Kael felt it the moment he shifted his weight.
Something inside him failed.
Not catastrophically. Not yet. But the familiar internal balance—the quiet alignment he had learned to trust—fractured just enough to matter. His breath came uneven for the first time since the fight began, sound leaking out in a faint, unwanted rasp.
The creature noticed.
It didn't show emotion. It didn't need to.
The space around it tightened.
Not toward Kael.
Toward himself.
Kael's eyes narrowed.
It was compressing its own form—densifying, stabilizing—preparing for impact rather than attack. That meant it had learned something important.
It had learned Kael could hurt it.
The creature moved again.
This time, there was warning.
A ripple in the air. A distortion that preceded motion by the smallest margin.
Kael stepped sideways—
—and the ground folded beneath his foot.
He dropped instantly, rolling as the space he'd aimed for collapsed inward, stone imploding with a force that sent shockwaves through the basin. His shoulder slammed against the ground, pain blooming sharp and immediate.
Sound exploded back into existence.
Stone cracked.
Air screamed.
Kael grunted, pushing himself up as debris rained down. His head rang—not from impact, but from the sudden return of noise. The silence recoiled violently, snapping back into place too late to soften the blow.
The creature advanced.
Faster now.
Kael wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and steadied himself.
"Adapt faster," he muttered.
He didn't wait this time.
Kael surged forward, abandoning restraint entirely. His movement tore through the air, silence compressing ahead of him so violently it bent the light around his limbs. Each step landed without warning, each shift of weight erasing sound before it could exist.
The creature struck—
—and missed.
Kael was already past it.
He turned mid-motion, driving his elbow into the space behind the creature's torso—not touching it, but collapsing the air between them. The impact detonated inward, crushing the creature's form momentarily into itself.
It shrieked.
Not with sound.
With distortion.
Kael staggered as the feedback tore through him, the cost surging again—harder this time. His vision blurred briefly, the world tilting as something essential slipped further out of reach.
He felt it clearly now.
The silence wasn't just muting sound.
It was taking it.
Every time he forced it, something was being stripped away—his ability to hear subtle shifts, the natural feedback his body relied on to orient itself.
Kael gritted his teeth.
Too much more of this and he wouldn't just be silent.
He'd be deaf.
The creature reformed, surface rougher now, movements less fluid. It was learning, but the cost was showing on it too.
They stood amid shattered stone and warped space, neither whole anymore.
Kael inhaled carefully, forcing the silence back under control—not pushing it outward, not compressing it further.
Just holding it.
If he escalated again, he might win.
If he did—
He might lose something he couldn't afford to.
The creature took one more step forward.
Kael didn't move.
For a long, suspended moment, the world waited.
Then the creature faltered.
Not from damage.
From instability.
The space it occupied buckled unevenly, its form tearing apart as incompatible forces pulled it in opposing directions. It tried to stabilize—and failed.
The distortion collapsed inward.
The creature imploded without sound, folding into a point so small it vanished entirely.
Silence rushed back into the clearing.
Kael stood alone.
Breathing hard.
Alive.
He closed his eyes briefly, steadying himself as the cost settled into something permanent and heavy.
He could still hear.
Barely.
But the world no longer sounded the same.
Kael opened his eyes.
This was the price of surviving something that shouldn't have existed.
And it was only the first.