Cold threaded itself through the village like a rumor people wanted to disbelieve. Frost filmed the lips of spilled water. Even the torches seemed to lean away from their own flames.
"Grid still aligned," Nia said, though her voice had become a thin wire. The two bands rose pale and stubborn; Aurora Stitches slipped along the joins, repairing as fast as damage remembered to occur.
Aurelia wiped a streak of red from her hip with the back of her wrist and smirked at the crowned absence in the torn horizon. "He's planning something theatrical."
"Then we keep it small," Andy said.
The rasi-shaped Corrupter opened his arms. Black filaments climbed from the soil and hung in the air, quivering with decision. The crown of fragments rotated a fraction; sound bent. Not a roar. A refusal.
Pressure arrived sideways.
Not a breath, not a cone—an edge, flat and wide, a sweeping pane of null that shaved across the ward like a scythe swung by a season. The outer band moaned. Nia slammed fresh glyphs into its ribs with a twist of her wrists. The pane changed angle mid-flight and came again, lower.
The third band tried to stand up to meet it.
It didn't.
Light shattered with the bright, pitiless report of glass cracking under winter.
Shards of silver fell and went to ash before they touched the ground. Shock knocked Nia back a step; she caught herself on the staff, teeth bared in something too focused to be pain. The two remaining rings rippled. Gaps yawned where stitches had been.
The villagers felt the change the way a child feels an adult leave the room. Bodies leaned forward without wanting to. Someone sobbed once—quick, embarrassed—and swallowed it.
Aurelia was already moving. "Stay tall," she breathed as she slid behind Nia and braced her with a hip and a hand. One dagger took a grazing vector an inch from Nia's ribs, turned it, sent it sulking into the dirt as smoke. "Breathe, saint."
Nia exhaled through her nose, jaw set, blood bright at one nostril. "He scraped the letters off the light," she said, and the staff trembled.
Andy stepped in front of them both, Oathblade up at a sensible angle, Tier II sitting on him like a crown he refused to notice.
"Dragon's Vow."
Aura firmed—no shout, just a law. The air decided it would not pass here without presenting papers.
Vectors bent toward him as if gravity had opinions. He let them arrive and answered each with a short, cruel parry—no romance, only angles. Steel spoke in a voice that made lies forget their cleverness.
The system took inventory and did not like the count.
[Lumina Ward — Third Band: COLLAPSED]
Outer Band Integrity: 38%
Inner Band Integrity: 57%
Null Overlay: Heavy (70%)
Aura Contamination (Andy): 57% → 61%
Recommendation: Bond Support; Avoid Solo Purge
The crowned absence noticed the gap and was polite enough to exploit it. He folded—not closer, just more present—and laid a palm of condensed hunger across the inner band. It buckled two inches, then four. Runes blew out like candles under a careless hand.
Nia forced her shaking fingers to shape three tiny Whisper Cast sigils—thread-thin stitches that slid under the palm and held it off the children huddling by the cart. The stitches smoked. Her breath shortened. A tremor ran down her forearms that had nothing to do with weather.
Aurelia cut two incoming filaments at once, spinning low, the motion clean as a sentence with no adjectives. "Room," she snapped, and shouldered Nia a half-step farther from the failing edge.
Andy moved through small wind-steps—Gale Platforms barely thicker than paper—placing himself exactly where threads wanted to be. "Keep your eyes on me," he told the Corrupter, and pressure obliged, curious and irritated.
The Oathblade bucked under a bite of cold. Ember at his left shoulder guttered; tide and gale dragged it along out of habit and loyalty.
"Not yours," he said, and cut the thought in half.
The crowned figure smiled with its not-mouth and drew back its arm like a farmer preparing to scythe regret.
"Down!" Aurelia barked, and they weren't in time.
The sweep hit the outer band full-length.
Light wailed. Stitches detonated into sparks. The ring held, then listed, then—like a tired horse following a bad order—slipped downslope the width of two palms.
Nia coughed; red dotted the back of her glove. She dragged the ring back with both hands as if hauling a boat against a greedy tide. "Stay," she told it, and the light shook with effort under the kindness of the word.
The system offered honesty and arithmetic.
[Ward Integrity — Outer: 38% → 22%]
[Ward Integrity — Inner: 57% → 44%]
Mage Strain: High (Vocal channels blocked; Whisper throughput 42%)
Projected Failure: 60–90 s
"Make us a minute," Andy said.
"I'll steal you two," Nia said, and tied the outer ring to the roots of the nearest pine with a brittle little rune that set her teeth on edge. The pine hummed as if surprised to be included.
A filament slashed for the seam between ring and stone. Andy met it without flourish, turned it aside, and split it into three more manageable promises.
Behind him, feet scraped. An old man stumbled and would have fallen forward into the seam if Aurelia's offhand hadn't snapped out and caught his belt. She set him back with a grin that showed every intention of making him laugh in an hour he didn't think laughter deserved. "Don't argue with gravity," she said. "It's petty."
Another pressure change. The Corrupter pulled the null tighter—thickened silence until the room between runes went syrup-slow. Whisper Cast choked; one of Nia's thread-stitches went dark.
He was not fighting. He was editing. Unmaking the vocabulary that kept people distinct.
