"Henry...?"

Max could not believe what he was seeing. The man he had expected to never meet again was standing behind Oswald, half-hidden by the smoke and drifting frost, and whatever was happening to the wind emperor had to be connected to the fact that Henry was here.

"Surprised?" The middle-aged man laughed as his gaze swept past Max, scanning the army behind him with eyes that were impossible to read. "I see my dear daughter is not here with you. What happened? Broke up already?"

His laughter was dark and slightly broken, carrying none of the warmth it once might have had. The eyes Max remembered now looked far too dead, as if every bit of life had been scraped out of them and replaced with something hollow.

Henry’s clothes were torn in places, stained by dust, blood, and faint traces of frost, while his face still carried that same familiar shape Rosalia had inherited from him. Yet now, there was something rotten beneath his skin, something twisted enough to make even his smile feel wrong.

He looked like Henry.

He sounded like Henry.

But the man standing there felt like something wearing what was left of him.

"She’s safe. At least this time, she won’t stop me."

Max took a step forward, walking toward them as void magic stirred around his body. The black-violet mist curled from his armor in slow waves, dragging across the broken stones beneath his feet while his eyes remained locked on Henry.

Oswald stood between them, breathing out thin streams of purple frost, his crimson eyes still burning with madness, but Max’s focus had already shifted.

The ice clan warriors watched with their mouths slightly open, unable to believe what they were seeing. Some of them had already raised their weapons, but the moment they recognized Henry, their arms froze in place.

"That’s Henry, isn’t it?"

"There’s no way... he’s supposed to be banished. Why is he here out of all places?"

"Marcus... Max will kill him, won’t he?" William stood beside Marcus, both of them in their full dragon hybrid forms. Their scales reflected the firelight in cold flashes, and their wings remained half-spread as if their bodies wanted to move but their minds could not decide where.

Their expressions were complicated, almost painful in a quiet way. They had both supported Henry once with everything they had, believing in his leadership, his wisdom, and the future he had promised their clan.

Yet now, seeing him standing behind Oswald in the middle of a ruined capital, with purple frost crawling through the air and corpses scattered around them, they could not even bring themselves to feel pity for him.

If he died here, maybe it would only be the end of something that had already rotted long ago.

"We cannot allow Queen Rosalia to find out about this..." Marcus said, clenching his fists so hard his claws dug into his palms. His voice was low, almost buried beneath the distant screams and crackling ruins. "She will be devastated."

"So powerful, yet so young... I’m jealous, Max. I really am." Henry laughed as Max advanced toward him, his fingers dragging down his own face, pulling at the wrinkles as if the skin itself disgusted him. "But at the same time, I’m thankful." His every word dragged longer than the last, slow, uneven, and rotten with something Max could not yet name. "For this."

Oswald moved without warning, his entire body jerking forward like something had pulled him by invisible strings, purple ice flames twisting with crimson winds around him as the two powers exploded from his body like they had been forced into the same broken vessel.

His movements were almost animalistic, without technique, without pride, without even the smallest care for his own life. He charged like a beast pushed far past reason, his crimson eyes fixed on Max.

Max snorted, allowing the void winds to coil around his blade as he stepped forward to meet him. Oswald’s claw came first, wrapped in crimson wind sharp enough to carve through stone, but Max tilted his body aside and let the strike tear past his shoulder before slashing upward with his void blade.

Black-violet wind followed the edge like a shadow, cutting across Oswald’s arm and opening a deep wound from wrist to elbow, yet the mad emperor did not even flinch.

He simply twisted his broken arm, snapped it back into place with a disgusting crack, and swung again as purple ice flames burst from his palm and swallowed the space between them.

The ice fire spread unnaturally fast, freezing the air itself while the crimson winds pushed it forward like a storm given claws.

Max narrowed his eyes and raised his hand, releasing void winds in a wide arc that tore through the incoming flames, but instead of being devoured, the purple fire clung to the edge of his magic for a breath longer than it should have, hissing and crawling over the black wind like it was trying to bite into it.

