Cade’s fingers scratched against the upturned cobblestone.

  He fought to maintain his balance from the gale of smoke and wind Hugh barraged him with. Every breath was a struggle. His throat was coated with dried blood and dust.

  His eyes ached and stung from the magical onslaught. He tried to send out a flash of fire at his attacker, but it just rebounded back onto him. Cade’s seared forearms and forehead spoke to how successful that route had been.

  “I will rip that power from you, then I will take what is rightfully mine! That Remnant shall be my legacy!” Hugh shouted from somewhere ahead of him.

  But he couldn’t make out his exact location thanks to the pillar of smoke he’d woven about them. Distant screams carried through the street they were on, and Cade could only hope that none of them belonged to his team.

  “It’s time you learned what a true wind mage can do.” Hugh’s voice came from all around him. “I always withheld my best tricks when around you and the others. But given that I’m going to kill you for the trouble you’ve caused me, I will give you one final lesson.”

  It was like Hugh’s entire being was spread evenly throughout the dark tunnel of ash and wind that encompassed Cade.

  “You’ve always fought like a coward, Hugh!” Cade shouted as best he could. “It’s comforting to see that nothing’s changed.”

  The smoke grew darker.

  He felt the winds shift, and he turned to face his opponent, but was too slow. A scarred arm stretched from the smoke behind him, and fingers as strong as iron dug into the soft flesh of his neck.

  “You think I can be baited into a fair fight, boy?” The fingers disappeared, but a fist crunched into his gut the very next moment.

  The first strike landed, and Cade went sprawling across the rough stone.

  “Fair fights are for naive fools who believe in justice and righteousness. There are no! such! things!” Hugh punctuated each final word with another strike.

  Cade dodged and blocked as best he could, but it was like they came from every direction at once.

  “Yes, there are, you miserable old man,” Cade spat as he wiped the blood that dripped from his split lips.

  “Oh, is there now?” Hugh’s thick and muddled accent made his demand sound even more condescending.

  He turned to see the gray-haired bastard step out from the wall of smoke with a raised eyebrow and gaze alight with fury. “Enlighten me, you worthless gutter rat! What justice or righteousness do you fight for?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean those,” Cade took a shuddering breath while his old master tilted his head in disbelief. “I just think that there are some things worth fighting for beyond self-preservation and some twisted sense of legacy.”

  “If you say friendship, I will fucking end you right here—right now,” Hugh shot back.

  “You don’t know me at all, do you?” Cade asked, careful to buy himself some more time to recover.

  He needed to be careful. One small mistake, and he would go up in flames.

  “Don’t know you?” Hugh laughed again.

  This time, it was a bitter bark of a sound, laced with decades of regret and rage.

  “I made you, boy,” Hugh retorted with a pointed finger. “I know you better than you know yourself. I know your every move before you can make it. I know what magic pumps through those veins, and how poorly you wield it. You think that a few hours in the woods can compare to nearly a century of hard-won experience, boy? I’m a fucking silver-ranker! I was old before you were even born, you piss-poor excuse for a core user!”

  Hugh stepped forward.

  It was a single movement, but Cade could feel the predatory glint in his former mentor’s eyes. He knew that look. Death followed in the wake of that merciless gaze. How had he overlooked who this man really was? How had he tolerated this merciless killer for so long?

  He met those eyes, and a cold chill snaked down his spine in spite of his courage. His determination.

  “You may have made me,” Cade finally admitted as his left boot dug into the ground. “But I’ve been reborn.”

  “Noooo,” Hugh drew out the word like it was a lullaby. “You’re still the useless boy with his head stuck in the clouds that I found half-dead over his father’s corpse. You can’t even remember your own dad’s name! No, you haven’t been reborn. You’ve been unmade by the same hand that molded you.”

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  He raised a hand, and Cade’s entire body went rigid.

  “And now I will rip out the one thing that made you even remotely interesting, son of none!” Hugh bellowed across the winds.

  Cade’s magic, now mostly drained from their fight, fought against the foreign influence even though it would’ve been an uphill fight even at full strength. Sure, Cade could feel that his stores of energy far eclipsed Hugh’s even at the same rank, but Hugh was right. His control was on a level he couldn’t begin to scratch.

  The air that had barely begun to ease the aches in his lungs was ripped out of his throat. Cade tried to yell. He tried to send a blast of flames at his executioner, but they sputtered out long before they reached their scarred target.

  The circlet atop Hugh’s brow glowed like a menacing third eye as Cade fell to his knees. His vision blurred. Red splotches gathered at the edge of his existence.

  He looked down.

  There, scratched by the sole of his boot and infused with every ounce of energy he’d been building up, was a single rune.

  Hugh’s foot connected with his chest, and he was shoved back even as more precious air was ripped out of his body. He strained his hand out against the hot cobblestone, but every tiny movement robbed what little remained of his strength.

