While the Group’s confrontation and duel raged on the East Side of Royal City, Rogue and Loyalist currently occupy the West tropical forest. They are sitting among the thick, sprawling roots of a colossal ancient tree, resting. The forest is, as usual, deeply muddy and swarming with the hum of nocturnal insects.
Rogue does not care about the mud; his heavy boots are firmly planted in the muck. Loyalist, however, has his legs delicately scooched over the dry roots and is meticulously wiping his black leather shoes with a pristine napkin.
Rogue wears practical clothing—a simple tee and tactical pants—viewing his attire merely as a utility. But for Loyalist, his tailored breast-jacket, crisp shirt, and polished shoes are a deliberate choice of appearance meant to project absolute control to the world. Therefore, he is deeply concerned that his footwear has touched the filthy mud. The tree they are sitting beneath is massive enough that a fully grown Wyvern could comfortably nest at its peak, with a trunk thick enough to house an entire pride of lions. Unlike the East Side forest of Royal City, harsh shafts of sunlight manage to violently pierce the thick canopy here.
These two are the absolute antithesis of one another, much like every member of Chaos‘s inner circle. Rogue is pure, unfiltered brute force; Loyalist is calculated, algorithmic planning. The only reason they have survived this long together—and aren’t currently ripping each other apart—is a perfect, ego-less dynamic: Loyalist thinks of the path, and then allows Rogue to lead the physical charge without ever interfering in how he leads, be it in a fight or otherwise. Rogue respects Loyalist because his calm, logical plans ensure that they both stay alive.
“How many days do we have to waste?” Rogue asks frustratingly. “Can’t we just directly go through Royal City? Why do we have to take the long way? After all, Chaos told us to handle the Necromancer.”
Loyalist pauses his wiping, letting out a heavy sigh. “We can’t enter Royal City. Taglia is currently there… it will be an unnecessary hassle.”
Rogue stops his impatient glaring at the jungle and turns to him. “Hassle… that means if push comes to shove, you can take him?” There is a distinct, hungry challenge in his voice.
Loyalist smirks slightly, keeping his eyes locked on his shoe. “Time is my domain. He is just a mighty monster.”
Rogue huffs. “You know, guys like you who have complicated Heats always ignore guys like us… but let me tell you… you know nothing about strength. When pushed, it becomes something wild, primal. The same way we will lose a war to nature itself… strength in its purest form is exactly that. A force of nature!”
Loyalist finally lifts his head, looking Rogue directly in the eyes. He is genuinely surprised; he didn’t expect a philosophical insight from a man built entirely of muscle. “Having a fan moment, are we?”
Rogue snaps back, “Toward whom? That false god? Absolutely not. But to pure strength… absolutely yes.”
Loyalist smirks. “Then you should bow to me too. I am strong.”
Rogue looks around the muddy clearing. “Making yourself ten times faster when you hold your breath doesn’t make you strong. It makes your Heat strong, and complicated.” He finally turns fully to Loyalist, his face twisting in genuine frustration. It is clear he has tried to grasp this concept before but his brain simply rejects the math. “And what does even ’10x’ mean? I forgot. What did you say? A ten-to-one ratio or what?”
Rogue squints his single eye, visibly burning more brainpower than he is comfortable with. Seeing this, Loyalist stops wiping his shoes.
“My Heat, A Dying Man’s Last Breath, activates when I hold my breath,” Loyalist explains smoothly. “Your one second, and this world’s one second, becomes my ten seconds.”
Rogue contorts his face like he is about to vomit. “What?”
Loyalist studies the giant for a moment, trying to figure out how to translate theoretical physics into brawler logic. He licks his lips—a soothing, calculated gesture. “What can you do in one second?”
Rogue squints. “Maybe get up.”
Loyalist smiles. “And if you had ten seconds?”
Rogue looks from his seat, over to Loyalist, measuring the distance. “Get up, walk up to you, and slap you in the face. Maybe for being so cocky.” He smirks.
Loyalist‘s smile widens. He is not one bit offended. “There you have it. While you are just getting up, I can already get up, slap you in the face, and take my seat back before your nervous system has even registered the sensation of the slap.”
Loyalist moves his fingers gracefully through the air, as if he can literally feel and manipulate the air currents surrounding them. Rogue‘s mouth snaps shut. He is a brute, which means there is one language he understands intimately: sheer speed. The horrifying realization that Loyalist could strike him and return to a resting state before he even felt the pain forces a newfound, profound respect for the tactician.
Realizing that Rogue has finally grasped the lethality of his Heat, Loyalist goes back to cleaning his shoes.
