The wall no longer protected.
It simply watched.
The most recent impact still vibrated under the rain when Lys's body finished sliding across the broken stone and disappeared among the debris.
The structure gave way with a dull groan — wood, tiles, everything descending too slowly, as if the world needed an extra instant to accept the fall.
Rynne felt before thinking.
The pressure ahead thickened.
Not because something advanced quickly, but because space yielded out of habit.
Ghatotkacha took a step.
The rain veered before touching him, turning into brief, uncertain vapor.
The air around him creaked, compressed by the presence.
Skýra received the blow with her feet planted.
The shield opened before her like a translucent blade, geometric lines vibrating under the impact.
It didn't break.
It yielded.
Rynne saw the half-meter recoil before Skýra felt it.
Stone scratching beneath the boots.
Jaw locked, denying the field any sound.
Iaso was already there.
Not blocking.
Redirecting.
The strike slipped along a wrong angle, energy scraping the edge of the shield and exploding into the ground beside them.
The crater was too short to be natural.
"Again," Iaso said, already moving.
Skýra nodded.
There was no room for more.
Kaelir was pulling air.
The sound came out uneven.
Rynne noticed the delay in his body — not pain, but weight arriving too late.
Arms a little slower, reflexes out of phase by fractions that did not forgive.
Even so, he remained.
Neriah was on her knees.
Her hands sunk into the soaked stone left dark marks while blood ran from the corner of her mouth, mixing with the rain.
The field around her seemed denser, as if crossing that point required extra force.
Rynne saw.
Kept it.
She herself had stepped back.
The mask was broken.
The impact had torn part of the garment, revealing the pale line of her face beneath the ruined fabric.
Water ran along strands of hair stuck to the skin.
One eye remained hidden.
The other evaluated everything.
No panic.
Only calculated fatigue.
Ghatotkacha rotated his torso.
The effect, absolute.
Skýra raised the shield again, but now the impact brought permanence.
The runic symbol in the creature's right iris pulsed, and the wind inclined as if it knew orders.
Skýra's arm vibrated.
The weight crossed the shield, descended through the shoulder and lodged in her chest for an instant too long.
Rynne saw the warning arrive before the sound.
Iaso too.
"Skýra—"
Late.
The field yielded again.
The recoil pushed both of them backward.
Not enough to knock down.
Enough to teach.
This wasn't adjustment.
It was insistence.
Only then did Rynne raise her gaze.
Beyond the wall.
Beyond the field.
Where rain reflected a distant light — not lightning.
Something older.
She breathed deeply.
Spoke almost to herself.
"First, a rain of fire…"
One step.
"Now butterflies."
The wind inclined.
"Appearing…"
The spiritual sparks in Ghatotkacha's hair vibrated.
"…and disappearing as if they had never been here."
Ghatotkacha advanced.
Rynne tilted her head, following.
"Funny.
"This one doesn't even remember how to get tired."
She then began to walk.
Stopping a few meters from Kaelir.
"So," she said, without taking her eyes off the creature.
"How do we proceed?"
Kaelir took a moment.
She read the pause in his chest, in the adjustment of his breathing.
"We don't," he answered.
"We push until something yields. Could be him. Could be the field. Could be someone who shouldn't."
The corner of his mouth moved.
It wasn't a smile.
"He doesn't fall.
"He doesn't tire.
"But he responds to pressure."
Rynne inclined her head.
Still looking at Ghatotkacha.
"No plan, then."
"Plans are for things that respect limits," Kaelir replied.
"This respects weight. And habit."
Rynne nodded once.
"Works."
She stepped forward.
And felt before understanding.
The wind changed.
She ran.
The first strike came as it always came — direct, crushing, made to erase the idea of approach.
"Now!"
Space yielded.
A fissure opened mid-step.
Short. Unstable.
Rynne vanished the instant the arm descended.
The blow passed where she had been.
She reappeared to the creature's left, already inside the guard.
Breath held.
Body angled like a blade.
The rapier went in.
Shallow.
Clean.
Enough.
The blade traced across Ghatotkacha's abdomen.
Blood.
Little.
Real.
The mistake answered an instant later.
He twisted his torso with brutality, elbow opening space by weight, not technique.
Another fissure.
She was gone before the impact truly existed.
Reappeared behind Skýra, releasing the air slowly.
"He bleeds," she said, almost voiceless.
"And everything that bleeds… can die."
Skýra advanced in the same second.
Low base.
Feet planted in the mud.
Her shield opened ahead like a living wall, geometry pulsing in the compressed air.
Ghatotkacha's second blow collided.
It didn't break.
But it pushed.
Kaelir felt the impact before hearing.
It wasn't the strike — it was the field's response.
He counted the recoil without needing to look.
Almost a meter.
Stone scraping beneath the boots.
The sound contained in Skýra's clenched jaw.
Iaso entered through the flank.
Didn't strike.
Deflected.
Kaelir saw the angle die there — centimeters stolen from the next impact when her hand scraped the shield at the only point where the force could still be altered, redirecting what could not be absorbed.
Even so, the field yielded.
He opened the fissure.
Short.
High.
Space tore obedient — too late to be comfortable, too early to be useless.
Rynne emerged above the creature's shoulder, falling with gravity, rapier aligned with the wrist.
