The world seemed to slow as the ragged Talon broke from the line.
Echo's voice cut through the chaos, sharp with disbelief. "What is that idiot doing?!"
It was too late.
The man was already moving—a clumsy, desperate lunge fueled by adrenaline and despair, not strategy.
He wasn't aiming to strike.
He was aiming to disrupt, to cling, to be a momentary obstacle.
For one frozen heartbeat, Nail, Mags, and Rook all went still.
The rhythm of their desperate dance stuttered.
Nail, frozen mid-swing, his glowing fist pulled back for another earth-shaking blow, hesitated.
His eyes widened, not in fear, but in shock at the sheer, stupid bravery of the act.
Mags, circling like a wolf with her shotgun half-raised, stopped dead.
Her gaze snapped from Ember to the fallen man, her face a mask of grim recognition.
She knew what happened to distractions.
Rook, a statue behind his scope, went perfectly still.
His finger hovered off the trigger.
There was no angle, no shot that wouldn't hit his own man.
He could only watch in horror.
For one frozen, impossible second, all three of them were locked in place, united by the same horrified thought: Why would you get that close?
A second of hesitation was a fatal.
The crimson armor moved.
It wasn't a lunge or a charge. It was a blur—a streak of polished crimson that seemed to skip frames of reality.
Ember closed the distance to the fallen Talon in the time it took Echo to draw a sharp breath.
There was no theatrical wind-up, no roar of effort.
Just a single, piston-driven punch delivered with the casual precision of a machine stamping a part.
Her armored fist met the side of the man's head.
The impact didn't make a crunch.
It made a wet, hollow pop, a sound that seemed to violate the very idea of silence.
The man's head wasn't crushed.
It popped like a balloon.
The force turned it into a mist of red that hung in the air for a suspended moment before gravity took over.
A shocking arc of crimson painted the frost-bitten concrete wall behind him.
More sprayed across the frozen ground in a grotesque, star-shaped pattern.
The headless body spasmed once, then collapsed, a puppet with its strings cut.
Across the rally point, every remaining Talon saw it.
They didn't just hear it.
They all saw it—the vivid spray against the grey, the sudden, absolute stillness of the body.
It wasn't a death in the heat of battle.
It was more like an execution.
Nail's mind went white.
For one second, there was nothing—no sound, no thought, no fear. Just the afterimage of red against grey.
Then reality crashed back in, cold and heavy.
His instincts screamed, not in words, but in a raw, electric jolt that locked his muscles.
That will be you.
One mistake.
One slip.
That's all it takes.
He was still breathing, still standing, but inside, he felt frozen.
The adrenaline high from trading blows shattered like glass.
This wasn't a brawl anymore.
It was a slaughterhouse, and he'd been swinging his fists in the middle of it.
"NAIL!"
Rook's voice tore through the ringing silence, sharp as a rifle crack.
It wasn't a command.
It was a yank—a lifeline thrown into the void of his hesitation.
Movement to his left.
Mags didn't shout, didn't wait.
She simply moved, shifting her stance, raising her shotgun not at the armor, but toward its path—putting her body between Nail and the crimson specter.
A silent, grim buffer.
Wake up.
We're still here.
Before Nail could shake the daze, a new sound cut through the yard.
It was a voice, but not a human one.
It came filtered through a vocal emitter—flat, synthetic, devoid of tone or tiredness.
It was the sound of a machine asking a question it already knew the answer to.
The crimson helmet tilted slightly, the featureless visor reflecting the scene of carnage it had just authored.
"…Shall we continue?"
The words hung in the air, polite and utterly horrifying.
It wasn't a taunt.
It wasn't a challenge.
It was an invitation back into the grinder.
Nail's hands came up, knuckles glowing with the familiar white hum of the Mass Driver glyph.
The motion was automatic, born of a hundred fights and the stubborn will to not go down without swinging.
But this time, he felt it.
A fine, constant tremor ran through his fingers—a vibration that had nothing to do with the glyph's energy.
It was in the bones.
In the tendons.
A shudder he couldn't lock down, no matter how hard he clenched his fists.
