The wave came down like the sky itself had turned to water.
Lingshu drove the tsunami straight at them, and Vincent barely got his shield up in time, wrapping Yejin and Kei in a dome of roaring flame. The heat cost him — he could feel it, a chunk of his reserves burning away in an instant, but the wave broke against the fire with a hiss like the world exhaling steam.
Lingshu just laughed.
"You don't need to protect Yejin. She won't be touched by anything we throw around here. I only gave her conscious mind permission to watch — she isn't part of this fight. What you're looking at is just an image of her mind, nothing more."
Vincent lowered his arms, staring at her, then at the shrinking flames around his hands. "Wait, seriously? Great. So I just burned through my energy shielding someone who was never in danger."
"My apologies. I should have said something sooner." Yejin stepped to the side, almost sheepish, and the next wave rolled straight through her without so much as bending a strand of her hair.
Vincent did not waste more time complaining. He hurled a ball of fire the size of a boulder straight at the old man — and watched, stunned, as a single gust of wind simply swept it aside like it weighed nothing. The wind did not stop there. It curled in on itself, twisting into a spinning column of fire and air, a tornado that reached hungrily for both of them, trying to drag them into its spinning core. Kei grabbed Vincent's arm and they threw themselves sideways, rolling clear as the tornado tore past.
"He's got, what, three elements now? Four?" Vincent said, breathing hard. "Everything I throw, he's got an answer for."
"Don't waste energy worrying about winning," Kei said, calm as ever, eyes flicking upward. "Look up. There are ten stars. That's our clock." As he spoke, one star flickered and dimmed, then went dark. "One down. It appears that we just survived our first minute."
"Man, I hate it when you're the smart one," Vincent muttered, but there was a grin underneath it. He whistled sharply, and his flame serpent coiled into being around him, a living wall of fire that hissed and snapped at the air.
Lingshu tilted his head, amused. "A flame serpent. That is cute." He raised one hand, and water gathered itself out of nothing, twisting into the shape of a mermaid with eyes like polished pearls. She opened her mouth and spat a jet of water so pressurized it screamed through the air — Kei threw himself flat, feeling it part his hair as it passed close enough to have opened him from hip to shoulder.
"That was close..." Kei said, while up in the air.
"Good reflexes," Lingshu said, almost approving. The mermaid melted back into the sea beneath them without a sound.
Then the sky went dark.
Storm clouds rolled in from nowhere, boiling and black, and lightning cracked down again and again, strike after strike, each one aimed with terrible precision. "Let's see how fast you really are," Lingshu said, smiling like a man watching a game he already knew the outcome of.
Kei dodged the first. The second. On the third, he was a half-second too slow, and the bolt caught him across the shoulder and chest, throwing him back through the air in a spray of sparks. He hit the water hard enough to skip.
"Kei!" Vincent did not think — he just moved, driving his serpent forward in a straight, furious line at the old man, trying to burn him where he stood. The mermaid rose again and swallowed the fire whole, snuffing it out like it was nothing more than a candle.
But Lingshu's focus had drifted, just for a moment, chasing Vincent's attack — and he missed the fact that Kei was already back on his feet. Three daggers left Kei's hand in a blur, each one wrapped in a faint shimmer of mana. One found its mark, striking Lingshu square in the chest — and simply stopped there, hovering, held motionless an inch from his skin by some invisible force. Lingshu twitched two fingers, almost lazily, and sent all three daggers screaming back the way they had come.
Kei threw himself sideways, feeling the wind of their passing brush his cheek. His mind raced even as his body kept moving. "This is supposed to be the strongest practitioner in Iona? We are too far apart in our abilities. How did I not see the gap until now?" He thought, and then he glanced up.
Seven stars left.
"Seven minutes. I don't know if we can hold out that long. I need to find a way to close this gap — fast."
Lingshu caught the shift in Kei's eyes, that flicker of calculation, and smiled wider. "Planning something, are you? Let me remind you both of something important — this is my pocket dimension, yes, but that doesn't make your real bodies safe. Whatever wound you take here, your mind remembers it so you feel the same pain when we get back in the real world. That's exactly why pocket dimensions are considered one of the most dangerous techniques in all of practition." The air around them chilled instantly, moisture crystallizing into a dozen razor spikes of ice. "So I'd suggest you two start taking this seriously."
The ice spikes launched as one.
Vincent's flame barrier groaned under the pressure — lightning, the mermaid's endless strikes, and now ice hammering against it from every angle. He gritted his teeth, feeding more strength into the shield, watching cracks of light spiderweb across its surface.
Kei was not faring much better, weaving and ducking through a hail of frozen spears, each near-miss shaving a little more off what strength he had left.
Five stars remained. Halfway there.
And they were both running on fumes.
That was when the voice rose up inside Kei's skull, low and rumbling, ancient in a way that made his teeth ache. "Summon me, Kei." it said.
"No," Kei answered silently, jaw tight. "Just lend me your strength. I can still take this."
Power flooded into him, cold and vast, filling him back up until he felt whole again — and Lingshu felt it too, the shift in the air around the boy, and his smile deepened.
With his strength renewed, Kei's speed doubled, then tripled, until even Lingshu's lightning could not quite pin him down anymore. The old man watched a few strikes miss entirely and decided, without any visible frustration, to change tactics.
