A dull, rib-shaking thud split the air. A mountain-sized force slammed into Jared’s spine. He shot through the hall like a severed kite. He punched a ragged hole through the palace’s glazed roof tiles, then tumbled onto the plaza outside, landing in a broken, bleeding heap.

“Jared!” Flaxseed and Corin cried out together, forgetting everything else as they sprinted toward the fallen warrior. Santino hovered above the plaza, gazing down at Jared’s crumpled form like a hawk over dying prey.

“A wandering immortal is weak,” said, lips curling. “Genius or not, you can’t defeat me with a realm difference.”

He raised his right hand. In his palm, a sphere as blinding as a newborn sun ignited, its heat warping the very air.

“It ends now…”

The searing orb drifted downward. Wherever it passed, stone liquefied and hissed into ghost-white vapor. At that instant, Flaxseed and Corin slid to Jared’s side.

Flaxseed hurled every charm owned, each slip of paper flaring like a firebrand as they fused in midair and knitted themselves into a bulwark of incandescent runes.