The shift in the duel was instantaneous and brutal. The grand, sweeping arcs of the greatsword were gone, replaced by the tight, vicious, close-quarters reality of a knife fight. The battle transformed from a spectacle of power into an intimate, desperate struggle for survival, a flurry of motion so fast and so close that the onlookers could barely track it.
Seraphiel, now armed with his consecrated dagger, was a different kind of opponent. He was no longer a defensive fortress. He was a whirlwind of aggressive, precise lethality. His style was a perfect, textbook example of dagger combat, a form that Edward had once seen in ancient scrolls in the Sunstone Academy library. Every block was a redirection, every parry was an attempt to trap a limb, every thrust was aimed at a vital, debilitating point—a wrist, a knee, the gap in the neck's armor.
