{Nicole Anstalionah.}
I drove my blade forward like a pike, committing fully, aiming for his side with everything I had.
Oliver twisted just enough to avoid it and kicked me mid-motion, sending me airborne as if my weight meant nothing at all.
From above, I saw Jennifer pressing him relentlessly, her strikes constant, layered, precise.
Steel rang again and again, yet he deflected every blow without strain, his breathing calm.
His posture unbroken, as though her assault was merely a formality.
Then something shifted.
They were suddenly in the air together, clashing between heartbeats. Jennifer was bleeding now.
Her movements tighter, more desperate, while Oliver's breaths came slower, measured, delayed.
It was as though even exertion obeyed his schedule.
I hit the ground hard, rolled, and thrust my hand forward, condensing wind into a long spear and firing it straight at his chest.
He caught it with one hand.
The spear snapped in half like brittle glass.
Light gathered in his palm, spiraling into a radiant disk, and with a casual swing he sent it carving toward both of us.
I stepped forward and blocked, bracing myself as the impact rattled through my bones and down my spine.
Time felt wrong in that moment, stretched and compressed unevenly.
I realized Jennifer was growing stronger while the world itself hesitated around her.
That terrified me.
The time magic she was using slipped past my perception entirely.
I could not see it, could not track it, could not even feel its edge.
Oliver's authority distorted awareness itself, weakening and confusing anything that opposed him.
That had to be why her movements escaped me, why reality felt misaligned whenever she acted.
I forced myself to adapt.
Wind surged beneath Jennifer, lifting her skyward.
I then slammed my hand to the ground and coated the battlefield in silver spikes of condensed mana.
Each one humming with pressure beyond the norm.
I twisted the wind around them, accelerating every shard, and sent the storm screaming toward Oliver in a spiraling wave of blades.
He took one step. Everything bowed.
The air collapsed inward. The spikes shattered mid-flight.
My legs gave out as if gravity itself had doubled, then tripled, crushing me to my knees.
His sword descended, slow and deliberate, like an executioner savoring the certainty of the end.
"Death."
Time froze.
Jennifer reappeared between us, stopping the blade with her own.
The impact splintered her bones on contact, fractures racing up her arms even as she healed, but I knew instantly it was too much.
One more exchange like that would kill her outright.
I had been right.
Blocking him meant dying.
Oliver's authority was not merely power. It was law. Reality aligned itself to his intent without resistance.
Before I could move, his blade was already in Jennifer's chest.
And time had stopped again.
I screamed and pulled her back, then swung with everything I had left, pouring wind, mana, and will into the strike.
Steel broke.
His sword shattered in my hands, fragments scattering across the frozen air, and for the first time his eyes widened in something close to surprise.
But the moment did not last.
The broken blade trembled, the fragments dragging themselves together as if pulled by invisible threads.
As such, before my eyes, the sword reformed, whole and flawless, restored by nothing but his will.
I did not hesitate.
I kicked him back as a massive pillar of wind erupted beneath him, lifting him violently into the air before he could counter.
I compressed it instantly, forcing the column to collapse inward, refining it into a focused beam and driving it straight through his chest.
I did not stop.
I wrapped the air around him, sealing him inside a sphere of crushing pressure, layering force upon force.
I tightened it further and further until space itself screamed and folded inward under the strain.
Then I reached inward.
I stole.
I envied his defenses, that absolute authority I had struggled against for so long.
That law which bent all things away from him before they could ever touch him.
The moment my power made contact, my vision blurred.
The authority rejected me.
Reflected me like the plague.
The force rebounded through my body in full, the backlash tearing me from the air and hurling me into Jennifer as the world shattered into black.
When consciousness returned, I was on the ground.
Jennifer was kneeling over me, her hands glowing faintly as she healed my wounds, though they shook despite her control.
"Nicole," she said, breathless. "I'm going to have to break causality. I need more power."
I did not argue.
I grabbed her thighs and transferred everything I could, draining myself without hesitation, emptying my reserves until my vision swam and my limbs weakened.
She vanished instantly.
Blood splashed across my face as she reappeared inside Oliver's guard, her blade already buried deep in his chest.
Then she was above us.
Then she was beside me again.
The movement was jagged, forced, unstable.
Her left arm was shattered beyond recognition, bone barely holding together as her healing struggled to keep pace.
The power I had given her flowed back into me.
"I can't do it," she said through clenched teeth. "I need more."
I coughed and forced myself upright, my vision swimming as I struggled to focus.
"This won't work," I said. "It has to be deliberate. Thought before force."
Oliver stepped forward, rolling his neck as if loosening muscles before instruction.
"You two work well together," he said calmly. "That reliance is also your flaw."
He bent his knees and pierced the air itself with his blade.
For a heartbeat, I thought he was posturing.
Then my heart was impaled.
The impact stole my breath.
Instinct took over.
I envied Jennifer's heart instantly, syncing the damage as she healed mine without hesitation.
Pain vanished as if it had never existed.
I raised my blade and deflected his next strike on instinct alone.
Prediction.
A single anticipated motion saved my life.
Even that was immediately smothered.
His hand closed around my neck.
Jennifer flinched.
Time did not stop.
Instead, Oliver bit down on his own tongue.
"I'm tired of all this pausing," he said flatly. "So from now on, you are placed in eternal motion."
Jennifer flinched again.
My eyes could not keep up with what followed.
She screamed once.
Then not even sound could keep up with her.
Her body vanished, forced forward through space without rest, without mercy, driven by time itself until motion became punishment.
Oliver raised his sword.
When she returned, the steel burst through her chest.
She convulsed, eyes wide, blood pouring freely as time finally released its grip.
Before I could reach her, before I could even breathe her name, Oliver's hand plunged into her torso.
He tore her heart free.
It beat once in his grip, he then crushed it.
Then he flicked his wrist.
Light formed instantly, sharp and merciless, and with a single clean arc her head was severed from her body.
It rolled across the ground. It stopped just before my eyes. Nothing I could do could amount to anything.
My worth was trapped within his grasp, reduced to something small enough to be held, fragile enough to be ended.
I tried to crawl. I tried to scream.
Oliver stepped toward me.
His hand closed around my neck, the pressure was absolute.
My spine shattered as he lifted me from the ground, my body spasming uselessly as life fled in fragments.
He threw me back and shook his head. "Be grateful, you will die knowing you were something, something in regards to me that is."