It wasn't fear of pain.
He'd taken beatings before.
This was different.
This was the tremor of a man who had just seen the ceiling of what violence could be—the wet, final punctuation of a life ended not in a clash, but with casual, effortless indifference.
His own fists felt suddenly small.
Heavy, but small.
He tightened his grip until the brass knuckles bit into his skin, trying to press the shake out through sheer force.
It didn't leave.
It just hummed beneath the glow, a silent, betraying witness to the cold now settling in his gut.
Nail took a step forward.
Then another.
Each one felt heavier than the last, his boots grinding grit into the frozen earth.
He stopped beside Mags, close enough to feel the heat coming off her shotgun barrel.
Without a word, he lifted a trembling hand and placed it firmly on her shoulder.
The shake was still there, a faint vibration she could feel through her jacket—not weakness, but live wire tension.
He didn't look at her.
His eyes were locked ahead, on the crimson armor standing motionless across the yard.
"I'm up front," he said, his voice lower than usual, rougher.
It wasn't a request.
It wasn't boasting.
It was a statement of fact, heavy with understanding. "You cover."
He gave her shoulder a single, solid squeeze—part reassurance, part transfer of purpose—before letting his hand drop back to his side.
The shake was still there, but his stance widened, his shoulders squaring toward the threat.
He was still scared.
But he'd rather be scared out here than watch someone else die in his place.
Ember watched from behind the crimson visor, her sensors tracking the subtle signs the boy couldn't hide—the slight tremor in his hands, the tension in his shoulders, the way his breath hitched before he moved.
Hesitation.
Cold, understandable fear.
She'd seen it a thousand times in the pits, right before a fighter broke.
But he didn't break.
Instead, he stepped forward.
He put a hand on Mags' shoulder—a silent transfer of duty—and squared himself toward her again.
The fear was still there, vibrating in the air around him, but it was being used.
Forged into resolve.
A flicker of something unexpected cut through Ember's clinical focus.
Not respect—that was too clean a word.
It was a darker, more familiar recognition.
The recognition of a cornered animal deciding that today, the teeth come from this side.
Then the boy planted his feet.
He took a sharp, ragged breath that steamed in the cold air, and his voice tore across the distance, raw and defiant.
"ROUND TWO!"
It wasn't a battle cry.
It was a declaration—a refusal to let what he'd just witnessed be the final word.
He rushed her.
Not with the wild, furious charge from before.
This was different—tighter, more controlled, every step a conscious choice to close the distance with the thing that had just turned a man to mist.
He was running back into the nightmare, eyes wide open.
Behind the armor, Ember's lips twitched.
Not a smile.
Something closer to a sharp, quiet acknowledgment.
Okay, she thought, her own focus narrowing, the suit's systems humming to a higher pitch.
Let's see how far that heart can take you.
This time, the dance was different.
Before, it had been chaos—a desperate, scrambling mess of reactions and near-misses. Now, it tightened. Coiled.
Nail no longer charged blindly.
His advances were shorter, sharper, each step measured to keep the crimson armor centered between himself and Mags.
He wasn't just swinging; he was herding.
Mags no longer fired to kill.
Every shotgun blast was placed—a burst of frost-coated concrete at the armor's feet to spoil its footing, a spray of shrapnel toward its sensor array to blur its vision.
She wasn't trying to pierce the shell.
She was sand in its gears.
And Rook… Rook was silent.
He didn't fire.
Not yet.
His scope tracked the armor's every twitch, his finger resting beside the trigger.
He was waiting for the exact moment—the split second when Ember committed to a move that would expose her, when her shield would flicker off, when Nail's position would be perfect for a kinetic shove rather than a killing blow.
They moved like three parts of one battered machine.
No words were spoken.
No signals given.
They had learned.
They had seen the rules.
And now, they were fighting by them.
The world was reduced to the rhythm of their three-part press—the thump of Nail's blows, the scattergun's bark, the tense silence from Rook's perch.
Then light rewrote the scene.
From somewhere behind them, a pinpoint of impossible brightness winked into existence.
It was cold, fierce—a star being born in the grime of the junkyard.
