The flame-wrapped fist connected with Syra's jaw.
The impact wasn't magical. Wasn't domain-level destruction. Just pure physical force executed with SS+ mastery—concentrated, precise, *devastating*.
Syra's head snapped sideways. The world blurred. Her Ariel Mode—already flickering, already unstable—*shattered* from sheer kinetic force. The frequency that made her weightless, that made her hair wave, that made her *formless*—all of it collapsed under the brutality of physical reality.
She hit the ground hard. Skidded. Rolled. Came to rest face-down in scorched earth.
Pain exploded across her jaw, her ribs, her entire body from accumulated damage. Her masochistic tendencies processed it as *satisfying*—the clarity, the focus, the heightened awareness that injury brought.
But underneath that satisfaction was something sharper: *recognition*.
*I lost the form. I became conscious. I thought about what I was doing and it killed the frequency.*