But not even four seconds pass before Rogue snaps his gaze from Loyalist‘s face directly up to the sky. Even from this massive distance, they can see it—a colossal, redwood-sized blade materializing and plummeting toward the earth. Seeing Rogue suddenly go quiet, and sensing the sharp spike of excitement and panic in his massive presence, Loyalist looks up. By then, the blade has already made contact.
Seconds later, the tremor hits.
It is so violently catastrophic that both men are forced to abandon their sitting positions and drop to the ground, clinging to the thick roots just to steady themselves. Loyalist‘s face violently contorts as if he has just inhaled the stench of a rotting corpse. Because he was sitting in his socks, his foot has slipped directly into the wet mud. His pristine white socks are now filthy and ruined. More than the apocalyptic impact or the thought of what caused it, Loyalist is entirely focused on the furious disgust that his socks are dirty.
Slowly, the tremors die down. The mud and the shaking leaves go completely quiet.
Rogue, staring toward the East, asks, “Taglia?”
Loyalist, his face still twisted in absolute revulsion over his mud-stained foot, replies, “No. But maybe we don’t have to go all the way to Titan City to find the woman.”
With that, he aggressively shoves his muddy foot back into his leather shoe and begins marching toward Royal City. Seeing this, Rogue smirks and falls into step a couple of paces behind him. This is exactly what the giant has been waiting for—a head-on clash, regardless of the myth’s presence.
Around evening, as the moon takes her full, luminous shape and the stars lock into their positions in the navy sky, the group enters Royal City from its East Side after their spar.
Most of them are battered. Taglia walks with a bare torso, his cargo pants hanging loosely from his hips—but this is the specialty of Royal City’s people: they simply do not care. On his right walks Makisa, relatively pristine but lacking her shattered katana. On his left is Lesca. Behind them is Leon, similarly bare-chested but bruised, with Maven at his right side, her focus entirely locked on him. Trailing behind all of them are Friling and Jarrod, the only two individuals who still look somewhat clean.
As they cross the sprawling, bustling bazaar and walk deep into the central district near Lady Liya’s palace, they veer slightly northeast. Suddenly, they enter an open, sprawling field area. There are houses here, but they are spaced far apart. These structures are built of baked earth, their roofs woven from dried leaves and thick grass. They resemble huts, but they are far too expansive to be called such.
Friling looks around the humble architecture. “What is this place?”
Maven glances back over her shoulder. “This is where most of Royal City’s people live who cannot afford to stay in the central district.”
“And those who were kicked out,” Taglia adds. There is a deep, uncharacteristic bitterness in his tone—a raw edge that is completely new to everyone in the group.
Maven stares at the back of Taglia‘s head for a moment, then drops her gaze to the dirt with a wistful smile. “Yeah.”
“Where are we going again?” Leon asks, speaking to no one in particular.
Makisa speaks up, though not to answer Leon. She looks up at Taglia. “You think he will be home?”
Taglia lifts his chin, gesturing for Makisa to look forward. “Still alive and kicking.”
Maven steps slightly to the right to see past the Taglia’s broad shoulders. Her eyes go impossibly wide.
“FATHER!” she screams.
She prepares to sprint toward him but hesitates for a fraction of a second, glancing back at Leon. Leon offers her a warm, reassuring smile that clearly says, I am fine, go.
She breaks into a full sprint away from the group. The group stops and watches as she runs toward an old man. He looks ancient, easily appearing to be a hundred years old, wearing the exact same style of noragi jacket and pajamas that Jarrod wears. He has a full head of thick gray hair and deep, weathered wrinkles carving his face. He leans slightly forward as he stands, yet he uses no walking stick. When Maven reaches him, she throws her arms around him, hugging him so tightly she nearly lifts him off the ground. The old man laughs a deep, echoing laugh and hugs his daughter back.
Seeing the pure joy of the reunion, Taglia smiles softly. The rest of them watches in respectful neutrality, except for Leon, who is smiling openly just seeing Maven this happy. The group stops at a polite distance. On their right sits his house—a humble hut identical to the surrounding architecture.
Taglia strolls up to the old man. “Look who I brought, Master!” he says pointing at Maven, fully aware he is far too late to take the credit for the surprise.
Maven finally lets go of her father, tears of joy streaming down her smiling face.
Leon takes a few slow steps backward, feeling the sudden need for an analytical perspective. He leans into Jarrod. “Is that…?”
“It looks like it,” Jarrod whispers, keeping his eyes on the old man.
“Her father. And his master,” Friling finishes the thought, nodding toward Taglia.
Lesca suddenly blurts out, “Golas!”
Friling snaps his head toward his sister in complete surprise. “You know him, sister?”
