The ruined block had become a basin of ice and slag.
What had been cobble and storefront was now a broken geometry of fused stone: buckled ridges where the street had heaved and set wrong, storefront beams collapsed into black angles, and frozen tongues of fire trapped mid-flicker inside Aerwyna's cold. Steam crawled over everything in low sheets, clinging to shattered walls and rolling off glassed rubble as if the city itself could not decide whether to burn or freeze.
Aerwyna stood at the center of it—blue armor steaming, breath coming hard inside her faceted helm.
Catalyna had vanished.
Not fled.
Gone under.
Aerwyna's hand tightened around her ice spear. Her jaw ached from the way she'd been clenching her teeth since Evan ran.
Evan has Ezra.
The thought should have been enough to steady her.
It wasn't.
The memory of Ezra's voice—Mama——still rang like a bruise inside her skull.
She expanded her Field.
Cold pressure rolled outward from her like a tide. It pushed through rubble and collapsed beams, tasted the ground for movement, and mapped the street the way hands read braille. She felt the density of fused stone, the hollowness under broken foundations, the thick wet pockets where earlier water had seeped and pooled.
Nothing.
The surviving Knights—black steel scorched dull from the earlier blast—held formation around her without needing to be told. Three now. They kept their distance from her armor's frost, but their auras flared and tightened in tense synchrony with her search.
Then—
A shift.
Below her left heel, the earth scraped.
Not sound.
A sensation, like a finger dragging across the underside of a drum.
Aerwyna shoved mana into her stance and sprang sideways.
The street exploded.
A boulder the size of a cart wheel punched up from beneath, splitting the ice skin and showering shards in all directions. It missed her by less than a yard, but its rising edge scraped her left pauldron, leaving a hot line of friction across the blue ice.
The impact still rattled her ribs.
She landed in a crouch, one gauntleted hand skimming the ice to steady herself. Cracks spidered through the luminous plate at her wrist and chest.
"Whore," her voice boomed through the helm, distorted and amplified. "Come up and die properly."
The air answered with heat.
Catalyna erupted from the ground ten yards away.
She came up like a thrown spear—stone and dust bursting around her shoulders as the tunnel mouth collapsed shut behind. A thin skin of earth armor coated her forearms, and her eyes were sharp despite the blood streaking one side of her face.
Aerwyna's attention caught a detail at once.
Catalyna was breathing harder.
Not the theatrical calm from earlier.
Real depletion.
Two of the Knights moved in on instinct. "Milady!" one barked, but Aerwyna didn't look at them. "Spread," she ordered, and they deployed at once: one took her right as a moving wall—shield angled, eyes locked on Catalyna's hands—while another slid left to become the hook, watching the ground for tells with a spell held ready to punish any re-emergence; the last stayed back as the hand, Fire primed, waiting on Aerwyna's cue to break a chant.
The Knights condensed and released—baron-rank, second circle.
\[Fireballs] tore through the steam toward Catalyna—orange spheres that hissed as they flew, leaving wavering heat trails in the cold air.
Catalyna snapped her arms up.
\[Stone Gauntlet].
Rock coated Catalyna's hands in thick plates, the spell clamping down tight and brutal as she punched forward; the first Fireball burst against the stone and splashed around her like molten paint, the second following half a heartbeat later—she crossed her arms and let the blast break over her, detonating behind in a spray of flame, and she barely gave ground, not far, only a half-step, which made Aerwyna's jaw tighten.
The wench can tank knight spells
And she's still holding enough control to not scatter. The wall Knight answered by slamming a palm down—\[Earth Wall]—and stone rose between Aerwyna and Catalyna, a jagged slab of protection taller than a man, thick enough to take a direct hit.
Aerwyna used the second it bought.
Her Glacial Armor had taken too much.
She felt it like a splintered bone—fractures spidering through the chest plate, cracks at the hip joints, a weakness around the throat where heat had eaten the ice thin—and she poured mana inward; the luminous blue thickened in pulses, veins of pale light knitting, plates re-locking, her breathing steadying as she forced herself back into shape.
On the far side of the wall, metal clanged—a volley—and Catalyna moved; Aerwyna couldn't see her directly, but she caught the timing anyway: the shift of position, the friction of earth sliding through earth. Then came a shrill whistle—ice spears—and Aerwyna flung them from behind cover, the projectiles arcing over the wall in a clean, practiced line.
Catalyna's Field flickered as she reacted, a brief shell of stone rising at the last second—the first spear shattering into glittering fragments, the second punching through the shield to scrape her shoulder, the third grazing her hip. Blood misted. Catalyna hissed.
Aerwyna stepped out from behind the wall and skated—ice extruding under her boots, smoothing and locking into a frictionless skin—and she accelerated hard enough that the steam blurred. The hook Knight didn't aim at Catalyna.
