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Oddly enough, the beast was untouched. Its black shell hadn’t even heated up, something I was immensely grateful for in retrospect. Likewise, Mercutio’s ’home away from home’ still stood.

I got to see the state of the demon himself when he came stomping around the house. He glared down at the collection of mortals sprawled around his turtle in various states of consciousness. Those stormy blue eyes of his swiveled around until they landed on me, and his expression grew baleful.

"I see some of you managed to survive," the demon snapped. I had to hide a smirk at his smudged, soot-covered appearance. Some of his clothing was charred or melted, but overall, he was in remarkably good health for having tanked a mana eruption.

With effort, he controlled his anger, growling his next words out through clenched teeth.

"Get them up. Get all of them up."

He looked ready to erupt himself, hands clenching and unclenching at his side in a way that sent a pang shooting through me.

That was a nervous habit of mine. I had caught myself doing it many times, especially when I was frustrated after a day of training. I spent a long time training myself out of it, and…

I winced, feeling a headache start up as my thoughts ran into a wall of confusion and outrage.

That isn’t me. None of that is me. It’s Hayden.

Except it was getting harder to make that argument, wasn’t it? My identity had been blurry from the start. Now it was doing a merry jig, stomping all over the line I kept trying to draw between the man I used to be and the man whose body and memories I had stolen.

Referring to myself as ’Hayden’ now came far too naturally. It was easy, a subconscious urge I was losing the battle to suppress.

A surge of terror shot through my gut. What could this mean for me? Considering all the other memories I had stolen, bouncing around in my head…

I didn’t have the chance to freak out, thanks to a sudden surge of agony that ripped through me. I spasmed as I screamed and collapsed to the ground. My teeth were clacking uncontrollably, so hard that I was worried they would shatter.

When the pain faded and I went still, my eyes landed on the smug face of Mercutio.

"Do not ignore me, mortal, or your punishment will be much worse next time!" the demon hissed, lips curling at the thought of getting to torture me further. "Now, rouse your useless rabble!"

Trembling, I got to my feet. Mia kept glancing at me, but I ignored the terrified look in her eyes, working with her to shake the other recruits into full consciousness.

There weren’t that many of us left. For better or worse, a mere three hundred recruits had managed to escape death by avoiding the brunt of the mana wave.

There was one notable exception.

I initially dismissed the man as nothing more than a clump of charred remains. The only thing that gave me pause was the fact that he hadn’t disintegrated into ash. When I approached and gingerly poked him with my foot, the burned husk actually groaned.

His eyes shot open a second later. Instead of regular eyeballs, two glossy, almost glass-like orbs stared up at me, burning with an inner flame. Then the man moaned, opening his mouth.

A burst of flame sputtered out between his lips.

"W-what happened?" he managed to rasp. If shredded metal could develop the ability to speak, it would sound just like his voice.

I didn’t recognize him, but that was no surprise. There were far too many recruits to keep track of even before this disaster. I hadn’t cared to learn about any of them. Now, though, I couldn’t help wondering who this man was. He looked remarkably young and lost and vulnerable.

How do you properly break it to someone that they now resemble a walking, burnt corpse?

I settled on, "You got lucky," then cringed internally. Forcing a cheerful smile, I went on, "And, it seems like you got yourself a special flame affinity. You managed to adapt to the fire mana, somehow."

I directed the dazed man to the rest of the recruits. That was that. I tried to put him out of my mind, and squished down any pity I might have felt.

I could not, would not, get attached to another person so soon after Mia.

I didn’t like that situation as it was. A part of me constantly felt like she would stab me in the back if the incentive was good enough. True, every day she didn’t stab me in the back, that part was slowly dying, but still...

When had I grown so paranoid of everyone and everything? Was it actually me, or was it Hayden? Regardless, serving under Mercutio certainly wasn’t helping.

Except Mercutio, I was almost certain, had actually tried to kill me more than once. And it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you… right?

Right?

To my shock, by the time I had finished my rounds and gotten everyone moving, I caught sight of the burned recruit standing on the turtle’s shell. Mercutio was conversing with him quietly, their voices too hushed for me to pick up on anything.

