The world pressed to a single, suffog moment as Cedric’s warhammer collided with the inferno. Fire howled, not like a, but like a starvi that had tasted blood. The spell was not meant to kill him instantly. It was meant to e him—mind, body, and soul.

  The air burned in his lungs. The metal of his armor seared his flesh. His hammer, on extension of his will, fractured. A thousand splinters of steel scattered into the abyss.

  He had nth left.

  He had no future left.

  This was it.

  “Lyra… I’m sorry.”

  Fmes swallowed him. His vision shattered into nothingness.

  And then—a hand caught him.

  A ripple of blue light split the inferno in two, tearing through the fire like a bde through silk. The heat recoiled, no longer unchallenged. Cedric did not fall. He was held—steady, firm, undeniable.

  “You did well, old man.”

  The voice was calm. Almost amused. But beh it y something far greater—a force of will so overwhelming it made the battlefield itself tremble.

  Cedric forced his failing sight upward. The figure above him was wreathed ihereal frost, his polearm crag with an energy that defied logic itself.

  “Lyra’s eyes were always fixed on you,” the warrior murmured. “Stand proud.”

  Darkness finally cimed Cedric.

  Garrett turned, his greathelm obsg his face, but his presence—his defiance—was impossible to ighe Azeroth Drive hummed against his chest, resonating with something a and unknowable. It was not power. It ermission.The knight raised his sword once more, attempting to cast the spell again. “Ymiris Aeternum” Garrett uttered.

  The battlefield froze. The chill in the surroundings celling out the spell of the knight.Lyra was in awe. “tless casting of a god-tier spell?”

  The ghouls and manticores, once mindless in their sughter, hesitated. As if they, too, had sehe shift.

  The knight who had unleashed the inferno did not falter. Instead, he raised his hand in silent and. The creatures fell back, f a circle around them.

  No magio tricks. No gods or spells to decide their fates.

  Just steel against steel.

  Garrett’s grip tightened. He did not speak. He did not o. He took a single breath and moved.

  His polearm carved through the air with the weight of something unshackled. The knight met him in kind, their bdes g with a force that sent shockwaves across the ruih. The duel was not a da was not precise or practiced. It was raw. Brutal.

  Every strike was a decration.

  Every block, a defiance.

  Garrett was not thinking. For the first time in his life, he was not analyzing or sed-guessing. He was not calg odds, not pnning tingencies. He was ag.Memories flooded his mind as the fight raged oy praises for being “smart.”Gaining friends in school because he’s the guy who “knows everything.”

  Cheg spreadsheets for any errors ia inside his cubicle.Justifying in his head why he shouldn’t ask Mina out.Empty debates on politics, sce, and religion.He had spent the ey of his past life trying to be smart. Trying to be perfect.

  Now, he would simply be.

  Their o once more, but this time, Garrett’s polearm did not falter. He drove forward, uing, his strikes ceaseless as the tide. The knight faltered. Then stumbled. And finally, with a single, devastating blow, Garrett shattered his sword from his grasp.

  The knight fell to one knee.

  The air was deathly silent.

  Garrett loomed over him, his polearm lowered but his presendeniable. He did not gloat. He did not strike the finishing blow.

  He simply said, “Rest now, sir knight.”

  The knight looked up, his hollow gaze flickering with something almost human. And then—he smiled.

  His form dissolved into the wind.

  Nyx perched on Lyra’s shoulder, watg with her luminous, endless eyes. “He was destio be powerless, but he defies it with sheer grit and will.”

  Lyra said nothing. She couldn’t. Her heart pounded, her thoughts tangled in something she could not yet name.

  Nyx leaned closer, her voice a whisper. “He might be the one.”

  The battlefield remaiill, as if the world itself was holding its breath. And then, the cheers began. Quiet at first. Then louder. Until the etlefield roared with the sound of victory.

  Garrett stood alone in the ter of it all. Not as a hero.

  Not as a chosen one.

  But as a man who had, for the first time, finally uood himself.

  And the Azeroth Drive hummed once more, whispering of what was yet to e.