The day broke clear and lied about what it planned to be.
By midmorning the ridge felt lighter than it had in weeks—smoke thinned, the wind smelled of pine instead of old coins, and the villagers' voices carried like laundry on a good line. Someone had chalked a child's hop-grid near the well. Someone else argued about bread salt as if salt had ever mattered to survival and therefore mattered very much.
Andy walked the boundary path with the Oathblade asleep in the SharedInventory and his hands empty on purpose. His aura stayed tucked—Dragon Resonance held down to a heartbeat's hush. Nia kept pace on his left, staff butt whispering against stone. Aurelia ghosted along a fence-top to his right, balancing on the rail with a dare in every step.
"It will come," Nia murmured, eyes on the cloudline that had learned to act innocent. "The air tastes like the hour before a storm."
"Storms are honest," Aurelia said, hopping off the fence and landing with a muffled thump. "This one will pretend to be a blessing first."
Andy listened to the earth. The ridge didn't groan, but it had begun to pay attention. "Keep your gear in the inventory," he said. "If we need to run, we run light."
Aurelia twitched two fingers. Moonpiercers flashed into nothing. Nia touched the staff and let it go, bright hair catching a slice of sun as she set her shoulders back into the quiet. The system made a tidy note.
[Shared Inventory — Active]
Draconic Oathblade: Stored.
Staff of Lumina: Stored.
Moonpiercer Daggers: Stored.
Status: Ready retrieval.
For a brief, fragile stretch, nothing hunted them.
Then the sky cracked.
It didn't thunder. It remembered. An old seam opened where the mountain line met the horizon—thin as paper, wide as ages—and wrong light seeped through like ink through linen. Birds fell silent mid-flight and landed hard because they were suddenly made of weight. The half-moon, pale this morning, flinched behind a veil of soot-colored cloud and did not peek.
People looked up and forgot the words they'd been using. A woman at the well lifted her bucket midway and held it there because letting it down or pulling it up felt like choosing sides in a quarrel between gods.
Nia's hand found Andy's sleeve. Aurelia's smile dropped off her face like paint in rain.
On the far ridge, something stood up inside the split.
It had a human outline and did not deserve it. Not a dragon—no bulk, no wing-bone span; a man-shaped emptiness filled with threads of black star-light, ribs like crooked constellations, a head full of absence wearing a crown of fragments. It looked like a rasi given flesh and then taught to dislike it. Where it stepped, the world wrinkled slightly, as if it had been poorly ironed. Where it breathed, shade tasted like old wine left open through a winter.
Nia whispered, "Tier Three," and the words fogged the inside of her mouth.
The thing—Corrupter Lord—took a step and the valley bowed. Not physically; the angle of hope changed. Men swayed. A child sat down in dust with surprising politeness. Two sheep lay down and put their soft heads on the ground as if they had received instructions about the gentle way to die.
Andy's aura pushed upward of its own accord and stopped because he told it to.
The system slid a pane of cold over his thoughts.
[Threat Assessment — Dragon Corruptor (Human Constellation Class)]
Designation: Tier III
Aura Pressure: Extreme
Recommendation: Escalate cautiously.
Form: Dragon Warrior — Tier I (Minimum)
Risk: Aura contamination ↑
He tasted ash that had not formed yet. "Nia."
"I've got the first ring," she said, already walking, voice leveled by old training. "Two bands to start. Three if he breathes."
"Aurelia?"
"I'm done pretending to be nice," she said, eyes on the silhouette, hands empty and itching. "Tell me where to put him when we cut his legs out."
Andy stopped at the crest where the village widened to a platform of rock and air. He rolled his neck once, exhaled slow, and let his voice be a line.
"Form up—and listen."
He didn't call for the Oathblade. Not yet. He let the ridge remember his weight and the air remember his name. Then he spoke the sentence that moved his blood differently.
"Dragon Warrior Form—Tier I."
Aura rose like a second skin shrugging awake. Heat unfurled at his left shoulder, tide cooled the right, wind braided under his heels. No roar. No display. Just a coat that belonged to him and fit. The villagers felt the pressure change and some of them straightened because posture sometimes borrows courage from weather.
