Across the battlefield, Iza Alruin stood with unsettling stillness.

  ? [Combat Status] ?

  Gone was the bubbly visitor from the lounge. Instead, her posture was relaxed, but her presence weighed heavily against the air itself. She reached eagerly for the red katanas at her hips, which gleamed faintly beneath the moonlight, their lacquered sheaths reflecting pale silver. She noticed me watching.

  Iza smiled. It was not the same smile from earlier.

  Beside her, Ume moved first. A thin strand of silk shot from her fingertips and anchored itself to a crooked gravestone. Another line followed, stretching to the branch of a dead tree. Within seconds, the battlefield began to divide where webbing shimmered when the fog parted, then disappeared again.

  She's already shaping the terrain, I thought.

  "Oath," I said quietly.

  "Oath sees it."

  ? [Combat Status] ?

  Of course she did. Oath always noticed the things others overlooked. A third silk line stretched behind us, nearly impossible to see until it caught a sliver of moonlight.

  We were already inside Ume's domain.

  Iza tilted her head, her green hair sliding over the skull ornaments on her kimono. She raised one hand and waved at me enthusiastically.

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  "Hi, KiAera!" she called, her voice bright enough to sound almost out of place in the graveyard setting. "Thanks for coming!"

  I filled in the missing words: "…to die." I did not wave back, though I felt the urge to.

  "Round 8 begins now!" Bellatrixa's voice boomed overhead.

  The fog shifted. Iza's hand dropped to one of her katanas. Oath stepped forward.

  The first strand of webbing snapped taut behind us. Iza drew her first katana.

  The moon, the field, the arena. It all split as Iza's crimson blade blurred toward my heart.

  I ducked as the weapon curved above my nose and brow. The aftermath of Iza's swing continued in a crescent shockwave that carved cleanly through a stone pillar behind me with a startling, precise cut.

  So fast, I thought. No windup. No wasted motion.

  Iza did not pursue immediately. She straightened with an almost lazy grace, katana angled downward at her side, the blade humming faintly as if satisfied. Her free hand lifted to brush a stray lock of green hair from her face, skull ornaments clicking softly against one another.

  "Oh wow," she said, genuinely impressed. "You ducked that perfectly."

  I could feel my heart hammering in my throat, as my emotions thundered with a mix of anticipation and surprise as I processed the sudden abruptness of Iza's assault. I remained calm nonetheless, staying a small target in my rabbit-fae form, and unleashed the tendrils from my back's ribbon appendages to retaliate.

  Iza reacted with a fiery glint in her eyes, her blade parrying the appendages. Then she was alarmed when the soft threads resounded against her blades like steel against steel as she backpedaled and danced away from my reach.

  My appendages vibrated from the force, their tips splintering where her edge kissed them.

  "Oh my," Iza said, eyes bright. "You really are quick!"

  I retracted my ribbons at once. The chipped edges tingled as if bruised. If those extensions were true nerves, I would have been biting back a scream.

  Iza had not overcommitted. Not even slightly. She laughed. It was bright and delighted, completely at odds with the lethal tension radiating from her blade.

  "This is fun already!" she exclaimed, and then she was moving.

  She closed the distance in an instant, her feet barely touching the ground. I brought my ribbons forward, the tendrils unfurling from my back in a controlled arc, each one sharp and responsive. Iza met them head on.

  Steel rang against my threads, sparks scattering like fireflies. She rotated her wrist and redirected my strike with effortless precision, then followed with a reverse cut that forced me to twist aside. The air where my head had been split with a shriek as her blade passed through it.

  I countered low, ribbons snapping toward her ankles. She jumped. My attack passed beneath her feet as she spun midair and brought the katana down in a diagonal slash. I crossed my tendrils to block. The impact rattled through me, a vibration that made my teeth clench. Chips flew from my ribbons where her blade met them, the edges shaved clean.

  She landed lightly and hopped back, eyes shining.

  "Oh, those are lovely," she said, nodding toward my appendages. "You feel everything through them, do you not?"

  I did not answer. I was already retreating, weaving between gravestones, careful not to brush against the invisible web lines that laced the fog. My senses screamed warnings each time I came close to one. Ume was tightening her net, reshaping the battlefield with the patience of a tailor fitting a gown.

  Iza followed, relentless but playful, slashing and thrusting in patterns that tested my reactions rather than overwhelmed them. Each strike was an inquiry. Each feint a question.

  How fast are you? How far can you bend? How long can you last?

  Another web surged from the mist, this one thicker, forming a partial cocoon around Oath's arm. She slammed her fist into the ground, and crystalline structures erupted outward in a radial burst, shattering the silk and sending shards of frozen light skittering across the field.

  For a moment, I glimpsed Ume's silhouette high among the dead branches, her arms raised as if conducting an orchestra. Then she was gone again.

  "I like your partner!" Iza called cheerfully as she pressed me back with a flurry of cuts. "She has excellent form!"

  "Focus on me," I snapped, parrying narrowly as her blade kissed one of my ribbons and sent another painful vibration through my spine.

  She grinned wider. "That is exactly what I am doing."

  She rushed forward once more, both hands on the hilt now, strength pouring into her strike. I braced, ribbons crossing again, crystal light flaring to my left as Oath erected another barrier just in time to deflect a stray arc of force meant for my flank.

