The weight of a presence that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Silent. Absolute. Uninvited.

  Lucien didn’t react immediately. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, catching the figure in his periphery.

  A man cd in a pgue doctor’s attire, the crow-like mask sharp and smooth, the lenses of his goggles glowing an eerie green, pulsing faintly like something alive. A wide-brimmed hat sat atop his head, casting half his figure in shadow, and a long, bck trench coat draped over his seated form, motionless, as if he had been there all along.

  The train carried on.

  The silence between them thickened.

  Lucien let the moment stretch, watching the steam roll past the shattered skyline, waiting for the first word to be spoken.

  It didn’t come.

  So, he smirked beneath his mask.

  “Well, go on then. Say something cryptic. I know you’re dying to.”

  Vaelle turned his head slightly, the glow of his lenses shifting as if studying Lucien, peeling him apart yer by yer. Then, in a voice like a man speaking through the echo of a grave, he finally responded.

  “Did you know a dead man is heavier than a living one?”

  Lucien huffed a quiet ugh. “Is that so?”

  Vaelle nodded slowly.

  “Yes. Because a man with breath carries only the weight of his sins. But a dead man… carries the weight of his eternity.”

  Lucien clicked his tongue, unimpressed. “That’s cute.”

  “Do you ever think about it?” Vaelle’s tone remained unreadable. “The weight of eternity? Of chaos, of destruction, of peace?”

  Lucien leaned his head back against the window. “I try not to think at all, really. Thinking leads to questions. Questions lead to headaches. Fuck it.”

  Vaelle let out a quiet chuckle, though there was no humor in it.

  “So you’re still the same. Still drifting. Still pretending you’re not a force of nature waiting to be unshackled.”

  Lucien turned his head slightly. “And you’re still talking like an executioner with a poetry addiction. Doesn’t it get boring?”

  Vaelle reached into his coat.

  Lucien’s gaze flickered down, but he didn’t move.

  From the folds of dark fabric, Vaelle withdrew something round and damp, still leaking. He lifted it up, holding it between gloved fingers.

  A severed head.

  The face was twisted in a permanent snarl, the mouth frozen mid-curse, the eyes gouged out, bck veins spider webbing across the pale skin. A witch’s head.

  “She called herself Laeyrinna the Hollow’s Eve, a daughter of the old covens. She thought she could bend the blood of nuns from a church, make her own throne from their bodies. She did not see the bde that came for her.”

  Lucien exhaled. “You lot always did enjoy the theatrics.”

  Vaelle studied the head for a moment, then, without warning, crushed it in his hand. Bone cracked, flesh colpsed, a wet sptter of darkened blood staining his gloves.

  Lucien didn’t bat an eye.

  Vaelle wiped his hand off with a cloth, tossing the remains aside. “And yet, you still breathe. Alive..”

  Lucien scoffed, rubbing his temple. “I noticed.”

  “The Inquisition. The Bck Chapel. They all still want your head.”

  Lucien sighed dramatically. “Yes, thank you, I’m well aware. Been told that a hundred times.”

  Vaelle leaned forward slightly, fingers interlocked. “The Bck Chapel never forgets its own.”

  Lucien’s voice dropped into something sharper. “I was never theirs…after a while. Getting bossed around, and all this other shit..don’t you get tired of it?”

  Vaelle let the silence stretch, then murmured:

  “We are the unseen dagger. The silent sentence. The execution without a jury.”

  Lucien’s grin sharpened. “We are the noose that tightens. The shadow in the corner of your eye. The st breath before the throat is cut.”

  A quiet pause.

  The train carried on.

  The tension between them thickened, pressing against the air, stretching unbearably—

  Then, without warning—they vanished.

  A blur of motion. A crack of impact.

  Torch yelped, thrown into the air, eyes wide as he spun weightlessly for a moment.

  Lucien and Vaelle collided.

  Vaelle’s scythe roared to life, its bde glowing a sickly green, dripping with a slow, viscous poison that hissed as it made contact with the air. Lucien caught it barehanded, stopping the strike mid-swing.

  The force of the impact was monstrous.

  The train windows exploded outward, gss scattering into the storming wind. Half the train’s interior colpsed inward, metal twisting like paper beneath the raw pressure of their csh.

