The dam in her mind burst; a flood roared through her skull like surf in a storm.

She wanted to kill it, like crushing a serpent’s head under heel.

A hundredfold, a thousand times; slice its fat claws into paper-thin shavings, smash its wedge skull, drive a greatsword into its spine.

Ride the hilt, split it like a log from crown to tail-tip, hack it into two halves that never meet again.

Yes, she wanted to kill it—more than anyone—again and again, as cruel as winter ice.

This was the only thought left, anger braided with grief like black smoke and rain.

She roared; arrows hammered like hail, and brute charges slammed like boulders.

Any iron chain or girder she could grab, she slammed onto the dragon’s crown like falling beams.

Supersonic booms cracked the air like thunderclaps.

For a heartbeat, the Soul Devourer Sormaidon, mountain-mass and vast, actually staggered back under her ambush.

Its snake-thin neck shrank like a turtle’s, curling into a guarded coil.

But it was only surf against a cliff.

Varie heaved the steel pillar again and aimed at the skull tucked in that serpentine neck.

A voice cried out nearby, sharp as a gull over waves, but her bloodshot gaze saw only red wind.

She paid for it in the next breath—coiled neck snapped wide, and the lowest hinge of the jaws gaped.

Inside, a white, annihilating glow bloomed like a newborn sun.

Her left arm went heavy, and she hit stone like a dropped hammer.

When the hormone-numbness ebbed, pain swarmed her arm like a million fire ants.

The steel pillar she’d gripped had fluttered to gray ash like burned paper.

If not for the Lionheart Hero’s gut sense, Varie herself would be a smear on the rock.

“Look at you, how wretched,” Sormaidon raised its head high, voice dripping like oil.

“Lionheart Hero—last time you scarred my wing, but look now—pitiful, laughable. You can do nothing.”

“Shut up, you dead lizard—!” she spat, a spark in a storm.

“Oh, poor Lionheart Hero,” chaos churned in its pupils like muddy whirlpools.

Its grin showed teeth whitened by ash, like grave-bone.

“Thank my Lord’s mercy. He grants you the best end.

After I kill you, I’ll swallow Her Majesty Queen Dreamlan’s charred body.

Then you can reunite in my dream.”

Varie’s nails bit the stone like claws.

Defeat and rage peaked like a breaking tide at that name.

She shouted it didn’t deserve to speak that name, then almost toppled trying to stand.

Viscous blood crawled down her left arm like hot syrup.

The Nacha Tribe’s gift and a Hero’s talent raced to knit her, but a chunk of upper-arm bone was gone, licked away by dragonfire.

Worse than the wound Mira nursed for nearly a quarter.

Sormaidon had already begun to draw breath again, a furnace stoking.

Adelaide and Mira cut in from both sides like scissor blades.

Bolts from the others hissed like sleet to buy her a window.

But the one who needed time only roared, snatched a sword in her right hand, and sprinted for the gaping maw.

She meant to jam steel into Sormaidon’s throat in the blink before the breath.

Did she know it was suicide? Of course, like a moth hurling into a flame.

She knew she’d only die, and it wouldn’t even scratch Sormaidon, and she still went.

Because what drove her wasn’t battle fire, but a grave-cold fatigue that wanted to let go.

Under the surface blaze, a deeper, ruinous void gnawed her reason like salt on iron.

Step by step, it pushed her to the cliff’s edge of self-ruin.

Sormaidon saw it and savored it, like a hawk watching a falling bird.

Chaos-torn pupils gleamed; its spines hummed with power like a hive.

The breath was full; victory hung within the next heartbeat like ripe fruit.

It said with its eyes, It’s fine, let me be your end; be free of loss.

Varie seemed to accept, and she rushed into that white light like a tide toward a reef.

Until a song rose.

So beautiful, so gentle, so familiar—like a cool spring breeze entering the stifling Magma Forge.

It lifted the choking haze and unlatched the shackles on thought like dew on locks.

Varie’s small round ears twitched like leaves in wind, and her eyes flew wide.

That was… Menglan’s voice, a thread of moonlight through night fog.

No thought was needed; her soul simply knew, and for the first time her feet slowed.

Adelaide’s chance opened, and chains of mana yanked her back a heartbeat before the flames.

She didn’t land soft; she hit the wall like a sack of ore.

Even with her body, two hoarse coughs rasped out like torn cloth.

She didn’t care about new wounds on old; the instant she drew breath, her eyes raked the room like a searchlight.

“Where are you!?”

Only the song answered, like a far bell, because Menglan wasn’t near.

In fact, Varie realized she wasn’t hearing air at all, but a harmless mana resonance, like a harp-string in the bones.

Yet that gentle wavelength halted Sormaidon’s pursuit; its bared fangs bent into wary lines like drawn hooks.

Mana, the soul made visible, naturally rings like ripples on a pond.

That’s not rare.

But the scale and strength rise with the tide of power.

And now the resonance was coming from beneath them, like a drum under the earth.

Yes, from below—not tens of meters, but thousands.

It pierced sulfur-choked, turbulent magma conduits like a spear of sound.

Through a pinhole crack in the floor, it entered their ears, a thrum you could feel on your drums.

Even when Adelaide rattled three legion-class spells in a row, her resonance never climbed this mountain.

The wave brushed Varie’s cheek like Menglan’s hands cupping her face, and wetness filmed her bloodshot eyes.

She’s alive… a star relit in her night.

Thank the heavens, she’s alive.

Varie bit her lip, ashamed to feel relief, like warmth after frost.

She swore that next time she’d grab that long-eared brat by the ears and roast her with words.

What was that stunt—jumping into a volcano like a firefly?

…Wait. So what is she trying to do, really, like a lantern suddenly flaring?

She only now asked the obvious, and the answer struck at once.

A violent tremor surged up from below like a giant turning in sleep.

Fresh on her feet, Varie staggered again.

“Oh come on, the dead lizard’s not enough—you adding an earthquake???” Hos wailed like a kicked hound.

The ground, as if answering him, paused, then convulsed again like a drumskin.

Little mountains of treasure cascaded into glittering avalanches.

“No—no, this isn’t an earthquake…”

Varie looked at the crack where Menglan had fallen.

The glow wasn’t dark red now; it brightened toward orange-red like a furnace throat.

The next instant, a deafening roar swept the Magma Forge like a typhoon.

The blast wave drowned Menglan’s song, whipped ancient dust into a storm, and the soaring heat and motion told the true source.

“Did she… wake this volcano?!”