"It's a Memory Wraith" Farworth whispered just loud enough for everyone to hear.
Lyra looked at him, "What's that?"
"One of my colleagues at the Southern Laboratory proposed a theory," Farworth said. "That when people die, their souls retain memories. When those souls are absorbed by the Flame, those memories can travel through the Veins."
Nebula looked back at him, "How does this help us..."
"Well, what if the souls are trying to shape in the physical reality, using the memories of the deceased."
Arata looked at Lyra, "I thought the Dead had to serve the living... so it should not be Hostile right."
Nebula didn't look away from the thing standing in the hollow.
"Considering it's holding an obsidian sword," she said, "I wouldn't bet on that."
Nebula moved first.
Steel rang against the obsidian floor as she stepped in, blade low, stance orthodox the textbook Academy form refined by years of real combat. Her strike was precise, economical, aimed for joints that didn't quite exist yet.
The memory wraith reacted a fraction too slow.
Nebula's blade carved through its shoulder, dispersing a spray of black distortion that hissed as it struck the floor. The thing staggered, form destabilising, edges blurring.
Nebula pressed the advantage.
She flowed into the next cut without hesitation, footwork crisp, timing ruthless. A feint to the ribs, a reversal, then a clean diagonal slash meant to bisect.
The wraith failed to parry.
It watched.
Its form shuddered but not from pain, in recalculation. The severed portion reattached incorrectly at first, arm bending at the wrong angle before snapping back into place.
Then it adjusted. On the next exchange, the wraith's stance changed.
It mirrored her grip. Her angle on the sword's hilt.
Its blade was no longer a crude extrusion of memory it refined itself mid-swing, narrowing, balancing, aligning with her centerline.
Steel met stone.
Nebula felt it instantly.
"That's fast," she muttered.
The wraith's counter came cleaner. They were more efficient. Its timing tightened, cuts landing where hers would have, had she been on the opposite side.
They traded blows in tight quarters, sparks of distortion snapping with every clash. Nebula was still better only barely but the margin was shrinking with each breath.
It wasn't copying strikes. It was copying the decisions a master swordsman would make.
After a minute, she was forced back a step.
After two, she felt resistance where there hadn't been any.
On the third minute, a shallow cut opened along her forearm it was her first.
She exhaled sharply and disengaged, sliding back across the stone.
"Alright," she said quietly. "Enough of that."
The air bent.
Nebula shifted not physically, but spatially. Distance folded inward as she stepped, her blade arriving before the motion that should have carried it. Space itself shortening to accommodate her intent.
The wraith barely managed to block.
Nebula was everywhere now she was appearing at impossible angles, strikes landing from compressed gaps, from blind spots that shouldn't exist. Each cut landed faster than reaction time allowed.
She layered folds, stacking distortions so that the wraith's counters slowed, dragging through thickened space like limbs submerged in resin.
Its attacks lagged.
Its blade carved arcs that arrived a heartbeat too late.
Nebula drove it back, pressing with relentless precision, forcing its form to destabilise under the strain.
For the first time, Farworth stepped closer.
His eyes weren't on the clash of steel.
They were on the space between.
"Remarkable," he murmured. "She's not accelerating herself. She's editing distance."
The wraith faltered.
Nebula struck hard her blade piercing through its chest, space collapsing inward around the wound. The memory convulsed, form unravelling, edges tearing loose.
For a moment, it looked finished.
Then it stilled. It was not frozen, but looked as if it was listening to something.
The distortion around its core condensed. Lines sharpened. The pressure in the chamber shifted, subtle but unmistakable.
Nebula felt it an instant too late.
The wraith moved—and folded space, just like Nebula had been doing uptil now.
Crude at first. Jagged. But real.
Nebula barely twisted aside as compressed distance detonated where she'd been standing. The stone fractured under the stress.
Her eyes widened. "No," she whispered.
The wraith's next movement was cleaner.
Its blade arrived through a shortened path, matching her own technique it was still imperfect, but improving with terrifying speed. The space around them warped in overlapping layers as both combatants edited reality at once.
