She came when he said "one," because she's not a fool. The ground behind her foot exploded in dust. Her blade cut an ascending line—Starlight Ascent—and the moment it met his palm it sang high and angry. Sparks skittered like fireflies. He stepped in, not away, shoulders turning just enough to let the edge glance, and brought his forearm up, letting the flat kiss his skin.
For a half-breath, it looked like a lock.
Then Shiki's hand closed on empty air… and found the loose edge of her cloak. He gave it a tiny tug to straighten it behind her shoulders—like a gentleman at a ballroom correcting drape—smiled at her baffled face, and vanished sideways.
"What—" Seraphina recoiled a fraction, not from fear, but because her brain had nowhere to file that data.
"Presentation matters," Shiki said. "You're the Knight-Commander. Gotta keep the cape crisp."
"Are you mocking me?"
"Admiring. Mocking is for people with worse hair."
"I will cut that smirk off your—"
Light flared. Her aura finally spiked. The ground under her boots glazed to glass for a heartbeat and shattered. Her pupils narrowed with focus. She drew everything tight; no more flourishes, no more wasted inches. Blade in close, footwork tiny and venomous, cuts all the shortest path between two points.
Shiki's grin thinned a shade. Not gone. Just… sharpened.
They collided again. The sound this time was lower, heavier—the thud of two bulls meeting, except one of the bulls was wearing silk and didn't believe in hooves. Seraphina's cuts arrived stacked like cards; he answered with minimalism so petty it was almost rude. A tilt of wrist. A turn of fingers. A pressure on the flat that stole power without seeming to move.
"Magicless…?" someone whispered, because saying it out loud made it real.
Lyra didn't answer. Her eyes were wide, not with fear now, but with the awful delight of a mage watching a new, impossible physics.
Shiki stepped inside the next cut and finally—finally—threw something back. Not a punch. Just a push. His palm touched the edge of Seraphina's cuirass under her ribs and breathed force into it. No light. No bang. Just momentum turned inside-out.
Seraphina skidded backward three meters, boots carving twin trenches. She hacked the air in half where his hand had been on instinct; he wasn't there; he was already at her flank; her guard turned, late; two fingers tapped the rim of her pauldron—ping—like he was testing for hollow spots.
"Relax that shoulder," he said, maddeningly helpful. "You're loading tension and it's stealing speed."
"Stop. Touching. Me."
"Make me."
Her eyes flashed. "Gladly."
She hit a gear he hadn't forced her into yet. Light crawled spiderlike across her blade and condensed to a thread—a single tight line of radiance that made the world hold its breath.
"Sunpiercer."
She thrust.
For the first time, Shiki's expression changed. Not much. Just that his smirk went sideways like okay, that's cute.
His right hand rotated, two fingers extended—index and middle—and they met the thrust point with a click you could feel in your molars. The thread of light trembled, buzzing like a trapped wasp, then shattered outward into glitter and sound.
Seraphina's wrist went numb. She stepped, turning the failed thrust into a slash because muscle memory never lets a line go dead. Shiki rode it, slid past her blade shoulder, and—because he simply cannot help himself—tapped the back of her hip plate again, fingers quick as a wink.
"Balance still perfect. Proud of you."
"SHIKI!" Ai's shout cracked across the courtyard like thunder. "THAT'S. ENOUGH. BUTT. TAPS!"
He looked over, all innocence. "Armor taps, honey. Armor. I'm a professional."
"You're a pervert."
"Certified."
"Divorce," she said, which was hilarious because they weren't married.
Eline cupped her hands. "Marry me instead!"
"Denied," Ai fired back on reflex.
Corvathen, who'd been trying to look dignified and failing, wheezed a laugh into his beard.
Back in the ring, Seraphina exhaled slowly, the kind that empties you to the toes, and reset her grip. Her shoulders drew narrower; the blade came close to her cheek. She looked… calmer. Sharper. The flush was gone. The anger wasn't—she'd just set it on a shelf and asked it to wait.
"Again," she said.
Shiki's head tipped, appreciative. "There it is. That's the face."
They moved.
From the stands, it stopped being a fight and turned into an optical illusion. Lines of light stitched the air, then broke, then stitched again somewhere else. The ground scuffed, cracked, re-smoothed by shock, and cracked again. Dust plumed and got cut into clean planes mid-flight. The sun turned both of them into stuttering flashes.
Ai tracked them—barely. She chewed the inside of her cheek and didn't realize it, jealousy and pride in a messy knot in her chest.
Lyra, breath shallow, whispered to herself, "He's… not trying."
And he wasn't. Not really. He was matching rhythm, not pushing tempo. When she overcommitted a fraction, he let her fall through and corrected her with a touch like a metronome's tap. When she guarded too high, he nudged low. When her blade sang too long, he shortened the note with a palm. It was infuriating. It was teaching. It was cruel in a way only mercy can be.
Still—SSS isn't a pretty badge. It's blood and bone and training until your fingers forget what resting is. Seraphina kept coming. Kept clipping angles, kept turning misses into pressure, kept making the space smaller for him to be an asshole inside.
He stepped in for another "boop."
She head-faked the nose and brought the pommel up in a brutal close-quarters strike for his temple.
It connected.
It thunked.
Shiki's head tilted a centimeter. He blinked once, like a cat sneezed on him.
Seraphina's pupils dilated. There, the thought moved across her face, slick and sharp.
Shiki grinned. "You're cute when you cheat."
"Close-quarters isn't cheating," she said, and swept his legs.
He hopped, hugged the arc, landed on her blade for one rude step, stepped off her sword, and patted the crest on her gorget as he vaulted past.
"Commander," he murmured as he passed, almost respectful under the tease. "You're fun."
She turned on her heel, breath hissing between her teeth, and sprinted again.
Up on the rail, the male rookie finally exhaled. "Who do you even bet on?"
The female rookie elbowed him. "The wife."
"Not in the duel."
"In life."
He considered, nodded solemnly.
The fight went vertical again, then sideways along a wall—footprints in the stone like shallow bowls where shoes had met centuries-old masonry. They ran the arch, traded along the curve, and came down in a shower of grit. Shiki finally stopped with his heel on the line where shade met sun and lifted his hand—a small time-out gesture.
Seraphina slowed, not stopping, blade angled.
"Seriously," he said, and his voice had the tiniest new thread in it—just a hair more earnest beneath the nonsense. "You're strong."
Her answer was a blow that should've removed his head. He caught it. Of course he caught it. But he nodded like he took the point anyway.
The courtyard was a mess of footprints and cracks and startled silence. People weren't breathing right. Even the wind seemed to listen in case the air could learn something.
Shiki put his left hand back in his pocket.
Seraphina's chin lifted half an inch.
"Round two?" he asked.
She didn't say yes. She didn't have to. The light coming off her blade answered for her, rising, refining, tightening down to a filament fine enough to slice a prayer.
He smiled, wicked and warm and absolutely impossible.
"Okay then," he said. "Let's make it pretty."
They vanished into motion again—one god playing with gravity, one commander carving it into better shapes—and the courtyard leaned forward as one creature, hungry to see who blinked first.
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END OF CHAPTER : 20 : GOD VS SSS : 2
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