I don't wait for Teleb to recover.
Can't wait. Won't wait. The voices in my head are screaming for blood and I'm too far gone to deny them.
I leap from the platform, my body moving with a speed that feels wrong. Too fast and too fluid. Like the resurrection didn't just heal me but fundamentally rewrote what my physical form is capable of.
The air tears around me as I dive toward the crater in the canyon wall where Teleb's body created that massive impact. Three hundred feet of empty space crossed in heartbeats. The wind screaming in my ears.
Around me, I catch glimpses of the city. Chaos spreading like wildfire.
Explosions of power and screams.
Helix has arrived and they engaging not just the Federation troops and whatever Elites they had in that camp. But the Midnight Rose members as well. Turning the entire city into a warzone.
I don't care.
Can't spare the attention. Can't think about anything except the figure who pulled himself from the rubble in front of me.
Teleb emerges from the crater like something from a nightmare. His black armor is cracked. Damaged. The obsidian mask has a fracture running across its surface from where my fist connected. Behind the broken mask, I see one singular bright blue eye narrowed in disbelief and amusement?
He moves.
Faster than I expected. Faster than someone who just got launched through three platforms should be able to move.
His hand comes up. A gesture that looks almost casual.
And the metal around us responds.
Every blade scattered across the canyon hundreds of them, the remnants of the people he murdered and the ones who just died by my hand indirectly when I launched Teleb through the platforms they all orient toward me simultaneously. Like I've suddenly become the center of a massive compass and every needle is pointing at my heart.
The blades launch.
A wall of metal death moving at speeds that blur the air. Each one singing that horrible song of hate and fear and rage embedded in human remains forged into weapons.
I activate the Fearmonger fully. Let it flood my system. The world shifts into hyperfocus greyscale. Time doesn't actually slow, but my perception speeds up to the point where I can track individual blades in the swarm.
And I dance. I use the Shadow Dance Battle Art. And I dance.
There's no other word for it. My body moves in ways I've never moved before. Twisting. Spinning. Contorting. Each motion bringing me a hair's breadth from death as blades scream past.
One comes at my throat. I lean back, spine bending at an angle that should be impossible, feeling the metal pass so close it parts the air above my neck.
Three converge on my center mass. I pivot, pulling my torso to the side, letting them pass through the space I occupied a fraction of a second ago.
A dozen come from below. I leap, push off a blade mid-flight, use it as a springboard to launch myself higher.
And through it all, I'm laughing.
The madness is getting worse. I can feel it eating at the edges of rational thought. But I don't care. Don't want to care. Because this—this violence, this chaos, this dance with death—feels right.
I land on a bridge connecting two platforms. My boots hit wood and I'm already moving, sprinting forward as blades slam into the structure behind me, reducing it to kindling.
Teleb is there. Waiting at the other end of the bridge.
His hand sweeps out and the bridge dissolves.
Not destroyed. Not broken. The metal components nails, supports, reinforcement bands simply rip themselves free of the wood and converge on his position, adding to the swarm orbiting him.
I'm falling.
The canyon yawns beneath me. hundreds of feet to the bottom where water and rocks wait to break my body.
I don't panic.
My hand snaps out, catches the edge of a platform as I fall past it. The impact nearly tears my arm from its socket but I hold on. Swing. Use the momentum to launch myself back up.
I rocket upward like a missile. Teleb is raising his hands, bringing more blades to bear.
Too slow.
I clear the edge of his platform and my fist is already moving. Aimed at that cracked mask. Ready to shatter it completely.
He blocks.
A wall of metal materializes between us. Blades fused together into a solid barrier. My fist slams into it with enough force to create a crater in the improvised shield.
But it holds.
Teleb is on the other side. I can sense him through the metal. Feel his presence through the Fearmonger's enhanced awareness.
The shield explodes outward. Each blade separating, spinning, becoming individual projectiles aimed at me from point-blank range.
I dive backward. Feel blades graze my shoulders, my sides, my legs. Shallow cuts. Nothing serious. The Regenerator flares and they seal immediately, golden light knitting flesh back together before blood can even drip.
I land on another platform crashing through the roof of a small house. This one is occupied by family huddled together. A mother, father, two children. Staring at me with wide, terrified eyes as this blood-soaked nightmare crashes through their roof.
The voices scream at them.
FEAR
DELICIOUS FEAR
THEY'RE AFRAID OF US
THEY SHOULD BE
I can feel it radiating from them. Thick and sweet and intoxicating. The Fearmonger drinking it in. Using it. Amplifying my power.
Teleb crashes through the opposite wall.
And that fucking mask, the cracked half broken obsidian mask still reflects my face back at me.
My face twisted in a snarl. Eyes wild. Golden light still flickering in the violet irises.
I look insane.
I am insane.
The family screams.
Teleb doesn't hesitate. His hand sweeps out and metal rips from the home around us. Pots. Pans. Nails. The reinforcement bars in the walls. Even the small knife the mother was using to prepare dinner.
Everything metal converges.
And the home collapses.
The supports are gone. The structural integrity compromised. The wooden beams can't hold the weight without their metal fasteners.
