Kara's heart had barely calmed when she shouted urgently, "We're leaving!"

  Without waiting for a reply, the three descended from the tree like fleeting shadows. They touched down and ran without looking back, plunging into the bushes and roots of the forest. Their bodies, trained to the limit, moved like specters through the vegetation.

  But they hadn't traveled even a hundred meters when a wall of fire erupted violently in front of them. The flames erupted from nowhere, like a burning tongue that reached up for several meters, blocking their escape with brutal efficiency. The heat was scorching.

  "Watch out! Back up!" Toren shouted, stopping in his tracks.

  Joel instinctively turned, drawing his katana with natural fluidity. Kara also prepared herself, channeling mana into her palms, her expression hardened.

  From the forest emerged the two figures, their striding confidences high. The fire mage and the physical mage, the caravan's killers, now hunters of another quarry. Both wore simple clothes, worn by travel and battle. But it wasn't their appearance that commanded fear, but their auras. Fire seemed to dance around the former, not only on his skin, but also in his eyes. The latter, on the other hand, looked like an ordinary man… if you ignored the invisible pressure emanating from his body, as if his very existence upset the balance of the air around him.

  "How disappointing," said the physical mage with a carefree smile, running his hand through his tousled hair. "I thought you'd be faster."

  Kara narrowed her eyes. Toren clenched his jaw. Joel said nothing, but his breathing slowed, became more controlled.

  "Calm down, Darel," said the fire mage, still looking at the three young men. "We already know who you are."

  "Really?" Darel asked, twisting his neck with a crack. "Because I prefer to ask. Sometimes people say interesting things before they die."

  Joel stood by Toren's side, his katana pointed toward the ground, but his gaze fixed on the attackers.

  "If you already know who we are," Kara said in her direct tone, "why not tell us who you are?"

  The silence that followed was brief, but heavy. A pause before the storm broke. Darel maintained his eternal smile, his eyes slowly scanning each of the three, settling on the sword Joel was holding. Something in his gaze hardened slightly, as if he'd found an unexpected piece on the board.

  "Korvax," he said softly, almost reverently.

  The three of them tensed instantly.

  "What did you say?" Kara asked, visibly puzzled.

  Darel tilted his head, his smile never fading. "We didn't expect to run into members of one of the new, but little-known, blessed cults… They're still a long way off if this is the standard of their members."

  Kara took a step back, immediately understanding the meaning. “You are from the Cult of Korvax, one of the twelve cursed cults.”

  The fire mage snorted in disdain. “And you are mere imitators…” he snapped, as if the word tasted bitter on his tongue. “People playing at being the opposition.”

  Kara raised her voice, firm but cautious. “We are not part of the Empire... We fight against them, just like you.”

  “Just like us?” Darel interrupted gently. “Oh my dear, we do not play at revolution. We are the inevitable destiny of the magical world… The thing that will replace those cursed empires and bring back the anarchy necessary to forge the mages our society deserves… Or at least that is what our leader keeps telling us.”

  The fire mage crossed his arms, his eyes glowing dimly. "Enough with the blathering. Unfortunately for these three, they saw something they shouldn't have. Our policy is very clear: no witnesses."

  "And I don't like it very much," Darel added, shrugging, "but rules are rules. I hope you don't take it personally."

  The tension became suffocating. Kara, Toren, and Joel braced themselves, knowing they were about to fight for their lives.

  The fire mage was the first to act. He raised his arm and conjured a massive ball of fire, which he launched directly at Kara. But before it could impact, Toren reacted: he extended his hands and materialized an energy shield that took the impact and blast, though it instantly cracked from the intensity.

  Kara seized the moment to slam her foot into the ground. A crack opened at their feet and spread rapidly, knocking Darel off balance. He had already lunged at the three of them and ended up crashing into a tree.

  Joel wasted no time, breaking away from his companions and leaping nimbly into the branches of a nearby tree, attracting the attention of the fire mage, who followed him with his gaze. Kara took advantage of this moment: she conjured several sharp stone projectiles and fired them with force. But the fire mage, with chilling precision, raised small kinetic shields that blocked each of the attacks with little effort.