He aimed at where she would be, a compact shot forming at his palm—\[Stone Bullet]—and the projectile tore through the haze to smash into the stone shell rising to meet Aerwyna's next spear, cracking it early and stealing Catalyna's timing.
Catalyna aborted the step and dropped under instead of pressing forward—knees dipping, one palm slamming into the street as a shallow tunnel mouth yawned—and she vanished into it, the ground swallowing her whole.
"Seal it!" the wall Knight barked—no order needed—and Fire roared into the opening in a tight, brutal stream, heating stone to red and turning the mouth into a furnace; beside it, the hook Knight slammed a palm down and raised an angled earth lip—not to block her, but to force any eruption to one side, to give her only one bad option. Aerwyna skidded to a stop, frost screaming under her heel, and snapped her Field wide again.
The Knights mirrored her, auras blooming outward in tense synchrony as they listened for the smallest tremor beneath the ruined block.
Nothing—no scrape, no shift, not even the faint tremor of an underground escape. The Knight beside Aerwyna swallowed. "Has she fled?" he asked, voice hoarse.
"I doubt that," Aerwyna replied instantly.
She stared at the hole. It was too close. Too deliberate. If Catalyna wanted distance, she would have tunneled away under buildings and rubble where their senses could not track. This? This was a throat held open on purpose.
One of the Knights—the one who had thrown Fire—moved toward the opening, cautious but drawn like a moth. "Stay back," Aerwyna snapped. He slowed. Then stopped. He took one more step anyway—drawn by the need to see.
The hook Knight caught him by the backplate and hauled him hard.
The earth spat.
A boulder launched upward from the hole like a cannon shot missing the Knight's head by inches. It was close enough that the passing air tugged his helm sideways and the heat trail scoured a groove through steam.
Catalyna burst out of the ground ten yards from the hole, not where she'd gone in; she hit the surface in a low roll and—without slowing—punched her hand into the ice at her feet, the frozen skin shattering as she freed her footing. Then she started chanting.
Aerwyna's blood went cold. The cadence, the shape—Earth. Not third circle. Higher.
"Interrupt her!" Aerwyna roared.
Her vision narrowed to a hard, cold tunnel. She could feel her limits now—the earlier heat had bruised her ribs and scorched something deep in her chest, and the foot injury had stolen the last of her mobility.
Aerwyna fell.
She hit the ice hard and rolled with the momentum, armor scraping and cracking, then forced her body into a flip that brought her upright—but Catalyna didn't give her time; she thrust both hands down, and a boulder a yard wide surged up and rolled forward to strike Aerwyna's right foot. The impact distributed through the armor, but the pain still punched through hard enough to steal her breath. Her ankle screamed—not broken, but damaged.
Mobility was cut.
Catalyna smiled—not wide, not theatrical. Just a thin curl.
Aerwyna answered on reflex, snapping an ice spear toward her center mass.
Catalyna sidestepped and kept coming, rock crawling back over her fists in thicker gauntlets as she wove through the next spears Aerwyna hurled—fast, relentless, meant to pin her in place.
The remaining Knight who still had mana took his opening.
He hurled a boulder from Aerwyna's flank.
For an instant Catalyna went with the momentum instead of fighting it—then clenched, her stone gauntlets snapping out to meet the rock mid-flight.
She crushed it in two as pebbles and dust exploded around her. Shallow cuts opened along her arm; a bruise bloomed beneath the leather.
And still she landed on her feet.
Eight yards from Aerwyna.
Close.
She charged.
Aerwyna raised her ice spear like a halberd and swung in a vicious horizontal arc meant to cleave bone.
Catalyna slid just inside the swing, shoulders low, eyes fixed.
Her rock gauntlet flashed and hammered down onto Aerwyna's already-injured right foot.
The blow landed with sickening density.
Aerwyna shuddered and howled.
Her speed halved.
The ice under her boots was still hers, but her body could no longer exploit it. Each pivot dragged. Each glide bled speed.
Catalyna rolled away as Aerwyna tried to retaliate with a desperate slice, then backed off one measured step.
She smiled again.
Aerwyna's movements were sluggish now.
Her right foot dragged.
The remaining Knights could barely stand, their mana spent, forced into pure Reinforce.
But Catalyna didn't fear the. Her smile widened.
"I have you," her posture said.
Aerwyna's breath steamed inside her helm.
If she'd known what Catalyna truly was from the start, the fight would have unfolded differently. Rank was not vanity; it was intelligence—timing, thresholds, what spells were even possible. But Catalyna's under-layer—whatever that armor was—had smudged her presence just enough to make Aerwyna read wrong.