  Vaelle’s eyes burned behind his mask, his voice no longer dry, no longer measured. Now, it was alight with something wild, something hungry.

  “There it is. There’s the strength I’ve been waiting for!”

  Lucien grinned, his fingers tightening around the bde.

  Vaelle tilted his head, excitement thrumming in his voice. “You are still my greatest rival, Lucien. The only one in the Bck Chapel who can match me! What’s this? Our 55th fight?! And still no winner?!”

  Lucien scoffed. “I’m not with you bastards anymore. And yeah, this will be our 55th, and of course no winner, none of us can die that easily.”

  “You were always restless, weren’t you? Always wanting to do your own thing. But tell me, Lucien—what is it that you truly seek?”

  Lucien didn’t answer.

  ‘Do I really know…?’

  The train groaned beneath them, still moving, still hurtling through the night—

  And the battle had only just begun.

  The storming sky blurred past in a streak of iron and moonlight, the thunderous roar of steel wheels carving through the tracks beneath them. The train lurched, shuddering from the raw force of the battle tearing through its walls, metal screaming in protest as two unstoppable forces cshed in a whirlwind of ferocity and precision.

  Vaelle struck first, lunging like a wraith, his pgue doctor’s mask gleaming under the flickering cabin lights. His scythe arced through the air, trailing a toxic green mist, its bde shifting between solid and spectral, warping between dimensions like a mirage of death. Lucien vaulted backward, boots skidding across the polished floor as the scythe sliced the air where his ribs had been seconds before, leaving a gash in reality itself.

  Lucien retaliated instantly, his golden revolver fshing as he fired a point-bnk shot. The bullet ignited the air, spiraling with bck and red alchemic energy, but Vaelle twisted midair, his coat snapping like a whip, the bullet grazing past him as he somersaulted off a handrail and rebounded from the ceiling with impossible agility. He came down like a falling guillotine, scythe fshing in a blur—

  Lucien caught it with his bare hands.

  The bde should have split him apart. Instead, red fmes exploded from his palms, racing along the weapon’s length, turning it into molten metal in seconds. Vaelle didn’t hesitate—his body disintegrated into smoke, slipping through Lucien’s grip like an illusion before materializing behind him, already mid-strike.

  Lucien barely twisted in time, parrying with his revolver, the gun’s reinforced barrel colliding with the scythe’s poisoned edge, sending sparks cascading across the cabin. The train groaned violently, windows shattering from the pressure as the sheer force of their attacks warped the very air around them.

  Then Vaelle moved.

  His scythe spun like a clockwork executioner’s axe, sweeping in a rapid, intricate sequence of cut-thrust-twist-ssh, his every motion fluid and mercilessly precise. Lucien dodged and countered in kind, his fists detonating with each impact, the red energy bursting from his strikes carving through steel walls like butter.

  A half-second opening—Vaelle seized it.

  He smmed his knee into Lucien’s ribs, sending him rocketing through a metal door, shattering it in a fiery explosion of torn steel and embers. Lucien skidded across the next train car, rolling into a crouch just as Vaelle emerged through the smoke, his scythe now split into two curved bdes, dripping with corrosive, seething emerald venom.

  Lucien vaulted off the floor, spinning mid-air, his heel crashing down like a meteor, red energy fring outward in a concussive shockwave. Vaelle caught the strike on his crossed bdes, but the force sent him skidding backward, his boots tearing trenches into the iron flooring.

  Lucien charged, closing the gap instantly, throwing a barrage of feral, explosive punches. His fists connected with the air like cannon fire, and for every blow Vaelle parried, another slipped through—shattering ribs, crushing bone, igniting flesh. But Vaelle was unrelenting, countering with blindingly fast retaliations, his bdes carving precise, poisoned cerations into Lucien’s arms and torso, the toxins sizzling on contact.

  Their wounds healed almost instantly, flesh reknitting, but the agony was constant, endless.

  Vaelle ducked low, pivoting on one foot, his coat billowing like a phantom’s shroud as he sshed upward. His twin bdes screamed through the air, Lucien bent backward, nearly horizontal, dodging by the width of a breath before snapping forward with a brutal headbutt, sending Vaelle crashing through the train’s ceiling—

  Lucien pursued instantly, unching himself through the wreckage, the two of them now brawling atop the roaring train, the wind howling as they exchanged an unrelenting hurricane of attacks.