That alone made Max’s expression darken. His void magic was not supposed to be resisted so easily, yet Oswald’s stolen power kept crawling through it, twisted into something uglier than the original.

Oswald rushed through the gap the moment it opened, his body low, his wings half-broken and dragging behind him as he crossed the ruined ground with terrifying speed. He slammed into Max with his shoulder, forcing him back several steps, then followed with a wild sweep of crimson wind that tore across the shattered stones beneath their feet.

Max blocked it with his blade, the impact ringing through his arm, and before Oswald could force him back any farther, Max drove his knee into the emperor’s stomach hard enough to make the air burst from his lungs in a cloud of purple frost.

Still, Oswald did not stop. His head snapped forward, jaws opening like a savage beast, and he spat a stream of purple ice flames directly at Max’s face.

Void armor thickened across Max’s cheek and neck in an instant as he leaned aside, letting the flames scrape past him and freeze a line across his shoulder. The cold bit deeper than normal ice. It sank past the armor, past the scales, and touched something beneath the skin for half a second before Max forced it away with a surge of void mana.

His gaze sharpened.

Henry only watched from behind with that crooked smile on his face, his dead eyes following every exchange as if he was enjoying a play written only for him. He did not command Oswald out loud. He did not need to. The mad emperor moved without speech, without thought, attacking again and again like a corpse that had forgotten it was supposed to fall.

Max clicked his tongue and finally stopped testing him.

Void winds erupted around his blade, folding tighter and tighter until the edge looked almost unreal beneath the black-violet pressure. Oswald lunged again, crimson wind gathering around one claw while purple frost gathered around the other, but Max stepped straight into his attack instead of retreating.

The crimson claw scraped against his armor, cutting through the outer layer, while the frost-covered hand reached for his throat, but Max’s blade had already moved. He thrust it forward with brutal precision, sending a piercing wave of death through the small opening in Oswald’s defense.

The attack struck Oswald’s chest directly, tearing through flesh, and bone before leaving a giant hole where his heart should have been. The force of it blasted out through his back, scattering frozen blood and crimson wind into the ruined air, and in that split second, the Wind Emperor’s heart shattered.

Max closed his eyes out of respect for only a moment, believing he had killed him.

But the body did not fall.

The feeling of death surrounded him instead, thick and immediate, crawling over his skin before his eyes even opened again. Oswald’s ruined chest twitched once, then twice, and from that empty hole where his heart had been, crimson winds and purple ice flames began to gather like something had been waiting inside him for the wound to open.

Rather than spilling out like blood, the crimson wind and purple ice flames gathered inside the empty wound, twisting together until Oswald’s ruined chest swelled with pressure no living body should have been able to hold.

Max’s eyes snapped open.

The explosion came before he could pull back.

Crimson winds and purple ice flames burst from Oswald’s open chest, crashing outward together in a wave of devastating destruction. The blast swallowed the space between them, tearing through broken stone, frozen blood, and ruined walls as the air bent under the pressure.

The whistling sound that followed no longer felt like simple wind. It sounded sharper, colder, and far more wrong, like a storm had been twisted into a weapon and then released from inside a corpse.

Max crossed his arms in front of himself as his void armor thickened, black-violet mist surging from every part of his body to shield him, but the tempest struck before the defense could fully settle.

Crimson wind tore into the armor first, ripping cracks across its surface, and the purple ice flames followed immediately after, freezing those cracks open before spreading deeper.

For a single breath, Max held his ground, his boots grinding through the shattered stone beneath him as he pushed back with his own void winds, but Oswald’s power kept pouring out of that empty chest like there was no life left inside him to limit it.

Then, the void armor shattered.

The tempest slammed into Max with full force, sending him flying like a ragdoll through the smoke and frozen air. Blood spilled from his lips as his body crashed through the remains of a broken tower, stone and ice fragments bursting around him before he tore across the ruined ground and carved a long trench through the capital’s shattered street...