Three days of preparation had transformed M'lod from a sleepy agricultural village into something resembling a military encampment.
The population had swelled from two hundred to nearly eight hundred as refugees from the seven threatened villages poured in—entire families carrying whatever possessions could be transported, livestock herded through the gates, children clutching toys and looking terrified. Shy'yao had organized the chaos with ruthless efficiency, assigning housing, rationing food stores, establishing work rotations for communal defense construction.
Vellin's scouting had identified twelve military camps within a day's march. Three were active staging areas with significant troop presence. Five were secondary positions with rotating patrols. Four were abandoned outposts that could be reactivated if needed.
And Misaki had discovered something remarkable about his fire chakra.
It happened during solo practice in his workshop, frustration mounting as he tried to achieve finer control over his flames. Standard manifestation created fire from his palms—useful for basic applications but imprecise, wasteful of chakra, difficult to weaponize at range.
Then he'd remembered Roy Mustang. His favorite character from Fullmetal Alchemist. The Flame Alchemist who could manipulate fire with devastating precision through specialized techniques.
On a whim, Misaki had snapped his fingers while channeling his Manipura chakra.
The resulting explosion of flame had blown out his workshop window.
After two days of experimentation and several minor burns, he'd refined the technique. A finger snap with chakra channeled through the friction point created instant ignition at a target location—precise, controlled, devastating. And a thunderous clap with both hands channeling maximum output generated a massive fireball that consumed everything in a three-meter radius.
Tonight, he would field-test these techniques in actual combat.
The target camp lay eight kilometers southwest of M'lod—a secondary position housing approximately forty soldiers according to Vellin's reconnaissance. Supply station rather than frontline deployment. Soldiers would be relaxed, expecting no resistance, possibly drunk given the distance from command oversight.
Perfect for a message.
Misaki crouched in the scrubland darkness two hundred meters from the camp's perimeter. Ten archers flanked him on either side, their arrows nocked and ready. Deylos commanded the right flank, his experience evident in how he positioned his shooters for optimal angles. Riyeak waited in reserve with Vellin, ready to charge when the chaos began.
The camp itself was poorly defended—canvas tents arranged in rough rows, a central fire pit, minimal fortifications. Sentries walked predictable patterns. Supply wagons sat unguarded near the eastern edge.
Amateur hour. These soldiers expected no opposition.
"On my mark," Misaki whispered. His heat-sense vision painted the camp in thermal signatures—forty-three human-shaped heat sources, most clustered around the fire pit drinking and laughing. "Archers ready. Aim for center mass. When I ignite the arrows, don't panic. Just reload and fire again."
The archers drew their bows. Twenty arrows pointed toward the sky in high arcs calculated to rain down on the camp from above.
"Mark."
Twenty bowstrings released with a synchronized thrum.
The arrows flew, dark shapes against the darker sky, nearly invisible to anyone not specifically watching for them. Misaki tracked their trajectories with his heat-sense, waited for the perfect moment, then snapped his fingers.
His Manipura chakra responded instantly. Twenty points of ignition flared to life mid-flight, and suddenly the night was filled with flaming projectiles screaming down toward the camp like divine judgment.
The arrows hit.
Fire exploded across the camp. Tents ignited instantly, their treated canvas burning with horrific speed. Soldiers who'd been standing near impact points simply burst into flames, their screams cutting through the night. The supply wagons caught fire, their contents—probably including oil or alcohol—detonating in secondary explosions that threw burning debris in all directions.
"AGAIN!" Deylos roared.
Twenty more arrows flew. Misaki snapped his fingers again. Twenty more ignition points. More tents burning. More soldiers screaming. More chaos spreading like wildfire through the camp.
The thermal signatures scattered in panic. No formation. No coordinated response. Just raw terror and self-preservation instinct taking over.
"CHARGE!" Misaki shouted, drawing his scout's blade and sprinting toward the burning camp.
Riyeak overtook him within seconds—the massive shield-bearer moved with shocking speed for his size. But instead of engaging directly, Riyeak skidded to a stop, grabbed Misaki around the waist, and threw him.
Misaki flew through the air like a projectile, his body spinning, his mind calculating landing angles and momentum. A soldier emerged from a burning tent directly in his flight path—face blackened with soot, sword raised defensively.
Misaki's blade took the man's head off mid-flight.
The decapitation didn't slow Misaki's momentum. He hit the ground in a controlled roll, came up running, and his precision-striker instincts took over completely. A soldier to his left—slash across the hamstring, man goes down screaming. Soldier to his right—stab through the armpit where armor plates gapped, blade finds the heart. Soldier directly ahead—snap fingers, face ignites, man drops clawing at his burning eyes.
