The field did not accept it at once.
For a short interval — too short to be safe — nothing advanced, nothing retreated.
The rain kept falling, but the sound changed, as if the drops were striking something denser than mud.
Ghatotkacha was rising again.
There was no haste in the movement.
No visible difficulty either.
The knee came out of the mud dragging the ground with it, whole plates tearing loose with a low, deep sound that did not echo — it was absorbed.
The world remembered weight.
The fissures in the body were still there.
Too closed to bleed.
Too open to disappear.
Heat escaped in short pulses, making the air ripple near the darkened flesh, retracted, like metal forced back into shape.
Kaelir felt the delay in his arms increase.
Not pain.
Something that cost more.
The kind of cost that is not paid only once.
Ahead of him, the step came.
Large.
Certain.
Inevitable.
The field yielded before the impact existed.
The mud sank in slow waves, pressure spreading as if the ground were being taught, again, to obey.
Skýra adjusted her stance by reflex.
She did not advance.
Did not retreat.
She recognized it.
It was not an attack yet.
It was the recovery of tempo.
Then—
the rhythm broke again.
Rynne passed.
There was no sound.
No clash.
There was misalignment.
The path ran too close to the creature's body to be seen as movement — felt more as a sudden absence where the weight should have been complete.
At the instant she crossed the line of the knee, the rapier traced a short arc — too low to be seen as offense, too high to be accident.
The tip found the exact fold where the weight transferred.
It did not pierce deep.
It interrupted.
It was enough.
Ghatotkacha's body responded too late to something that did not come from the field.
The knee bent again.
The ground groaned under the forced correction, mud and stone crushed together like something not made to yield that way.
When the world breathed again, she was in front.
Still.
The rapier low.
The wrist loose.
Feet planted on ground that had not yet decided if it could hold.
The symbol in Ghatotkacha's iris pulsed.
Not in fury.
In adjustment.
There was no flank there to crush.
No distance to impose weight.
There was a fixed point where none should exist.
Rynne inhaled.
Her gaze did not rise to the creature's face.
It lowered.
Followed the fissures along Ghatotkacha's body as they closed — not fast, not slow, but with an uncomfortable precision, as if each correction were being chosen among worse alternatives.
The darkened flesh contracted in short pulses.
Vapor escaped in dense, almost organized lines.
It was not careless regeneration.
It was discipline applied to one's own body.
Ghatotkacha rose again.
The knee still marked the mud when the weight began to climb once more, vertebra by vertebra, like a structure being reassembled under tension.
The gesture was not abrupt. It was complete.
The weight occupied space again like a structure placed back in the wrong place.
The field answered late, the mud sinking under the creature's feet in short, dense waves, as if the ground were recalculating permissions.
Rynne drew air for one second longer than normal.
She felt the world lose sharpness at the edges.
Then she spoke.
"I keep wondering which of us will yield first."
She rotated the rapier once at the wrist.
Not to threaten. To align.
The blade described a short, discreet arc, clearing the gathered water before stopping low, almost relaxed — point loose, guard open, body in profile.
It was not a dueling guard.
It was a passing position.
She held her breath again.
The sound of the rain receded.
It did not disappear — it moved away, as if someone had closed an invisible door between her and the rest of the world.
The first step came from Ghatotkacha.
Not an attack. A test.
The base shifted with controlled weight, the torso turning to align shoulder and hip in an advance that would crush anything trying to occupy that space by insistence.
Rynne did not retreat.
Her body slid laterally at an angle too short to be flight.
The forward foot touched the mud only enough not to lose reference while the other was already pushing again.
For her, time did not stop.
It became expensive.
Each adjustment of Ghatotkacha seemed to demand more effort than it should, as if his body were always arriving an instant after the decision.
The blow came.
A heavy, closed arm, descending diagonally to cut space, not flesh.
Rynne went inside.
The blade passed close along the creature's forearm, not seeking a deep cut but line — it scraped, marked, forced correction.
Ghatotkacha reacted by turning the torso to crush her with the weight of the whole body, elbow opening space like a moving wall.
Rynne was no longer there.
She reappeared in the next step, now in front of the creature's axis, body low, knees flexed, rapier aligned with the wrist as a natural extension of the arm.
A short cut.
Dry.
Not to kill.
To interrupt.
The blade entered the same groove as before.
The flesh resisted more.
The vapor rose thicker.
Ghatotkacha answered with the knee, a short, brutal advance, using the closing of his own body as a weapon.
The pressure came before contact. She held the air.
The world stretched.
She turned her hip, letting the blow pass where her body had been half a second before, and used the creature's own leg as a momentary point of support — she did not climb, did not jump.
She slid.
The rapier rose in a low thrust, aiming for joint, not mass.
The impact was real.
Ghatotkacha's knee yielded a minimal degree.
Enough.
The field groaned.
