The air had gone sharp enough to cut lungs. Each breath felt borrowed. The hoop of Nia's emergency ward shivered, a silver ribcage forced to hold a village's worth of panic. Beyond it, the crowned Corrupter gathered himself like a cathedral rehearsing collapse.
Andy stood at the center, one hand heavy with Oathblade, the other with the weight of two pulses against him—Nia's trembling palm on his sternum, Aurelia's hot grip on his back. Rivalry sparked between them still, but the spark leapt through him instead of burning sideways.
The system did not chime; it leaned.
[Constellation Resonance — Orion]
Participants: Andy × Nia × Aurelia
Status: Partial Gate Open
Effect: Aura Contamination Resisted
Synergy Output: +20%
Note: Maintain contact for stabilization
The Corrupter raised both arms. Threads pulled taut, every filament of shadow strung like a harp about to scream. The crown of fragments turned once and set the key. A soundless note rolled through the ridge—wrong, immense, inevitable.
Nia's knees almost went. She forced her jaw shut on the pain and whispered into Andy's bones: Steady. Steady with me.
Aurelia pressed harder between his shoulders, teeth bared in a grin that looked like defiance pretending to be fun. "Let him sing. We'll drown him out."
Andy breathed once, deep and deliberate, and let Tier II relax—not flare, not roar, simply allow. Gale braided tight under his heels; tide rose up his ribs; ember, though bitten cold, burned again because it had friends.
The Oathblade answered with a low hum, bright at the edges. Sigils bled down its spine—not his, not dragon—runes Nia was threading across his aura. They stitched into the steel like old cloth remembering to be a banner. Silver flickered across the fuller.
Aurelia slid one dagger along the flat and the weapon lengthened a hair, blade resonating with moonlight. For the first time, the Oathblade carried laughter as well as duty.
The Corrupter breathed.
It wasn't cold this time. It was a wall of hush, silence thick enough to choke. Words died in throats. Torches guttered in obedience. The hoop bent, bands whining, silver stretched too far. Villagers clutched hands tighter and stared at Andy's back as if that were all the geography left in the world.
Andy did not answer alone.
"Vector Prism," Nia whispered, not with her voice but with her pulse against his chest.
"Moonlance," Aurelia whispered, lips curving against his ear.
Andy stepped into both words as if they'd been his own.
"Resonance Prism."
The Oathblade split light into three gutters, but this time it didn't fracture. Silver glyphs held the seams. Daggers launched through the lanes, twin lances of starlight braided with gale. The hush crashed against geometry it couldn't unname. The wall cracked down the middle.
Aurelia laughed, harsh and lovely. "He flinched!"
"He felt," Nia corrected, light spinning faster down the lattice.
The Corrupter reeled half a step. Black fire spat from his ribs where the prism had bitten. He gathered threads to plug the wound—then staggered as the wound refused to be plugged. Andy's cut had written honesty there, and honesty is the one thing corruption struggles to imitate.
System panes cascaded with a speed that made breath seem late.
[Resonance Stabilized]
Nia ⭐ 97% | Aurelia ⭐ 95%
Tier III Progress: 36%
New Skill: Glyphstorm Prism (Unlocked)
Effect: Rune storm projected through bonded weapon
Status: Stable
"Try it," Andy said, and Nia already was.
She raised the staff, lips bloodied from biting silence, and drew a circle inside his aura. Andy cut with it. Glyphs didn't scatter this time—they spun, storming down the Oathblade's edge in a spiral. The swing spat silver rain that punched a titan of shadow square through the chest. It fell, not as smoke, but as broken glass sighing.
Aurelia followed, sliding past Andy's hip with a grin hot enough to sear regret. "Moonpiercer Arts—Crescent Guillotine!" Both daggers slashed wide, but the prism lanes bent them inward, folding the arcs into a cross of silver that slashed a filament bundle into silence.
The Corrupter's crown rattled. A fragment fell and cracked, smoke pouring out like a confession.
Andy pressed forward, one step, then another. Tier II didn't expand; it focused. Each breath was a law. Each step, geography rewriting itself to agree with his feet.
"Stay with me," he said—not loud, not strained, just true.
Nia's ward brightened, regaining color. The hoop widened by half a pace, enough for villagers to breathe without tasting iron.
Aurelia's laugh rang like silver on stone. "We'll stay. Try not to break before we do."
The Corrupter tilted his head. For the first time since he had walked out of the seam, uncertainty flickered across the ribs of wrong light.
Andy leveled the Oathblade. "Then we teach him what staying means."
The ridge shuddered. The villagers rose in a cheer they had no right to have time for. The constellation above Orion flickered, brighter, as if leaning down to take notes.
[Constellation Sync — Orion]
Tier II Combined: 48%
Shared Resonance: Active
Status: Stable | Forward momentum recommended
And in the middle of a silence meant to erase them, three voices—one calm, one fierce, one laughing—rewrote the air into music.