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Balor’s bones began to crack. It started in his back. A sound like wood snapping ran down his spine, and his shoulders pushed outward as if something under the skin was trying to get out. He bent forward and gripped the floor with his hands. The stone cracked under his fingers.

”Warlord?” an old captain called from the wall. ”Warlord, are you...”

Balor screamed. It was two voices at once. One was his own, rough and angry. The other was deeper and older, and it sounded like someone crying from the bottom of a well.

His armor split open. A long neck pushed out of his shoulder, then a head made of black scales and bone. It had no eyes, only two burning holes. Wings tore out of his back, torn and uneven, half leather and half cooling rock. His left arm grew claws as long as swords. His right arm stayed same-shaped and swollen, the skin cracked and glowing like coals.

He wasn’t a demon anymore, and he wasn’t a dragon. He was both, badly stitched together, and the two halves didn’t agree.

The soldiers ran. Nobody gave an order. Fifty armored demons pushed toward the walls, climbing over each other, and some dropped their spears just to move faster. The young soldier from the door didn’t run. He sat down in the ash with his hands over his ears.

”That’s not him,” he kept whispering. ”That’s not him.”

Gideon planted his staff and raised another ring of obsidian around the platform. His hands shook. ”A stolen core,” he said under his breath. ”I heard stories. I never thought anyone would be fool enough to try it.”

Balor lifted his head. The burning holes turned to the pillar where Dante and Esabella stood.

”Now,” he said, and the dragon’s voice ran under his own like a second river, ”we finish this.”

He opened his mouth.

”Move!” Dante grabbed Esabella’s arm and threw himself sideways.

The fire hit the pillar a heartbeat later. It wasn’t red like normal flames. It was white and yellow, and it ate the stone instead of burning it. The pillar melted from the top down and slid into the lava. Dante hit the next pillar ,rolled, and came up with smoke rising from his sleeve.

His left forearm was black at the edge. He looked at it for one second, then looked away.

’Don’t think about it. Think about him.’

He pressed the ring. The stone eye opened, and the world went grey.

Balor was easy to see now. The red threads that fed him were thicker, as wide as a man’s body, and they all ran into the floor behind him. But Dante saw something new. The stolen core in Balor’s chest was beating faster, and it wasn’t beating for Balor. It pulled toward the other side of the room, like a hand reaching out in the dark.

It was pulling toward Esabella.

’It knows her,’ Dante thought. ’The core knows her blood.’

He looked down at the floor. Every thread ran back to one place, a dark hole near the far wall where the lava rose thickest. All of Balor’s strength came out of that single point.

’If I cut it there, he loses his healing. Then he’s just a half-dead dragon.’

It was also the hottest place in the room.

”Gideon!” Dante shouted.

The old man looked up.

”Can you hold the platform for ten minutes?”

”I can hold it for five,” Gideon yelled back. ”After that, the stone gives out.”

”Then I have five.”

Esabella had gotten up beside him. Her skirt was slightly torn, She looked at the dark hole near the far wall, then at his arm, then at his face. She understood before he said a word.

”No,” she said.

”I need to cut the source.”

”No, You will burn.”

”Maybe.” He kept his voice low. ”But if you fight him head on, he heals and you tire out. If I cut the source, you can actually hurt him. Hold him for me. Keep his eyes on you.”

Her jaw trembled. She looked at the half-dragon, and the anger in her face struggled with something softer.

”You always ask me to wait while you do the dangerous part,” she said.

”I’m not asking you to wait. I’m asking you to be the reason he doesn’t look at me.”

For a second she said nothing. Then she gave a short laugh.

”Then I will be very loud,” Esabella said.

She jumped. She went off the pillar with her dragon-sword over her head and landed on the broken floor in front of Balor’s face. The sword lit up like a small sun. She swung it down in a wide arc.

”Balor!”

The dragon head snapped toward her. Its jaws opened, and fire came out. She cut through it, and the heat rolled around her shoulders and sprayed across the walls.

”You ate him!” she screamed. ”You ate my father!”

”I made him useful!” Balor roared back, and his claw came down.

She blocked it. The sound was like two bells hitting each other. The floor under her feet cracked in a circle, and she slid back three meters, her heels carving two long lines into the stone. She was already shaking from the effort.

Dante didn’t watch. He ran. He didn’t use Void Step. His legs wouldn’t have held up for another one. He ran along the edge of the lava with his arm pressed against his chest, and heat rose from the stones into the soles of his boots. The leather bubbled. His toes began to burn.

”Come on,” he muttered. ”Come on.”

Halfway there, a soldier stepped in front of him.

It was the old captain. His armor was half melted, and he held a short sword with both hands. His eyes were wide.

”I can’t let you,” the captain said. ”The Warlord said...”

”Your Warlord just burned your men behind that door,” Dante said.

The captain flinched.

”Your clan’s name is on the wall behind me,” Dante went on, still walking forward. ”Do you want it to say you died for him?”

The sword wavered. The captain looked at the molten doors. He looked at the young soldier sitting in the ash. His arms dropped.

”Go,” he said hoarsely. ”Go. Just go.”

Dante ran past him. The dark hole near the wall was bigger than he had thought, wide as a well, and the air above it danced. Red threads came out of it in bundles and rose toward Balor’s body like the strings of a puppet.He drew the invisible blade.

”Last time,” he said to the sword, quietly. ”Don’t fail me.”

He walked into the heat. It took him in with both hands. His hoodie started to burn at the hem. His eyebrows curled up. The skin on his neck and cheeks stung, then went numb. He made himself breathe through the pain, a small breath at a time, because a big one would have scorched his lungs.

Behind him, he heard the dragon-sword ring.

”Come on!” Esabella shouted. She was bleeding from the shoulder now. ”Is this all the stolen strength you have? My father would have broken your arm already!”

Balor roared and swung.

Dante lifted the blade with both hands and sank it into the nearest bundle of threads.

It was like cutting through hot iron wire. The edge caught for a second, then the Eye of Fate flared on his finger and the flaw opened up in front of him. He leaned his weight into it.

The threads snapped. A scream tore through the vault. It wasn’t Balor’s voice or the dragon’s. It was both at once. Half the lava in the room dimmed, and the light along the walls fell by a third.

Balor staggered.

His wings folded, and the burning holes in his head went wide. He turned, slowly, away from Esabella, and looked across the vault at the small figure standing next to the hole with an invisible sword.

”You,” he said.

Dante didn’t answer. He was gripping the blade with his burned hand, breathing in short gasps, and he couldn’t feel his left arm at all.

There were still seven bundles of threads left.

Across the room, Esabella lowered her sword for a moment. She looked at Balor’s chest, where the stolen heartbeat had gone wild. She felt it too, deep in her own blood, answering. A thin gold line ran down the edge of her blade where there had been none before. She didn’t understand what it meant yet. But the core did.