The blow went deeper this time.
Ghatotkacha's body responded.
Not retreating.
Correcting.
The roar came with the adjustment — not pain, but muscle calculation reorganizing.
His arm returned in an impossible arc.
Kaelir opened his mouth.
"Rynne—"
Late.
She was already leaving.
The fissure opened as the blow passed, wind tearing where her body should have been.
Kaelir felt the impact cross space as if the opening were a polite suggestion.
Rynne reappeared on her knees, sliding in the mud.
Short breathing.
Controlled.
"Again," she said.
Kaelir opened two more fissures.
One for her.
One for Iaso.
The rhythm was wrong.
He felt it now — not as an idea, but as physical resistance in his chest.
Skýra advanced first.
The shield came forward, but not as a wall.
As an invitation.
She turned her body in a controlled arc. The initial impact was diverted while the spear emerged from behind her shoulder, long, precise, describing a low curve.
Ghatotkacha corrected the weight.
Late.
The tip scraped the side of the thigh.
Too shallow to stop.
Deep enough to mark.
Kaelir felt the field react to that mistake.
He opened the fissure in the middle of Skýra's rotation — short, precise beyond instinct.
Rynne came out of it already moving.
The cut came fast.
Not to kill.
To reopen.
The same point.
Blood appeared again.
Now constant.
Ghatotkacha reacted by turning his torso.
Skýra was already off-axis.
The shield rose at an impossible angle, deflecting the blow along its back.
The spear retracted and returned — a short, dry thrust, using the enemy's own rotation against him.
The impact sounded heavy.
Not bone.
Displaced pressure where there should be no space.
Iaso appeared right after.
Low.
Close to the ground.
Short strikes to the knee, to the base of the leg — delays, not wounds.
Kaelir opened another fissure.
Rynne fell from above.
The rapier sought the opened groove.
Deeper now.
The body responded.
The roar came again.
Not pain.
Adjustment.
Ghatotkacha struck the ground.
Not as an attack.
As a decision.
Stone rose in wide plates.
Mud spat fragments.
The base ceased to exist.
The field was no longer reacting.
It was imposing.
Skýra turned the shield downward, planting it as an anchor.
The spear drove forward, creating a fixed point in a terrain that wanted to yield.
She held.
Kaelir felt the error in the same instant.
One second more than it should.
Iaso tried to correct.
Entered to cover the flank.
The world rose.
Ghatotkacha's punch did not come at her.
It came at the ground.
The entire slab lifted.
The impact crossed space as if the opening were only theory.
Iaso was thrown.
There was no scream.
There was displacement.
The body cut through the air and collided against what remained of a side structure.
Wood broke.
Stone gave.
The sound came after.
Dry.
Final.
Kaelir felt the weight of it before the name.
"Iaso!" Skýra shouted.
The next blow came toward her.
Direct.
Kaelir saw the shield rise by instinct, the body turn to absorb.
It worked.
For half a second.
The impact crossed the metal like solid thunder.
The arm gave.
The shield lost its axis.
The spear was ripped backward by the force of the impact, taking Skýra with it.
She spun.
The mud didn't hold.
The shield escaped her hand and was swallowed by the mire.
Ghatotkacha advanced.
A step too large.
A finisher.
Kaelir opened the fissure before thinking.
Short.
Violent.
Space tore where Skýra was — and she appeared behind him, still spinning, knees sinking into the mud as she planted the spear in the ground to keep from coming apart entirely.
She breathed deeply.
Once.
Only once.
Ghatotkacha felt the change.
Turned.
Toward Kaelir.
The heavier axis.
The advance came.
Not as choice — as inevitable response.
Space ahead yielded first.
The ground sank under the step, pressure spreading in short waves — weight recognizing weight.
Then—
The advance did not complete.
Ghatotkacha's body locked for an instant too short to be called a mistake — too long to be ignored.
Something slipped out of rhythm.
Not pain.
Deviation.
Cuts.
One.
Another.
Another.
Too short to break.
Too precise to ignore.
The strength did not fail.
The alignment did.
Tendons responded late.
Joints lost synchrony.
The body adjusted.
But the time between impact and correction grew an instant.
And in that interval—
Rynne had passed through him like compressed wind.
She stopped behind.
Released her breath slowly.
The sound was almost intimate.
Kaelir saw first.
Not the blood.
What came after.
The open gashes in Ghatotkacha's body still ran, thin, constant — but they no longer yielded the same way.
The flesh around them darkened, retracting, like metal exposed to heat.
Vapor rose.
Brief.
Dense.
It was not smoke from an open wound.
It was closing.
As if the body itself were burning to correct.
Kaelir felt the delay in his arms worsen.
Not pain.
Calculation becoming too expensive.
Behind him, Skýra rose again.
Dirty with mud.
Without the shield.
The spear now firm in both hands — point low, base solid, weight redistributed through the body like someone who knew exactly what she could still afford to lose.
"He learned," she said, without taking her eyes off the creature.
Kaelir nodded.
The gesture came half a beat after the thought.
"Not as we thought," he answered.
"He just got tired of responding."
Ghatotkacha rose slowly.
The field answered beneath his feet.
And Kaelir understood, with cold clarity:
the fight still existed.
But now he was the one marking the tempo.