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Balor looked at the broken handle in his hand. Then he looked at the cracks running across his bone armor.

Then he laughed.

It wasn’t an angry laugh. It was slow like a man who had just heard a good joke. The sound rolled across the vault, and the northern soldiers at the broken door felt it in their chests. A few of them took a step back without even knowing it.

”You broke my axe,” Balor said, tossing the handle aside. ”Good. It was too light for me anyway.”

Dante stood in the middle of the crater, he didn’t say anything. He just looked at Balor and waited.

’He’s too calm,’ Dante thought. ’A man who just lost his weapon shouldn’t be smiling.’

He pressed his right thumb against the ring on his middle finger. The stone eye opened, and the color drained out of the room.

Everything turned grey. The burning dust, the red light, the soldiers’ faces all faded away until only lines and shapes were left. Dante looked at Balor’s chest, and his breath stopped.

There were threads.

Thin red threads, came out of Balor’s back and sank into the floor. They went down through the stone and into the dark, toward the lava vents below the mountain. Every few seconds they pulsed with light. Each time they pulsed, the cracks in Balor’s armor closed up, like a wound healing in fast motion.

’So that’s why,’ Dante thought. ’He isn’t strong. He’s plugged in.’

That wasn’t the strangest part. Deep in Balor’s chest, behind the ribs, there was a second heartbeat. It was slower and heavier than the first, and it didn’t belong to the warlord. Burning veins were wrapped around it like chains, squeezing it, as if his own body was trying to swallow something and couldn’t.

Dante’s eyes narrowed.

’That isn’t his.’

”Dante!”

Gideon’s shout. The old pioneer was staring at the walls, and his face had gone pale under the scars.

”The vents are opening! He’s started the lockdown! Get off the floor!”

Balor raised his three remaining arms over his head and brought his fists down together.

BOOM!

The floor of the vault split from wall to wall. Lava came up through the cracks in bright orange rivers, spreading across the black stone. At the entrance, the doors closed, and sheets of molten rock poured down over them like curtains. A dozen northern soldiers who had not made it inside screamed from the other side. Then the screaming stopped.

The whole room shook, and then it began to sink.

”The platform!” Gideon shouted. He slammed his bone staff into the ground, and a ridge of obsidian rose around the edge of the core stage. ”Everyone up! The vault is dropping into the lake!”

The heat hit Dante like a hand pressing on his face.

It wasn’t a strike. It wasn’t a weapon. It was just air, burning air, and it came from everywhere at once. His hoodie began to smoke. The skin on his forearms went red, then white, then it blistered and split open.

For the first time since his reborn, Dante felt real pain.

He didn’t make a sound. He clenched his teeth, and he forced a slow breath through his nose.

’So this is the limit,’ he thought. ’A hit, I can throw back. A fire I’m standing inside, I can’t.’

He remembered the 55th floor, the same kind of heat, the same helpless feeling, watching his own people walk away. His hands had been steady then too. That hadn’t saved him.

Balor saw the blisters and laughed again, louder.

”Where’s your trick now, human?” he roared. ”My mountain doesn’t care about your cheap skin! It burns everything that stands on it!”

A wave of lava rushed across the floor toward the platform. Dante used Void Step and landed on a stone pillar three meters away. The jump should have been nothing. His legs shook when he landed, and the soles of his boots had started to melt, sticking to the stone.

’Too slow. I can’t keep doing this.’

A shadow dropped beside him. Esabella landed on the pillar with her dragon-sword blazing in her hand, and her eyes went straight to his arms.She went completely still.

”You’re bleeding,” she said, almost in a whisper.

”It’s nothing.”

”Dante, you are bleeding.” Her voice cracked on his name. Her tail, which was always thrashing, hung down limp behind her. ”No one has touched you, you are badly hurt.”

”It doesn’t matter.”

”I should have stood in front of you. I should have...i will kill him right away”

” Wait.” He finally turned his head and looked at her. His face was grey with pain and sweat, but his eyes were calm. ”Listen to me. I’m fine. Don’t swing at him yet.”

She swallowed. Her hand tightened on the sword. She was shaking, and not from the heat.

”He’s connected to the volcano,” Dante said, keeping his voice low so only she could hear. ”Every time you cut him, it heals. If we fight him head on, we lose. I need time to find where the threads join. Can you keep him busy?”

”How long?”

”As long as you can without dying.”

Something moved across her face then, fear and anger and a kind of fierce relief all at once. She nodded once, hard.

”Then don’t worry i will do it ,” Esabella said. ”As long as you need me to.”

Below them, Balor was watching. He had stopped laughing. His eyes went from Dante to Esabella and back, and a ugly smile pulled at his mouth.

”Whispering,” he said. ”Planning. How sweet. It won’t help you.”

He laid one huge hand against his chest.

THUD.

The second heartbeat pounded so loudly that every soldier in the vault heard it. The red threads in the floor flared bright, and the vents answered with a roar that shook dust from the ceiling.

Esabella stopped breathing.Her eyes were locked on Balor’s chest. The color left her face, the blood left her lips, and the dragon-sword in her hand began to shake that sparks fell from its edge.

”That energy,” she whispered. ”I know that energy.”

”What?”

”I used to sit on his shoulders when I was small,” she said, and it didn’t sound like she was talking to Dante at all. ”He would carry me through the throne room. I could feel that heartbeat through his back. It was warm. It was always so warm.” Her voice broke. ”That’s my father’s core.”

Balor’s smile split wide across his face.

”Did you think I left it on a shelf, girl?” he asked softly. ”I ate it.”

”It screamed, you know,” Balor went on, almost kindly. ”Your father’s core. Even after I crushed him, it kept screaming. Took me a whole month to make it quiet.” He patted his chest. ”It’s quiet now. It’s mine.”

Esabella didn’t scream, and she didn’t charge. She stood on the pillar, perfectly still, and the fire around her hands went from orange to white.

The red threads in the floor lit up one by one. Balor’s body began to swell. His bones cracked and shifted, and his skin split along the seams, showing a deep glow underneath.

Dante felt the temperature jump again, and he tightened his grip on the invisible blade.

’Here it comes.’