Lesca turns to Friling. “Only by reputation, brother. A being who has walked the earth for a thousand years, it is said.”
Jarrod looks from her to the old man. “A sorcerer.”
Finally, Golas, Taglia, and Maven turn to face the group.
Golas lets out another deep, hearty laugh. “One thousand years is too much of a stretch, my dear… I am only 168.”
The entire group freezes.
While it isn’t a thousand years, 168 is a century and a half and then some more. The sheer biological impossibility forces them to process the data in entirely different ways. Maven knowingly smiles. Makisa maintains a perfectly neutral expression; she is neither happy nor sad to see him, entirely apathetic to the reunion. Taglia shoots a glance at Lesca, his lip twitching upward. He is deeply impressed that she knows the ancient legends of a foreign country. It tells him there is a vast, terrifying intellect behind her malice, and for some reason, that realization brings him genuine joy.
Jarrod, despite coming from the middle of nowhere and having never heard of Golas, understands one simple, universal truth: with age comes unparalleled experience and wisdom. He steps forward and offers a profound, deeply respectful bow. Golas returns the gesture with a serene smile.
Friling and Leon remain completely silent. Friling, the bureaucratic head of a city possessing the most advanced technology in the world, simply cannot compute the biology. How could a man survive this long naturally? Despite wielding 5D energy himself, Friling‘s metaphysical knowledge is strictly functional. Leon is silent because he is trapped in a terrifying combat dilemma. His eyes see a frail old man who looks like he can barely stand up straight, but his finely tuned warrior instincts feel the exact same heavy, concentrated core of Heat that he felt when he first met Maven.
Golas breaks the stunned silence. He turns and walks toward the entrance of his hut, pausing to look back over his shoulder. “Come on now, you all must be hungry. Let’s talk after dinner.”
The group hesitates for a heartbeat, but seeing Makisa and then Maven casually follow him inside, the rest begin to file in. As they walk past Taglia, Lesca stops beside him.
“Shall we go, my lord?” she asks, heavily dripping with sarcastic mockery.
Taglia turns his head from the hut to meet her gaze. A playful smirk dances across his face. “Lead the way, Lady Death.”
The dinner table is overflowing with rich wine and various cuts of roasted meat. The conversation flows freely, shifting from the apocalyptic battle that took place mere hours ago to the ancient history of how Maven‘s mother—the Empress of Royal City—and Golas met, fell in love, and had Maven. While Leon already knew the broad strokes, the rest of the group is hearing it directly from Golas‘s mouth. Surprisingly, the old sorcerer does not radiate sadness over his fractured past. There is a lingering melancholy for a love that could not last, but he speaks with the quiet grace of a man who has made profound peace with his history.
Maven tells most of the story, with Golas occasionally interjecting to correct minor details, like the exact location they met or how she fell. The table is alive: Leon loudly boasts about how he nearly defeated the myth; Jarrod respectfully questions Golas about his centuries of adventures across the three continents; Friling absorbs the lore with a polite, fascinated smile; and Makisa completely ignores everyone, actively focusing on devouring as much meat as humanly possible.
Amidst the chatter and Lesca‘s mocking laughter at Leon‘s inflated boasting, the Goddess of Death notices an absence. Taglia has slipped away. No one else has noticed. She casually sweeps her gaze across the room and looks through the window. He is outside on the veranda, leaning heavily against the wooden pillar of the balcony, bathed in moonlight.
Seeing that everyone else is deeply engaged and won’t miss her, she silently pushes her chair back. She steps out onto the balcony, walking up beside him.
“What? The meat isn’t to your liking?” Lesca asks smoothly. “It is far better than that griffin meat, I promise you.”
She is making small talk, actively navigating the unfamiliar territory of how to initiate a normal conversation with a man like Taglia.
Taglia looks away from the starry sky to meet her gaze. He smiles softly. “I am sure it is.”
But there is a profound, heavy quietness in his tone. It isn’t his usual, aloof brush-off; it is deep, anchoring contemplation.
Lesca‘s expression instantly softens into serene focus. She stops looking at him and turns her eyes up to the sky. “What is it?”
“What is what?” Taglia asks.
Lesca turns to him. She raises her hand and firmly pokes his left pectoral muscle, directly over his heart. “You can’t fool me. Something is bothering you. I am not seeing that cocky light you had when we first met.”
He looks at her with a smile of quiet longing. “You see a lot, don’t you?”
She smirks, a flash of her arrogant, aristocratic attitude bleeding through the vulnerability. “Yes. I am blessed with incredibly sharp eyes. Now spill.”
