Jackson Reeves had killed hundreds of daemons in his career.
Not just the weak ones. The trash-tier daemons that any competent magjistar could handle with basic spells and a decent weapon. He meant the real threats. The B-Grades and A-Grades that required teams of magjistars to bring down. The Second-Grade nightmares that could massacre cities if left unchecked. Hundreds of confirmed kills across two decades of service, each one documented, verified, and added to his official record.
He was, by any reasonable metric, one of the most dangerous magjistars alive. As he approached Poison's compound, he allowed himself a moment of professional satisfaction. His city's OM had finally let their leash drop and called him in. Took them long enough. He'd been surprised to hear about the first daemon king in like the last century has suddenly appeared and also had a gully+daemon army under her. He'd offered his services twice, and twice he'd been told to wait like the good dog he was. Well, not actually, but still. That's what it sounded like to him.
Now half of Luminaurora was in ruins and their precious Victor was dead. Funny how "under control" could change so quickly. The compound sprawled before him: a converted industrial complex surrounded by makeshift fortifications. He could sense the mahna from here, layers of daemonic magji designed to alert and deter. Child's play. With a gesture and a muttered incantation, he unraveled the outer defenses like pulling threads from a cheap sweater.
Alarms began to wail. Good. He wanted her attention.
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Poison felt the intrusion the moment it happened. Her barrier didn't just fail. They were torn apart with skillful expertise, each layer peeled away by someone who understood exactly how they'd been constructed. S-Grade. She'd known this was coming. The Council would never let her attack on Luminaurora go unanswered, not when their precious hidden city had been violated so thoroughly. They would cry for the best, the strongest, the most experienced magjistar to put down the upstart daemon who had dared to challenge their authority. Part of her had been looking forward to it.
"Jinx," Poison said calmly, rising from her chair. "Protect our people. Keep our forces on alert but do not engage unless absolutely necessary."
The small white fox daemon tilted her head. "You're going alone?"
"This is between me and whoever they've sent." Poison adjusted her glasses as she licked her lips with excitement. "If I fall, use the escape routes we prepared. Leave me and run. Don't look back."
"Mistress—"
"I refuse to let it turn out like it did with Victor Kahn after that girl's trial. Those were useful daemons damn it…"
Jinx's ears flattened, but she nodded. Poison walked out of the war room without looking back, her heels clicking against the concrete floor with each measured step. An S-Grade magjistar. Finally, a proper fair challenge.
…
They met in the courtyard: a wide expanse of cracked concrete and rusted machinery, lit by the orange glow of emergency lights. Jackson Reeves stood in the center, his arms crossed, his expression one of bored contempt. He was older than Poison had expected, with gray streaking his dark hair and deep lines carved around his eyes. But his mahna signature was unmistakable: a blazing sun of power that pressed against her senses like a physical weight.
"You must be Poison," he said. "I expected someone more impressive."
"And where did you come from?" Poison stopped twenty meters away, her hands clasped behind her back. "I know you aren't affiliated with Luminaurora's OM branch."
Reeves smiled without humor. "Well, someone had to clean up little ole Victor Kahn's mess after he passed away mysteriously. Did you have something to do with that? I'm actually curious. It's not often an S-Grade magjistar dies unexpectedly."
"I'm as clueless as you are. However, it certainly worked out in my favor. Two monstrous humans in Krey is far more than someone like me can deal with. I barely managed to deal with one."
The S-Grade's smile widened. "Two? The only S-Grade magjistar stationed in this branch is Victor Kahn? That Kali girl may reach S-Grade in the next decade or so if she keeps up her training but I was unaware of anyone else."
"Hmph! Do you think I'm stupid? Why would I willingly give you humans more information? Just shut up and get ready to die."
"Unfortunately, it's not my time to go just yet. There are still plenty of sexy magjistar women waiting for me back home." He moved.
Poison had fought magjistars before. Dozens of them, across years of hunting and being hunted. She knew their tricks, their techniques, their predictable reliance on ranged magji and careful positioning. She knew how they liked to open with probing attacks, testing their opponent's defenses before committing to a real assault.
Jackson Reeves didn't bother with any of that. A lance of pure white light erupted from his palm, crossing the distance between them in less than a heartbeat. Poison barely managed to dodge, the beam scorching past her shoulder and punching a hole through the warehouse behind her. Before she could recover, a second attack came: a barrage of crystalline shards that filled the air like deadly rain.
She dissolved into poison mist, letting the shards pass through her harmlessly, then reformed ten meters to the left. A bolt of white struck down where she'd been standing, cratering the concrete. Fast. Powerful. Dangerous. This was what an S-Grade magjistar looked like when they stopped holding back. Poison found herself grinning.
