed. It was no longer the gasp of a dying man. It was the voice of the head of House Vogler, the Baron of Corruption, layered with the last dregs of his Lawyer powers—a final, compelling command, an authority that brooked no argument. It was the voice that had convinced creditors, rivals, and victims for decades. Now, he used it to convince the only person he had ever loved.
Karl stared, shocked into silence, his protest dying in his throat. He was listening.
From the other side of the fiery barrier, they could hear Reverie Noire's voice, clear and focused, chanting spells. "Mighty Breeze. Ocean. Storm." The wall of debris shuddered. She was coming.
"Karl," the Baron said, his voice dropping back to a pained whisper, the authority now laced with a desperate, brotherly plea. "I have a mystical artifact. A last resort. It'll let me gain time… and it will allow me to take her out. But it will take my life as well. It's the only way." He coughed, a spray of blood dotting his chin. "We were too greedy. Too blind. We should have left this place, left it all behind. But now it's done. This is the only way."
He reached up a trembling, bloodied hand and gripped Karl's arm. "Karl, please. Listen to me and go. See if Lutz is still alive. He is a good man. A loyal one. Take him with you. Take the money and start again somewhere else. The Vogler name…" His voice faltered, filled with a profound, heartbreaking sorrow. "The Vogler name can't die in this wretched, burning warehouse."
The words struck Karl with the force of a physical blow. He saw the absolute certainty in his brother's eyes, the finality. He saw the love there, a love so fierce it was demanding his own survival. The memory surfaced, unbidden and vivid: two boys, running through a dark forest, the screams of their parents echoing behind them, Gunther's hand tight in his, the promise of 'A fun adventure' forged in that night of terror. And now, his brother was breaking that promise to save him.
For the first time since that day, tears not of rage, but of pure, unadulterated grief, streamed down Karl's face, cutting clean lines through the grime. He closed his eyes, his body shaking with silent sobs. He leaned forward and hugged what remained of his brother, a careful, agonizing embrace. "I love you," he choked out, the words thick with pain. "I'm sorry. And thank you."
"Go," Gunther whispered, his hand weakly patting Karl's back. "I'll be watching over you."
With a final, shattered look, Karl pushed himself to his feet. He turned and, without looking back, ran into the dark, smoke-filled hallway that led deeper into the warehouse, toward the treasury and a future he never wanted.
As he watched him go, a faint smile touched Gunther Vogler's lips, and a single tear traced a path through the blood and soot on his cheek. The artifact was a lie. There was no last, glorious suicide attack. There was only a dying man, using the last trick he had—a lie wrapped in the authority of his power and the truth of his love—to save his little brother.
The smile faded. With immense, grinding effort, he used his one arm to push himself up, propping his back against a chunk of fallen masonry. He sat in the middle of the ruin of his life, missing a leg and half his body, watching as the wall of debris before him glowed brighter, the Deacon's spells systematically clearing a path. His demise was not approaching. It was already here. And he would face it on his feet, or what passed for them.