The creature corrected with brute force, the foot driving into the ground and exploding mud and stone in a short radius, trying to recover dominance through environmental impact.
Rynne was pushed back.
She did not fall.
She rolled once, absorbing the energy in shoulder and back, already returning to stance before even stopping.
She released the air.
Inhaled again.
The duel was established.
Not by words. By rhythm.
Behind her, the world kept collapsing.
Ahead, Ghatotkacha adjusted his body again, each correction more precise — and slower.
Rynne tilted her head slightly.
Not in provocation.
In reading.
Ghatotkacha advanced again.
This time he did not seek to crush space.
He closed.
The step was short, heavy, calculated to eliminate angles — the torso turning with it, shoulder forward, the readied arm not to sweep, but to strike where she was.
Rynne did not run.
She held her breath.
The body did not accelerate.
The mind did.
The punch came straight.
Not wide. Not exaggerated.
A compact strike, launched to pass through, not to push.
Rynne did not leave the line.
She yielded within it.
The torso inclined the minimum necessary, hip loosening a degree, shoulder dropping as Ghatotkacha's fist passed a handspan from her face — close enough to displace air, far enough not to touch.
There was no impact.
There was failure.
The creature's arm carried forward by inertia, too heavy to correct in the same instant.
The rapier rose in a short movement, almost lazy, seeking the fold of the elbow — not force, interrupted continuity.
The blade did not go deep.
But it went where it needed.
Ghatotkacha's arm responded late.
The adjustment was too small to be seen as change.
But the air reacted differently.
The foot retreated half a step, base closing, shoulders aligning to reduce exposure.
The next punch came different — in a short line, contained, not seeking where Rynne was — but where she would need to be to leave again.
Rynne felt it.
She closed the air in her chest.
Not as breath.
As decision.
There was no room to slide fully.
She retreated two steps.
The blow passed.
No impact.
No clash.
When she stopped, she was still whole.
Only then did she notice.
The fabric at the shoulder was open in a short, clean tear — not pulled, not irregular.
The air had passed there.
The shoulder burned an instant later, the pressure arriving late, compressing the flesh like a belated memory of weight.
A minimal error.
The kind that leaves no mark. But demands attention.
Rynne felt the world narrow more than before. Not slower. Narrower.
The field behind her was deeper.
Ghatotkacha did not pursue.
He straightened the torso. Adjusted the base.
The symbol in the iris pulsed again.
Not in anger.
In calculation.
He had missed by little.
Too little to be discarded.
In the field.
Not outside it.
Kaelir did not blink.
The arm that still trembled was held by the other — not to contain weakness.
To contain excessive reading.
He was not watching the blows.
He was watching the intervals.
Each time Rynne held the air, the world around her did not grow slower.
It grew misaligned.
The rain fell out of tempo by a minimal fraction.
The mud reacted late under her foot.
The vapor rising from Ghatotkacha's fissures took half a second longer to dissipate when she passed.
It was not speed.
It was compression of decision.
She was paying to see one decision earlier.
Kaelir tilted his head slightly when he realized the pattern had changed.
The adjustment was not coming from only one side.
The creature was not missing less.
It was missing differently.
The first blows sought to crush.
The second sought space.
The third sought return.
Now none of them sought where she was.
They sought where she would inevitably have to be to maintain the pattern.
Skýra spoke without taking her eyes off the field.
"She's applying pressure."
There was no doubt in her voice. There was calculation.
Kaelir remained still.
The silence was not agreement.
It was space.
Neriah approached only enough not to intrude.
"At first glance, it may look like pressure," she said, low, steady. "But he is not being pressured."
Her gaze was not on strength.
It was on Rynne's breathing.
"He's doing what predators do when they don't need to run."
Kaelir did not answer immediately.
His gaze slid to Neriah.
The still-recent marks on her skin — superficial, but present. Resources not infinite.
Then, farther away — two motionless bubbles of water.
Inside them, Iaso and Lys suspended like memory the field had not yet allowed to fall.
He returned his eyes to Rynne.
Only then did he release a small breath through his nose. Almost a humorless laugh.
"Predators run when they still have doubt," he murmured.
His gaze narrowed.
"He has already chosen."
The arm trembled again.
Stronger now.
The rain struck differently for an instant.
Skýra frowned.
Not at him. At the calculation.
"She already used Surge of Movement."
A stronger beat of rain.
"And the State of Suspension."
Silence.
The rain weighed heavier in the air.
Neriah did not look away.
"Then she knows the next mistake will not be small."
Kaelir inclined his head slightly.
"No."
A pause too short for comfort.
"The next mistake will be definitive."
In the field, Ghatotkacha's foot sank deeper.
Not by weight.
By decision.
Kaelir finished, low:
"And he is already waiting for it."
The rain seemed to retreat.
The duel did not lessen. It only lost the possibility of a small error.