He raised both arms slowly, fingers curling like he was closing a fist around something unseen — and Kei felt it, an invisible hand wrapping around his whole body, squeezing tight. Lingshu lifted his arm, and Kei rose with it, hauled helplessly into the sky.
The world around them shivered and reshaped itself, the endless ocean melting away into cracked, rocky wasteland.
Then Lingshu's arm dropped.
Kei hit the ground like a falling star, the impact tearing a crater into the stone.
Yejin was already running before the dust settled, dropping to her knees beside him. He was breathing — barely — but alive, his whole body screaming from the impact.
"You'll have to do better than that, kid," Lingshu said, almost gently, already lifting his arm again to haul Kei back into the air for a second slam.
But this time, Kei fought back. He poured everything he had left into breaking the grip, muscles straining, veins lighting up faintly beneath his skin as raw will alone tore him free of the telekinetic hold. Sparks crackled through the air around him from the sheer force of it.
Lingshu's eyebrows lifted, genuine surprise flickering across his face. "There it is! That's exactly what I wanted to see, kid!"
One star left in the sky.
Kei had broken free — and in the process, Lingshu's attention had narrowed entirely onto him, lightning and ice spikes still raining down, leaving Vincent forgotten at the edges of the fight. Vincent saw the opening and took it without hesitation, sending his flame serpent burrowing straight down into the ground, out of sight.
It surfaced directly beneath Lingshu.
Fire erupted upward in a violent column, wrapping around the old man before he could react, searing deep burns across his skin. He was still airborne, still reeling from the shock of it, when Kei launched himself upward, closing the distance in a heartbeat, and drove the old man down toward the earth with everything he had left.
The stars vanished, every last one, the moment they hit the ground.
The rocky wasteland went utterly silent.
Grandmaster Yoo Lingshu lay flat on his back where he had landed, a shallow crack spreading out beneath him through the stone. For a long moment, he did not move at all, and Kei stood near him, chest heaving, fists still clenched and ready for a counterattack that never came.
Then the old man let out a long, wheezing breath — and laughed. "I guess I've really gotten way older," Lingshu said, staring up at the sky that was not really there. "Can't believe a strike like that could actually bring me down. My body won't even get up now." He laughed again, softer this time, more to himself than to either of them.
Vincent landed hard a few feet away, the flame serpent dissolving back into embers around him, and just stood there for a second, staring. "Wait. Hold on. Is he — did we actually—"
"Don't get too proud of yourselves," Lingshu said, cutting him off without even lifting his head. "I let my guard down for one second, focused too hard on this one." He tilted his chin toward Kei. "That's on me, not some sign you two could beat me on a good day."
Kei finally lowered his hands, though his Deathsight still glowed faintly, scanning the old man out of habit more than suspicion. "You're still healing. I can see it — your ribs are already knitting back together."
"Those eyes of yours, I can't tell where I saw it before." Lingshu pushed himself up onto his elbows, wincing, the burns along his side already fading to pink, then to nothing. "Comes with the territory. Living this long, you learn to patch yourself up fast, or you don't live much longer after that."
Yejin ran over and crouched beside him anyway, hands hovering like she was not sure if she was allowed to help. "Master, are you truly alright?"
"I'm fine, child. You need not worry, we're in my own pocket dimension, after all. I can still borrow energy from my own energy reserves that are stuck in here, but I don't want to cheat." He waved her off with a tired flick of his wrist and slowly sat all the way up, joints popping audibly in the quiet.
Lingshu rose to his feet at last, brushing dust off his clothes that was not really there, and the cracked stone wasteland around them shimmered, dissolving back into the endless, glassy ocean they had started on.
"Well. A deal's a deal," he said, turning to face them both properly now, all traces of laughter fading from his weathered face. "You survived the full ten minutes, and you even brought me down. I'm quite impressed. So now, well, I'll tell you what I know."
Grandmaster Yoo snapped his fingers, and the ocean and the endless gray sky folded away in an instant.
The Timeless Chamber was gone. In its place, the familiar walls of Lingshu's chamber settled back around them, the same faint smell of sandalwood and old parchment hanging in the air like nothing had happened at all.
Vincent blinked, glancing down at his own hands as if checking they were really his, still standing exactly where he had been before the fingers had first snapped.
"Wait." Vincent looked around, disoriented. "So none of that actually — I mean, we're not even bruised?"
"Your minds carried the damage, not your bodies, not out here," Lingshu said, settling back down onto his dais with a small grunt, folding his legs beneath him like he had not just been slammed into a crater minutes ago. "But make no mistake, boy — what your mind believes happened to it, it remembers just the same. Ask Kei how his shoulder feels."
Kei rolled it experimentally, jaw tightening. "Still sore. Like the memory of the strike did not get the message that it wasn't real."
"Exactly." Lingshu nodded, satisfied. "That's the danger I warned you about. A mind convinced it's broken doesn't always wait around for the body to catch up."
Yejin, still catching her breath from simply watching, stepped further into the room. "So it's really true, then? You'll tell them?"
"I said I would, didn't I?" Lingshu's sharp eyes moved from her to Kei, then to Vincent, weighing them all over again, slower this time, like he was looking for something he might have missed the first time around. "Ten minutes against me would break most seasoned practitioners twice your age. You two didn't just survive it — you actually landed a hit that put me on my back. That's not nothing." He exhaled, long and slow.
"Fine. Sit. This isn't a short story."