Kaiser’s grin widened, his fingers tightening around the hilt of his blazing sword. "Ivan," he said, never taking his eyes off the Maestro. "Go."

  Ivan, still sprawled on the ground from the last shockwave, looked up in disbelief. "What?"

  "The Drillex," Kaiser clarified. "Our mission is done."

  Ivan furrowed his brows, glancing back at the lone, untouched cage behind them. "Kaiser, there’s still—"

  "I’ll see what’s inside," Kaiser interrupted, rolling his shoulders, "After I smear the walls with this weirdo’s insides."

  Maestro let out a soft chuckle, adjusting the golden violin resting against his shoulder. "Weirdo, is it?"

  Kaiser took a slow step forward, flames licking up his sword as the heat distorted the air. "I didn’t catch your name."

  Maestro sighed. "I introduced myself already." He gave a small, almost theatrical wave of his hand. "I would appreciate it if you called me by it."

  Kaiser snorted. "I only remember people who are worthy of the honor." His smirk sharpened, eyes glinting with something dangerous. "But if you’re the man I think you are…" His grip on his sword tightened. "Then I’ll remember you, at least for a while."

  Maestro paused. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, he bowed again. "It will be my highest honor to play for the Great Eternal Flame, tonight."

  As soon as he straightened, Kaiser shifted, signaling the start of another battle.

  Maestro’s bow moved before Kaiser could even blink, unleashing dozens of golden arrows that burst from the empty air in front of him, their brilliance blinding. Kaiser reacted instinctively, twisting his body to evade the first arrow, then the second. He spun sharply, dropping into a backward roll, and flickering his sword to deflect another.

  The sheer precision of Maestro’s attack was staggering. The arrows didn’t just fire in a single volley, they curved, they adjusted, they aimed for the future positions of Kaiser’s movements. Kaiser's mind raced as he realized this wasn't just magic, but pure music. Each note dictated motion, each stroke of the bow summoned death, and Maestro, this masked bastard, was playing him like a fiddle.

  Ivan was already sprinting toward the hall as he barely managed to dive out before another wave of golden arrows rained down.

  Kaiser grinned, relieved to see Ivan reach safety, until a sudden, searing agony ripped through him. An arrow struck his chest with the force of a ballista, hurling him through the hall and slamming him into the wall, stone cracking on impact. His vision blurred, his ears rang and his body screamed, until he saw his left arm. Not just severed, but obliterated. Blown away at the shoulder.

  What remained of his arm was pinned against the far wall by another glowing, burning arrow, and for a moment, Kaiser simply stared, then let out a long, guttural laugh, wheezing as he leaned slightly forward, grinning through the pain with ragged breath while the arrow still pinned him to the wall. "Holy shit, you actually got me!"

  Maestro took a graceful step forward, the bow still poised against his violin. "I would be ashamed if I hadn't."

  Kaiser coughed, blood dripping from his lips. He tilted his head back against the wall, eyes gleaming with exhilaration. "Alright," he muttered, cracking his neck.

  "KAISER!" Milo whirled around, eyes frantically locking onto the man still pinned to the wall—a man who, by all logic, should have been writhing in agony, should have been panicking, yet wasn’t listening or even looking at him. Milo’s heart slammed against his ribs. "Kaiser, we need to leave!" But Kaiser couldn’t focus on Milo, because at that very moment, another barrage of golden arrows shot toward him.

  A sea of radiant light rushed down the corridor like a perfect storm of death, yet Kaiser didn’t flinch. The wound where his arm had been was already closing, the muscles in his shoulder twitching as his fingers dug into the arrow pinning him to the wall.

  A grin split across his face as he crushed it, shattering the golden arrow like glass and scattering burning fragments across the room. The moment he fell forward, slamming into the ground, he rolled to the side, narrowly dodging the second volley.

  A shockwave of golden explosions erupted behind him, ripping through stone, fire, and air. The moment he landed, he snapped his gaze toward Milo. "You’re yelling a lot," Kaiser muttered, flexing his regrown arm. "What’s got you so—"

  Milo grabbed him by the collar, dragging him up. "THE KINGS-FUCKING-GUARD, YOU PSYCHOPATH!"

  Kaiser’s grin didn’t fade. "...And?"

  Milo’s eye twitched. "Are you actually insane?"

  Kaiser shrugged. "I wouldn’t describe myself with that word."

  "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT MEANS THAT A KINGSGUARD IS ON THEIR WAY?!" Milo gestured wildly toward the corridor, toward the carnage, toward the hundreds of bodies littering the floors. "WE JUST WIPED OVER A HUNDRED PEOPLE KAISER! THIS—THIS WAS A SECRET OPERATION!"