The ceiling comes down on the family. On me. On everything.
I hear screaming and then it's cut short.
Don't look. Can't look. Don't care.
I burst through the falling debris like it's paper. Wood splinters against my body. Dust clouds the air. Behind me, the home completes its collapse into rubble.
I'm airborne again. Teleb is retreating, leaping from platform to platform, trying to gain distance. Trying to set up another attack.
I won't let him.
My speed is obscene now. The Regenerator isn't just healing me—it's enhancing me. Flooding my system with vitality that makes my muscles perform beyond their normal capacity. Every movement explosive. Every action faster than it should be.
I close the gap in seconds.
We collide midair above the canyon.
My fist meets his defense—a shield of compressed metal shaped from dozens of blades fused together.
The impact creates a shockwave that shatters windows on nearby platforms.
We separate. Land on opposite sides of a wide plaza.
And the real fight begins.
Teleb gestures and the ground beneath me erupts. Metal pulled from underground, from foundations of buildings around us, from anywhere within his range, bursts upward and in as jagged spears.
I'm moving before they breach the surface. Dancing between rising and collapsing blades. My hands lash out, deflecting ones I can't dodge. The Regenerator sealing cuts as fast as they appear.
I grab one of the spears. Rip it from the air with strength that surprises even me and I spin hurling it at Teleb with murderous intent .
He stops it midair by absorbing the metal back into another spear.
in that moment of absorption, I'm on him.
My fist crashes into his ribs. I feel armor crack. Feel the impact transfer through metal and into flesh beneath. Feel something break.
Teleb stumbles backward.
I don't relent.
I'm a whirlwind of violence. Fists. Elbows. Knees. Every strike aimed at weak points. At joints. At places where armor can't fully protect.
Each hit lands with that same catastrophic force. Each impact creating sounds like thunder. Each blow enhanced by three marks working in perfect, terrible harmony.
Teleb tries to defend. Creates barriers. Summons blades to intercept my strikes.
But I'm too fast. Too relentless. The madness driving me past exhaustion, past pain, past any semblance of strategy.
I just attack.
My knuckles are bleeding. The skin splitting from the repeated impacts against his metal armor. Golden light immediately seals the wounds. Heals the damage. Lets me keep punching without consequence.
Teleb's mask cracks further with each hit and his one blue eye is wide with shock. The spiderweb fracture spreading. Growing. One more good strike and it'll shatter completely and I will see the bastards face.
He knows it too.
His hand comes up and he deflects my jab and hits me with a vicious knee while also launching himself back and away from me. As he does this he raises his hand again and everything metal in the plaza responds
Merchant stalls dissolve as their components tear free. Weapons from dead soldiers, and Inquisitors fly toward us. Coins from scattered purses. Jewelry from corpses. Every scrap of metal within a a thousand feet converging on Teleb's position. I see the same sickly sentient blades recalled back to him. All of the metal converages on his position creating a sphere. A shell of compressed metal that surrounds him completely. I slam my fist into it. The impact rings like a bell. Creates a dent. But doesn't penetrate. I hit it again. And again. And again. Each strike making the sphere ring. Making the metal groan. Making Teleb's defense shake.
But it holds.
The metal sphere splits open.
Teleb emerges like a dark star. His armor full regenerated back to pristine conditions, although his mask remains cracked with one eye showing.
We stare at each other across the ruined plaza.
His cracked mask reflects my bloody, snarling face.
And we move simultaneously.
The collision destroys the plaza entirely.
Stone cracks. Wood explodes into splinters. The platform itself—hundreds of tons of construction—shudders from the force of our impact.
We're too close for his blades to be effective. Too tangled for him to create distance.
So we fight like animals.
He uses his armor like weapons. Spikes erupting from his shoulders, his elbows, his knees. Trying to impale me. Pierce me. Create wounds faster than I can heal.
And we're destroying everything.
Every movement creates shockwaves. Every impact shatters stone. Every clash of enhanced flesh against metal armor produces sounds that echo through the canyon like artillery fire.
People are dying around us.
I catch glimpses. See civilians trying to flee when we arrive in all our unholy glory.
See a woman crushed by debris when our fight demolishes a support column.
See a child trampled in the panic.
See an old man vaporized when Teleb's stray blade cuts through him like he's made of mist.
Don't care.
Can't care.
The voices won't let me care.
We're moving through the city now. Our battle carrying us from platform to platform. Leaving destruction in our wake.
A bridge collapses when I throw Teleb through its supports.
A residential tower crumbles when his metal sphere smashes through its foundation.
A marketplace goes up in flames when our fight ignites oil lamps and scattered goods.
Baelin is burning. Dying. The beautiful canyon city being reduced to rubble and corpses.
And I'm laughing through it all.
Teleb finally creates distance. Leaping away from me after I deliver a particular violent kick to his chest cracking armor for what feels like the millionth time.
And the metal screams. As we rampaged across the city he was turning every mundane human into more metal, so every blade he's created. Every weapon he's forged from human remains. Every scrap of metal under his control.
They all rise into the air. Hundreds of them. Thousands.
Blocking out the sky.
And they orient toward me.