A single rising uppercut shot into the beings chest, connecting with the second Rage Burner's core and driving it up the inside of its body. The results were cataclysmic. The creature’s entire head detonated, the explosion of molten rock and vaporized core energy sending a column of fire spiraling into the sky.

  The third Rage Burner, now caught in the bst, reeled backward, its molten body flickering and sputtering as its internal heat threatened to destabilize. Before it could recover, William closed the gap, his fingers sinking into its chest like molten steel through ice.

  The warform shrieked, a distorted, hissing cry of pure agony, but William ignored it. He dug deeper, his burning fingers wrapping around the core within. The creature cwed at him, trying to pull away, but it was too te.

  With a sickening squelch, he tore the core free.

  The body colpsed instantly, the molten veins dimming as the once-mighty warform crumbled into a pile of cooling sg.

  William's form snarled, the fmes around his body momentarily flickering as he absorbed the energy.

  Standing ten feet from Auracea, but keeping his distance, a much different looking Ashborn watched the fight.

  "What kind of monster is this? Did this thing kill the race that lived here?" Granalth, 7th Prince of Mars telepathically asked, and then looked over at the fully healed Auracea. "You can understand me, yes?"

  The spirit of Earth eyed the Ashborn that was much smaller than the others, but looked almost like a knight of old in obsidian bck armor. The only glow he emitted was from his visible, but protected core and a "T" shaped crack on his featureless face.

  "No, he is the st of his race, but none of that matters. I don't know what is causing him to act like this, but I expended a great amount of energy trying to kill him just before you arrived. This... being is some kind of immortal bastion that can't die," Auracea replied without looking as she watched William tear through the invaders and absorb them.

  Granalth's heat vision roamed over Auracea, but he didn't try to attack her. While the being before him looked weak, he had been there when his king, Arganth, had cshed with Wargar.

  There was a chance this spirit was hiding some power, and was also the fact that she wasn't helping the being over there fight. This thought made Granalth turn back to the fight, but a foreign feeling washed over his body.

  Unease.

  Granalth’s unease deepened as he surveyed the battlefield. His elite squad of one hundred Rage Burners had been whittled down to just ten, their molten bodies flickering with unstable heat as they hesitated in formation. These creatures were forged for war, bred for destruction, yet the being they faced had unraveled them with ease.

  This was no ordinary opponent.

  This was a force of nature.

  William stood at the center of the carnage, his once-bulky form honed into something sharper—something primal. His body pulsed with an unnatural heat, the molten ground beneath him shifting as if the very earth bowed to his presence. His once-human eyes had become bottomless voids, bcker than the abyss between stars, filled with swirling embers that flickered like dying suns.

  Granalth clenched his fists. The knowledge that this… thing was the st of its race gave him no comfort. If anything, it made him more wary. A single survivor meant a story untold. A warrior left standing meant an enemy that had already defined extinction.

  We underestimated him.

  Granalth’s gaze flickered to Auracea, the Spirit of Earth, who still hovered near the battlefield, her body faintly pulsing with weakened energy. The fact that she wasn’t aiding the human was telling. Was it exhaustion? Fear? Or something else entirely?

  The seventh prince of Mars didn’t have time to ponder it.

  William moved.

  He was on them before the Rage Burners could react, his body blurring with heat-induced speed. The first warform barely managed to raise an arm before William’s fist obliterated its core, sending a shockwave of energy through its molten veins. The creature erupted, its body fragmenting into molten sg that spttered across the battlefield.

  The remaining Rage Burners roared in unison, their bodies glowing white-hot as they entered a final berserker state. Their internal temperatures skyrocketed, their very forms distorting as they sacrificed stability for raw, unbridled power.

  William didn’t slow.

  He waded into them like a storm of fire, his every strike a death sentence. One fell as he drove his burning palm into its core, reducing it to a smoldering ruin. Another tried to fnk him, only for William to pivot, his elbow caving in its skull before he tore the core free from its chest.

  The battlefield was turning into a burial ground of molten ash.

  Granalth’s mind raced. This isn’t right. He’s not just fighting—he’s absorbing them. Every time William killed one of his kind, the heat around him intensified, his fmes growing wilder, more erratic. This wasn’t just strength—it was evolution.

  “Enough.”

  The command rippled through the air like a thundercp.

  Granalth stepped forward, his obsidian-bck armor gleaming as the heat waves distorted around him. The molten ground hissed beneath his boots, but he paid it no mind. Unlike the others, he was no mere Warform. He was a prince, a scion of Mars, and he would not allow his brethren to be devoured like prey.

  William turned toward him, and for the first time, Granalth felt something close to fear.

  The human’s form had fully transformed. His once-solid flesh was now something molten, something alive. His beard and hair, once simple fmes, now twisted and coiled like living fire, licking at the air with a hunger that defied logic. His muscles pulsed with raw heat, and his fingers—elongated, sharpened like obsidian bdes—curled with barely restrained violence.

  Most chilling of all were his eyes.

  Those twin voids locked onto Granalth with something more than awareness—something ancient. Something inhuman.

  You are next.

  The words didn’t come from William’s mouth.

  They came from everywhere.

  The very fmes around them whispered it, the air carried the promise, and for the first time in centuries, Granalth found himself questioning his own superiority.

  Still, he was a prince. He would not cower.

  He raised his hand, and the air around him exploded in heat. His core pulsed, and his obsidian-bck armor began to crack, revealing something much hotter underneath.

  “You will not consume me, human.”

  With those words, the seventh prince of Mars lunged.

  Two titans of fire collided, and the battlefield trembled.