Ten hours.
Ten. Full. Hours.
It wasn't ten hours of fighting like mortals, Nadhir or Jinn, no...
It was ten hours of instantaneous combat.
Every second held a million micro-movements.
A hundred exchanges.
Every blink of the eye was a full battle in itself.
And it always ended the same.
Malik hit a wall.
It was always at the exact same point.
At the end of a ten-hour-long clash.
Its end was a stab.
A singular, perfect stab.
It wasn't anything flashy.
No. Committed.
That was what it was.
Both of them had to lean into it.
They had to risk it without any safety nets.
It was a short moment that announced the transformation of their clash from one microstate to another.
But Cyrus was always first.
Malik was always late by a hair.
A millisecond.
Always.
And at this level, a single millisecond might as well have been a century.
Every blink.
Every rewind.
Every self-burned heart.
Malik restarted.
He would force himself back into the moment before it.
