The first sign was not sound.
It was breath.
Rynne inhaled — short, controlled.
The air went in too cold.
When it left, it came out white.
A pale thread slipping between her lips, dissolving slowly into an atmosphere that no longer seemed natural.
Her fingers tightened on the rapier's grip half a degree more than before.
The leather was stiff.
The rain crossing the field slowed as it passed through that zone, as if meeting invisible resistance.
Some drops hovered for an instant before being dragged by the slow orbit turning behind them.
Kaelir exhaled beside her.
The vapor came out denser.
Heavier.
Ahead —
the heat began to disperse.
In layers.
The vapor that once rose in thick columns now unraveled into thinner veils, gradually revealing the silhouette that remained motionless at the center of the field.
Ghatotkacha was no longer a wall.
The shadow was still too large to ignore — but now it had contour.
Definition.
Proportion.
Perhaps a little over three meters.
Perhaps less.
It was not easy to measure.
Because the space around him seemed slightly compressed, as if reality itself had thickened at that specific point.
The ground beneath his feet no longer sank.
It was flattened.
Compacted.
As if pressed by an invisible, constant force.
When the diffuse light of the rain reflected on his form, it revealed skin black like living basalt — thick, irregular, marked by golden and scarlet veins that pulsed slowly beneath the surface.
But now the veins no longer coiled chaotically.
They followed lines.
Directions.
Like structured channels meant to contain something that could no longer spread.
The musculature was compressed.
The colossal volume had been reorganized into fibers too dense, tensioned beneath the skin like steel cables pulled to the limit.
The shoulders were broad.
But not excessive.
The arms hung beside the body, long enough to suggest reach — short enough to allow speed.
The joints were aligned in an almost human way.
Almost.
Small deviations made the figure wrong enough that it could not be mistaken for a man.
The water falling over that body ran for a few instants.
Then dispersed into brief vapors before touching the ground, as if the environment itself could not decide whether to yield or resist.
The long, bristling hair was no longer wild.
It floated under invisible pressure, each strand held suspended by a force that did not come from the wind.
Spiritual sparks arose among them — not explosive, but contained — brief golden arcs appearing and vanishing across the surface of the skin, like internal discharges seeking escape.
The eyes burned.
Incandescent red.
There was no fury in them.
There was focus.
Full awareness.
In the right iris, the ancestral runic symbol pulsed in its own rhythm — the seal of the primordial wind — engraved as if the very concept had been compressed there.
But what truly changed was not the form.
It was the presence.
Before, he occupied space.
Now, he dominated density.
The air around him seemed heavier.
Each breath required slightly more effort.
Every raindrop deviated before touching his body, as if the very trajectory of the world were being adjusted.
Rynne adjusted her grip on the rapier.
Her thumb moved half a centimeter up the guard.
She did not take her eyes off the figure.
"What do you think he's waiting for?"
Kaelir narrowed his eyes just enough to shift focus.
He did not answer immediately.
As if weighing the words before releasing them.
"I don't know."
A pause.
"But it favors us."
The vapor left his mouth, denser.
"We needed time."
Kaelir's eyes shifted.
One millimeter.
Skýra was running.
Her mouth opened.
The warning never became sound.
Something struck his shoulder.
A brutal shove.
No warning.
The world gave way.
The air was ripped from his lungs.
Broken horizon.
Knees against stone.
The impact came after.
A delayed sound — too heavy to be only sound.
The ground opening.
When he lifted his head —
Ghatotkacha was there.
Fist extended.
No momentum.
No preparation.
As if he had always been in that position.
A few meters away —
Rynne.
Fallen on her side.
The rapier loose from her hand.
The ground around her opened into an irregular furrow, marked by the drag of the impact.
The rain kept falling.
As if it had not seen.
Kaelir breathed.
Air entered unevenly.
Too late.
He understood.
There had been no miscalculation.
It had been an error of a fraction.
Skýra was still in the last step of her run.
As if time had forgotten to advance for her.
Ghatotkacha then moved his fingers.
Slowly.
Like someone testing his own strength.
The field responded.
Not with sound — but with pressure.
The gaze marked by the runic symbol shifted.
Minimally.
Toward Kaelir.
There was no prior tension.
The fist came.
Short line.
No arc.
No recoil.
Direct.
Kaelir read the shoulder before the elbow.
