Cold threaded the ridge in long needles. The thing in the split—man-shaped constellation with a crown of fragments—watched the three of them as if patience were a blade he enjoyed keeping sharp.
"Grid holds," Nia said, voice tight but level. Her bands gleamed like frost caught mid-breath; Aurora Stitches crawled along the cracks, mending while they made new ones.
Aurelia rolled her shoulders. Sweat steamed off her collarbone in the chill. "He's thinking. I hate when they think."
"He's learning us," Andy answered. "We learn faster."
The Lord spread his fingers—no, vectors—wide. Black threads lifted from the ground and hovered. Then they tilted, tips toward Andy, and accelerated without crossing the space between: there… then here. They went not for flesh but for the glow at his sternum.
The first hooked the edge of his aura like a fish taking an offered hand.
The system bit down behind his eyes.
[Warning: Aura Contamination ↑]
Ingress Vectors: 3
Level: 11% → 23%
Mitigation: Dragon Resonance II (Active)
Recommendation: Disrupt siphon geometry
Andy let Tier II press harder into the ridge; the gale under his heels braided dense as rope. "Not yours," he said, voice low enough to respect the cold. He cut the first thread near its head. It reattached nearer his shoulder. The second slid along his right flank, learning the pace of his breath. The third found the Oathblade's fuller and sang a thin, cruel harmony.
Aurelia's daggers flashed. "Get your teeth out of him," she snapped, and carved a figure-eight through the air that cut two threads to smoke. The third split; both halves latched deeper.
"They divide on impact," Nia warned. "Like thistles."
"Then burn the field," Aurelia answered, eyes bright.
"Not here," Andy said. "We live here after."
He rotated his wrists and wrote a circle in the air, small and exact, letting ember heat and tide pressure stack instead of swirl. Triune meant balance; corruption wanted to misname that as weakness.
"Ember Edge—Flame Spiral."
Flame climbed—then buckled. The spiral learned the Lord's rhythm mid-rise and spun backward, unraveling into a coil of black smoke that tried to sit on his shoulders like a bad memory.
The system hissed.
[Counter-Pattern Detected]
Corruption Feedback: Spiral Inversion
Triune Geometry: Unstable
"Again," Aurelia said, eyes narrow.
"Different," Andy answered.
He dropped the flame and led instead with water: a blade-length of pressure, a narrowing of choice. "Tide-Singer—Aqua Fang." Water-teeth erupted along his cut and bit into the hooked threads. They hissed and grew small barbs in gratitude.
Nia stepped in with a sharp flick—"Aqua Spiral Lens"—turning his Fang into a tight screw that drilled through the barbs before they learned which direction to point. Half the hooks tore free; the rest clung and drank.
The crown vibrated. The Lord moved two steps without walking, abandoning and arriving. Ribs of light flickered; the honest beat came and went with a gambler's grin.
"Left," Aurelia called, and launched into a Ribbon Feint that promised eye-height harm. The Lord flinched; she cut for the joint beneath the crown with Crescent Guillotine.
Luck broke wrong. The arm-vector changed length the way intent changes tone; steel met nothing; a second vector rose from the Lord's shadow and clipped Aurelia under the ribs. She rolled with it, breath knocked out in a harsh bark.
Andy didn't think. "Dragon's Vow."
Aura flared—pure dominance, not loud but absolute. The pressure in the valley shifted one notch toward him; the vector meant for Aurelia's spine forgot its errand and flexed his way instead. He slid inside the angle and shaved the thought off the attack with a short, disrespectful cut.
Aurelia landed, knife point digging shallow into dirt. "I had that," she said between her teeth.
"You have you," Andy replied, not looking away from the Lord. "I keep us."
Her grin came back, savage and grateful. "Fair division of labor."
The Lord inhaled without chest movement; threads along the ground tightened like piano wire tuned by a drunk. Nia's bands creaked. Her mouth thinned. "Null field thickening," she said. "Words will not help us."
"Then whisper," Andy said.
She already was. Whisper Cast lit corners of the lattice no sound could reach. Distant runes flared and went dim, flared and went dim, holding their breath with her.
The Lord's not-mouth opened wider than a face should sense as possible. Cold spilled out—the taste not of winter but of an attic with the window nailed shut since grief. The breath didn't pour; it reached, tendrils seeking aura to drink.
Andy set his stance to the shape of no. "Vector Prism—on me."
Nia's hands traced narrow gutters into the air, silver channels threading into his forearms. Aurelia's blades caught that light and lengthened into two long lances that hummed with stubborn joy. The breath struck, split, and bled down lanes to die at the ward. The second band flickered and held. The first smoked and learned.