The battle unfolded like thus. Reeves hurled spell after spell: fire and lightning, ice and force, constructs of pure mahna that shifted and adapted to counter her every move. He was versatile in a way few magjistars achieved, his decades of experience allowing him to switch between learned magji spells with seamless effort. One moment he was bombarding her position with artillery-level destruction; the next he was weaving barriers and traps to deal with her counterattacks.
And Poison… adapted. When Reeves launched a wave of flame, she didn't try to tank it or dissolve around it. She used her poison to create a barrier of toxic mist that absorbed the heat and dispersed it harmlessly. When he tried to pin her down with control magji, she'd already moved, anticipating the technique from the subtle shift in his stance.
They traded blows across the compound, their battle carving trenches in the earth and collapsing buildings. Reeves was stronger: there was no denying that. His mahna reserves dwarfed hers, his spells were more refined, and his experience showed in every attack. But as the minutes stretched into an hour, something strange began to happen. Poison started gaining ground.
It took Reeves longer than he would have liked to realize something was wrong. The daemon should have been tiring. Should have been making mistakes. First-Grade or not, no newly daemon king should sustain this level of combat against an experienced S-Grade magjistar. He'd been systematically breaking down her defenses, forcing her to expend mahna at an unsustainable rate, wearing her down through superior resources and technique. And yet.
Every time he thought he had her cornered, she slipped away. Every time he prepared a finishing blow, she found some way to disrupt his casting. And increasingly, uncomfortably, she was getting closer. Reeves launched a control magji spell: Chains of Light designed to immobilize even the strongest opponents. Poison didn't dodge. Instead, she charged directly into the attack, her body shifting and flowing around the chains like water through fingers. Before he could adjust, she was inside his guard, her clawed hand raking across his barrier.
The barrier held. But the impact sent him skidding backward, and for the first time in the fight, Reeves felt a flicker of genuine concern.
"You've picked up gully martial arts," he observed, buying time to rebuild his defenses.
Poison's grin was all teeth. "I learned from the best." She came at him again. Her attacks targeted his weak points, the gaps between his barriers where his concentration was thinnest. She pressed him constantly, never giving him the space he needed to prepare his more devastating techniques.
It was, Reeves realized with growing unease, exactly how a close-combat specialist would fight a ranged opponent. But daemons didn't do close combat. Not like this. They had instincts, yes: primal urges to rend and tear and devour. But this was different. This was trained. This was someone who had learned. Learned from a proper fighter on how to fight.
"Who taught you this?" he demanded, deflecting another claw strike with a hastily conjured earth shield.
Poison laughed. The sound was wrong: too bright, too genuine, too relieved.
"You want to know the funny thing?" she said, pressing her advantage as his shield was slashed to pieces.
She feinted left, then struck right, her claws scoring lines across his arm before he could react. Reeves gritted his teeth and unleashed a gust of wind from a spell, forcing her back. "What are you talking about?"
Poison landed in a crouch, her emerald eyes gleaming with something that might have been gratitude. Or hatred. Or both.
"Three weeks ago, I fought someone. A human. A girl barely out of childhood who shouldn't have been able to touch me, let alone threaten my life." Her voice dropped, becoming almost reverent. "She didn't use spells. Didn't bother with tactics or strategy or any of the things a proper magjistar should do. She just… hit me. Over and over. Faster than I could react. Harder than I could endure. For sixty seconds that felt like sixty years, I experienced what it truly meant to fight something that didn't care about rules or technique or fairness." She rose to her full height, poison dripping from her claws.
"You're strong, Jackson Reeves. Stronger than me, probably. Your mahna reserves are deeper. Your spells are more refined. In a proper battle between magjistar and daemon, you would win." Her smile turned savage.
"But this isn't a proper battle. And compared to her? Compared to that monster who beat me to death again and again and again until time ran out?" She blurred forward, and Reeves barely managed to raise another barrier before her fist (not her claws, her fist) slammed into it with enough force to crack the magji construct.
"You're so wonderfully slow."
…
The fight turned after that. Not dramatically: Reeves was still an S-Grade, still one of the most powerful humans alive, still capable of spells that could level buildings and reshape landscapes. But Poison had found her rhythm now, found the brutal close-quarters dance that Zoey Winters had burned into her soul through repeated death and resurrection.
