[Volnova Holdings — Auction Chamber | 6:15 A.M.]
Steel flicked his blood-slicked hair back and drew a long breath.
"…And that, gentlemen, was your daily dose of ordinary."
He turned toward the elevator again, adjusting his tie.
Liliya's voice sliced through the air like a scalpel.
"And with this final batch… you may write the terms of tomorrow."
The world's most dangerous people leaned forward.
Silence thickened.
Then—
BOOM.
The emergency stairwell exploded—steel doors ripped off their hinges, a wall of smoke blasting through—
—and Steel came screaming out of it.
Riding a stolen riot shield, knees bent like a surfer from hell, eyes gleaming, pistols drawn. He crashed through the glass-paneled wall of the top-floor conference room like a human warhead—trailing flame, chaos, and bad decisions.
The obsidian table flipped end over end. Vials of Ember spun into the air—slow-motion fireworks of crimson temptation. Warlords screamed. Some ducked. Others drew weapons. One man fainted. The Broker shouted something in code. A scarred mercenary pulled a chair as a shield. An investor cursed in Mandarin.
Steel landed in a skid, stood up slowly—hair blood-slicked, tie crooked, suit torn at the shoulder. One eye glowed faint green. He cracked his neck, then dropped the shield.
"Bidding's over, you capitalist clowns," he said with a lazy grin. "The universe just got a party crasher."
A guard opened fire.
Steel didn't flinch.
His left arm warped—bones snapping and reforming into a sleek green energy shield, glowing like molten jade. Bullets ricocheted off. Sparks flew.
He lunged forward, swinging the shield in a wide arc—
CRACK. A warlord went flying, landing on the table.
CRUNCH. A second was knocked through the holographic stock feed of Hong Kong.
The room erupted in chaos.
Steel's right arm morphed into tendrils, snaking across the floor, grabbing a chair and hurling it into the gut of a fleeing bidder.
THUD. SPLAT.
Steel just hummed.
🎶 "I don't wanna be… ordinary…" 🎶 blared from his earbuds.
"Nope," he muttered. "Extra as f*ck."
Three Ember-enhanced guards charged—veins glowing red, muscles twitching unnaturally.
Steel didn't even blink.
His back arched. Green energy erupted, flaring into a rotating halo of light and flame. He reached out—green constructs forming around his arms—a massive warhammer in his hands.
He spun once.
BOOM. All three were crushed into the ground like broken dolls.
One tried to crawl away—Steel casually stepped on his head, knocking him out cold.
"That felt personal. Therapy's gonna be weird next week."
Another came at him with a plasma blade.
Steel's chest split open—morphing into writhing, thorny tendrils glowing green and alive. They wrapped around the man, lifted him mid-air, crushed.
Then, they ignited.
FWOOOSH. Green fire erupted—unholy and hungry.
The screaming man flew into the wall, leaving behind scorched outlines and smoke.
"...And that's what I call a light snack," Steel quipped, brushing ash off his shoulder.
[Volnova Holdings — Auction Chamber | 6:17 A.M.]
Smoke twisted in elegant, dangerous spirals.
The broken silence was replaced by shrieks of chairs scraping across the floor, bodies scrambling backward in panic, and guns hastily drawn with trembling hands.
One of the warlords—a Brazilian cartel heir—vomited on the table.
Another, masked and skeletal, backed toward the shattered window, whispering prayers in Arabic.
The Broker, composed until now, reached for a hidden pistol in his coat—but it shook in his grip.
"This... this was not part of the program!" a British tycoon snarled, spittle flying. "Where the hell is security?!"
Steel stood amidst it all — unbothered. His green aura burned brighter now, casting ghostly shadows across the bloodstained marble. The remains of the three guards still smoldered at his feet, their Ember-warped flesh twitching in residual spasms.
The room stank of scorched synthetic muscle and melted bone.
A woman in a red silk dress tried to crawl toward the exit, whispering, "Это демон…" — It's a demon...
A few warlords had already drawn weapons and pointed them at Steel — but not a single one pulled the trigger.
Not after what they'd just seen.
Across the room, Liliya Volnova remained still.
Her gloved fingers tapped the table rhythmically—the only sound now that the panic had quieted to dread.
She didn't look at the dead.
Didn't flinch at the carnage.
Her eyes were locked on Steel, analyzing — dissecting — with the patience of a machine.
Her second-in-command, a tall, pale man with veins like barbed wire under his skin, stepped forward.
Muscles tense. Lips curled in restrained bloodlust.
"Permission to engage?"
Liliya didn't look at him. She simply said:
"Разорви его."
(Tear him apart.)
The command dropped like ice water over the room.
He smiled — something inhuman behind it — and charged.
Steel barely moved.
But his limbs twisted. Shifted.
With a hiss of emerald light, his legs compressed like coils, then launched him up with a thunderous WHOOMPH — green fire trailing behind him in a spiral.