  The cemetery shook. Mist churned. And as steel met silk and crystal sang against webbing, one truth became painfully clear to me. Iza Alruin was not testing whether I was worthy of fighting her.

  She was enjoying discovering how far she could push me before I broke. She tested range first. Speed second. Now she would test rhythm.

  I pivoted midair and narrowly avoided a silvery thread slicing across where my ankle had been. It came from Ume, and I realized that the web had not been thrown. It had moved with intent.

  As I sped backward to distance myself from Iza, I spun around Ume's webs, my sharp senses catching her threads. I wasn't going to be netted into them, even if they hid the slightest signature of mana, they were visible to my eyes.

  Across the field, Oath thrust her hand forward. Crystal erupted from the soil in a jagged fan, intercepting three incoming strands that had attempted to coil around her shoulders. The threads tightened instantly, sawing against the crystal bulwark, but Oath's shields rotated forward and absorbed the friction with a humming resonance.

  Ume herself was nowhere to be seen. Only the web.

  The strands trembled in unison, then shifted direction without sagging. They moved like living fingers guided by invisible joints.

  Telekinetic control, I registered. She does not need proximity. A new thread lunged toward me from the fog's edge.

  Before I could twist aside, a hexagonal crystal plate slammed into its path. The web wrapped around the shield and constricted, attempting to cocoon it. Oath clenched her fist. The shield shattered outward in a controlled burst, scattering prismatic shards that severed three additional lines hiding in the mist.

  "Oath apologizes," she called calmly. "Her thread density keeps increasing."

  "I see it," I answered, though my attention could not linger.

  "Gratitude acknowledged," she said calmly, already repositioning.

  "Always," I replied, though I doubted she heard me over the crowd. Because the crowd had gone feral.

  "Did you see that slash?"

  "KiAera dodged it!"

  "Those webs are moving on their own!"

  Iza was already in motion again. She advanced not in a straight line but in angled steps, each footfall repositioning her hips for maximum torque. Her blades came in alternating diagonals, high right, low left, then reversed, forming a shifting X that forced me to retreat upward.

  I spun, ribbons extending defensively this time, weaving between her arcs. One blade skimmed my sleeve. The fabric parted as if it had volunteered to take the fall.

  "You know," she said conversationally while pressing me back toward a gnarled tree, "it is very rude to ignore a guest after she makes the effort to visit."

  I caught her descending strike between two ribbon bands and diverted it into the earth. The impact split the ground at my feet.

  "You came to measure me," I replied. "You got what you wanted."

  Iza beamed that maddening grin. "Not yet!"

  Her knee rose sharply. I blocked with a reinforced ribbon coil, but the impact still drove me sideways into the trunk of the dead tree. Bark splintered behind my shoulder.

  She fights with abandon, I thought. But it is curated abandon.

  Every wild flourish disguised exact control. She allowed openings to appear, baiting retaliation, only to collapse the space with frightening precision. Her wrists were loose. Her elbows never locked. Her center of gravity remained anchored no matter how dramatic her upper body seemed.

  She was not undead in the mindless sense. She was practiced. Ancient, perhaps.

  A silk line brushed my calf. Instantly, it tightened.

  Before it could wrap fully, crystal speared upward from the soil beneath me. Oath's construct split the thread and lifted me half a meter higher, freeing my leg.

  "Oath requests awareness of rear assaults," she stated evenly while deflecting a barrage of threads that now wove around her like a storm of white serpents.

  I glimpsed her battle from the corner of my eye.

  Ume's webs did not simply bind. They sculpted and the strands gathered midair, folding upon themselves into layered sheets. A cocoon began to form around one of Oath's rotating shields, its surface patterned like delicate lace. The web tightened in spirals, compressing the crystal until fractures spidered across its surface.

  Ume's voice drifted faintly from somewhere unseen. "Tension must be even, Lady Alruin. One does not rush tailoring." The web-cocoon sealed around Oath.

  Oath responded by driving both palms downward. A ring of crystalline pillars erupted outward in symmetrical formation, shredding the silk casing and forcing the hidden weaver to retract her threads before they were severed completely.

  And I noticed it now. The field was becoming a dress in progress. Panels of webbing draped between gravestones. Sleeves of silk dangled from branches. Invisible seams tightened at precise intervals. We were inside Ume's design.

  Iza used that distraction. Her blade flicked beneath my guard and tapped the center of my chest.

  I froze for a fraction of a second. She could have pierced through. She had chosen not to.

  Iza's smile softened. "I could have taken that," she said lightly. "But then we would not get to talk anymore."

  I twisted away and lashed outward with both ribbons in a spiraling counterattack. She retreated in a blur, sandals skimming the fog.

  "You are holding back," I observed.

  She tilted her head. "So are you."

  The crowd roared at the exchange, voices overlapping in disbelief at the speed. I heard fragments rise above the chaos.

  "She nearly had her!"

  "No, KiAera read it!"

  "They are playing with each other!"

  From the balcony, Jalkra no longer leaned. He stood upright, fingers curled over the stone railing.

  Iza rolled her shoulders and exhaled. Then the air changed. Her playful looseness condensed. The fog around her feet recoiled slightly as if repelled.

  ? [Combat Status — System Strain Detected] ?

  "You are very interesting, KiAera," she said quietly. "I wonder how much you can endure."

  Both crimson blades aligned. The next step she took erased the distance between us entirely.