Peril. The limit. Those two words fit that split second like a blade at the throat.

He was the second, besides Elyssus, to feel truly unwieldy, a mountain’s weight pressing down on her lungs.

It was her first head-on clash with a Swordmaster, a cliff’s drop showing her how sheer their terror ran.

In other fights, Lucimia’s clever setups netted foes like fish in a calm pond, but Cole was a spear hurled from a storm.

Her opening ambush during his chatter failed, her binds and pinpoint spells failed, and first blood stained the mud like rust in rain.

Truth be told, she’d never studied Swordmasters, a fog hiding how keen their edge was.

From her father’s grimoire came one line, a red lantern in the dark: “A mage must do anything to avoid a Swordmaster closing in.”

That was easy to grasp, like fire burns and water drowns.

Her past life’s games taught the same rule, footprints pressed into fresh snow.

Glass-cannon mages kept warriors and assassins off their faces, or they were carved in seconds like tofu under a cleaver.

So she shackled Cole’s movement at once, vines snapping tight, but then what?

Then he almost killed her from range, an arrow whistling down from a hill.

What answer was there to that, under a sky hard as iron?

She’d thought magic towered over steel, but that tower rang hollow like a drum.

Was it that, in real fights here, a Swordmaster outweighed a mage like stone over paper?

Were mages for other fields, their battles a side path, like scholars pacing a battlefield’s edge?

She didn’t know; maybe she was still a sapling in wind—and what rank Swordmaster was Cole, anyway?

Mages ran from First to Tenth Rank, ladder rungs clear to Seventh, each earned by one spell, and from Eighth on it was storms of spells, even raw elements in hand.

Swordmasters climbed similar steps, but did one sword form mean one step, beads on a string?

Some swung one set for a lifetime and still felled great beasts like trees in a gale.

She reeled her mind back in like a kite string, and faced the now.

Her half-finished Instant Movement whisked her from danger, a startled bird to a higher branch, and her gaze locked on Cole.

“Do his afterimages not get used up?” she thought, counting phantoms like arrows in a quiver.

The stacked afterimages around him stayed like layered smoke, unspent and unmoving.

They were only upper bodies, torsos hung in air like pale paper lanterns, still as frost.

If they wouldn’t fade, the next bout would be a thicket, thorns tugging at her sleeves.

She settled first, then shaped a plan like clay on a wheel.

She had to cut Cole down here, or he’d start the Sacrificial Ritual; only then would the scales tilt to her side, wind at her back for Elyssus.

At least for now, he still couldn’t move… and then that thought cracked like thin ice.

When he sent that great arc of sword aura at her, he’d carved a three-meter fissure that met the mud pit like a hidden channel.

The mire bled into the crack like a draining marsh, thinning around his legs until he pulled free, one foot on the rim, climbing up like a stubborn boar.

Mud painted his pants and shoes, each step a wet squelch like reeds in a bog, and he hefted his great blade, took two steps toward Lucimia, then stopped like a wolf catching steel on the wind.

They faced off across the gap again, two storms meeting over a field.

“This is just…” Lucimia rubbed her eyes, worry gritty as sand.

With Cole back on solid ground, points would meet points, blades crossing at arm’s length like thunderheads colliding.

Snaring him again wouldn’t be easy, the net already torn by teeth.

That Blade of Severed Shadows—was that his trump, the net he’d use to swarm her like crows?

She glanced at the afterimages behind him; they didn’t ebb at all, a tide held in place by a cold moon.

Would he use those phantoms for a gang-up, a pack of mirror-wolves?

It wasn’t impossible, a storm brewing behind glass.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. No wonder you’re from the Exorcist Family—so young, and you even command Instant Movement? I’m very, very surprised; without it, you’d be face-down in the mud.”

Freed of the mire, Cole’s tone turned light again, a cat flicking its tail.

“I almost believe you’re an Eighth Rank Mage,” he said, brow arched with disdain like a feather dusting ash.

“I told you I was Eighth Rank,” Lucimia said, voice smooth as silk on stone. “Surrender now, come back with me, tell me everything, and maybe I’ll let you swim free.”

“Ha. Spare me? Do you buy that?” Cole’s grin crooked like a hooked blade. “I don’t. Watch the blade!”

No sooner said than done, his hand lifted and his slash came clean, lightning cracking a dry sky.

A figure flickered before Lucimia, a great knife throwing cold light like frost on a river.

Her heart stalled; what speed was this, a hawk’s dive, and why did it feel so close to that Fraud Blessing?

She slid her left foot back like drawing a bow, spell at her fingertips—and in a blink the figure vanished like smoke.

What… another Fraud Blessing, a trick of mirrors?

What was Cole setting up, like a hunter laying snares?

Before her thought set, Cole threw more cuts, each one a stone skipping water.

More figures flew in, and each time she braced, they winked out together like fireflies in wind.

What game was he playing, a fox circling the coop?

“Hahaha.” Cole laughed again, the sound rattling like gravel in a tin.

“The Fraud Blessing doesn’t stick to you, but if I pay enough soul to boost it, I can still steal one blink. That blink is small, but the ripple cuts deep.”

Lucimia’s brow tightened, a ripple across still water.

“…Pay with souls? Where do you find souls now, coins in an empty purse?”

“Heh. Of course… I pay with my own soul!” A wicked aura burst from him, black mist billowing like kiln soot.

His eyes went blood-red, two embers igniting in a skull.

“Heh-heh-heh, watch the blade!” His glee chimed like brittle ice.

He flicked more slashes, each one a snake’s tongue tasting the dark.

Shapes of different sizes bloomed before her and died in a single blink, sparks torn away by wind.

Lucimia caught the outline of his aim, a sketch in ash: numb her with feints, then seed one true body among the fakes, a needle in silk for the strike.

The next beat proved it, a drum answered by thunder.

More figures rose, and she blinked; most blew away like dandelions, but one held fast like a nail in wood.

It was one of the lingering afterimages behind Cole, a ghost stepping out of the ranks like a soldier.

Ready for it, Lucimia snapped up an ice shield, frost blooming like a white flower.

Clang!

The blade hit the ice and held, the blow stopped like a wave on rock.

That afterimage unraveled as well, smoke ripped by wind.