Nia swayed; the staff's head struck stone, ringing three notes that made the villagers flinch. Aurelia caught her again, an arm around ribs, fingers finding blood-wet fabric at the hip and not letting it become a conversation.
"Stay with me," Aurelia murmured. "Later you can scold me for how I'm holding you."
"Later," Nia agreed, voice sanded thin, a spark under it still obscene with determination.
The crowned figure took two steps that did not belong to space. He stood inside the outer ring, just at the edge of the inner, crowned skull shadowing the cart. A child's eyes found him around the cart's rim and did not look away, as if curiosity were loyal even when sense begged divorce.
Andy didn't think. He set both heels where the ridge wanted them and lifted the Oathblade until the edge was a horizon the monster would have to respect or trip over.
"Back," he told the villagers, not turning, and their bodies believed the instruction belonged to them.
The Corrupter's hand—gesture, vector, suggestion sharpened into blade—dropped for Nia's throat.
Aurelia tilted in and parried it with a laugh. The parry hurt; you parry hunger like you parry rain. Silver screeched along black. She stole half the force, made it clumsy, returned it across the inner ring where it only cut stone.
"Eyes here," Andy said, and cut for the crown—not to break it, but to make it think about balance. The edge sang, short and decisive, like a priest closing a book. Fragments clinked. One fell and went dull.
The crown stopped smiling.
Threads everywhere tightened. The ridge's hair stood up. Stones remembered they were mortal.
The sweep that followed wasn't beautiful; it was a budget approved after midnight. The inner band took it and squawked. The outer band took it and went to pieces—light falling in lengths like wet laundry dropped from a line. The smell of hot silver and winter breath hit the back of Andy's throat.
Nia folded, not from fear; from math. The Staff of Lumina grew heavy enough to be a crowbar. She would have eaten floor if Aurelia hadn't been between her and falling already.
"Don't sleep," Aurelia said, voice bright and filthy with affection. "You'll miss the good part."
Nia's eyes flicked to Andy over Aurelia's shoulder. Apology lived there; so did refusal. "Two bands," she said, and slammed the last clean light she had into a shivering hoop no wider than the cart.
"Good bands," Andy said, and meant it.
The system chimed in the small, exact tone reserved for moments that rewire definitions.
[Ward Status]
Outer: DISPELLED
Inner: 31% (Shrunk)
Emergency Hoop: Engaged (5 m radius)
Villager Exposure: High
Mage Vital: Weak; Hands Steady
Huntress Vital: Wounded (moderate); Mobility High
The crowned absence cocked his head as if genuinely curious how mortals intend to continue. He gathered himself—not breath, not null, something layered. A chord under a chord.
A field pulse slammed out from his chest in a ring. Not cutting. Tuning. The world tried to agree with a terrible note. People gagged. The donkey tied at the post lay down with grace and did not rise. The pine tied into Nia's rune groaned and leaned against a sky that refused to lean back.
Andy took it on his bones. Tier II absorbed most, stored some, threatened to crack around the rest.
The Oathblade heated along the spine, ember pushing under ice by stubbornness alone. "Not yours," he told the pulse too, because sometimes repetition is how laws are taught.
The monster's ribs flickered—the drink. Late, wrong, but there. Andy moved to punish and his left side hesitated; cold chewed the ember pauldron and turned conviction to ache.
He checked the cut mid-swing and slashed low instead—"Gale Rift," ugly and honest. It diverted a lash of thread that had been angling for a woman's calves. She ran. A thread tripped her. Aurelia's hand picked her back up mid-stumble and stood her behind the hoop as if seating a guest late to temple.
The system stopped making suggestions and started making instructions.
[CRISIS]
Time to Hoop Failure: 40–60 s
Enemy Pattern: Adaptive Null + Siphon + Tuning Pulse
Solo Countermeasure: Insufficient
Required: Bond Channel — Dual Entry (Mage/Huntress)
Initiate Window: 2.8 s
"Now," Andy said, eyes never leaving the crown. "Hands."
He didn't mean surrender. He meant help.
Aurelia tucked Nia under his left arm with a motion that should not have been graceful and was. Her right palm pressed between his shoulder blades, above the cold flower eating ember. Nia's left hand rose, fingers trembling, and flattened over his sternum where the Oathblade's invisible twin lived.
Warmth slid in on one line; light slid in on another. Rivalry sparked like flint—the kind that starts stoves, not wildfires. Andy's aura opened doors it had been keeping closed since morning and let two different weathers walk the halls.
The crowned absence drew himself to full rudeness. The crown locked. Filaments all over the field snapped to attention. Every lie he had told lined up to be used again, cleaner.
The world had the look of something about to accept an invitation it didn't trust.
Nia's whisper threaded through his bones, thready and fierce. "With you."
Aurelia's breath warmed his ear, amused and devout. "Try to keep up, Dragon."
The system set a hand on his shoulder as soft as a blessing and as heavy as a duty.
[Constellation Resonance — INITIATE]
Participants: Andy × Nia × Aurelia
Gate: Open (Partial)
Effect: Aura Contamination Resistance ↑ | Output Synergy +20%
Status: Stabilize on Contact
The crowned figure began to breathe the wrongness of a cathedral collapsing.
Andy lifted the Oathblade to the line that decides whether mornings happen and stepped forward, taking their hands with him.