He looks away from her, staring back into the infinite sky. “I feel a weird binding… something invisible, asking me to hold myself back. I never had this until I met you.”
That single, devastating sentence instantly reconstructs the terrifying, intimate bubble that erupted back in the grasslands. Lesca stares at his left profile. She needs to confirm if it means what she thinks it means, but she is far too proud to ask the question directly.
Instead, she points a thumb back toward the noisy dining room. “I know Jarrod appears to be morally heavy, but you don’t have to worry about all that. Just do what you gotta do.” She leans in closer, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “And one piece of advice… if you wanna kill someone, just don’t do it in front of him.”
Taglia looks at her, his face dead serious. He does not laugh at her joke, nor does he accept her attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
“I don’t mean the group,” he says quietly. “I mean you. I don’t wanna hurt you because of what I am.”
She stares at him. “Hey, you big brute. You are not going to hurt my feelings with your actions… I chose to come here knowing exactly who you are and what you are capable of,” she says with a warm, assuring smile.
Taglia averts his gaze. “Fuck me. I hate this… I have never been this mushy with anyone…” He pauses, the weight of isolation pressing down on his shoulders. “Well, not in a long time.” It is as if he is on the verge of confessing a dark tragedy from his past, but he instantly cuts himself off, locking the vault. “I always do what I want and I don’t give a fuck. But now… it’s odd.”
Lesca leans in. She raises her hand and presses her manicured nail directly over his heart—the exact same predatory gesture she made during their very first, bloody encounter. But this time, just like the first, her nail digs slightly into his hardened flesh. There is no pain, only the undeniable point of contact. She is physically reminding him of the stakes.
“Do I need to remind you who, I am?” she whispers.
Taglia looks down at her nail digging into his chest, then slowly traces his gaze back up to her face. He sees that exact same smirking, terrifying face that once asked him whether she should rip his heart out or not.
For a second, Taglia‘s eyes narrow in confusion.
Then, the entire violent montage crashes through his brain: Him clapping Jarrod‘s ears. Tearing off Friling‘s wing. Stopped dead by her maroon skeleton. Piercing her gut with his 75% Primal Mode fist. Her horrific regeneration. Her straddling him, threatening to rip his heart out, and him peacefully smiling, saying Take it.
He can see it in her eyes right now. For a microscopic split second, Lesca flashes her eyes to a blinding, hemorrhagic blood-red, then instantly snaps them back to normal. It is a playful, horrifying gesture that screams: Despite this vulnerability, do not ever forget who I am and what I am capable of.
Slowly, the dangerous, unapologetic light that was missing from Taglia‘s eyes ignites.
Seeing the light return, Lesca flashes the exact same victorious, radiant smile she gave Friling when he successfully sewed his wing back on.
“There it is…” she purrs. “…that cocky, sick… asshole.”
Taglia‘s smirk stretches wide. “You are quite a twisted bitch yourself.”
It feels as though time has completely stopped on that moonlit balcony. They are locked in a profound, terrifying moment of absolute acceptance, the gravitational pull between them undeniable.
Until the wooden door swings open.
Makisa steps out of the room, probably just coming out to burp or seek a moment of quiet. She freezes. She sees Lesca leaning intimately into Taglia, their chests practically touching, her nails dug into his skin, and his left arm hovering mere inches from wrapping tightly around her waist.
“BLUHHHH!” Makisa gags, letting out an exaggerated, disgusted puking sound.
The spell shatters. Taglia and Lesca snap their heads toward the young swordswoman, who is staring at them with unfiltered revulsion. But neither of the two actually hates her for the interruption. Lesca shoots her a dry, exasperated look that clearly says, Seriously? You had to walk out right now?
Taglia simply gives Makisa the exact same exhausted, affectionate look he always gives her: All is forgiven. What am I going to do with you?
As the moon takes its central throne in the night sky and the group enjoys their cozy, healing dinner, the illusion of sanctuary shatters at the borders.
Loyalist and Rogue have officially breached Royal City from its West Gate.
Already, three elite city guards lie slaughtered on the cobblestone. As the pale moonlight washes over the corpses, the horrific anatomy of the kills is fully illuminated: one guard’s head has been violently ripped from his shoulders; the second possesses a massive, cauterized hole completely punching through his stomach; and the third guard’s head has been sickeningly twisted 180 degrees to face his own back.
Rogue glances around the silent, blood-soaked gate, his single eye scanning the shadows. “What if he is here?”
Loyalist doesn’t even break his stride. He walks smoothly forward, his hands resting calmly at his sides.
“Then we have to be faster before he can catch us,” the tactician replies coldly.
Without another word, the two executioners step over the bodies and march directly into the heart of the city.
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