He turned his hip out of the line, low base — clean transition, almost instinctive — but the impact did not seek where he was.
It sought where he would step.
The ground exploded beneath the displacement.
The shockwave climbed his leg.
Before the second blow closed the angle —
The mist appeared.
It did not fall.
It condensed.
Dense.
Pale gray.
It formed along the trajectory of the fist and hardened at the instant of contact.
The sound was pressure crushing something too rigid.
Fissures opened in the opaque layer.
Ghatotkacha did not pull back.
He merely turned his face.
The red eyes landed on Skýra.
She was still in the last step.
Hand extended.
Breath broken.
He disappeared.
In pure displacement.
Closed base.
Aligned center.
Minimal step.
When Skýra felt the air change behind her, it was already late.
She turned her torso, forearms rising into a cross block — clean structure, correct technique.
She saw the fist pass through the defense.
Not by failure.
By difference in mass.
The impact did not make immediate noise.
It made silence.
And then she was thrown.
She did not spin out of control.
She was projected in a straight line, body rigid, crossing the rain before hitting the ground and bouncing once — dry — before sliding to a stop.
Kaelir saw.
The scream tore his chest before passing through his throat.
"Skýra!"
He was already on his feet.
Daggers in hand.
Short stance.
One blade low.
Another high.
Center protected.
Gaze fixed.
Kaelir did not blink.
But Ghatotkacha was already there.
Fist cocked.
Centimeters from his face.
The distance was death.
The air imploded.
There was no transition.
The ground exploded into ice.
It did not form — it erupted.
White, dense crystals shot upward in angular blocks, abrupt steps rising from nothing, lifting in an impossible fraction of time.
The freezing impact came like a silent detonation.
The ice took Ghatotkacha entirely in the same instant.
The raised arm was swallowed before the muscle could contract.
The fist stopped.
Less than a breath from Kaelir's skin.
The thermal wave swept the field.
The rain froze in the air.
It did not fall.
It remained suspended — crystallized particles reflecting the diffuse light like motionless shards.
The vapor vanished.
The heat was ripped from the environment in a single violent pull.
Extracted.
As if the world itself had suddenly been plunged into an absolute winter.
The silence that followed was not absence of sound.
It was compression.
Kaelir felt the cold before noticing the presence.
Behind him.
Slow steps.
Controlled.
The sound of ice responding to the approach.
She emerged from the side.
Unhurried.
Her breath produced no vapor.
The environment produced it for her.
Neriah stopped beside Kaelir.
Her gaze fixed on the imprisoned creature.
The ice crackled in nearly inaudible microfractures.
Kaelir kept his eyes on the frozen fist centimeters from his own face.
Only then did he turn his head.
Slowly.
He observed her fingers covered by the dense white, the mist being drawn close to her body.
His gaze rose to hers.
Analytical.
"You said you needed ten minutes."
A short pause.
"We didn't get them."
There was no excuse in his voice.
No frustration.
Only fact.
She stepped forward.
Passed him.
The cold intensified.
Her eyes were fixed on the imprisoned creature.
"I believe your immediate concern should be another."
Her gaze moved slowly across the field.
From Rynne fallen.
To Skýra motionless in the rain.
The air grew thinner.
Kaelir felt the heat leave his own body.
As if standing before a thermal abyss.
An invisible sink.
He finally looked at her.
Not as one looks at an ally.
But as one measures a threat.
The ice kept rising.
Cracks appeared on the crystalline surface that held Ghatotkacha.
Kaelir stared at the cracks.
Then spoke — without raising his voice.
"I will take all of them."
A short pause.
To measure his own breathing.
"As far as I am still able."
Neriah tilted her head.
A minimal gesture.
Kaelir waited for nothing more.
He turned the short blade in his left hand.
The air before him split like thin glass.
A dark fissure opened vertically — narrow, unstable, its edges vibrating as if resisting existence.
He crossed it.
The fissure collapsed.
The field fell silent.
The rain remained suspended.
Neriah did not move.
Her eyes fixed on the frozen mass before her.
The ice cracked.
A fissure ran through the imprisoned arm.
Then another.
Inside the translucent prison —
a finger contracted.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Not reflex.
Choice.
The cracks began to spread like living veins beneath the white surface.
And the field — even frozen —
began to breathe again.