The Corrupter turned its head at the motion as a wolf might at a thrown stone. From that crown of debris, a long black thread unspooled toward them—a feeler, slow, patient.
Nia slid her palm along the bare air and the first ring came up with it, a circle of soft silver light at ankle height that rose like a breath around the village. "Lumina Ward—First Band," she said, and the staff jumped from nowhere into her hand as if eager to be held. "Second Band." A second circle nested inside the first, denser, studded with runes tiny as needle eyes.
Aurelia flicked her wrist without looking and the Moonpiercers hit her palms with a chime. She crouched, eyes narrowing; her grin came back in a different dialect—wolfish, not mocking. "If he has knees," she said cheerfully, "we'll teach them apology."
The thread touched the outer ring.
It didn't strike. It seeped, learning. The light hissed where the blackness tasted it and the sound was like a knife testing a whetstone for personality. Nia anchored with her left foot, shoulders set. "He's polite," she observed, sweat beading suddenly at her temple. "He knocks before he eats."
"Let's answer the door with something heavy," Aurelia said, and set her stance to run.
Andy let Tier I breathe deeper. The second skin settled into muscle, bone, thought. He called the Oathblade with a thought that had been a habit since the mountain. It slid into his palm warm, already humming ember along the spine, tide on the fuller, gale at the edge. The blade felt like family—complicated, bright, unavoidable.
"Hold for my word," Andy said, looking not at the Corrupter Lord but at the lines of terrain between them. The path. The lay of wind. The places where a breath might curl.
"Since when do you ask permission?" Aurelia said, a laugh in her mouth she didn't have time to let out.
"Since we live here after," he replied.
The Lord stepped again. The black thread shivered on the ring, then withdrew as if amused. It opened its mouth—not mouth; a cut where mouth would be if a face had consented—and the light in its ribs flickered like a bad constellation. The valley dimmed.
"Brace," Nia said quietly. Her staff lowered to a defensive angle and a thin net spread between the two bands—Aurora Stitch pre-laid, ready to catch.
The Lord breathed.
Not a cone. A sheet. Corruption came like linen unrolled down a table—taste of iron and cool rot and the idea of sleeping too deeply. It spread wide enough to roof the world for a blink. The first band took it and shuddered; the second caught what passed and made it unproud. The net sang under the weight.
Aurelia didn't wait for mercy. "Moonpiercer Arts—Crescent Dash!" She streaked left, riding the seam where the breath slid off the ward, and sent a silver arc slicing at the Lord's ankle-shadow. It struck; the shadow stuttered; the Lord's weight rebalanced minutely.
Andy stepped not into the breath but into where the breath decided to go after it was done being dramatic. He cut the air above the ward in a low diagonal. "Stormbreaker—Gale Rift." The wind agreed, left a hinge in the breath-sheet, and the remainder peeled there instead of pressing against the second band.
"Good," Nia breathed, voice a wire pulled just short of breaking. "Keep it hinged."
The system ticked like a second pulse.
[Vector Conditions: Favorable]
Synergy Path: Prism (available)
Note: Maintain Tier I to conserve stability.
"Prism if he repeats," Andy said. "Not this pass."
Aurelia slid back into place and spat hair out of her mouth, grinning feral. "Polite was a lie. He's a bully."
"Bullies negotiate," Andy said, eyes on the Lord's chest. The constellations there dimmed and brightened like sickness practicing. "They want you to move yourself."
The breath thinned, then stopped. The Lord cocked its head as if listening to a song we weren't privy to. Then two more threads unspooled—left and right—dragging shadow through the weeds. Where they passed, small things lay down and remembered their last winter.
Nia shifted her footing and rebalanced the rings so the pressure met between them. Her hands trembled once and stopped. "He tests edges. He'll push where we stitched."
"Let him," Andy said, and felt the ridge accept his weight like a promise. Tier I held. He didn't need more yet. His hands itched to throw more than wind at the problem; he did not scratch.
