Dan's heat was dying.
He felt it in the subtlest details—the way the flames snuffed out before even touching the enemy, as if swallowed by an invisible void. With every blow, his fire howled lower. With every step, his body trembled, not from exhaustion, but from impotence.
On the other side, Stella still fought with fury and precision, her beams of light carving momentary paths through the darkness surrounding them. But the holes closed quickly. Hazau, now monstrous, walked upon the ground like a primordial entity. His form no longer resembled a man. He was a centaur of living wood, his torso broad, his arms branching like the limbs of an ancestral tree. The roots extended in all directions—hungry, conscious, carving through buildings and concrete as if the city belonged to him.
And indeed, it did.
— He's... not fighting — Dan murmured, retreating. — He's... growing.
Stella answered with her eyes. Determined. She still believed in the plan. Push Hazau out of the city, where the root network would lose strength. It was that or the end.
They separated, a distraction maneuver. Stella climbed the elevated structures, trying to draw Hazau's attention with sonic light blasts. Dan ran at ground level, preparing the ambush.
But it was exactly what Hazau expected.
— Separated... vulnerable. — his voice whispered. And then he attacked.
The earth opened beneath Dan's feet with a muffled roar. In the blink of an eye, root tentacles erupted from the shadows and enveloped him like hungry serpents. He fought, burned, screamed—but the flames no longer responded. Within seconds, he was wrapped in a living sphere of dark wood. Closed. Sealed.
Hazau was adapting, and Dan's flames were no longer enough to burn.
The sound of the outside world vanished.
Outside, Stella screamed:
— DAN!! — And launched a sphere of light straight at the prison, a white star roaring toward its target.
But Hazau was there. He emerged like a shadow, raising his arm. A single tentacle intercepted the attack and deflected it, shattering the light into golden fragments.
— It's no use anymore. — his voice vibrated with the entire city. — He's not coming out.
Hazau advanced. A grotesque, spear-like arm stretched out and struck Stella squarely in the chest. She flew, crashing through a wall and collapsing amidst metal beams. Dust, blood, flickering light.
She got up staggering, eyes wide, chest heaving.
Hazau walked toward her with the tranquility of one who fears nothing. The roots writhed under his feet like whispering snakes.
— Now... only you remain.
— When you are separated, you become weak and fragile. That's how we defeated you once, and that's how we will defeat you again — Hazau said with a dark smile as he walked.
Inside the sphere, Dan gasped.
The darkness was almost liquid. The walls pulsed, alive, breathing around him. Roots sprouted like malignant veins, coiling around his body, fusing to his skin, piercing muscles, infiltrating as if wanting to replace him. A warm, viscous liquid began to trickle from the cracks, enveloping him like a rotten womb.
Dan forced his flames. Concentrated everything. His spirit. His fear. His rage. But...
Nothing.
No heat. No light.
— Burn... BURN! — he screamed, his voice choked, desperation rising in waves. — I SAID BURRNN!
But the fire did not come.
The fire had abandoned him.
It was then, in the ashes of his mind, that a voice echoed.
Fenra.
In the temple. Her eyes piercing his soul.
— "Your flames have no limit. They don't come from rage. Nor from fear. They come from your will. They burn what you want to destroy. But only if your will is greater than what wants to extinguish you."
Dan's eyes snapped open, dilated. He was sweating. Trembling. But a spark ignited.
And then another memory: Dante.
The demon who had once possessed his body. The monster. The shadow. The abyss in human form.
He remembered what it was like to be consumed by that consciousness.
The brute force. The manipulation of the impossible. The distortion of reality. Gravity, perception, destruction.
Dante made the world bend.
And Dan had felt all that in the palm of his hand and consciousness.
Powers come from a personal conception, generated by spiritual connection or simply spontaneously, allowing the user to perform unique techniques that vary from person to person.
Dante could manipulate negative energy, manifest it, and use sparks of the Abyss, manipulating gravity and perception.
Dan had felt it, and if it were possible, he could use all those abilities because he had seen, thought, and acted like Dante; he knew what to do, but since those weapons weren't his, he couldn't use them without Dante's soul.
He felt that if he had that power, he could use it exactly like that monster, because he had thought like him and could replicate it.
But among all the weapons, one was the most devastating.
And it was the only one they had in common.
The flames.
Not flames to warm. Not to purify.
Flames to consume.
Dan felt the echo of the power. And then he murmured, like a sentence:
— If I can't be like Mei...
— Then I'll be like that bastard.
A crooked smile appeared between his clenched teeth.
— If it's to save those I love...
— Then I'll become the demon itself.
And in that instant, the fire returned.
But not as before.
It came white.
It came silent.
It came as hunger.
The roots shuddered.
In the heart of the wooden prison, where silence reigned as a prelude to death, a white light was born.