She didn't give him space. Didn't let him breathe. Every time he tried to create distance, she was there, pressing, striking, forcing him to defend with barriers and spells instead of the devastating ranged attacks he preferred. And she understood now. Fighting Zoey had been like fighting a natural disaster: a meteor shower of fists and fury that didn't care about strategy or self-preservation. The girl hadn't used magji like a normal person. She'd used her body as the weapon, augmenting it with mahna until every punch carried enough force to shatter mountains.
Reeves was nothing like that. He was a magjistar, someone who had trained for decades in the art of magji, who relied on spells and distance and the accumulated wisdom of generations. His close-quarters combat was competent, certainly. Better than most. He could hold his own against physical attackers, could use barriers and spells to protect himself from melee assault.
But he wasn't used to it. Not like this. Not against an opponent who had learned through agony exactly how to survive when someone stronger, faster, and more brutal was trying to take you apart piece by piece. Zoey Winters had been a nightmare. An anomaly. A freak of nature who fought like no human should be able to fight.
And Poison, for all her suffering, had learned from that nightmare. Every instinct Reeves had told him to create distance, to fall back on the ranged superiority that had carried him through hundreds of daemon kills. But every time he tried, Poison was there, not with the speed of an S-Grade, but with the anticipation of someone who had been forced to predict attacks that moved faster than thought.
She read his movements. Exploited his transitions. Punished every attempt to disengage with strikes that grew more confident with each exchange. The tables had turned so gradually that Reeves almost didn't notice until it was too late. His barriers were weakening. His mahna reserves, while still substantial, were being depleted faster than he could replenish them. And the daemon in front of him: this green-haired monster who had somehow learned to fight like a close-combat specialist: showed no signs of slowing down.
"Give up human," Poison said, her voice carrying an edge of exhaustion that she couldn't quite hide. "Killing you would take more effort than it's worth."
Reeves laughed bitterly. "You think I'll surrender to a daemon?"
"I think you'll do whatever it takes to survive." Poison's eyes were cold. "That's what separates the living from the dead. The willingness to swallow your pride when the alternative is oblivion."
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Then Reeves made his decision as he felt the poison flowing through his veins.
The explosion of mahna lit up the night sky like a second sun. Poison felt the technique building: a desperate, all-or-nothing attack that would drain Reeves of everything he had left. She could try to dodge, to dissolve, to escape the blast radius. But she knew, with the certainty of someone who had survived the unsurvivable, that he wouldn't miss. Not at this range. Not with everything on the line.
So she did something stupid. She charged directly into it. The blast caught her full-on: a torrent of pure destructive magji that would have vaporized anything less than a First-Grade daemon. Poison felt her body torn apart, felt her essence scattered across the courtyard, felt the familiar agony of dissolution that she had experienced so many times against Zoey Winters. But she didn't stop.
Her magji shard blazed with defiant light as she pulled herself back together, reforming from the poisonous mist that hung in the air. Reeves stared at her with wide eyes, his face pale, his body trembling from the exertion of his final attack. He had nothing left. She still had just enough. Poison's claw pierced through his chest, lifting him off his feet. Injecting him full of her venom, she knew he was already dead. And for some reason, she had a feeling that only Zoey Winters is the only human capable of surviving her poison no matter the dosage. Poison tossed him away, this battle already finished. She was breathing hard, her body screaming with exhaustion. She'd won. Against an S-Grade magjistar. Against one of the most powerful humans alive. And all she could think about was how much easier it had been than fighting Zoey Winters.
"Pathetic," she murmured, though she wasn't sure if she meant him or herself. "This is what passes for humanity's best? This is what the Council sends against me?" She turned away.
Zoey Winters had changed everything. Even sealed away in a void of nothingness, her influence lingered: a brutal lesson in what true impossibility looked like. Poison limped back toward her compound, her mahna reserves dangerously low, her body held together by willpower more than anything else. She needed to rest. To recover. To replenish the strength she'd burned through in this battle.
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From a rooftop half a kilometer away, Kali lowered her binoculars.
"She's weakened," she said quietly. "More than I expected. The S-Grade pushed her hard."
Beside her, Jax cracked his knuckles. "Then we move now?"
Kali nodded, her expression grim. "Now. Before she has time to recover." She turned to the others: Alexander, Lindsay, Joseph, Jacky, Tink: each one tensed and ready for what came next.
"Remember the plan. Get in, find the Oubliette, get out. If Poison returns before we're done…" She hefted her daemonic chainsaw, its teeth beginning to spin with a hungry whine. "We buy time however we can."
Jax reached out, his hands resting on the shoulders of those closest to him. The air began to shimmer.
"Hang on," he said. "This might feel weird."
The world twisted, folded, and disappeared. When it reformed, they were inside the compound.