  Hugh was steadily draining him. Suffocating him. Ending him.

  Cade could feel Death’s approach at the edge of his senses. It was like the ancient god slowly stalked forward, a hunter about to gut its prey.

  His vision went entirely black as Hugh’s steel-toed boot pressed down on his neck. Even through the wild torrent, he heard his old mentor’s final remark.

  “Right where you belong, son of none.” The boot shoved downward, and Cade could feel his spine strain under the incredible and ruthless pressure.

  Cade’s middle finger stretched and finally touched the outermost edge of the rune he’d carved into the street.

  White flames blazed to life and collided with Hugh’s chest. He was a comet as his entire body exploded through the veil of smoke and into a distant brick wall.

  The vortex of death that had shackled Cade to the ground vanished, and he drew in a sharp and hacking breath. He coughed and choked on the sulfurous air, but he didn’t care. He drank in as much as he could. A part of him wished to collapse then and there, but he knew that despite the power he’d invested into that trap, it wouldn’t be enough to kill Hugh, not with the elemental armor he wore.

  Cade rose to his feet, ignoring the dozens of bruises and cuts that screamed at him for making the slightest motion. He stumbled forward, eyes squinting against the thickening smoke. He made it across the crumbling cobblestone street with a slow and shambling gait.

  When he found Hugh, it was beneath a partially collapsed wall. Debris had buried one of his legs, and he was in the middle of extricating the limb when their eyes met.

  “I will end you for this! You are nothing! You are—” Hugh shouted.

  “I’m a Son of Ruin, you ungrateful bastard,” Cade said, cutting him off.

  He sent a scorching blast of wind at the writhing man, but Hugh countered with a blast of his own. Their two magics competed in the air, pressure rising and dropping in rapid and nauseating succession.

  But this time was different.

  Cade poured all of his hatred into his spell. His devastating grief from Hugh’s betrayal beneath Scorn’s temple. His shock at seeing Hugh at the first trial, only to witness the near death of his entire team while Hugh had watched on, antidote already in hand. His outrage at how Hugh had thwarted them again and again—from blacklisting them in every thieving guild to hunting them in the various trials.

  But all of those paled in comparison to the blinding fury he’d felt when he’d returned to his team to find Rayka missing.

  Hugh had used Rayka to get to him. That bastard had tortured her—the man they had both looked up to as a father.

  That pushed him over the edge. The brewing rage building within him reached a crescendo, and it slammed at the withering edges of his self-restraint again and again, with more ferocity each and every time.

  “Goodbye, Hugh.”

  And with those words, Cade let go of his control.

  Destruction magic coursed unabated through his veins. They seared new pathways down his flesh as it fought to escape his core. Pain cut through every inch of his body, but he let it happen.

  He welcomed the pain. For with it came the certainty that his sister’s tormentor and his team’s greatest threat would be gone forever.

  It didn’t matter that he might die, too.

  Hugh's scream pierced the air as his wind barrier shattered like glass, the sound a mixture of rage and disbelief. The wind-elemental, once a formidable force, let out a final, piercing shriek of defiance before succumbing to Cade’s relentless assault. Hugh’s body, no longer protected, became a target for the very destruction he had sown.

  Countless shards of debris, propelled by Cade’s magic, tore into Hugh’s skin. Each impact was a testament to the years of pain and manipulation Cade had endured, each wound a severing of the ties that had bound him to his former mentor.

  Cade continued to pour his magic out, a torrent of power that threatened to consume him the same way it was consuming Hugh. He felt the damage spreading within himself, his body straining under the weight of his own unleashed potential. But he couldn't stop—wouldn’t stop—until the job was done.

  He watched, unflinching, as the light in Hugh’s eyes flickered and faded. That gaze, once filled with cruel ambition and the power to decimate Cade's world, dimmed into nothingness. Death had come at last, not from Hugh’s doing, but as the consequence of Cade's own choices and actions.

  As Hugh’s lifeless body crumpled to the ground, Cade felt a shift within himself. This wasn’t just the end of Hugh—it was also the death of the person Cade had been under Hugh's influence.

  Good riddance.

  With each labored breath, he felt himself being reforged, no longer an apprentice or a pawn, but a force to be reckoned with in his own right.

  As the dust settled and the echoes of battle faded, Cade straightened his shoulders. The world was changing, and he had claimed his place in it—not as Hugh’s shadow, but as a fighter of his own making.

  The city burned around him, gods battled overhead, but in that moment, Cade stood at the center of his own universe. He had chosen his path, carved out his identity with magic and will. The road ahead was uncertain, fraught with challenges he could scarcely imagine, but for the first time, it was truly his own.

  Exhausted, broken, and drained, Cade collapsed to the ground. Though countless fires bloomed around the city, his vision darkened until all he could see were the few untouched polished stones that caught his fall. His eyes slowly closed, and as the darkness took him, he smiled.

  At least his team would live.

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