A split second later, the star became a river.
A concentrated beam of pure, blue-white energy lanced across the ruined street, moving faster than sound, faster than thought.
It tore through the air with a scream of ionized particles, etching a line of devastation across everyone's vision.
It struck the spot where Blaze stood, watching.
The explosion wasn't fire.
It was an annihilation of shadow—a sphere of blinding whiteness that swallowed dust, rubble, and the smug spectator at its center before collapsing inward with a concussive explosion that hit the chest like a physical blow.
The fight froze.
Nail stumbled back, shielding his eyes from the afterimage burned purple into his sight.
Mags lowered her shotgun, her grim focus shattered by the shockwave.
Even the crimson armor halted its advance, the helmet turning slightly toward the rising plume of steam and debris.
No one had seen it coming.
No one had dared to hope for an intervention.
No one but Echo.
From her shadowed position, tucked behind the collapsed frame of a cargo loader, she let out a slow, controlled breath.
Her eyes, sharp and calculating, hadn't widened in surprise.
They narrowed in satisfaction.
A slight, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.
"Finally," she murmured, the word lost under the ringing silence. "Reinforcements."
She hadn't just hoped.
She'd expected.
The plan was always bigger than the rally point.
Echo's brief moment of satisfaction dissolved as the dust began to settle.
Her mind had already been pivoting—the plan to concentrate their stolen spell apps on the crimson armor was now on hold.
Reinforcements changed the equation.
They could pressure Ember from two sides, maybe even force a retreat.
The blast had been precise, devastating.
Nothing organic could have walked away from that.
But the reality, when it cleared, was cruel.
The dust parted like a curtain.
Where the beam had struck, the ground was scorched into a glassy, shallow crater.
Rubble had been vaporized or blasted outward in a perfect ring.
And in the center, standing exactly where he had been, was Blaze.
Around him, shimmering with a vibrant, furious orange hue, was a perfect hexagonal barrier.
It glowed brighter than they had ever seen it—not a flicker of strain, but a display of absolute, contemptuous stability.
Tiny motes of dust and energy skittered across its surface before dissolving into nothing.
He hadn't moved.
He hadn't flinched.
One hand was raised casually, as if he'd been shielding his eyes from a bright light.
His other arm remained crossed over his chest.
His expression, visible now through the fading glare, wasn't anger, or surprise.
It was amusement.
A wide, genuine smile split his face, his eyes gleaming with delight at the unexpected turn.
The barrier slowly faded from view, its job done, leaving him utterly, insultingly unscathed.
Echo's slight smile vanished.
Her blood ran cold.
The reinforcements hadn't changed the equation.
They had just shown her how deep the hole really was.
Before anyone could process the barrier's display, they followed Blaze's gaze upward.
Against the dusk-lined sky, a single figure was falling—not plummeting, but hurling downward like a spear thrown from the heavens.
The air whistled around them.
As the figure descended, a complex, brilliant blue glyph spiraled to life in front of them, etching itself into the air with crackling intent.
Blaze still didn't move.
His amused smile didn't falter.
He watched the falling caster with the curiosity of a man observing an interesting insect.
The glyph flashed.
There was no beam, no explosion.
Instead, a tremendous, focused wave of concussive force slammed downward—not at Blaze, but at the space he occupied.
It hit the shimmering orange barrier with a deep, shuddering force that vibrated through the ground.
This time, Blaze moved.
Barrier and all, he was wrenched from his footing—not damaged, not breached, but physically displaced.
The force lifted him and flung him backward like a doll, arcing through the ruined air over the rally point, soaring across the shattered landscape toward the skeletal ruins of Sector 20 in the distance.
He vanished into the gloom, a streak of fading orange light.
The figure landed a second later, boots impacting the fractured concrete with a crack that sent a web of fissures through the ground.
Dust billowed, then settled, revealing Lucent.
He stood poised, breathing steady.
Not one, but three conduits hovered in the air around him, held in a stable triangular formation by a subtle silver stasis glyph.
Their light cast sharp, moving shadows across his focused face.
He didn't look at the stunned Talons.