Faint, trembling… like a solitary candle facing a storm.
But then, it roared.
A muffled sound, like the thunder of an ancient spirit echoing inside a chained soul. The root prison began to sizzle, creaking like bones under pressure. Small cracks appeared in the living wood—but what escaped them was not simple light.
It was fury.
Outside.
Hazau and Stella fought among the streets, but Hazau's superiority was clear, and Stella was getting closer to defeat.
However.
Hazau halted his advance. His body, still partially fused with the earth, bent slightly as if the very ground wavered under his feet.
— ...What... is that...? — he murmured, feeling a shiver that cut through even his regenerative nerves.
Stella, kneeling in the distance, gasped. She felt it too.
The world stopped for an instant. The air trembled.
The heat changed in nature. It was no longer a scorching or destructive heat—it was an ancestral heat, dense and reverent, as if nature itself were holding its breath before what was coming.
Hazau turned, his eyes wide at the sphere of roots now vibrating. Spectral lines formed along the fissures—and the glow leaking through them was not common fire.
It was white.
Absolute.
Uncontaminated.
Then, in an instant that tore through time, a deafening roar echoed from within the earth—and the base of the prison exploded.
Like an inverted volcano, a white eruption ruptured the ground. A flaming hole opened in the city's center, and from it emerged white flames, pure, spreading like a wave of divine judgment.
Dan had taken Dante's mindset—to concentrate everything into specific points, not to burn for heat, but to consume—and brought that essence into his own technique.
The roots connected to the subsoil began to scream.
Yes—the living, conscious wood screamed.
Hazau tried to retreat, but it was too late. His connection to the earth—his roots—were burning. The fire climbed up his lower half like an inevitable sentence.
— AAAAAAAAAAARRGH!!
He contorted, his flesh dissolving into fragments that evaporated. His screams were not just of physical pain—they were of terror. Of something his monstrous mind could not comprehend. A pain he could not regenerate.
Because Dan wasn't touching anything. He didn't need to move.
At a distance, immobile at the center of the glare, Dan remained enveloped in the white flame. His eyes no longer held irises, only the glow of an ancestral power. His arms were outstretched, his body trembling with the energy he released. His chest heaved, but his soul was firm.
He wasn't burning roots.
He was consuming sins.
Under the city's concrete, the roots writhed, trying to flee. But the fire reached them—even under stone, metal, or flesh. They twisted, darkened, and turned into white dust, as if they had never existed.
Stella leaped back as a white flame swept past her, but she felt no pain.
On the contrary.
The heat enveloped her like a blanket on a cold day. The burn on her leg slowly disappeared, sealed by that light. Her wounds stopped bleeding. She gasped, surprised.
— This is… — she murmured, her eyes fixed.
The flame that destroyed Hazau… was the same one protecting her.
It was Dan's fire.
A fire that sought not vengeance. But justice.
Dan was no longer just burning. He was choosing what should exist… and what should not.
"Dante used this as a weapon..."
Dan's voice echoed among the flames, in thought, in faith.
"…but I will use it as salvation."
Hazau roared, desperate, trying to pull the roots back into the ground. Trying to rebuild them. But all connections dissolved. The bonds tying him to the city were being torn out with sacred brutality.
The purple vegetation that had once spread like a disease through the city now died rapidly. The black leaves withered, the branches collapsed. The ground shook as if coughing the plague back to hell.
And then, Stella stood up.
Her eyes shone. She felt the moment. The imbalance. The enemy's sudden weakness.
It was now.
Even staggering, she raised her arms. Ethereal chains appeared from nowhere—serpents of light that spun around her and advanced with fury. They bound Hazau by the arms and shoulders, pulling him backward.
He screamed, but his voice now sounded more human—more vulnerable.
Stella spun in the air, channeling every last drop of remaining strength into ethereal spears, formed with brutal precision. With a cry laden with everything she had lost, she launched the weapons of light directly into the enemy's distorted torso.
The spears impaled him.
Hazau arched his body, in flames, trapped, writhing between the white fire and the ethereal prison.
— GO... TO HELL! — Stella bellowed.
With a final surge, the chains shone like thunder and hurled him away.
Hazau flew like a projectile tearing through the sky. His body shattered in the air until it violently collided with the ruins at the city's edge—where the roots had been almost entirely eradicated.
A crater formed where he landed.
Silence.
Stella fell to her knees, exhausted. The fire around Dan still burned, but now calmly. As if recognizing it had fulfilled its role.
The battle... perhaps, for the first time in a long while... seemed to be turning.
Dan, enveloped in light, did not say a word.
But in that instant, even without looking, Stella felt it.
He was not the same anymore.
And both knew they had to hurry and finish this battle before the enemy recovered.
To be continued...