The forest closed around them.
Not suddenly. Not violently.
It tightened.
Sound dulled first. Then distance. Trees leaned inward just enough to narrow vision without blocking it. Roots surfaced where ground should have been clear, forcing altered steps, broken rhythm.
Seris felt it in her casting.
Mana responded a fraction slower than it should have.
Not interference.
Resistance.
"Keep spacing," she said quietly. "She wants us compressed."
Lucien adjusted immediately, stepping half a pace left, staff angled low. Elyra mirrored him on the right, fingers brushing the earth as she widened her stance.
The woman watched.
She hadn't moved since disengaging moments earlier. Just stood between the trees, relaxed, weight settled on one leg, blade loose in her hand as if it were an afterthought.
"You adapt quickly," the woman said. "Most panic by now."
"We're not most," Lucien replied, voice steady despite the tremor in his mana.
Seris did not answer.
She was listening.
Not to the woman.
To the forest.
There it was again. The faint misalignment in flow. Not everywhere. Localized. Shaped. Someone wasn't just present here—they were asserting priority.
This wasn't a duel.
It was a demonstration.
"She's buying time," Seris said. "For someone else."
The woman smiled. "Perceptive."
Then she moved.
Not in a straight line.
She vanished sideways, body blurring as mana folded around her steps. The air snapped where she'd been, pressure collapsing inward.
"Left!" Elyra shouted.
Seris reacted instantly.
A layered barrier flared into existence, angled rather than flat. The woman struck it mid-motion, blade scraping across hardened light with a shriek that sent vibration through Seris's arms.
Seris slid back a step, boots digging into soil.
Too strong.
Lucien attacked without waiting.
His staff cracked forward, sigils igniting as compressed force surged outward in a binding wave meant to interrupt momentum, not restrain it.
The woman stepped through it.
Not by overpowering.
By slipping between pulses.
Her kick came fast, precise. Lucien barely raised a barrier in time. The impact hurled him backward, skidding across roots until Elyra slammed her foot down.
The ground surged.
Earth rose and caught Lucien before he could crash into a tree, cradling him just long enough to bleed off force before collapsing.
"Again," Elyra said, already resetting.
The woman tilted her head.
"Clean recovery," she observed. "You've trained together."
"Enough," Seris replied.
She shifted tactics.
Mana gathered around her not as a spell, but as structure. Invisible lines formed, mapping movement, predicting approach angles, tightening space where the woman would need it most.
Lucien felt it immediately.
"Got it," he said, breath hitching as he adjusted his casting.
He struck again, not at the woman—but at the ground behind her.
Space compressed.
Air screamed.
The woman was forced to pivot, momentum disrupted for the first time. Elyra seized the opening, earth spears erupting upward in a staggered pattern meant to deny footing rather than pierce.
The woman leapt.
Seris was waiting.
A focused pulse of light detonated mid-air—not to injure, but to disorient. The woman twisted, landing harder than intended, boots cracking stone.
Her smile widened.
"Good," she said again. "Very good."
She came at them in earnest this time.
Blade flashed, but it wasn't the weapon that carried threat—it was the pressure behind it. Each strike warped the air, forcing Seris to layer barriers faster than comfort allowed.
Lucien tried to flank.
She sensed it without looking.
A backhand strike shattered his incoming spell mid-cast, backlash snapping through his arm. He gritted his teeth, refusing to drop his staff.
Elyra anchored them.
The ground beneath Seris never shifted unexpectedly. Roots parted when needed. Stone rose to catch glancing blows. Her mana burned steady and deep, resisting erosion.
But even she was straining now.
Seris felt it.
The pull at her core.
The cost.
"She's not finishing us," Lucien said between breaths. "She's—"
"Testing thresholds," Seris finished.
The woman disengaged again, stepping back into shadow, breath still even.
"Three coordinated casters," she said. "One anchor. One controller. One disruptor."
Her gaze fixed on Seris.
"You're the reason they haven't broken."
Seris met her eyes without flinching.
"And you're wasting time," she said.
The woman laughed.
"Am I?"
The forest answered for her.
A distant roar echoed through the trees—not close, but moving. Heavy. Wrong.
Lucien stiffened. "That wasn't—"
"Natural," Elyra finished.
The woman stepped aside, clearing a path through the undergrowth.
"Survive," she said lightly. "If you can."
Then she vanished.
Not retreating.
Repositioning.
Silence fell again—but it was heavier now, weighted with inevitability.
Seris lowered her hands slowly, breath controlled.
"We move," she said. "Now. Before whatever that was reaches us."
Lucien nodded, already reinforcing himself. Elyra placed her palm to the ground, sending her senses outward.
"They're converging," Elyra said quietly. "Multiple vectors."
Seris closed her eyes for half a heartbeat.
Then opened them.
"Then we don't let them surround us."
They moved as one, disappearing into the forest just as the pressure behind them surged.
And far away, unseen, something else shifted its attention.
Not toward them.
But in their direction.