The Lord tilted his head, interested. The crown spun quarter-turn and the breath changed. It returned along the very channels they had laid, reversed like a river persuaded to climb a hill. It struck the Oathblade in the middle of the prism, trying to make the blade a pipe.
The steel made a sound like a choir arguing with a bell. Andy's elbows locked. The dragon pauldron on his left shoulder scorched white where pressure pressed.
Nia barked a laugh that hurt her throat. "He's using our gutters."
"Then we use his rain," Andy said. He let the reversed breath through a hand-span, then twisted the prism four degrees on a rune Nia hadn't finished drawing. The stream spilled sideways across empty air; Aurelia watched the spill and shot it—two Moonlances at once—popping the breath like bubbles that had lingered too long on a pond.
The system counted their hurt and their wit with equal respect.
[Resilience Check]
Ward Integrity: 63% → 51%
Aura Contamination: 23% → 31%
Andy Pulse: Steady
Recommendation: Avoid extended prism loops; alternate with blunt geometry.
"Blunt it is," Andy said, and went simple.
"Stormbreaker—Gale Rift."
Air cut—not artfully, not in a long arc; a short, mean slice across the nearest vector. It stuttered, then regrew in a worse shape.
"Terrafang—Earthen Shackles."
The ridge lifted stone knuckles and grabbed the Lord's ankle-thread. The grip creaked; the ground complained; the Lord tore free and left a tuft of shadow behind like hair on a nail.
"Ember Edge—Flame Spiral."
Heat again—but this time he didn't let it be clever. He shoved it, a hot shove. The spiral didn't become a backwards coil; it became friction. Threads burned. The smell turned hard—black wool singed by accident and not apologized for.
Aurelia used the moment to climb the air itself, Moonline Dash stepping on each silver stitch Nia had set, and stabbed both daggers down into the seam beneath the crown. "Apology accepted!" she called, and twisted.
The crown jerked. Three fragments fell, kissed the rock, and went dull. For a blink the ribs inside the Lord blinked honest again.
"Now," Andy said, moving.
"Triune Severance."
Fire marked. Water fixed. Wind carried—not forward, but sideways, so the cut stressed the lie rather than the image. The incision wasn't long, but it was persuasive. The Lord staggered for the second time in as many breaths.
The ground punished Andy for his success.
Hooks he hadn't seen—laid earlier under the grass—sprang shut around his ankles, not physical, but contracts. Aura-drains bit and drank, through greaves and will.
[Aura Contamination ↑]
Level: 31% → 44%
Symptoms: Edge tremor (micro) | Peripheral numbness (L)
Mitigation: Resonance II compensation 70%
Alert: Sustained drain will reduce stability
Nia felt it through the bond and overcorrected—bands thickening, lattice locking. The null field pushed back; the runes dimmed as if embarrassed by their own brightness.
"They eat my letters," she said, quiet and furious.
"Then write with mine," Andy answered.
He let the Oathblade hum along her pulse—ember, tide, gale braiding with Lumina for a heartbeat-long marriage. Her next stitch landed in steel and then leapt outward into the ward, piggybacking courage.
Aurelia tried to press the advantage at the crown with a Ribbon Feint that became a triple-split throw midroll. The Lord forgot to like art. He caught one blade between two vectors and turned it toward her belly with the lazy authority of a teacher returning a paper. She twisted away; the blade skimmed skin; red blossomed. She hissed, then grinned because pain is a language she speaks fluently.
"Don't get poetic," Andy warned, and flared the Dragon's Vow again—threat projection refined, not a roar, a law. The vector listened and decided to hate him more.
The Lord moved like a short story told by a bad friend—cuts and omissions. He appeared inside the ring, between band and grid, where Nia had wanted space and honesty. The crown pressed against the net; the net gave two inches then remembered policies.
A vector-mouth opened at Andy's left shoulder. No time for disbelief.
Teeth closed—not teeth; hunger arranged to resemble them—and bit his aura where the ember pauldron sat.
Fire went black.
Pain bloomed cold, a flower held under ice.
The system didn't shout; it spoke with the clarity reserved for bad news you can use.
[Critical: Aura Bite]
Contamination Spike: 44% → 57%
Effect: Elemental skew (🔥 suppressed) | Gale/tide compensating
Counter: Purge path unavailable (solo)
Recommendation: Bond channel support (Mage/Huntress)
Status: Fightable—Brief Window
Nia's breath caught hard enough to hurt her. She slammed three runes into his shoulder through the bond—light-threads, thin as hair, clamping around the bite and caging it. Whisper Cast burned her throat raw, silent. A fourth rune refused to form and dribbled down her palm as heat.