The Lord stepped again and the air cooled enough to make teeth crack. Behind Andy, someone whimpered. He didn't turn. Turning would have taught the Lord something about who mattered most; the Lord must not learn that lesson.
"Andy," Aurelia murmured, tone stripped of ornaments. "Say when."
"When he drinks," Andy said.
"What?" Nia asked, not taking her eyes off the threads in the ward.
"When he pulls power back from his own breath," Andy answered. "He'll stutter. It's how lies swallow."
The Lord opened its not-mouth again, wider. The ribs flickered—and then, for a heartbeat, became honest. The black threads that made them winked transparent, showing a human shape beneath that had wanted to be something else and got its wish in the wrong direction.
"Now," Andy said.
Aurelia was already moving. "Ribbon Feint!" She pulled the Lord's attention with a false line at eye height, then dropped and cut where knee should have been if knees had decided to make sense today. Silver bit absence and turned it into worse absence; the Lord's weight stammered.
Andy stepped into the pause and wrote with the Oathblade, not loudly. "Tide-Singer—Aqua Fang." Water-teeth bit along the flicker and pinned it an inch longer than breath wanted to offer. "Ember Edge—Flame Spiral." Heat wrapped the fix. "Stormbreaker—Gale Rift." Wind carried all of it through.
The cut wasn't deep. It did not need to be. The lie met a simpler sentence and had to sit down.
The Lord's head twitched toward him and the crown of fragments buzzed like a nest of mean ideas. Its arms unfolded—not arms; vectors; slicing suggestions. The ward's net flashed, Nia's wrists jarring with the impact; Aurora Stitch held but bled light. She hissed, then smoothed the hiss into silence and replaced the rune she'd lost with a smaller, meaner one.
The system offered a clean line on a clean pane.
[Constellation Sync — Orion]
Nia ⭐ 96% | Aurelia ⭐ 93%
Tier III Progress: 26%
Technique: Vector Prism — Ready
Status: Maintain Tier I | Dominance via Geometry
Aurelia panted once, laughter hot on it. "He hates being measured."
"Most liars do," Andy said, and lifted the Oathblade just enough to make the edge a thought again.
The Lord raised both arms and the sky obeyed. Wrong clouds muscled in—low, fast. The temperature fell far enough to make breath visible, then far enough to make breath thick. The ground under Andy's boots decided it would prefer to be slick.
"Prism," Nia said calmly. "On my count."
Andy nodded, weight steady. "On yours."
She set the runes in the inner band with a surgeon's insistence, then tapped the outer with the butt of her staff. "Three."
Aurelia set her stance, shoulders loose. "Two."
The Lord's not-mouth yawned. Cold roared.
"One," Nia finished, and thrust the staff forward, silver unrolling into geometric channels like thin gutters laid suddenly through the air.
"Vector Prism," Andy said—not a shout; the voice of a man who trusts his tools. The aura around his forearms brightened, taking the rune-lines into itself. The Oathblade hummed low.
Aurelia's daggers glowed until they didn't look like steel anymore. "Moonlance," she breathed, and threaded both through the nearest channels.
The breath hit.
It split where Nia told it to, ran where Andy allowed, died where Aurelia punctured it. The second band trembled and did not break. The first band smoked and held. Behind them, villagers cried out and then were quiet because the world had not ended in that particular way today.
The Lord reeled half a step. It hated geometry—truth measured into lines instead of feelings.
Andy did not escalate. Tier I held. The Oathblade's edge hummed like a thought about to become necessary.
"Again," Aurelia said, pupils wide, smiling like someone who has found a better sport. "Make him learn."
"He will," Nia said, voice a cool hand. "They always do."
"Then we teach him to learn slower," Andy said, and took one step forward over the ward as if the ridge had always been a dance floor.
The Lord's crown rotated; the wrong light in its ribs changed tempo. Threads dragged through the grass like nets pulled full.
The sky darkened further, and the breath gathering felt like the moment before a lake takes back a child. The village drew in a collective lungful and held.
Andy lifted the blade a finger-width more.
"Stay with me," he said, and the system's next pane slid into place like a promise that knew exactly how much it could afford to keep.