The first strike is hers.
No warning.
No declaration.
Wu Shuang moves and the air tears with her, reality peeling back like skin cut too cleanly. Her blade is not metal — it is alignment given edge, a rule sharpened until it can sever other rules.
I barely manage to raise my sword.
The impact shatters stone beneath my feet.
I am thrown backward, boots carving furrows through ash and blood. The Presence inside me tightens instantly, not roaring, not surging — bracing. It understands this kind of violence. This is not chaos. This is selection.
I rise and meet her again.
Steel meets not-steel.
My blade screams as it collides with something that should not have weight, yet does. Sparks do not fly — instead, fragments of sutra-light scatter, characters breaking apart mid-meaning. Each clash sends pressure through my bones, rattling my teeth, collapsing breath.
Wu Shuang does not overextend.
She never does.
"You hesitate," she says, voice calm even as she presses me back step by step. "That's new."
I snarl and drive forward, forcing my weight into the strike, letting the Presence permit what my body no longer can. Space buckles. Her blade skids sideways an impossible distance.
"I'm choosing," I spit.
She smiles.
"That's the problem."
She pivots and the world turns with her. My ribs scream as something invisible slams into me from the side. I roll, come up on one knee, sword already moving. We exchange three strikes in the span of a heartbeat — too fast for anyone else to follow, each blow landing where physics disagrees it should.
Around us, the ruins begin to deform.
Walls bow inward. Shadows detach and crawl. The ground pulses faintly, reacting not to us, but to the question we are asking it.
Who decides what survives?
From the palace balcony, Wu Jin sees it.
Not clearly — no one can — but he feels it, the way authority drains when something older steps forward. His hands shake as he grips the railing.
"This wasn't part of it," he whispers. "This wasn't—"
The Lord Protector does not move.
He watches with the stillness of a man observing an experiment finally reach the data point he has waited years to collect.
"Of course it was," he says softly. "This is the only part that mattered."
Wu Shuang presses in again, relentless now. Her blade grazes my shoulder and the cut does not bleed — it empties, flesh forgetting how to hold blood until I force it to remember. Pain blooms late and furious.
"You are becoming inefficient," she says. "Emotion still interrupts you."
I answer by ramming my forehead into her face.
The shockwave cracks the street.
She staggers half a step — only half — but that is enough. I swing low, high, then drive straight through the space she will occupy. The Presence tightens, granting permission, and my blade bites.
For the first time, Wu Shuang bleeds.
Not red.
Gold-black, thick and luminous, steaming where it hits the ground.
Her eyes widen — not in pain.
In delight.
"Yes," she breathes. "There you are."
She lashes out, and the city recoils. I am flung across the square, crashing through a collapsed archway. My sword skitters away. I hit stone hard enough to see white.
The Presence coils, not rescuing me, but offering more.
I reach for my blade—
—and stop.
Footsteps sound.
Measured.
Disciplined.
From the smoke and twisted streets, Shen Yue emerges.
She is not running.
She is not shouting.
She walks with purpose, seals already forming at her wrists, eyes locked not on Wu Shuang, but on the space around her. Beside her comes Liao Yun, bloodied but upright, and behind them —
The Black Tigers.
Not scattered.
Not broken.
A full formation pours into the square, weapons raised, breath unified. They do not charge. They arrive, presence snapping into place like a final clause in a sentence.
Wu Shuang turns slowly.
The smile fades.
Wu Jin gasps from the balcony. "They're still alive…"
The Lord Protector's eyes narrow — just slightly.
Shen Yue raises her hand.
The city answers.
Sigils bloom across the square, not binding Wu Shuang, not attacking her — isolating the conflict, sealing the geometry so no further distortion spreads.
"Enough," Shen Yue says. Her voice cuts through the ruin with terrifying clarity. "Not like this."
I retrieve my sword and rise, blood dripping from my fingers, breath ragged, Presence humming loud and close now, eager and dangerous.
Wu Shuang studies us all — me, Shen Yue, the Tigers — recalculating.
"This changes things," she says.
"Yes," I reply. "It does."
For the first time since the war began, she steps back.
Not retreating.
Acknowledging.
Around us, Ling An holds, cracked but standing, as if waiting to see whether tonight ends in annihilation or merely another scar.
Wu Jin sags against the railing, pale and shaking.
The Lord Protector finally speaks.
"Now," he says softly, "we see what you choose to protect."
The Presence thrums.
Blades drip.
And the world leans in, knowing this clash has decided something irreversible — even if no one yet knows what it is.