A Crown of Shattered Glass

Jazz's stormcloud eyes burned into Killian's, both men trembling with a fury neither could name, a power neither recognized.

"What the hell are you?" Jazz snarled, his voice layered with a hundred whispers.

Killian's replying chuckle shattered the silence. "I was about to ask you the same—"

Misha stopped just as he was about to step between them, his eyes wide, taking in the volatile spectacle.

Around Jazz, the very air seemed to writhe, dark energy coalescing into fleeting, ashen figures. The floor beneath him pulsed with a malevolent heat, the tiles darkening as if scorched by the fires. In stark opposition, Killian radiated a brilliant, almost blinding white light, edged with shimmering lines of pure gold, an ethereal energy that hummed with a vibrant, untamed power. The floor was divided along an invisible fault line where these two forces converged. The tiles beneath them cracked and the gap between them was warping and twisting reality, akin to a mirage.