  Vaelle moved with inhuman elegance, his form shifting between solid and ethereal, his poisoned bdes extending and retracting like they had a life of their own. He vaulted over Lucien’s sweep kick, nded on his hands, and used the momentum to twist his entire body into a spinning aerial ssh—

  Lucien caught his leg mid-spin, smmed him down, and fired his revolver directly against Vaelle’s mask.

  The bullet detonated in an eruption of red lightning and bck fire, tearing the air apart—but Vaelle’s form shattered into smoke, reappearing behind Lucien in a blur of movement, his scythe reforming into a massive give, already mid-strike.

  Lucien barely spun to block, his forearm erupting in red energy, catching the bde as it sank halfway into his bone. He snarled through the pain, his other hand igniting as he punched Vaelle point-bnk in the ribs, sending him hurtling down the length of the train like a meteor.

  Vaelle caught himself st second, using his give to impale the roof, stopping his momentum. He wrenched it free, spun it like a bded hurricane, and then—

  He disappeared.

  Lucien’s instincts screamed. He dove to the side, narrowly avoiding a bck spike of pure venom that erupted from where he had been standing. More spikes followed, piercing through the train like spears, the poison sizzling as it melted through iron like acid through paper.

  Lucien somersaulted through the chaos, dodging, twisting, vaulting, his every movement an intricate counter to the ever-shifting battlefield. Then he saw it—Vaelle moving through the poison, his form flickering between solid and liquid, his very existence flowing like a specter through his own attacks.

  Lucien grinned.

  He could py that game too.

  He pnted his hand on the train’s roof, red energy igniting along the entire surface. In an instant, the entire train became his weapon.

  Vaelle lunged—but the train itself roared to life, fmes surging from every panel, twisting and morphing into whip-like tendrils of molten iron. The metal coiled, surged, and smmed into Vaelle with the force of an explosion, unching him skyward.

  Lucien pursued in an instant, spinning through the air, meeting Vaelle mid-fall with an earth-shattering punch, his fist detonating against Vaelle’s ribs, sending him hurtling back down like a meteorite.

  They crashed through the train’s roof, smashing through multiple cabins, tearing through iron walls and gss windows, smming through seats, doors, and cargo like wrecking balls.

  And then—

  The train hit a sharp turn.

  The momentum ripped them from the wreckage, hurling them out of the train, into the abyss of the storming night.

  Lucien twisted midair, Vaelle already snapping his weapons back into pce, the two of them falling, spinning, closing the gap for one final strike—

  ___________________________________________

  The Infernal Coliseum roared with life, its towering iron-and-brass walls vibrating from the sheer force of thousands of voices. Gas mps flickered from massive wrought-iron fixtures, casting the oval racetrack in an eerie golden glow. Steam hissed from underground vents, the scent of burning oil and damp metal thick in the air. This was the heart of Drakhelm’s underground thrill—

  The Iron Stampede.

  A death-defying, wless race where only the most daring—or most suicidal—competed. Riders atop steel horses, machines of polished brass and alchemic engines, lined up at the starting ptform. Each mechanical steed was a masterpiece of raw power and reckless innovation, their limbs sculpted to resemble horse-like frames, their internal furnaces roaring with untamed energy. Smoke curled from their exhaust ports, and their metallic hooves sparked against the cobblestone as they pawed at the ground in restless anticipation.

  The grandstands, packed with aristocrats, crime lords, merchants, and drunkards, buzzed with chaotic energy.

  “Fifty sovereigns on Red Gale!” a man in a plumed hat bellowed, smming his bet onto a wrought-iron counter, where bookkeepers scribbled numbers with lightning-fast precision.

  “You’re mad! The Hellfire Mare’s gonna take this one!” a woman in an extravagant scarlet corset argued, pointing down at the track, where a sleek bck steel horse, etched with hellish engravings, snorted out a burst of crimson steam.

