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“You...” I rasped, my voice no longer sounding human—it was a low, vibrating growl of pure, apocalyptic death.

I didn’t care about the Crescent Potion. I didn’t care that my magic was bound. I didn’t care if I bled to death on the Obsidian Sand.

I shifted my weight, setting my boots into the volcanic grit, and raised Vaelthrys to execute the traitor.

“MALICE!” I screamed.

I charged.

I covered the ten feet of space in a fraction of a heartbeat, driving the seven-foot spear forward with every ounce of murderous fury left in my soul—aimed straight for Mal’s throat.

Mal’s eyes flared with panic. He raised his broadsword frantically to block the blow—

Before the blade could sever Mal’s neck, a sudden, violent explosion of deep crimson smoke and thick, acrid sulfur erupted across the center of the ring.

The dense red mist billowed out with supernatural force, completely blinding the space, blowing the volcanic grit thirty feet into the air.

“NOT MY SON!”

A harsh, booming voice roared through the smoke—a voice that carried the ancient authority of More Alora.

Through the swirling red fog, a towering figure materialized directly between my spear tip and Mal’s throat.

Lord Dellyn.

The dark-visaged lord had broken the ultimate law of the duel. He had breached the perimeter of the Dagda-Fae. He had stepped onto the sacred Obsidian Sand during an active duel, physically interposing his body to shield his heir from execution.

Dellyn’s black eyes burned with a dark, corrupt desperation. He reached out, his heavy hand slamming into the shaft of Vaelthrys, deflecting my lethal strike two inches to the left, saving Mal’s life by a thread.

“Dellyn!” I screamed, twisting the spear, trying to drive the blade through the old lord’s chest instead. “I will kill you both!”

By stepping into the ring and physically stopping the strike, Lord Dellyn had committed high treason—and he had broken the sacred blood oath of the duel.

And the ancient magic of the Dagda-Fae reacted instantly to the corruption.

High above us in the sky, suspended between the eight towering ward-stones, the massive, floating Blood-Tithe let out a deafening, acoustic screech.

The dagger of crystallized crimson turned violently in mid-air, its jagged point locking directly onto Lord Dellyn and Maloce. Because the duel had been corrupted, because the blood pact had been violated by external intervention, the Blood-Tithe transformed into an indiscriminate instrument of divine retribution.

The dagger dropped from the sky like a falling meteor, tearing through the air at blinding speed, bound to pulverize Lord Dellyn and his son into dust.

“We leave!” Dellyn bellowed.

The old lord did not try to fight the falling dagger. He did not try to fight me.

Dellyn grabbed Mal by the collar of his dark armor, pulling his son close. He raised his left hand, driving a dark, iron-ringed dagger straight into his own palm, releasing a torrent of blood magic that bypassed the ward-stones through forbidden sorcery.

A monumental, swirling vortex of pitch-black smoke and liquid crimson shadows erupted around the two males, enveloping their bodies in an impenetrable shield.

“This isn’t over, Mongrel!” Dellyn’s voice echoed from within the dark vortex, raspy, triumphant, and utterly unrepentant. “The West remembers!”

I lunged into the mist, driving Vaelthrys forward with a desperate, wild thrust—

A split second before my spear tip could touch the vortex, and a split second before the massive Blood-Dagger could slam into their skulls, the red smoke imploded with a sharp, deafening POP.

Lord Dellyn and Maloce vanished.

They dissolved into the shadow-lines, fleeing the citadel, escaping the executioner’s dagger, and vanishing from the realm entirely.