Riyeak crashed into the camp like a bulldozer, his shield slamming soldiers aside with bone-breaking force. His earth chakra flowed into his weapons, doubling their weight at impact, turning each shield bash into a lethal strike. A soldier tried to block with his sword—the blade shattered against Riyeak's chakra-enhanced shield, and the follow-up blow caved in the soldier's chest armor.
Vellin moved through the chaos like a ghost, her small size and scout training making her nearly impossible to track. She didn't kill directly—instead, she hamstrung runners, disabled fleeing soldiers, set traps with her wire and stakes that caught desperate men and left them screaming on the ground for others to finish.
The archers continued raining fire from their positions, each volley ignited by Misaki's finger snaps, each impact spreading more flames and more terror.
A soldier charged Misaki with a spear, thrusting with desperate strength. Misaki sidestepped, grabbed the spear shaft, and channeled his fire chakra directly into the wood. The weapon ignited in the soldier's hands, flames racing up the shaft and engulfing his arms. The man dropped the spear screaming, and Misaki's blade found his throat before the screams could peak.
Another soldier—this one had the rank insignia of a sergeant—tried to rally a defensive formation near the camp's center. "FORM UP! SHIELDS TOGETHER! THEY'RE JUST—"
Misaki clapped his hands.
The massive fireball that erupted consumed the sergeant and four soldiers around him in a sphere of flame that burned so hot it turned sand to glass. When the fire cleared three seconds later, nothing remained but charred skeletons still locked in defensive positions.
The remaining soldiers broke completely. No more attempted rallying. No more defensive stands. Just pure, animalistic flight instinct. They scattered in all directions, abandoning weapons, shedding armor, seeking any escape from the nightmare that had destroyed their camp in less than five minutes.
"LET THEM RUN!" Misaki commanded, and his voice carried surprising authority. "Let them spread the word! Let them tell their commanders what happens when you come for M'lod!"
But not all of them would escape.
Vellin had positioned herself along the most obvious retreat route. As soldiers fled, she used her scout abilities and trap expertise to funnel runners into specific paths. Trip wires brought men down. Concealed pits caught others. And when they were disabled, vulnerable, Riyeak's team secured them with rope and iron chains.
By the time the flames began dying down, forty-three soldiers had been reduced to six prisoners and twenty-seven corpses. Ten had escaped into the night.
Perfect.
Misaki stood in the center of the burning camp, breathing hard, his clothes soaked with blood that wasn't his own. His heat-sense vision scanned for remaining threats but found only the thermal signatures of the dying and the captured.
"Riyeak," he called out. "Bring the cart. We're taking some of these bodies back with us."
The big man appeared from the smoke, his armor splattered with gore. "Why? Evidence burns cleaner."
"Because I need them for something else." Misaki's voice carried an edge that made even Riyeak pause. "Trust me."
They loaded five corpses onto a supply cart—soldiers who'd died relatively intact, without massive fire damage or decapitation. The six prisoners were chained in a line, their hands bound, their faces showing the kind of terror that came from watching your entire unit get annihilated in minutes.
Before leaving, Misaki walked among the remaining corpses—the burned, the broken, the scattered pieces of men who'd thought themselves safe this far from any real threat. He raised his hand, snapped his fingers once, and watched as delayed ignition brought flames to life across each body.
They wouldn't burn fast. He'd modulated his chakra specifically for that. Slow burning. Hours of visible smoke. A beacon that would be seen from kilometers away, announcing exactly what had happened here.
They stopped at M'lod's outskirts rather than entering the village directly. A cleared field that had previously been used for crop overflow now served a different purpose.
Riyeak noticed the wooden stakes first—tall poles driven deep into the ground, each sharpened to a cruel point at the top. Ten of them, arranged in two rows facing the main southern approach road.
"Misaki," Riyeak said slowly. "What the hell are these for?"
Misaki didn't answer. He simply unloaded the first corpse from the cart, dragged it to the nearest stake, and with Riyeak's reluctant help, lifted the body.
Then he positioned the stake's point against the corpse's lower back and pushed.
The sharpened wood pierced flesh with a wet, tearing sound. The body slid down the stake, impaled through the torso, the point emerging from the chest cavity. Gravity did most of the work. Within thirty seconds, the corpse hung displayed like a macabre flag, arms dangling, head lolling forward.
Vellin had gone pale. The prisoners were openly weeping.
Misaki moved to the second stake. Second corpse. Same process. The efficiency was almost mechanical.
Third stake. Third corpse. The captured soldiers began begging.
"Please," one gasped. "Please, we didn't—we were just following—"
"You have leather bags," Misaki interrupted, not looking at them, continuing his work on the fourth stake. "Collections. I checked while you were unconscious. Eighty-three pairs of ears between the six of you. That's one hundred sixty-six people you murdered. Men, women, children—didn't matter, did it? You took their ears for bounty money."