  Kaiser dusted himself off, rolling his shoulders. "I think that ship sailed when you started butchering them in the halls, Milo."

  "OH, FUCK OFF."

  Milo’s hands trembled, an unsettling sight, given that Milo never trembled. His voice was tight, barely controlled. "If a Kingsguard is coming, that means we have minutes, no, maybe seconds before we’re face-to-face with someone who makes the entire Right Fist look like common peasants."

  Kaiser tilted his head as if considering, then, with unsettling calm, said, "...I wanna see them…" sending Milo into a rage as he snapped, "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMNED MIND?!"

  Before Kaiser could respond, another sharp note cut through the air, making Milo’s gut twist.

  "Ah," the masked figure said, voice amused. "Looks like the night is getting even more interesting." He traced his bow along the violin’s edge, producing a slow, haunting melody. "But before you concern yourselves with the Kingsguard…"

  The ground trembled beneath their feet and the air turned thick and suffocating. "...You still have a dance partner."

  Milo ignored Maestro, and went past Kaiser, towards the drillex. “You can die by yourself, you lunatic, but don’t forget I tried to warn you.” Without a single word, without hesitation, without so much as looking back, Milo became the wind.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  His body dissolved into a rushing gust, an unseen force streaking through the hall with a howling roar. Dust and blood sprayed from the ground as his form shot forward, past Kaiser, past the corpses littering the floor, past the bodies still twitching from his blade. He didn't spare a second to glance at the battle behind him, didn't even turn to see if Kaiser followed. He only knew one thing.

  If they didn’t leave right now, they were all going to die.

  But Kaiser had no such sense of urgency.

  Still grinning, he rolled his shoulders, feeling the satisfying pop of his freshly regenerated arm settling into place. His chest, where the golden arrow had blown him apart moments ago, was still tender, but the pain was already fading. His body had long since become accustomed to being torn apart, stabbed, broken, and burned. Pain was just another part of the dance and right now, he was enjoying the music.

  The Maestro stood before him, bow still poised in mid-air, the violin at his shoulder vibrating with unseen energy. His masked face was unreadable, but something about his posture told Kaiser that this man wasn’t in a rush to end the fight.

  ‘Good.’

  That made two of them.

  Then, something happened. At first, it was barely noticeable, a faint vibration that tingled against the skin. But in an instant, it erupted. The ground beneath Kaiser’s feet cracked as a wave of golden energy burst from the Maestro’s violin, streaking through the air in the form of blazing, ethereal arrows. They came at him from every angle, twisting and curving mid-flight like they had minds of their own. Each one sang, their deadly song filling the air with a chorus of vibrating strings.

  Kaiser moved the second he saw them. He twisted his body at the last second, dodging one arrow by a hair’s breadth, then another, his instincts carrying him through the deadly barrage with inhuman speed. He weaved between the attacks like a ghost, his movements fluid, effortless and beautiful.

  But there were far too many of them. A golden arrow slammed into his chest like a war hammer, sending him hurtling through the air and into the hallway once again. The impact shattered the stone behind him, tore his left arm clean off. His body crumpled to the ground, smoke rising from the seared flesh where the arrow had struck.

  For a moment, the only sound was the crackling embers of the arrow still embedded in his chest, but soon after came a deep, rich, unhinged laughter. Kaiser pushed himself up, his body shaking from the force of his own amusement rather than pain. His head tilted back, and he laughed so hard that his shoulders trembled, blood dripping from his lips as he wiped his mouth with his remaining hand.

  "Oh-ho-ho…" His voice came out between chuckles, rough but filled with exhilaration. "I like this one…" With a flex of his muscles, his severed limb grew back in an instant, the skin knitting itself together with unnatural ease. He reached up, ripped the still-burning arrow from his chest, and tossed it aside.

  "That’s twice you’ve managed to land a hit on me," he said, rolling his shoulders as if testing his newly restored arm. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

  The Maestro remained still, watching. His mask betrayed no reaction, but there was a subtle shift in the air, an awareness that this thing standing before him was not normal, but he already knew that, ohhhh he knew that better than anyone.

  The moment Kaiser took a step forward, the heat in the room surged. The air itself seemed to boil around him, distorting the space between them like a mirage in the middle of a sun-scorched wasteland. The sword in his grip pulsed as it was alive, hungry, exuding a crimson glow that flickered and danced like living fire.

  And yet, despite the suffocating intensity, Maestro did not move. He remained poised, violin at his shoulder, bow at the ready. But something was different.

