The needle crossed the distance between them before the sound could catch it.
It was nearly invisible, a silver-black line fired from beneath his left wrist while Moses's attention sat on the daggers. Moses twisted his shoulder. The needle missed his throat, scraped across the horned edge of his collar, and sank into the narrow join between pauldron and gorget.
The poison entered.
Moses felt it at once. A small burn. A crawling numbness beneath the armor, trying to slow the muscle that guided his shoulder. His purple eyes brightened, not with alarm, but with interest.
"You and your cheap tricks, the same Caelum as always."
"Effective," Caelum said.
Moses swung his shoulder once. Dark veins of demonic mana crawled under his skin and devoured the numbness before it could spread. The needle snapped, forced out by pressure from beneath the flesh, and fell to the floor with a tiny metallic tick.
"Almost," Moses said.
Caelum was already moving.
