“...” Lucimia held her tongue, her silence like frost clinging to a blade.

“Actually, I am curious.” Cole rolled the greatsword in the air, loosening his wrists like a hawk flexing wings. “How’d you find me?”

“...” Lucimia stayed quiet, her words locked like snow under ice.

She couldn’t possibly explain Yuna’s time Reversion, that hidden river winding backward in the dark.

“Don’t answer then. Under the Exorcist Family’s eyelids, secrets gleam like lanterns in fog.” His voice cooled like steel. “Today… you die here.”

The fight snapped taut like a bowstring ready to bite.

Cole stopped probing; feints were mist, real combat was thunder.

His flippant gaze hardened in a blink, a wolf’s eyes eclipsed by storm. He crouched, blade forward, back leg coiled, then shot like an arrow.

He was fast, a gust splitting reeds, but slower than his earlier mirage—still within Lucimia’s weathered reflex.

“Shatter.” Lucimia breathed, her whisper a flint spark in the wind.

The ground under Cole fractured like dried riverbed, collapsing into a jagged pit; his legs jammed among stone like trapped roots.

He tried to wrench free, tendons taut like pulled rope. Lucimia spoke again, voice cold as rain.

“Melt.”

Broken rock sagged into viscous slurry, a bog of tar-black syrup, the pit turning to mire that gulped like a hungry swamp.

Every time Cole strained upward, the mud welcomed him deeper, like night swallowing dusk.

That was Lucimia’s tactic, a net of reeds closing over a racing fish.

From Cole’s first strike at Ritch, she’d judged him—a speed-first Swordmaster, a falcon living by wind.

To break such prey, you first clip the wings; bind his stride, and the storm turns to drizzle.

A mage against a Swordmaster—no closeness, no breath shared; the blade’s kiss is death in arm’s reach.

So her first spell was control, a clamp of frost on spring.

Once bound, he’d stand there and take it, a tree in hail.

Lucimia seized the opening; while Cole thrashed, her left hand rose, and a spike drove up from the mire like a tusk—aimed below the belt.

Cole caught the lift of her wrist, felt the ground’s heartbeat sour. He swung the blade, air cracking like split bamboo.

Crack! The earth-spike burst, shredded to gravel halves under a silver arc.

Not done. Lucimia leveled her other hand, and countless Wind Blades hissed out like a flock of razors.

Her first hand flashed again, a second spike surging like a shark’s fin through sludge.

Twin torrents pressed in—steel and storm—daring Cole to drown.

If her magic nicked flesh, its strange hex would bloom like nightshade; even spare a life, it would poison comfort.

Cole read her intent in the dance of wrists, as hunters read weather in clouds.

A pressure surged in his chest, a furnace sputtering sparks. First he’d been tricked; now he stood as a post in a gale.

“Ahhhhhh!!!” Cole roared, breath ragged like bellows. His muscles knotted, veins bulged like braided ropes; his grip turned white as frost.

“Shadow Cleave!” he bellowed, a thunderclap ripping the haze.

His sword arm convulsed in midair, a hummingbird’s blur beyond human; each flick carved sword-qi, each arc a crescent of wind-shearing light.

Sword-qi met Wind Blades, clashed and canceled, sparks and gusts colliding like tides in a narrow strait.

Cole kept hacking, a stormmill whirling, mouth howling like a beast in rut. His speed birthed afterimages, a hive of Coles swinging in chorus.

He shredded Wind Blades and split the rising spikes, steel mowing stalks in a field of knives.

The sight stunned Lucimia; her breath stalled like a caught leaf.

What sword art was this? Those piled shadows overlapped like layered clouds; how many cuts had he carved into the air?

Lucimia poured more mana, a river broken loose, releasing Wind Blades like sleet in a squall.

Cole’s next motion made her scalp prickle, a cold comb through hair.

No matter how many Wind Blades she loosed, he met them—his speed a whetstone that never dulled.

Then we grind, she thought, two mills chewing grain—see whose store empties first, mana or muscle.

She amped speed and count, changed sizes—big blades first like oxen, small ones tailing like snakes—hoping to slip a sting.

Cole didn’t bite; he wove them all aside, a net cut by a sharper net.

Lucimia refused that fate—no edge could touch him? The thought was a splinter under nail.

She warped the shapes, bent trajectories into curves like swallows, angling to flank and back—could he still block that storm?

He could; the facts were iron.

“Shadow Cleave!” Cole shouted again, his voice iron on anvil.

This time Lucimia witnessed horror—afterimages that were not ghosts, but dancers waking.

Those shades swung too, storms within a storm; they caught the flanking Wind Blades like shields sprouting from air.

The shadows birthed more shadows, sword-qi thickening like hailstones; sometimes one arc cleaved two Wind Blades clean.

On one side, Wind Blades countless as reeds; on the other, sword-qi many as starlings.

They collided between them, each impact a whoosh like torn sky, each burst sending gales that slapped faces raw.

Lucimia’s hair whipped wild, a black river in storm; the wind stung her eyes like blown sand, and she raised her forearm as a bark shield.

…No good. I’m the one faltering, she felt, her heart sinking like a lantern dropped in a well.

Cole’s speed was too fast, a river outrunning the dam; faster than her casting, faster than her breath.

His sword-qi count swelled, a tide turning from harbored defense into crashing offense.

What kind of brute is this? A thunder-ox in human skin.

That matched his frame—near one-ninety, muscle stacked like bricks, a living battering ram.

At last, one sword-qi slipped through the dense blades, a swift fin slicing water, and struck at Lucimia’s feet.

It carved a crack in stone, a lightning scar in earth.

One became two, then three, then four—like hailstones following the first thunder.

Several arcs broke through, lashing ground, wall, and ceiling, leaving gouges like claw marks of giants.

She missed one angle; a blade kissed her shin, cutting her black stockings and pale skin, blood beading like dew.

“Hiss…” The pain pricked, and cold sweat slid like rain from her brow.

This is bad… the thought fell heavy, a stone in the gut.

She hadn’t expected her advantage to frost over; she bled first under her own storm.

That alarm barely formed when more sword-qi sliced past, tearing cloak and fabric like paper in wind—luck spared skin.

Damn it. I just changed into these. Petty anger flared like a match in gale.

She couldn’t keep dragging this—stalling was a slow drowning in marsh.

She needed a new move, a reed raft in flood.

But how? His sword-qi was a barrage, a locust cloud; if she stopped Wind Blades, more arcs would punch through and bite.

Hold like this, and it’s a gentle death, water rising inch by inch.

What now? The question coiled like a snake in her chest.