The dead moon hung low when Cyrus smiled without warmth.
"So they sent the weakest Pillar to stop us?"
Faye's laugh was a small click—amused, not impressed.
"Weakest seat, maybe," Tikhan said, soldier-plain. "But I'm a Pillar. I'll show you why I'm the strongest in the Tsar Empire."
Snow breathed. Winter Neverland pressed a boot farther over the Pale Desert—aurora haze thickening, dunes glazing to glass. Wolves growled inside the gale.
Faye tilted her parasol; her shadow opened like a throat.
Spirit Summon — The Black Vampawat, Man-Eater.
A black tiger climbed out—wet-ink pelt, scythe fangs, eyes full of old hunger. The dead sand bowed under its paws.
Cyrus's voice stayed low. Ryōiki Law — Memory Bind.
Light that should die here clung to the beast; its outline hardened, its weight swelled. "Go."
The Vampawat bounded—one step erased ten paces; the next slammed the seam—and basic ice broke.
Cryo — Ice Wall.
A slab heaved to pen it—the tiger hit and the pane shattered into white dust.
A second wall turned to clap—the beast shoulder it off-line and kept moving.
Fangs hissed off the floor. Cryo — Fang Volley.
Lances cut the lane; the Bind fed weight back into the legend and the tiger ran through the storm, studded, unbowed, already angling to break the field.
Tikhan didn't step.
Cryo Construct — Winter Pack.
Ice wolves grew from the ground—iron-ribbed, vapor manes, pale eyes—fanning out to tie the tiger down. They hit low and clean. The pack held the legend in a moving vise, bodies re-forming as fast as they were thrown.
Feathers fell like snowlight.
Shrine Guardian — King Heron, The Ice God.
A winged sovereign unfolded from the gale: heron-crested helm, silver-white mail set with cold blue, vast pinions shedding ice dust. He landed with a spear of winter-light and a cathedral's poise; sapphire eyes fixed on Faye.
The spear stitched toward her ribs. Faye slid a half-sole; ash-scent answered steel. The ferrule of her parasol tapped the shaft; frost raced her glove and died against a thin red ward. Her expression didn't change. "Again."
Tikhan turned to Cyrus.
They met on the centerline like killers who'd done this their whole lives.
Martial Muti — Step-Cut: Horizon Break.
Heart Chaser skimmed; light bent to the edge.
Cryo Forge — Frostblade.
A single edge grew from a seam—clear as old glass, rimmed in razor frost. Tikhan set a quiet guard and let the cut arrive.
First bind—short and mean. Cyrus beat inside; Tikhan yielded a thumb's width and took the center back with wrist only. No flourish. Steel talked in tight clicks. Footwork small: slip, plant, half-step, recover. Hands decided before thought arrived.
Void Muti — Event Horizon Edge.
Cyrus cut over; energy bled out of the exchange, and the bite arrived light. Tikhan's parry wasn't power; it was position—closing Cyrus's angle, making him work for every rebeat.
They turned into blurs because of how fast they were going.
Cryo — Permafrost.
A hush rolled off Tikhan's boots—heat and motion pinned for a beat, exactly when a level change should land.
Void Muti — Null Seam.
Cyrus drew a thin absence across the lane; the pane that should have herded him simply wasn't there. An exit opened that had not existed, and he slid through it as if the world remembered a door.
A single volley scissored once. Cryo — Fang Volley.
He didn't parry the needles—he unmade their idea of motion. The flight collapsed into harmless dust, like a thought abandoned mid-word.
Cryo — Ice Wall.
Two slabs traveled from blind angles, turning mid-rush to clap. Cyrus checked, stole a step—
Martial Muti — Rising Tiger: Throat Ladder.
Four clean ascents up the guard line; Tikhan took three on angle and wrist, the fourth shaving a chill across his gorget.
"Not bad, for a cultist" Tikhan said.
Behind them, the field pressed. Winter Neverland kept eating inches; aurora haze thickened; snow glazed dunes to glass.
King Heron crowded Faye with chapel-clean triangles—no waste, no show. Faye stopped being bored and started being busy, still calm.
Her toe traced a tight glyph. Spirit Summon — Ossuary Hound.
A bone-laced mastiff slammed the spearline, jaws locking on the haft to break rhythm. The guardian's wings knifed; the hound shattered and re-knit in the same breath to keep the bind.
The next angle went high. Faye drew a second seal. Spirit Summon — Stone Ram.
Horn met sainted steel; the ram took the turn on its shoulders and shoved the line a pace off her circle. Hoof sparks skated across glass; the guardian reset without complaint and came again—precise, relentless.
King Heron shifted to the air. Faye answered laterally.
Split Shade.
The Vampawat threw a smaller echo from its own back-shadow to harry the wings. When the guardian snapped through it, the echo popped to soot, and the real tiger shouldered two wolves off Faye's lane and back into the pack.
The guardian's return thrust was cleaner. Faye's parasol ferrule caught the guard at a quiet angle; her heel etched a new tag, and she changed the board again.
Chain Call.
Ossuary Hound back on the bite, Stone Ram on the spear, Vampawat dragging three wolves by sheer presence—Faye rotated her beasts like a calm conductor, no flourish, adapting to each line King Heron drew. The message was simple: he was strong enough to require many answers, and she had many answers.
On the centerline, Cyrus stole a breath on an outside cutover and thought once,
Pillar. Ryōiki, Muti, tactics. He's keeping all of us at bay—me, Faye, the beast—and he isn't even winded.
Hoarfrost crawled his sleeve where steel had kissed. He shook it off and went back in.
Bind. Redouble. Tikhan kept him answering, not asking—frostblade writing quiet, merciless lines while an Ice Wall turned behind to make a book of the lane, while a single Permafrost beat hunted his timing, while one Fang Volley marked the exit he wanted most.
Void Muti — Unmake.
Cyrus removed the push from the wall before it hit; the clap met emptiness and slid wide. He stepped to claim initiative—
Tikhan's wrist said no. Soldier-clean check, center taken back, breath still even.
At the seam, wolves and tiger crashed, reformed, crashed again—teeth on crystal, crystal on muscle, all motion, no spill. King Heron's spear traced a sky-cold line; Faye's ferrule locked the guard and turned the point by a thumb's width as she swapped summons mid-beat to keep pace.
Snow breathed. The dead moon watched.
Winter Neverland crept a boot farther; the Pale Desert held its line by will.