He hit a wall, cracking it.

  "You presume to fight me in my domain, on my throne!" Hades roared, staggering to his feet, molten blood dripping from his mouth.

  Kurai pointed.

  "I told you that I’d make you pay. It's only fair I collect my debts."

  Behind them, chains cttered to the floor.

  Skuld stood over Helios, Ravenveil Whisper shimmering in her hand. The weapon pulsed with pale light, and with a second incantation, the locks binding Helios's limbs clicked open. He colpsed forward, hitting the floor hard.

  "Helios!" Skuld dropped beside him, cradling his body. He groaned faintly.

  "You’re safe now," she whispered, lifting him up by the shoulders.

  Across the chamber, Kurai extended her hand. A bck vortex unfurled beneath them—a dark corridor, summoned from raw will.

  "No!" Hades bellowed. "You can’t open corridors here!"

  Kurai looked over her shoulder, eyes gleaming with disdain.

  "It’s difficult," she admitted, "but I’ve grown used to this realm. And unlike you, I learn from every failure."

  The corridor fred to life. Darkness howled as it expanded.

  "And thanks to Hecate," Kurai added, her voice like a death bell, "I no longer need to resist your Underworld curse. My power flows freely now."

  Skuld and Helios dropped through the corridor, vanishing into shadow.

  Hades screamed in fury and lunged forward, but Kurai intercepted him with a downward arc of her fan. A shockwave split the stone beneath them.

  "You’ve meddled long enough!" he bellowed, twirling his trident and smming its butt into the floor.

  The chamber erupted. Gouts of blue fme surged upward, forming a dome of infernal fire around them.

  Kurai narrowed her eyes.

  "Now that those nuisances are gone, it’s just us."

  They cshed.

  Hades came at her with a fiery rage, sweeping fireballs across the room with the wrath of a god who’d been defied on his own throne. Each strike cracked the earth and spat columns of heat upon exploding. Kurai matched him blow for blow, fan snapping open to deflect, parry, and sh out.

  Their powers collided with sounds like the air screaming in agony.

  Kurai ducked a wide fming arc and spun behind Hades, unleashing her Bded Bloom technique—a fan toss that released shadow petals, each one slicing like a guillotine. Hades threw up his fming aura, but two petals cut through and grazed his fnk.

  He howled and whirled, fmes sweeping in a circle.

  Kurai leapt into the air, flipping above him. Her fan reformed mid-flight and released a pulse of darkness that distorted gravity. Hades stumbled, his feet sinking an inch into the fractured floor.

  Kurai nded, crouched low. She dashed forward with a fsh step and struck low, cutting deep into Hades’ leg. Blood—golden and seething—spshed across the stone.

  "You dare draw godly blood?!"

  "You dare imprison him?"

  Their voices collided as violently as their powers.

  Hades released a whirlwind of fire and fury. He created a cyclone, a storm that scorched the entire chamber in a spiraling inferno. Kurai summoned Umbra Veil, a cloak of sentient shadow that wrapped around her like armor.

  She walked through the fire.

  Her eyes were not blinking.

  She wasn’t even sweating.

  Hades looked upon her with curiosity.

  "What are you?"

  Kurai stopped before him.

  "Darkness that is beyond you."

  She struck.

  One blow after another, fast, vicious, refined. Her war fan split into segments mid-strike, weaving around Hades’ defenses and sshing at joints, ribs, and tendons.

  He howled and brought his fming hand down like a hammer.

  Kurai blocked it with her war fan raised like a shield. Hades struck and was rebounded with a deafening cng.

  She tilted her head.

  "Not enough."

  With a motion like an orchestra conductor, she waved her fan and the very air sliced Hades.

  Bck wind bdes.

  Invisible. Silent.

  They sheared across his back and shoulders, opening fresh wounds.

  He fell to one knee, struggling to rise.

  She approached.

  "This throne will soon be ash. Just like your rule."

  Kurai raised her fan.

  Hades rose again. Slow, shuddering, molten blood dripping from his ribs. One eye had gone bck. The sapphire fire in his hair dimmed, flickering, but his wrath was far from spent.

  "You dare wound me in my realm? You think you understand this pce?" he snarled, voice cracked and yered with fury.

  Kurai said nothing. She adjusted the grip on her fan, Shadow Sovereign shimmering with poisonous light at her back.

  Then Hades stood, his body rapidly healing. By the time he was fully standing, there were no wounds on his body.

  Faster than a scream, Kurai flickered behind him, fan brimming with coiled darkness. Hades threw a massive fireball at Kurai and she deflected the bze with a zy sweep of her war fan, which absorbed the heat and twisted it into spirals of bck smog that swirled in the chamber like angry ghosts.

  Hades stomped the ground, fissures of divine heat crawling across the floor. Lava erupted. Shadow surged.

  Kurai danced over the carnage, her fan a blur of silence and death. She hurled it mid-spin, and it split into six bdes of shadow, each one veering toward Hades like a predator. Hades threw up a circur wall of hellfire, which caught four, but the st two curved low, slicing across his legs.

  He roared, blood searing the ground.

  "I AM A GOD!"

  "You're someone whose managed to piss me off," Kurai replied coldly.

  He thrust his fist downward.

  The ground beneath her erupted in red-hot fme.

  But Kurai had vanished again. Darkness warped space, and she appeared in the air, flipping backward, hands forming a seal. "Bck Eclipse."

  The ceiling cracked as a sphere of colpsing darkness formed above them—a miniature bck sun. Tendrils of anti-light spiraled outward, siphoning the heat, the fire, even sound.

  Hades forged a spear of molten va and threw it at Kurai’s attack.

  It collided.

  A pulse of silence.

  Then the world screamed.

  The orb detonated, imploding first, then exploding outward in a maelstrom of inverted shadow. The throne room walls shook. Statues shattered. Torches died.

  Kurai nded lightly in front of him, half her coat gone, left shoulder bleeding. Her breathing was steady.

  "I’ll end this soon," she said.

  "You think you’ve won?"

  "I don’t think. I know."

  She unched forward again. Hades met her charge with a howl of fire. His strength surged in desperation—blinding strikes, waves of heat, pilrs of fme, all crashing down on her.

  But Kurai adapted.

  Every move he made, she read. Every strike, she turned. Her fan screamed through the air, catching firebolts and unching them back, infused with her own bck energy.

  She struck his side with a bde of her fan. Cracked his jaw with a rising kick. Shoved her palm into his chest and unleashed a massive bst of compressed darkness.

  Hades coughed blood, staggering back, fire sputtering.

  But still he didn’t fall.

  Kurai halted. Her eyes narrowed.

  Then she raised her fan and smmed it into the floor.

  A tidal wave of darkness rippled out from her feet, coating the chamber in shadowed mist. She lifted her gaze, now glowing white.

  "Round two," she whispered.

  And the darkness swallowed them again.