  Closer to the pit, mechanics and alchemists scrambled around the competitors, making st-minute calibrations to their arcane-fueled engines. Sparks showered as one of them wrenched a valve open, checking the pressure in the core of a massive, six-legged steed nicknamed Iron Revenant.

  “Oi! Your stabilizer’s acting up! If it overheats again, you’ll be scrap by the second p!” one of the pit workers warned.

  The racer, a tattooed brute with alchemic circuits burned into his skin, spat onto the track. “That’s the point.”

  Up in the VIP booths, nobles clinked their gold-rimmed gsses, indulging in bck honey wine and pcing outrageous wagers. One of them, a lord draped in gilded furs, smirked as he leaned over to his Inquisition bodyguard.

  “I hear three of the riders are exiled Purge-worshippers. This should be quite the show.”

  His guard merely grunted, arms crossed.

  A mechanical whistle screeched, signaling the final countdown.

  Ten. The horses reared, their engines howling.

  Nine. The crowd leaned forward, anticipation thick in the air.

  Eight. Riders adjusted their goggles, gripping their reins with white-knuckled determination.

  Seven. The starting pistons engaged, gears clicking into pce.

  Six. The announcer’s voice rang out, reverberating through the coliseum.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s IRON STAMPEDE!”

  Five. The racers lowered their torsos, bodies aligned with their machines.

  Four. The front gates unlocked, mechanisms whirring.

  Three. The audience held their breath.

  Two. The world froze.

  One.

  The gunshot cracked through the night.

  A deafening explosion of motion followed.

  The steel horses tore forward, kicking up sparks and dust as they shot down the track in a blur of molten brass and crimson fire. Exhaust trails billowed behind them, some leaving streaks of white-hot psma, others sparks of alchemic blue.

  The first turn came in fast—far too fast for the untrained. The leading racer, Hellfire Mare’s rider, yanked hard on the reins, forcing his steed into a near-impossible sideways drift, its hooves grinding against the stone, sending a hailstorm of molten debris into the air.

  Behind him, Iron Revenant surged forward, its hydraulic limbs extending, vaulting over the competitors ahead like a lunging predator.

  A lesser racer hesitated. A mistake.

  The moment’s hesitation allowed Red Gale to intercept, its rider twisting the reins, sending a controlled burst of fire from the horse’s exhaust, scorching the nearest opponent’s machine in an instant.

  The poor fool’s steel horse colpsed mid-stride, its internal mechanisms melting into sg, and the crowd erupted in cheers and screams.

  “That bastard just torched Bck Vulture!”

  “This is madness!”

  “This is BLOODY BRILLIANT!”

  The racers entered the second p, the gaps between them narrowing, their steel titans cshing against one another, hooves sparking violently as they jostled for position. Two racers locked arms, grappling atop their mounts in a desperate bid to throw the other off—

  Then someone screamed.

  A new kind of scream.

  “LOOK! UP THERE!”

  Heads snapped toward the sky.

  Two figures were plummeting from the heavens, their bodies silhouettes against the coliseum lights. The sight alone sent a ripple of panic through the audience, but the terror magnified when they realized—

  They weren’t just falling.

  They were fighting.

  Lucien and Vaelle collided mid-air, fists shattering the wind itself, their forms wreathed in crimson fire and poisonous mist. Their impact sent sonic booms rolling across the city, the shockwaves rattling the entire coliseum.

  “By the gods…” someone whispered.

  Then—

  THOOOOM.

  The ground split open upon impact.

  A fiery explosion engulfed the racetrack, debris and fming embers raining down like a meteor storm. The shockwave sent racers spiraling out of control, their mechanical steeds toppling like dominos, some erupting into fmes, others crashing through the barricades.

  The audience erupted into chaos.

  Some screamed and ran, pushing past each other in a desperate bid for safety. Others, too entranced by the spectacle, merely stood frozen, eyes locked on the smoldering crater.

  The dust began to settle.

  And through the rising veil of smoke—two figures remained.

  Lucien’s hand was buried through Vaelle’s chest, fingers clutching his still-beating heart, red energy crackling violently.

  Vaelle’s scythe was buried through Lucien’s face, its poisoned edge lodged deep into his skull, venom sizzling against his flesh.

  Neither moved.

  Neither fell.

  And then—they began to regenerate.