Didn't glance at the crimson armor.
His eyes were fixed on the path Blaze had taken.
Without a word, another glyph—simpler, sharper—flared to life beneath his feet.
With a pulse of compressed air and kinetic energy, he launched himself forward, a blue-tinged blur streaking after his target.
He hadn't come to join the fight at the rally point.
He had come to remove the spectator.
For a long, stretched-out second, even the crimson armor went perfectly still.
The only movement was the slow settling of dust around its feet and the faint, almost imperceptible hum of its active systems.
The helmet remained fixed in the direction Blaze had been thrown, as if the suit itself was buffering, recalculating.
Inside, Ember's mind raced, scrolling through sensor logs and combat data.
Target displacement.
High-yield kinetic glyph.
Origin: airborne intruder.
Blaze status: mobile, barrier intact.
Threat reassessment.
But beneath the sterile analysis, a more human confusion simmered.
Blaze was gone.
Not by her hand.
Not by the suit's power.
By some junkyard caster with three conduits and a death wish.
The calculus of the fight had just been rewritten by an outside variable.
The director had been ejected from his own theater.
Her gaze, behind the visor, slowly panned back across the yard—over the stunned Talons, the headless body, the woman with the shotgun, the brawler with the shaking, glowing fists.
The script was gone.
All that was left was the fight.
And, for the first time since the shield had flickered off under Mags's blade, she felt something that wasn't in the mission parameters.
From within the crimson shell, Ember had watched it all unfold—the blast, the barrier, the falling figure, the violent relocation of her commander.
But her eyes had caught what the others might have missed: the look on Blaze's face in the instant before the force glyph hit.
It wasn't shock.
It wasn't anger.
It was anticipation.
A sharp, eager light in his eyes, as if he'd been waiting for this—hoping for it.
His smile hadn't been one of mockery in that final second.
It was one of recognition.
Finally, something interesting.
The realization settled into Ember's gut, cold and clear.
Blaze hadn't stayed out of the fight because he was bored.
Or because he was following some corporate observation protocol.
He'd stayed out because he was waiting for the challenge.
And now, someone had given him one.
A quiet understanding threaded through her focus.
She probably didn't need to worry about him.
Wherever he'd been thrown, he wasn't in trouble.
He was in his element.
And maybe… that was the point all along.
She turned her helmet back toward the remaining Talons, her systems recalibrating, her stance shifting.
The distraction was over.
The game had just split into two fronts.
And on hers, the fight was still very much alive.
Ember was already pivoting back toward Nail, her systems priming to resume their brutal calculus.
But a new sound cut through the ringing silence—not a glyph, not a gunshot.
The deep, gut-throated roar of a heavy engine, gunned to its limit, coming fast.
She turned her helmet toward the east wall just as it happened.
The already battered concrete wall shattered inward in an explosion of dust and rubble.
Not from a glyph.
From sheer, blunt-force momentum.
A heavy junkyard truck, its front grill reinforced like a battering ram, plowed through the breach.
It didn't slowed down.
It was accelerating, aimed like a spear.
There was no time to dodge.
No time to leap.
Ember braced, the barrier flashing orange around her a split second before impact.
The truck hit her dead-center.
The barrier held, dispersing the energy, but it couldn't negate momentum.
The force was colossal—the entire weight of the vehicle behind a point-blank ram.
She was driven backward, skidding across the ground, before her back plate crunched into the far wall.
The truck's mangled grill pressed forward, pinning her there, barrier shimmering under the strain.
For a moment, there was only the hiss of steam from the wrecked engine, the groan of metal, and the low, steady hum of the Aegis-frame's systems.
Then, from the cab of the truck, a single, deliberate click.
Ember's audio pickups registered it a heartbeat before the world turned to fire and deafening thunder.
The truck detonated.
Not just a fuel tank rupture—a controlled, professional demolition.
The explosion erupted upward in a column of flame and shrapnel, tearing the vehicle apart and swallowing the pinned armor in a whirlwind of heat and force.
Chunks of metal and concrete were hurled skyward, raining down across the rally point in a scorching hail.