Mid-air, his arms warped again — no longer arms at all, but twin energy scythes, curved like death's own wings.
He twisted once.
Landed behind the lieutenant in a flash of fire.
A whisper:
"You're not even the main course."
Then—
SNAP.
A cyclone of green fire burst upward from beneath the lieutenant's feet, swallowing him whole in an instant.
His scream was brief.
When the flames receded, only his smoking boots remained, fused to the marble floor.
For a second, the entire room forgot to breathe.
The warlords, previously inching toward escape, now froze like statues.
An African general raised a trembling flask of Ember to his lips and downed it in desperation.
A cybernetically enhanced Mongolian enforcer dropped to one knee, muttering, "Хар тамын илбэ…" — Black sorcery…
Even the mercenaries lining the perimeter—hardened killers all—began to shift uneasily.
One slowly backed toward the exit with his hands raised, saying, "I—I didn't sign up for this. I'm just here for crowd control, man—"
Steel walked forward, dragging a smoking chair behind him like it was an executioner's axe.
Blood on his coat. Fire on his shoulders. Madness in his grin.
He turned the chair around, straddled it, and sat.
His eyes locked on Liliya.
"Let's try this again," he said, voice a cocktail of exhaustion and mockery. "Project Ember, huh?"
He tilted his head like he was pondering a wine list.
"Mind if I outbid your ass… with a revolution?"
[Volnova Holdings — Auction Chamber | 6:19 A.M.]
Smoke.
Flame.
Ash.
Steel sat alone amid the wreckage. Dozens of warlords were unconscious or dead. Glass crunched beneath his boots. Green fire licked the edges of the conference table like a starving beast.
Across the room, Liliya Volnova rose—slowly, regally—from her obsidian chair, now cracked in half.
Liliya's lips twitched.
Not a smile. Not quite. More like the final curl of a loaded trap.
Her voice, when it came, was cold and precise—Russian accent coiled around every word like frost on steel.
"Ты не понимаешь, во что ввязался…"
(You have no idea what you've walked into...)
Her gaze didn't flinch.
Even as her lieutenants burned. Even as her plans were shattered.
Even as the world watched.
"Do you think," she said softly, "that I'd host gods… without becoming one?"
She removed her gloves—revealing skin that shimmered slightly under the light, veins not red but black, pulsing with iridescent oil-glow.
Steel's grin twitched. "You look like a bad science project."
Liliya smiled — but it didn't reach her eyes.
"You call it Ember," she said. "But what I took wasn't from your little lab."
She raised her hand.
And the air twisted.
Something deep stirred — older than the facility, older than Ember's synthetic birth.
"I found the original strain," she whispered. "The first flame. Buried in a city that predated your civilization. They called it the Heart Rot."
Steel's smirk vanished.
"Corrupted Ember," she said. "Too volatile to be sold. Too unstable to be studied. It killed every test subject."
She reached up and ripped her own throat open — and didn't bleed.
Instead, black-green flame poured from the wound, and her flesh knit back instantly. Sinews healed in reverse — like the body remembered its true form.
Her eyes turned pitch black, save for a thin golden ring at the center.
"Except me."
[Visual: Liliya's Transformation]
Her hair unravels into tendrils of smoky black strands, each one moving like a snake sensing heat.
Her veins pulse, crawling under her skin like roots.
Her shadow expands, taking up the entire far end of the room — but she doesn't move.
She opens her mouth and breathes — and the air corrodes. Steel's green flame flickers in protest.
Steel narrowed his eyes.
"You corrupted yourself," he said. "You idiot."
"No," she whispered—and her voice doubled—one voice soft, the other ancient and malevolent. "I evolved."
She raised her arms.
A pulse exploded from her chest—pure black light, laced with golden circuitry. The remnants of Ember vials on the floor shattered, reacting violently.
The Ember in the warlords' bodies began boiling.
They screamed.
Some melted.
Some burst.
Some turned into twitching husks of raw flesh and fire—crawling toward her like moths to a god.
Steel stepped forward. "Alright. You want to play queen of monsters—fine."
He cracked his neck. His arms glowed.
But then—
Liliya vanished.
In one heartbeat she was across the room—a blur of darkness—and slammed a tendril-laced fist into Steel's chest, sending him crashing through a marble column.
BOOM.
He hit the wall so hard it cracked.
Green fire splattered.
He stood, coughing, blood in his mouth. His ribcage was dented—actually dented—and steam hissed off his shoulders.
"You hit like a prophecy," he growled.
Liliya was floating now.
Not flying—hovering.
Around her, reality distorted. Her presence warped gravity. The air wept.
"You thought I was selling godhood," she said. "I was breeding extinction."
Steel stood, wiped the blood from his jaw, and grinned again.
"Cool story," he said.
Then his entire torso ignited in green flame.
"But I brought my own apocalypse."