The fire had settled into something almost stable.

  Contained enough to frame the space it occupied. A wall of heat burned behind the ruined platform, casting long, broken light across warped steel and shattered concrete. Emergency lamps flickered overhead, some holding, others dead.

  The man from the fire stood within the heat as if it were a birthright.

  The flames did not cling to him. They recoiled. The air around his body shimmered gold, pressure radiating outward in slow, deliberate waves. Each breath he took drew the temperature higher, metal groaning softly in protest.

  Opposite him, a man stood just outside the worst of it.

  He looked amused.

  “So,” he said, tilting his head slightly as if appraising a piece of art, “who do I have the pleasure of killing?”

  The heat surged in answer.

  “My name is Salvador,” the man in the fire said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “And you took something that belongs to me.”

  The other man smiled wider.

  “Of course you’re Salvador,” he said. “You always look exactly like this in the stories.”

  He was unbothered by the heat creeping closer.

  “Victor,” he added, gesturing to himself with mock courtesy. “Victor Reech.”

  The name hung there briefly, then dissolved into the crackle of flame.

  Salvador moved.

  There was no warning. No flourish. One moment he stood framed by fire, the next the space he’d occupied collapsed inward as he crossed the distance in a burst of condensed heat. The platform screamed as he launched forward, boots leaving glowing impressions behind.

  Victor did not meet him.

  He slipped sideways at the last instant, coat snapping in the thermal wake, laughter sharp and unrestrained as Salvador’s strike pulverized the rail where Victor’s head had been a heartbeat earlier.

  “Oh, come on,” Victor called, already moving. “That’s how you open?”

  Salvador turned, fury tightening his posture, and charged again.

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  Victor ran.

  He moved like someone enjoying the chase, boots skimming across debris, shadows stretching and warping around him as the firelight grew more violent. Salvador followed, every step driving the temperature higher, each miss feeding his anger.

  The environment began to fail.

  Lights burst. Supports buckled. Fire climbed where it hadn’t been moments before.

  Victor glanced back, still smiling.

  “You know,” he said conversationally, “people misunderstand fire.”

  Salvador lunged again. Victor ducked under the swing, heat tearing the air above his head.

  “They think it destroys things,” Victor continued, voice carrying easily. “Erases them.”

  He vaulted over a fallen beam, shadows pooling thick beneath it.

  “But really,” he said, slowing just enough to let Salvador close the gap, “it just makes shadows bigger.”

  The fire flared.

  And the darkness answered.

  The tattoos along Victor’s arms began to move.

  Not all at once. Not violently. The ink slid, stretching and peeling away from skin like liquid shadow, gathering mass as it detached. Shapes hit the ground already in motion.

  Wolves first. Low, fast, bodies cut from darkness sharper than flame. Then others followed, serpentine forms uncoiling, wings unfolding where no light should have allowed it.

  They surged toward Salvador without a sound.

  Fire met them head-on.

  Salvador tore through the first wave, heat reducing shadow to nothing on contact, fists and shoulders blazing as he waded forward. Shadows burned and reformed, snapping at him from every angle, forcing him to keep moving.

  Victor never stopped repositioning.

  He stayed just outside Salvador’s reach, directing nothing aloud, letting the shadows hunt on instinct, on intent. The platform became a collision of forces, flame and darkness ripping at each other, debris scattering in every direction.

  Then Salvador stopped.

  The fire faltered.

  For the first time, the flames did not expand outward. They collapsed inward, drawn into Salvador’s body as he straightened, posture tightening, the glow around him sharpening into something denser.

  The battlefield darkened.

  The temperature spiked.

  Victor’s smile faded.

  Salvador stepped forward, heat concentrated now, no longer wasteful. His fist drove forward, the air screaming as it compressed, the blow aimed cleanly at Victor’s chest.

  Victor reacted instantly.

  A shadow lunged between them.

  The impact obliterated it.

  The darkness shattered, dispersing like ash, and did not return.

  Victor staggered back a step, eyes flicking to the bare skin where ink had once been.

  Victor hissed a breath through his teeth, then snapped his fingers sharply.

  The remaining shadows surged, not to kill, but to delay, swarming Salvador in a desperate knot of movement and force. Victor turned and ran, retreating hard into the wreckage, toward the corridor where the last of his shadows had been sent.

  Salvador tore free moments later, incinerating the last of them in a roar of heat and rage.

  “RUN,” he bellowed, the sound shaking what remained of the platform.

  Victor was already gone.

  The fire did not return to its former height.

  Salvador stood alone amid scorched metal and drifting smoke, chest heaving, eyes tracking the darkness where his prey had escaped.

  Elsewhere, out of sight, something howled.

  Metal screamed.

  And the hunt continued.