  Slowly. Horrifically. Their wounds mended before the crowd’s very eyes.

  “They’re still alive…”

  The words spread like wildfire. Some watched in awe, mesmerized. Others saw monsters where men should have been, their fear turning to sheer panic.

  And panic was contagious.

  A single bolt of gunfire rang out—then more.

  The first shot came from a terrified guard. More followed.

  The crowd erupted in chaos.

  Lucien, ignoring the turmoil, slowly pulled his head free from the scythe, his skull snapping back into pce, bones knitting as if he had never been wounded at all. He spat out blood, rolling his neck with a zy grin.

  Vaelle exhaled, yanking Lucien’s hand from his chest, the hole closing before the final drop of blood could even hit the ground.

  They locked eyes.

  Vaelle chuckled, flexing his fingers. “This…” He inhaled sharply, his voice thrumming with exhiration. “This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  Lucien scowled. “Are you just gonna follow me around forever, popping up out of nowhere?”

  Vaelle tilted his head, his glowing lenses flickering. “Some things never change, rival.”

  Lucien groaned.

  And then—they cshed again.

  What had once been a grand arena of spectacle and chaos was now nothing more than a shattered battlefield, a monument to destruction left in the wake of two unrelenting forces. The racetrack was torn apart, great fissures splitting through the stone where fists had nded, where bodies had crashed. Molten steel horses burned in twisted heaps, their riders either unconscious or long gone. The remaining spectators stood on the fringes of devastation, too afraid to move, too enthralled to look away.

  And at the center of it all—Lucien and Vaelle.

  Both men stood bloodied but unbowed, steam rising from their regenerating wounds.

  Vaelle took a slow breath, rolling his shoulders, stretching out the tension in his limbs. Then, he exhaled.

  His body rexed. His stance settled.

  The fire was gone.

  The thrill was gone.

  Lucien watched as the shift in Vaelle’s presence became palpable. There was no exhiration now, no lingering echoes of battle’s high. No sly remarks, no amusement. Just calm. Just normal.

  That contrast—it never got old.

  Vaelle adjusted his coat, rolling his sore wrist. His voice, level and controlled, broke the silence.

  “You’re still hard to kill.”

  Lucien, still catching his breath, gave a slow nod. “So are you.”

  They stood there for a moment, the smoke curling around them, the distant shouts of frantic civilians fading into irrelevance. The blood between them was already gone, their bodies mending, erasing all evidence of what had just happened—except for the wreckage around them.

  Lucien exhaled, dragging a hand through his tangled, blood-matted hair.

  “Guess nothing’s changed,” he muttered.

  Vaelle’s head tilted slightly. “Not much.”

  There was a long silence.

  Lucien’s gaze flicked up. “It’s strange,” he said after a pause. “When we fight, you act like it’s the best thing in the world. Then it’s over, and you act like it never happened.”

  Vaelle’s expression didn’t shift. “That’s how it is.”

  Lucien studied him for a moment, then let out a tired scoff. “Yeah. It is.”

  Vaelle turned away.

  “We both grew up in the shadows of the Exarch,” he murmured, adjusting the high colr of his coat. “Trained directly under him.”

  Lucien felt something twist in his gut at those words.

  “We were supposed to be his greatest,” Vaelle continued, his voice as steady as ever. “And here we are. Both alive. Both trying to kill each other.”

  Lucien looked down at his hands, flexing them, feeling the faint echoes of battle still burning under his skin. He let out a slow breath. “I guess we both failed.”

  Vaelle was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “Not yet.”

  With that, he turned, stepping over the wreckage, walking away with measured, deliberate steps.

  “I’ll see you again, Bloodhound,” he said over his shoulder. “And we’ll do this again.”

  Lucien exhaled. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I know.”

  Then—a familiar weight on his shoulder.

  Lucien stiffened.

  Torch, his ever-present bck cat with burning golden eyes, had reappeared, tail flicking zily.

  Lucien narrowed his eyes, grabbed the cat by the scruff of his neck—

  And threw him.

  Torch twisted mid-air, nding with perfect grace on a broken crate a few feet away.

  A second ter, he was back on Lucien’s shoulder.

  Lucien sighed, rubbing his temple.

  “…Of course.”