Tellingly, when the demon stepped forward to assess us all, the recruit remained right where he was.

"In light of the recent… events," Mercutio ground out, anger temporarily flaring back to life in his features before he got it under control, "we will be hastening our journey to the capital. I will open a portal for us, which you will pass through quickly."

The biting emphasis on the world told us exactly what would happen if we dallied, but I didn’t care. The rush of relief I experienced at the mere thought of being away from Mercutio, or at least in the presence of other demons who might be able to keep him in line, was overwhelming.

The demon swept out an arm, and wind swiftly picked up all around us. It burst through the piles of ash, picking up the souls dropped by over six hundred dead recruits. I couldn’t stop the flare of greed and regret in my gut, but this turned out to be a good thing. The demon picked up on the emotional spike. He smirked at me, implying he was unaware of my activities before he recovered. He thought he had snatched all the souls.

I would let him keep thinking that.

Once the souls were piled up in front of him, several dozen floated up to form the framework of a runic matrix. Slowly, painstakingly, Mercutio started to weave a spell.

For the first time, it occurred to me that it might not have been some scheme that kept him from claiming the cities we passed. A single portal was almost too much for him to handle. The strain on his face was obvious, despite his effort to hide it. Even his lips trembled, betraying him further. By the time a portal snapped open, the demon’s face was a pale white that stood in stark contrast to his gray skin. Still, when he roared for us to hurry through, we all rushed to obey.

The sight on the other side of the portal took my breath away.

We stepped onto a burned field outside a massive city. The walls were bigger than any I had seen before in Berlis. They were made out of a bluish kind of rock that I didn’t recognize, but if the way it glimmered under the sun was any indication, it was highly magical.

Despite the impressive height of the walls, the city’s buildings rose even higher. Dozens of towers poked into the sky, all built in different styles and of differently colored materials. Small islands seemed to hover in the air, connected to the towers by alarmingly dainty bridges that shone in crystalline hues.

Over the entire city stretched a series of spatial shields, at least four layers deep if I was seeing correctly. The shields trapped actual clouds of mana from drifting away into the sky, forcing the mystical substance to accumulate at the highest point of the city. I wasn’t sure where the clouds were coming from, but the constant stream of them rising into the air suggested there was a mana spring here, too, even bigger than the one we had just left at Glarind’s Spine.

The capital of the kingdom was stunning, and so obviously magical that I itched for the chance to walk its streets.

Of course, compared to the city, the legion besieging it was just as impressive. The first demons I spotted were huge creatures, each one beating away on a drum. I recognized them immediately. I hadn’t seen them since my inaugural battle, but they were hard to forget. Their continuous music rippled visibly through the air, causing even the outermost spatial ward to ripple in concert with it.

A sea of tents stretched beyond the initial perimeter. Myriad demons milled around the tents, watching the barrier and preparing for war. All around the barrier, more demonic mages than I could count were working in groups. Spells went flying, mana sparked, and runic configurations climbed over the spatial shield.

Overhead, small shapes flew in lazy circles. I fought the urge to run for the hills when one of them peeled off and came barreling down at us. The shape grew bigger and bigger until it resolved itself into a wyvern-like monstrosity that showed no sign of stopping.

A rumble behind me warned that I should start moving again, and I got out of the way before Mercutio’s turtle could squish me. Importantly, the portal winked out as soon as the turtle came through it, with no sign of the demon’s other beasts emerging.

Seems like that old mage did a number on him after all, I thought smugly, then refocused on the approaching threat.

When it was only a few yards above us, the wyvern suddenly arrested its steep descent, producing a gust of wind that knocked many soldiers off their feet. I stayed upright, but I was more than a little awed as the impressive beast alighted gently on the ground.

A rider quickly hopped off its back and headed straight to Mercutio. If her body language was anything to go by, she wasn’t happy.

Turning away, I tried to leave the two demons to their own devices. I was far more interested in the siege of the capital, and whether our arrival here meant I could get out from under Mercutio’s thumb.

But then the demons’ angry voices cut across my thoughts, irresistibly drawing my attention to the argument that would decide my fate.