The air in the courtyard didn't just grow cold; it curdled.
Something wrong had settled into the space between one breath and the next. Lan Yue felt it before she saw it, a pressure behind her sternum, like a hand pressing inward without ever touching her skin. The torches along the inner wall guttered sideways, all of them at once, bending toward the distortion as if even flame wanted to run.
The distortion was still a frantic mess of static and shadow when Zhao Lingxi moved. She didn't wait for it to find its shape. There was no "martial art" display, no flashy call of a technique, just a brutal, clinical efficiency. One step cracked the paving stone beneath her foot, a clean split that radiated outward in silence, and her palm cut through the air like a guillotine.
Thwack.
