Silas existed in the deeper shadows, his Sense Fade active, his Speed Enhancement primed, waiting for a perfect moment.
He'd learned lessons during months of combat, during Trial matches and survival operations and desperate fights against odds that should have killed him.
Big illusions are spectacles, he'd concluded. Grand misdirections that make people gasp and applaud. But tactically? Wasteful. Obvious.
It was better to make minute changes. Subtle alterations to sensory input. Make yourself appear one step further than your actual position. Make tiny scents register differently. Make sound originate from a wrong direction.
Compound small lies into a grander perceptual confusion rather than trying to sell one large falsehood.
So when the acid woman—tracking multiple targets, her enlarged cheeks bulging with prepared attack—focused on his last known position, Silas was already elsewhere.
She spat. Fast-moving acid vomit launched at speed that should have caught him.