  The masked man’s aura, once immense, had dimmed. There was no longer the crushing weight of his presence, no longer the feeling that the air itself was being twisted into sound around him. At the start of the battle, Maestro had been like a storm, a grand conductor leading an orchestra of destruction. Now? Now he was just a man with an instrument.

  Kaiser smirked. “So,” he mused, letting his blade rest on his shoulder, the metal scorching the fabric of his coat. “Looks like you aren’t what you just used to be, Maestro.”

  Maestro did not respond at the obvious deduction, making Kaiser’s smirk widened. He’d fought enough bastards in his life to recognize when someone lost their edge. The violinist had started this fight brimming with power, launching those golden arrows like they were an extension of his own will. They had burned, they had sliced, they had blasted him apart, but now? They lacked their former fury.

  And Kaiser couldn’t help but wonder… Why?

  At the start of the battle, the entire Right Fist had been here. The enemy gang members had crowded the halls, filling the halls completely. Even Milo had been watching. All of them had heard him play.

  But now, there was no one left.

  Milo had fled the moment the Kingsguard was mentioned, and the Right Fist members all retreated the second he was out of sight. The only ones remaining were him and Maestro. And yet… something felt different.

  Was it the silence? The way the sound of the halls had just… vanished, leaving only the sound of his their own dance? Or was it the people? The way they’d all disappeared, maybe it was the sound they were producing? Did Maestro need them, their attention or their sounds to keep his power alive?

  Kaiser didn’t know. But he could see it in the way Maestro gripped his bow, the slight stiffness in his stance, that he was getting nervous. And now, Kaiser was going to tear him apart.

  "Well, come on then," he taunted, tapping the blade against the ground. The floor hissed and blackened where it touched. "Play me another song."

  Maestro did exactly that. His bow slashed across the strings in a vicious arc, and a single, sharp note rang through the air. A golden crescent of energy tore toward Kaiser, rippling like a wave of molten light.

  But Kaiser was already gone. He had already lunged forward, the floor cracking beneath his feet as he shot toward Maestro like a human meteor. The golden crescent barely grazed him, singing past his cheek, but Kaiser barely reacted.

  His sword swung, and the flames trailing the blade exploded outward in a wild arc, a violent inferno roaring to life. The walls screamed as they melted, silver and stone alike turning into bubbling, molten slag in an instant. Maestro leapt back, bow racing across the strings in a desperate counterattack. Another volley of arrows erupted from the violin, dozens of golden streaks burning through the air.

  Kaiser laughed, neither dodging nor retreating, but swinging with a ferocity that made the blade howl as its power erupted in an unrelenting, fiery storm, the arrows disintegrating in mid-air before they even neared him, consumed by the searing heat radiating from his weapon.

  Maestro’s masked face snapped up, his body flinching ever so slightly.

  It was obvious he hadn't expected that, and Kaiser saw it. He saw the hesitation, the flicker of doubt, the realization that whatever power he once held wasn’t enough anymore.

  "Too slow, Maestro."

  And then he was on him. The violinist barely managed to twist away as Kaiser’s sword came down, the ground beneath them shattering from the sheer force of the strike, embers swallowing the space where Maestro had stood only seconds ago.

  But Kaiser didn’t stop. He was a storm. A relentless, flaming tempest. Every motion was a deadly dance: step, swing, strike, step, swing, strike. He didn’t give Maestro a single moment to recover. And with each clash, with each desperate note Maestro played, his attacks became weaker.

  Kaiser could feel it, the intensity building within him as his flames scorched hotter, his strikes growing heavier with every swing. Maestro, once unyielding, was starting to buckle under the relentless pressure. Then, it something changed. Maestro played another note, another golden arrow forming in the air, but for the briefest moment, the glow dimmed and the magic wavered. That split second of weakness was all Kaiser needed. With a savage roar, he lunged, the air itself screaming as he closed the distance.

  Maestro’s bow barely had time to move before Kaiser’s burning fist slammed into his chest. The force of the impact sent the violinist flying backward, crashing through the melted remains of the wall, but Kaiser was far from satisfied. He stepped forward, swinging his sword again, this time aiming to end it.

  Maestro barely had time to react. In the blink of an eye, he turned into a flicker of movement as his violin sang its final note. His body twisted, phasing through the air where Kaiser’s flames had just surged, vanishing like a mirage before he landed, sliding across the shattered stone with ragged breaths. Kaiser tilted his head, observing the shift in Maestro’s demeanor. For the first time since their battle began, Maestro stood differently. He was tense, the grip on his violin tight, his head slightly bowed and the dark holes in his mask fixed on Kaiser’s sword.

  And that’s when it clicked.

  Maestro was scared.

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