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  Toren, meanwhile, intercepted Darel's new charge, summoning his most powerful kinetic shield. The physical mage's hands collided with fury, producing a thunderous roar of compressed energy. Toren resisted, but he immediately understood that he was at a total disadvantage, and the physicist mage's perpetual smile seemed to indicate that it was all a game to him.

  Joel continued jumping from branch to branch, his eyes darting between the two enemies, but mostly focused on the fire mage, seeking an advantageous angle, being loud and provocative. His objective was clear: to distract the fire mage and get behind him. But even in this chaos, the enemy never took his eyes off him, easily deflecting Kara's projectiles.

  Until suddenly, the fire mage seemed to lose patience. He completely ignored Joel and extended both hands toward Kara. With a short scream, he conjured a gigantic column of fire that completely engulfed the young woman. It was so fast, so absolute, that not a trace remained.

  Joel felt time stop and the world go silent. His breathing became heavy and his hands trembled slightly. Seeing Kara disappear like that, as if she had never existed, awakened something fierce inside him. The reality of combat, the harshness of death, took over with a violence impossible to ignore. And then, the fire turned to fury. Joel instinctively overloaded his mana.

  The act of overloading the mana within the body is something every experienced mage is capable of, usually to increase the potency of a spell, or often to cast one they shouldn't be able to use due to their level. However, one thing is clear: it's a process that usually takes time and always has negative consequences for the mage's body, sometimes even fatal.

  For Joel, it wasn't a conscious decision; it was pure instinct. His body was flooded with an overflowing energy that someone of his level shouldn't be able to handle. But Joel wasn't an ordinary mage, or more specifically, his body wasn't ordinary at all. The mana didn't give him any special or extracorporeal powers; what it gave him was a strength he'd never felt before and a speed that should put him far above his current enemies.

  Taking advantage of the moment when the fire mage was still staring at the spot where Kara had been, Joel appeared behind him with blinding speed and unleashed a series of swift slashes with his katana. However, they all collided with an energy shield protecting the enemy's back. The mage knew what he was doing by turning his back on Joel.

  In the midst of the frenzy, his mind working at incredible speed, Joel perceived something: the energy shield was circular and almost completely covered the fire mage, save for one small spot, which seemed impossible to protect without being a nuisance to him… his feet.

  Dodging an explosive counterattack from the fire mage, a blast of flame that nearly hit one of his arms, Joel launched a slash into the ground that raised a large screen of earth, obscuring his movement. Taking advantage of the cover, he positioned himself behind the enemy again, ducked with absolute precision, and executed his most powerful echoing slash: a line of pure mana that traveled low, inches from the ground. And so, he sliced cleanly through the fire mage's feet.

  The resulting scream was heartbreaking. The fire mage collapsed forward, his ankles severed surgically, blood spurting out in rhythmic streams, soaking the ground. But he didn't even touch the ground before Joel, without hesitation, drove the tip of his katana through one of his eyes and the back of his skull. His body hung for a moment from the weapon, convulsing, its trembling limbs throwing out spasmodic jerks, while its mouth exhaled broken sounds, babble that didn't quite amount to words.

  Blood trickled in a spiral, falling onto Joel's face, and he didn't blink. He held it there, feeling the weight of the body, the reality of the act. The katana vibrated faintly in his hand, still charged with mana, still connected to the echo of the fury that had driven him. The fire mage died right there, hanging from the blade, without honor or glory.

  Joel dropped the body without a word, his breathing ragged and his hands trembling. He turned to face the other combatant, but he already knew what he would find. Toren lay on the ground, a gaping hole pierced his chest, his face frozen in an expression of fury and resistance. Darel, standing with one of his bloody fists, watched him like someone contemplating a finished work.

  Their eyes met. Joel was bleeding from his nose and eyes, and he could barely stand upright. Darel smiled, his expression serene and unperturbed.

