Natalia came down from the roof the way she did everything: like gravity was a suggestion she'd chosen to accept, temporarily, under protest.
She dropped the three stories in two moves. A telekinetic cushion caught her six feet above the pavement, held for half a heartbeat, then deposited her on the asphalt with the kind of grace that made parkour instructors weep into their energy drinks. Her boots hit the ground without a sound. The Cryo-Lich Ring on her finger cast blue shadows across the wet street.
I watched her walk toward me through the carnage of our morning. Through the steaming husks of wolf-things that were already decomposing into something that smelled like burnt rubber and regret. Through the spreading pool of oil-dark blood leaking from the A-Rank's skull cavity where my bat had made its final argument. Through the shattered remains of her own ice walls, reduced to sparkling meltwater that caught the sunrise and threw it back at the sky in broken fragments.