Aurelia arrived at his side between one thought and the next, palm on his back, the skin of her hand very human and very alive. "With me," she said, and it wasn't banter.
The bite hesitated, considering three pulses instead of one.
Andy rolled his left shoulder, making room for survival. The Oathblade lifted, heavy on that side now that ember had been told to sit down. He cut with wind and water only, for three beats. "Gale Rift." "Aqua Fang." "Gale—"
The Lord shoved him back across the ring with a palm of coalesced disdain. Andy planted, slid one boot-length, and stopped where Nia had hidden a Vector Anchor for him for exactly this moment. He nodded once, gratitude head-tilt, then breathed until the cold-flower in his shoulder remembered it was uninvited.
A villager ran where he should have crawled. The Lord noticed because mistakes attract predators. Andy stepped across three lines quickly enough to make them pretend to have been planned and put himself between curious absence and soft person. The not-mouth smiled wider and tried to make a second bite where ribs remembered hunger.
"Overreach," Andy said, and answered with the cheapest, ugliest cut in the world, the one that has kept friends alive since knives learned shapes. He chopped the idea in half. It reformed as a worse idea. That he could live with.
Nia swayed. The third band guttered and held. "Five minutes just became three."
"Two is enough," Aurelia said, blood soaking through her hip strap, grin insisting.
The crown angled, and threads gathered in a single thick braid. The Lord drew his arms back for something not breath, not vector—a hammer made from collected regret.
The ridge whispered protest underfoot. The well stones chimed, bowl against bowl.
Andy tasted copper again. The ember in his left shoulder glowed dull under ice. The system pane hovered in the mind's eye, honest and unkind.
[Stability: 63%]
[Aura Contamination: 57% (holding)]
[Ward: 41%]
Team State: Fatigued (Mage/Huntress)
Next Step: Disrupt gather → force drink early → punish stutter
Risk: High
"On his swallow," Andy said again, steadier than he felt.
Nia lifted the staff, every muscle in her arms signing the letter of enough to the air. "I can make him greedy."
Aurelia chuckled without humor. "That I trust."
"Do it," Andy said.
She shifted the grid one degree—a tiny theft of convenience the Lord would not notice until he needed it. The braid thickened beautifully, greedily, happy to be fat right where the new gutter would mislead it.
Aurelia went high, daggers at odd angles, drawing eyes. Andy went low, blade parallel to the world, breath even, feet where the ridge expected him to be.
The crown rattled. The braid slammed down. The grid caught and slid. The Lord sucked power back with the instinct of every hungry thing shocked by inconvenience.
The honest beat came—late, but it came.
"Now," Nia said, barely a sound.
Andy stepped into it, one clean pace, and let the Oathblade be opinion rather than ornament.
"Triune Severance."
Fire sulked—he used what it would give. Water hauled the line straight. Wind carried it through the drink. The cut didn't look impressive; it wasn't meant to. It landed at the deepest place a lie keeps its first name.
The Lord recoiled, crown shedding a ringlet of fragments that skittered like guilty coins. Black light bled out and ran long enough to touch the ward, where it went dull as spilled ink.
He didn't fall. He pulled back. Not retreat. Regroup. His ribs flickered in a new rhythm, counting them as if to make sure they were still his.
Andy didn't chase. He stood in Tier II as if standing had been the whole art. He breathed around the ice-band in his shoulder until ember creaked, then warmed by half a degree.
"Still with me?" Aurelia asked, eyes flicking to his left.
"Stay there," Nia said, and it was a command to both of them and the world.
The Lord lifted his arms again. Threads rose everywhere, humming, like a field of tuning forks about to agree on a key. The null came down heavier; Nia's runes guttered like candles in a room that wanted wind.
They were running out of band. Out of breath. Out of names for no.
The system slid a final pane in their sight with the intimacy of a friend telling truth in a bad hour.
[Immediate Outlook]
Enemy Pattern: Adaptive drain + null overlay
Team: Stressed / Coordinated
Mitigation Path: Shared Resonance (Unavailable: Uninitiated)
Hold Strategy: Ground control + measured geometry + pulse bait
Time to Ward Failure (est.): 90–120s
"Two minutes," Nia breathed.
"Then we make them honest minutes," Andy said.
The crown angled toward the cart, toward the seamstress, toward the child who had sat politely. The braid of threads humped the ground like a snake expecting applause.
Aurelia flexed her fingers. "I'll take ugly. You take true."
"Deal," Andy said.
He stepped forward, shoulder burning cold, edge steady, and met the first hammer with the simple act of being where it wanted absence. The ridge, faithful and tired, leaned into his heels.
The lesson wasn't finished. The hour was.
They would have to buy the next one with something more expensive.