She had walked into a battle against a higher circle wearing the assumptions of a lower one.
She huffed.
The foot injury stole speed.
And Catalyna—Catalyna was still standing.
As Sir Evan neared the devastated block, his steps faltered.
The world narrowed to bodies.
Blackfyre Guard lay scattered across the streets and rooftops—men he'd drilled with, drunk with, cursed the rain with. Some stared sightlessly at the sky; others were twisted into shapes no human spine should make.
Half the guard, by his rough count, was simply gone.
A hollow feeling gnawed at his gut.
"Lord Ezra," he said hoarsely, tightening his grip on the child in his arms. "We should fall back to the castle. It's too dangerous here. Look at the wake of that spell—it was… monstrous."
Ezra peered over his arm.
He saw charred stone, steam, and the faint shimmer of mana still clinging to the air. The quake from Catalyna's \[Supernova] had rippled through the city like a thrown stone through water. Even now, he could feel the aftershocks of their ongoing clash—smaller, but sharp.
"Let me ask you a question," Ezra said quietly, mana flared in his throat. He didn't bother hiding now.
Evan glanced down, startled by the tone.
"Given this situation," Ezra went on, "half the guard dead, the enemy clearly a high-ranked mage… if my mother dies, who has the capacity to save me today?"
Evan opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
"If Catalyna wins," Ezra continued, words steady, "I will still be abducted. Our remaining forces cannot stop her. Without my mother, she will come and go from the castle as she pleases."
What he said was only half the picture.
Even if Catalyna burned through most of her reserves finishing Aerwyna, the battlefield told its own story: nearly half the defenders in this quarter of Bren were already dead. Those who survived were mauled. If the spy chose to withdraw after a victory, she could recover, regroup, and return.
The very next day, she could strike again, with no guarantee Reitz would be back in time.
The messenger would need a day to reach the front. Reitz would need at least another to ride back at full tilt. Two days, minimum.
Hiding inside the castle, with Aerwyna gone, was postponing the inevitable.
The only realistic path was to increase the chances Aerwyna walked away from that street—and for that, every capable fighter mattered.
Evan's jaw clenched.
He couldn't refute Ezra's logic. His shock at the boy's clarity barely registered anymore; adrenaline and grief burned away room for any more surprise.
"Wait," Ezra said. "Before we go back—I need to see something. Cast a \[Stone Bullet], please."
Evan blinked, confused.
"At what?" he asked.
Ezra pointed with a tiny hand at a broken signpost ahead—a hanging tavern sign, its board snapped, dangling from one chain.
"That," he said.
Evan shifted his hold, freeing one hand. He flicked his wrist out of habit, drawing from the already-disturbed stone of the street.
\[Stone Bullet.]
A fragment of rock shot out, smashing cleanly through the hanging board, splintering it with a crack.
"Can you repeat that spell," Ezra asked, "with the same speed and force, over and over?"
"Of course," Evan said, a bit of pride sneaking into his tone despite everything. "That's basic for an Earth mage."
"Good," Ezra said.
He nodded to himself.
"Now," he said, "tie me to your back. High between your shoulders. You need both hands for fighting."
Evan stared at him.
"You mean… I'm going to help your mother fight," he managed, "with you strapped behind me?"
"Yes," Ezra said simply. "But don't worry—we won't go near them."
He pointed again, this time toward a fallen archer in the gutter.
"Also," Ezra added, "pick up that bow. And as many arrows as you can fit in the quiver."
Evan looked from the corpse, to the plume of smoke, to the child in his arms.
This is insane, he thought. If anything hits us…
But maybe survival didn't live on the side of caution anymore.
Maybe it lived where the six-month-old pointing out his blind spots said it did.
"Very well," Evan said quietly.
He grabbed a length of silk from a shattered stall and worked quickly, binding Ezra securely to his back, snug enough that he wouldn't jostle loose even if Evan rolled or dove. The baby's chest pressed between his shoulder blades; Ezra's field of view opened across the ruined streets behind them.
Then Evan crouched, pried the longbow from the dead archer's fingers, and collected a quiver's worth of arrows.
"Okay," he said, voice low. "We go back. But if it becomes too dangerous, I—"
"You won't have time to argue with me then," Ezra cut in. "So don't. Just listen."
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat.
Mana slid into familiar grooves behind his eyes.
Activate AMP.
The world unfolded in lines and arcs—impact tremors traveling through stone, the rough locations of spell detonations, the cadence of Aerwyna's movements versus Catalyna's counters. The battlefield, even out of sight, became a shifting diagram.
"Now," Ezra whispered near Evan's ear.
"We move. Stay at range. I'll tell you where to aim."
Evan took a breath, set his jaw, and broke into a run toward the fire.
Aerwyna's back up was on its way.