CHAPTER 52.

Chapter 52: The Duel of the Black Flame

The battlefield was chosen.

An ancient coliseum carved into the bones of a dead god—Vharon's Hollow, long buried beneath ash and salt, now unearthed by divine will and dragon fire. Its sky was red, its ground cracked from the weight of countless fallen titans.

Jean stood alone in its center.

Her silver armor gleamed beneath the twin moons. At her side, Whitney growled low, every muscle taut like drawn steel. Around her heart, the mark of the Word of Unmaking pulsed faintly—a silent reminder of what she now carried.

Across the field, a pillar of smoke spiraled into the air.

Then came Virexion.

The Black Flame did not walk. He descended, a living inferno shaped like a man, wings of molten bone trailing fire, and eyes like twin eclipses. His scaled form shifted with every breath, a beast barely contained within a humanoid shell.

When he landed, the Hollow trembled.

His voice was like grinding stone and crackling embers.

> "You bear the Word, Emissary. You carry light where it was never meant to shine."

Jean drew Eclipsion.

The blade shimmered with radiant light, humming in tune with the stars themselves.

"I also carry the will to end this war."

Virexion laughed, smoke curling from his mouth.

> "Then come, daughter of light. Let me test the fire that dares to burn before the storm."

---

The duel began not with a charge, but with silence.

Then—

Clash.

Their blades met mid-air, sending out a sonic boom that shattered the outer coliseum walls. Jean's aura flared like a celestial tide, white and gold. Virexion's fire surged in a spiraling tempest, dark and hungry.

He was strong.

Unnatural.

Every strike he delivered was meant to break her body—and yet Jean parried, ducked, struck back. Whitney lunged to aid her once, only to be thrown across the battlefield by a single pulse of the dragon's fury.

"You fight like your ancestor," Virexion hissed, "but your light is not Martin's."

"No," Jean whispered, blocking a devastating blow. "It's mine."

And then, she released it.

The First Spell.

The Word of Unmaking surged from her lips—not spoken, but sung in the language of creation. Runes spilled into the air around her, cracking reality itself. Eclipsion flared brighter than ever before, and she drove the blade into Virexion's core.

He screamed—a roar of pain and memory, of ancient grief and fury.

And then he fell.

---

The fire faded.

Smoke drifted over the battlefield. Jean knelt, panting, blood trailing from a gash over her brow. Whitney limped toward her and placed his head gently against her side.

Above, in the heavens, the stars blinked.

The Accord was sealed.

For now… the dragons would not march.

But far across the veil, Antares opened his eyes.

And he remembered the name Jean Luther.

---