---
Kai took it. He let the hits turn the world narrow so that all that lived in it was a face and a cage and the thin hum in his head that said numbers and time in a voice that refused to care.
[Ding! 85%… 21 seconds.]
Mardek drew back for the big one, for the story blow, the one you carve at the end of the tale. He lifted the dagger high and pulled his other hand into a fist and set his weight to drive it through Kai's eye and into the brain and show the seven hundred how a man ends without aura.
Alka fell again.
She didn't touch Mardek this time, either. She hit the ground a pace to his right and threw sand and her scream together into his face. It wasn't a word. It was a hawk's blade of sound. Mardek flinched and slashed blindly where he thought a wing would be. Alka was already up a body-length. The cut took air.