  “Out of the corner of my eye, I saw part of what you did... but I didn't think you'd pull it off. Amazing,” he said, with a mixture of admiration and genuine curiosity. “There's something very special about you. It's unusual to see a mage of such a low level... use a sword like that. You're not like those regular soldiers the empire sends to die in wars. No, you're something else.”

  Joel didn't respond. The wind blew hard through the trees. He didn't move a muscle and simply stared at his enemy, his eyes reddened, his katana still dripping with blood, a scarlet thread trailing slowly from his nose.

  As Darel calmly advanced, Joel reviewed in his mind every blow the physical mage had thrown at Toren. Every pattern, every shift, every pause in their sequence. His mind worked at an unnatural speed, plotting possible trajectories, identifying the smallest angles of opportunity. The young man didn't have the energy for a prolonged battle, nor for trading blows with the physical mage, a far superior enemy in every field. But he had an idea, a way to confront him. Something he managed to see in his enemy when his aura completely covered his body.

  About ten meters away, Darel stopped. His smile remained unperturbed, but his body began to glow with a strange brown aura. One of his fists took on a silver sheen, as if coated in living metal. Then, without warning, he launched himself at Joel with brutal speed, like a human spear.

  But Joel was already moving. He flexed his legs and dropped backward, then immediately launched himself into a leap so powerful that he instantly matched Darel's speed.

  Darel's eyes widened when his fist missed Joel by inches, and his surprise was even greater when the sword passed seamlessly between the boundary of his two auras on his attacking arm.

  Joel ended up crashing backward into a tree, leaving a huge mark and causing several fractures in his ribs.

  But Darel's case proved to be a macabre spectacle. The instant his forearm was severed, the internal pressure of his body, increased by his channeled magical energy, triggered a catastrophic reaction. A gigantic jet of blood erupted from his severed veins and arteries, shooting several meters into the air like a grotesque fountain. The crimson liquid sprayed through the trees, splashing leaves, branches, and Joel's face, who, although wounded, did not look away. Darel fell to his knees, panting, staring at his severed arm with a mixture of disbelief and animal fury. That instant remained suspended in the air: the wounded colossus, trembling, bleeding, before the exhausted, but still standing, figure of Joel.

  Darel's face immediately turned white. Only the magic coursing through his body seemed to keep him conscious, clinging to life by invisible threads that were beginning to fray. His blood pressure was dropping rapidly, and his breathing became shallow and hoarse. Blood was still gushing from the stump, soaking the ground, the leaves, and his clothes. He tried to maintain his balance, but his legs gave out. Even so, he didn't fall, as he ended up catching himself with his remaining arm.

  "That was... incredible," he murmured, with a smile that was no longer arrogant, but resigned. His eyes were glassy, clouded by the veil of impending death. "They don't teach you that... of that I'm sure... it's as if I've faced... my master... That monster who has lived for hundreds of years... Your eyes aren't... normal."

  Joel didn't respond. His entire body was shaking, not only from the exertion, but from fury, pain, confusion. He held the katana in his hand, still soaked with blood. His breathing was a harsh panting noise.

  "Don't... let those children... fall into the hands of the Empire," Darel whispered with his last breath, his voice trembling like a leaf in the wind.

  And then he collapsed. His body fell sideways, heavily, his gaze still fixed on Joel, as if he hoped his words would endure beyond his death. Blood spread around them like a dark flower opening in the damp earth. Joel, standing in the middle of the scene, felt the silence of the forest become an echo inside his chest.

  Joel sighed deeply. The air burned his lungs, and his throat felt dry. Around him, the trees seemed to gaze at him in solemn silence, as if the forest had also witnessed the fleeting hell that had just erupted among their roots. He looked at the fallen bodies. Kara, missing. Toren, with a hole in his chest. Darel and the fire mage, defeated. A short battle, but more intense than anything he had ever experienced. He felt alienated from himself, as if he had crossed an invisible threshold from which he could never return.

  But there was no time to rest; the end of the battle is only the beginning of something new for Joel. An uncertainty that shouldn't happen during a mission like this, because for many reasons, he can no longer return.