The world compressed to a single, suffocating moment as Cedric’s warhammer collided with the inferno. Fire howled, not like an element, but like a starving beast that had tasted blood. The spell was not meant to kill him instantly. It was meant to consume him—mind, body, and soul.

The air burned in his lungs. The metal of his armor seared his flesh. His hammer, once an extension of his will, fractured. A thousand splinters of steel scattered into the abyss.

He had no strength left.

He had no future left.

This was it.

“Lyra… I’m sorry.”

Flames swallowed him. His vision shattered into nothingness.

And then—a hand caught him.

A ripple of blue light split the inferno in two, tearing through the fire like a blade through silk. The heat recoiled, no longer unchallenged. Cedric did not fall. He was held—steady, firm, undeniable.

“You did well, old man.”

The voice was calm. Almost amused. But beneath it lay something far greater—a force of will so overwhelming it made the battlefield itself tremble.

Cedric forced his failing sight upward. The figure above him was wreathed in ethereal frost, his polearm crackling with an energy that defied logic itself.

“Lyra’s eyes were always fixed on you,” the warrior murmured. “Stand proud.”

Darkness finally claimed Cedric.

Garrett turned, his greathelm obscuring his face, but his presence—his defiance—was impossible to ignore. The Azeroth Drive hummed against his chest, resonating with something ancient and unknowable. It was not power. It was permission.

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The knight raised his sword once more, attempting to cast the spell again.

“Ymiris Aeternum” Garrett uttered.

The battlefield froze. The chill in the surroundings cancelling out the spell of the knight.

Lyra was in awe. “Chantless casting of a god-tier spell?”

The ghouls and manticores, once mindless in their slaughter, hesitated. As if they, too, had sensed the shift.

The knight who had unleashed the inferno did not falter. Instead, he raised his hand in silent command. The creatures fell back, forming a circle around them.

No magic. No tricks. No gods or spells to decide their fates.

Just steel against steel.

Garrett’s grip tightened. He did not speak. He did not need to. He took a single breath and moved.

His polearm carved through the air with the weight of something unshackled. The knight met him in kind, their blades clashing with a force that sent shockwaves across the ruined earth. The duel was not a dance. It was not precise or practiced. It was raw. Brutal.

Every strike was a declaration.

Every block, a defiance.

Garrett was not thinking. For the first time in his life, he was not analyzing or second-guessing. He was not calculating odds, not planning contingencies. He was acting.

Memories flooded his mind as the fight raged on:

Empty praises for being “smart.”

Gaining friends in school because he’s the guy who “knows everything.”

Checking spreadsheets for any errors in the data inside his cubicle.

Justifying in his head why he shouldn’t ask Mina out.

Empty debates on politics, science, and religion.

He had spent the entirety of his past life trying to be smart. Trying to be perfect.

Now, he would simply be.

Their weapons met once more, but this time, Garrett’s polearm did not falter. He drove forward, unrelenting, his strikes ceaseless as the tide. The knight faltered. Then stumbled. And finally, with a single, devastating blow, Garrett shattered his sword from his grasp.

The knight fell to one knee.

The air was deathly silent.

Garrett loomed over him, his polearm lowered but his presence undeniable. He did not gloat. He did not strike the finishing blow.

He simply said, “Rest now, sir knight.”

The knight looked up, his hollow gaze flickering with something almost human. And then—he smiled.

His form dissolved into the wind.

Nyx perched on Lyra’s shoulder, watching with her luminous, endless eyes. “He was destined to be powerless, but he defies it with sheer grit and will.”

Lyra said nothing. She couldn’t. Her heart pounded, her thoughts tangled in something she could not yet name.

Nyx leaned closer, her voice a whisper. “He might be the one.”

The battlefield remained still, as if the world itself was holding its breath. And then, the cheers began. Quiet at first. Then louder. Until the entire battlefield roared with the sound of victory.

Garrett stood alone in the center of it all. Not as a hero.

Not as a chosen one.

But as a man who had, for the first time, finally understood himself.

And the Azeroth Drive hummed once more, whispering of what was yet to come.