The waves came and died, and Kaiden stopped counting them. His body moved on the rhythm Alice threaded through his nervous system, her perception calls landing before his own eyes finished processing the threats they described, and the gap between seeing a target and ending it collapsed past the point of conscious decision.
He did not choose stances anymore. The stances moved through him like weather, each one arriving because the fight demanded it and departing when the demand changed.
The column stopped repeating itself. Mirescutters and Ruinwalkers still came, but they came backed by new templates as the Claimant rotated deeper reserves into the passage. Thornmaws arrived in the eighth wave, low-slung quadrupeds that launched volleys of bone spines from their ridgelines at range and forced him to close distance before the barrage found him.