They clashed again. And again.
Evenly matched now.
Nebula's breathing deepened. Sweat traced along her jaw. Blood trickled from her nose, dark against pale skin.
Five minutes of sustained folding was too much.
Farworth's voice was low. Intent.
"It's not just copying the power," he said. "It's synchronising with the concept."
Tomas looked at the data and then to the professor, "How?"
"Well, my assumption, Memory wraith come from the Flame and the Vein's. so they inherently have resonant energy, and the concepts of universe as memories, all the they need now is a catalyst to activate the memory. Which in this case is Nebula."
Nebula slipped on her next step—just slightly.
The wraith didn't.
Arata moved before he realised he had decided to.
"Enough!" He stepped in, blade raised.
Compared to the wraith, his form was rough. Less refined. His cuts wide where they should have been narrow. The wraith turned, redirected, its blade flashing toward his throat...
and missed.
By nothing.
Arata felt it then.
A pull.
Not from the blade.
From the moment.
Time leaned.
He heard a voice it wasn't aloud, also not memory exactly.
Now.
He shifted.
The wraith's next strike slipped. Its foot caught on uneven stone that hadn't been there a second earlier.
Arata's blade connected.
Not cleanly. Not well.
But just enough to make the wraith recoil and re-calibrate. After an eye's blink it struck again.
This time, Arata should have been too slow.
He wasn't.
The blade passed where his neck had been. The floor cracked under the wraith's misstep.
Left.
He moved.
Duck.
He obeyed.
Each near-fatal moment resolved just off-course like parries landing a fraction early, strikes veering wide, opportunities opening where none should have existed.
Nebula stared.
"Arata," she breathed, "what are you—"
"I don't know," he said honestly, teeth clenched.
The wraith faltered.
For the first time, its timing broke.
Its copied folds destabilized, overlapping incorrectly. Space snapped back violently, tearing at its form.
Arata pressed in.
Not better. He was just luckier.
The final strike wasn't graceful.
But it landed.
The memory wraith shattered the space collapsed inwards as its borrowed concepts unraveled, its form dissolving into fragments of light and echo that sank back into the obsidian floor.
Silence followed.
Nebula sagged, catching herself on her blade. Arata steadied her without thinking.
Farworth exhaled slowly.
"Fascinating," he said.
Arata looked down at his hands. They were shaking. The veins on his palm were glowing Incandescent blue.
You listened this time.
...
Farworth did not join the others.
While Tomas packed away broken instruments and Lyra checked Nebula for signs of collapse, Farworth remained at the edge of the hollow, staring into the place where the Memory Wraith had come apart.
The obsidian floor was smooth again.
Too smooth.
No residual distortion. No echo bleed. Nothing that matched the violence that had just occurred.
That unsettled him more than the damage ever could.
He closed his eyes.
It wasn't skill, he thought.
And it wasn't instinct.
Arata's movements replayed in his mind—not the strikes themselves, but the spaces between them. The moments that should have ended in death. The places where probability had leaned, ever so slightly, away from disaster.
Near-misses.
Perfectly timed slips.
Stone cracking where it shouldn't have.
Blades arriving a fraction late.
Not enough to be obvious.
Enough to be decisive.
Farworth exhaled slowly.
He didn't bend space, he concluded.
He didn't bend force.
He bent outcome.
He opened his eyes and looked at Arata again—really looked this time. At the way the Veins beneath the stone had dimmed around him. At the faint afterimage of blue still clinging to his right hand, like the world hadn't quite finished responding yet.
The Flame had rules.
The Veins had structure.
Even the Choir followed resonance.
But probability— Probability was not a system.
It was an universal law.
And Arata may have been granted immunity without knowing he'd asked.
Farworth felt a chill settle in his chest.
He doesn't hear the world, he realised.
The world listens to him.
That was the difference.
That was why the Memory Wraith had faltered not because Arata was stronger, but because the thing had been built from memory and expectation.
And expectation fails when the future refuses to behave.