Fourth corpse mounted. Fifth stake.
"We'll tell you everything!" another prisoner screamed. "Troop movements! Commander names! Supply routes! Anything! Just don't—"
"Oh, you'll tell us everything," Misaki agreed calmly, mounting the final corpse on its stake. "That's why you're still alive. We have an interrogation room prepared. Very thorough. Very persuasive." He finally turned to face the prisoners, and his eyes reflected firelight like a demon's. "And when you're done being useful? You get stakes too. But yours will go through while you're still breathing. You'll die slowly, probably over several hours, displayed for every soldier in the king's army to see as they march toward M'lod."
One prisoner fainted. Another vomited. The remaining four simply stared with the hollow eyes of men who'd seen their futures and found only horror.
Riyeak pulled Misaki aside, his voice low. "This is... this is brutal. Even for war."
"Good," Misaki said flatly. "It's supposed to be brutal. Fear is a weapon just like fire or steel. Every soldier who sees these stakes will think twice before attacking M'lod. Every unit that hears about this camp will have to march knowing this might be their fate. Psychological warfare is force multiplication when you're outnumbered."
"You learned this on Earth?"
"Human history is full of examples. Vlad the Impaler. Genghis Khan. Sherman's March. Armies that wanted to break enemy morale before the actual fighting started." Misaki looked at the five corpses displayed on their stakes, dark shapes against the night sky. "This is kindness compared to what they did to those children. What they planned to do to entire villages. I'm just speaking a language the king's army will understand."
Riyeak studied his friend's face—the cold calculation, the absence of hesitation, the transformation from peaceful engineer to something harder and more dangerous. "You've changed," he said quietly.
"Good," Misaki repeated. "On Earth, being peaceful meant being powerless. Here, peace requires the capacity for overwhelming violence. I'd rather be the monster they fear than the victim they forget."
Shy'yao had prepared the interrogation room in a reinforced storage building on M'lod's eastern edge. Solid stone walls. Single door with heavy iron lock. No windows. Inside, chairs with restraint points, a table with various implements, and oil lamps that cast dancing shadows.
The six prisoners were brought in one at a time. Outside, the other five could hear everything that happened through the walls. The screaming. The begging. The eventual cooperation.
Misaki didn't personally conduct the interrogations—Shy'yao and several village elders who'd seen military service handled that. But he observed. Learned. Understood exactly what information they were extracting and what it meant for M'lod's defense.
Troop positions. Command structure. Supply schedules. Communication protocols. Patrol patterns. Psychological state of various units. Which commanders were competent versus which were political appointees. Where the king's forces were strongest and where they were stretched thin.
By dawn, they had a comprehensive intelligence picture.
And five of the six prisoners had been executed—quick deaths, merciful compared to the threats. Their bodies joined the stakes display.
The sixth prisoner was released deliberately. Given water, basic supplies, and sent running south with a message burned into his memory through hours of psychological conditioning:
M'lod fights back. Tell your commanders. Tell your king. This village will not go quietly into the purge.
When Riyeak returned to the main village and shared what Misaki had done with the corpses, reactions were mixed.
Some villagers looked disturbed. Questioned whether such brutality was necessary. Worried about becoming the monsters they were fighting.
Others—particularly those who'd fled from neighboring villages, who'd seen family members killed, who'd lost children to the purge—looked grimly satisfied. Approved of the ruthlessness. Wanted more of it.
Lyria found Misaki in his workshop at midday, methodically cleaning blood from his equipment and checking his weapons for damage.
"They're calling you 'The Flame Devil,'" she said without preamble. "The refugees. They heard about the impaled bodies. The fire attacks. They're... impressed. And terrified."
"Good," Misaki said for the third time in twelve hours. "Fear keeps armies at bay better than walls."
Lyria sat down across from him, studying his face with her healer's perception. "You've gone somewhere dark," she observed. "Somewhere I can't follow."
"War is dark," Misaki replied. "Pretending otherwise just gets you killed. I'm doing what needs to be done to protect this community."
"At what cost to yourself?"
Misaki paused in his cleaning. The question hung in the air between them, heavy with implications he wasn't ready to confront.
"Whatever cost is necessary," he finally said. "I was powerless on Earth. I won't be powerless here. Not when I have the capability to make a difference."
Lyria reached across the table and took his hand—the one not holding a blood-stained rag. "Just remember you're not alone in this. Don't lose yourself so completely in becoming their nightmare that you forget who you were trying to protect."
Misaki squeezed her hand but didn't respond. Because honestly, he wasn't sure he could make that promise.
The king's army would arrive in twenty-four days.
And The Flame Devil would be waiting.