Purple petals drifted.
Lila rushed to Kai, one hand on his chest, water aura pulsing.
"Okay, champ, stay asleep. Your ribs and I are having a meeting."
Aria exhaled once.
Sparks crawled up her arms, veins glowing yellowish-blue.
Spirit Bloom: Spark Rush.
Making the environment feel like a hurricane with sparks of lightning flying everywhere.
She vanished.
The floor cracked under her boots.
William caught her first strike with an open palm.
The impact rang through the stone.
He slid half a step, still anchored on his tile.
Calm.
Testing.
She didn't let him breathe.
Jab, hook, knee, vanish to the other side, heel for his head.
He bent just enough.
Air split, leaving a shockline through the courtyard.
From behind a splintered tree at the courtyard's edge, Rin watched, hidden.
His Viatras caught every frame the human eyes missed — light clashing with lightning.
With Rin saying "Incredible."
"She's faster than Kai."
"Faster than I expected."
Aria's pace climbed.
Her hands blurred into afterimages, each strike sharper than the last.
William deflected with daylight aura condensed on his arms, glowing plates that turned her blows aside.
But she tagged him.
A cross across the ribs, clean.
The first mark.
His eyes narrowed.
Rin's fingers twitched against the bark.
"She landed it."
Against him.
Aria pressed.
Lightning screamed through her body, limbs moving like whips.
Every exchange forced William harder onto the defensive.
His parries grew tighter, pivots sharper.
One more strike, and he gave ground.
A complete step back off his mark.
Aria's chest burned, but she remembered the Black Forest.
Sidney's smirk.
The sting of losing.
Never again.
She refused to stop.
Spark Rush climbed higher.
Sweat steamed off her skin.
William answered.
His speed rose.
Hands traced light itself — palms, elbows, forearms glowing, movements crisp as blades.
Every parry came a hair from counterstrike.
The courtyard collapsed into light against lightning.
Two streaks collided, rebounded, slammed, sending shockwaves that shattered stone tiles.
Rin's jaw tightened.
"They're moving too fast."
"If I didn't have my Viatras, I wouldn't be able to see them."
And she's still growing faster.
Aria broke his guard again.
Knuckles brushed chin, elbow cracked ribs, knee hammered hip.
William shifted.
Another step.
Surprise flickered on his face.
She roared, Spark Rush screaming, body wreathed in stormlight.
He met her fully now, light condensed over his skin, speed answering speed.
They blurred into pure streaks.
Every collision left concussive cracks.
When the dust cleared, William's boots stood two tiles off where he began.
Aria straightened in the crater they'd made, chest heaving, eyes blazing.
Lila never lifted her hand from Kai's chest.
"Hurry it up, Kai."
William and Aria launched again, faster.
Aria's eyes narrowed.
Spark Rush climbed — clean, bright, merciless.
Lightning Muti: Flashpoint Strike.
She disappeared on the half-beat before William's blink.
A straight blitz, no tell, knuckles clipping his reaction window.
Impact popped daylight off his jaw like a bulb bursting.
He absorbed it, but his guard lagged a frame.
Lightning Muti: Valkyrie Dash.
Mid-recovery, she kinked her trajectory ninety degrees in the air — ankle cut, hip whip, reappearing on his blind shoulder.
Palm landed at the base of his neck.
He pivoted late, shoulders catching instead of throat.
He slid a foot.
Dust ringed his boot.
Rin watched, breath shallow.
William's forearms brightened, daylight condensing into tight panes.
He tried to smother her with pressure — short steps, closing elbows, stealing center with his palms.
Lightning Muti: Thunder Strings.
Aria threaded a five-beat chain into his guard — tap... tap... delay... tap-tap.
Each micro-pause landed like a strobe, stacking stun in his wrists and collarbone.
His parry timing drifted a hair.
Just enough.
The third tap corkscrewed his balance.
The fifth sank into ribs with a low thud.
He answered with speed.
Clean cutlines of light, no blade, just form.
A forearm graze washed her momentum sideways, trying to glue her feet to the tile.
Static Grounding.
Aria stamped.
Lightning bled into the soil, charging it to her rhythm.
The slip died under her soles.
William's light-slick lost purchase.
She took center back in one heartbeat.
Lightning Muti: Valkyrie Dash.
Angle change off a fallen pillar, wall step, ceiling brush, drop at his flank.
The elbow already mid-swing.
Lightning Muti: Arc Burst.
She detonated the elbow at point-blank — short-range thundercrack.
The shock ring blew his hands off her frame and cleared the perch.
He skidded, daylight flaring as he fought to stay upright.
Rin's pupils pinholed.
0.13... 0.11... it's breaking past counting.
Aria chased before the dust settled.
Lightning Muti: Flashpoint Strike.
A second blitz, closer, meaner, clipping the moment he would counter.
It landed.
His head snapped a fraction.
Light sprayed like shavings.
He reset hard, shoulders low, stance finally honest.
The courtyard narrowed to two vectors.
William surged — palms like metronomes of light, elbows carving razor arcs, footwork carving triangles.
Aria answered with storm logic, unreadable feints nested inside single beats, hands moving on sub-rhythms.
Lightning Muti: Thunder Strings.
Seven beats now — tap... tap... delay... tap-tap... delay... TAP.
Each micro-stall widened its timing further.
His right forearm spasmed under aura-stun.
She slipped through and printed a clean body shot to the liver.
Breath left him sharp.
He forced the offense to regain the count — a shoulder bump, a knee check, a palm to the sternum that erased her forward momentum.
Lightning Muti: Arc Burst.
She popped a knee-burst mid-cancel, shockwave against his shin, reclaiming space and stepping into range on the recoil.
No gap.
She remembered Black Forest, the stumble, Sidney's grin — and fed it to the fire.
Spark Rush peaked cleaner.
Not wilder.
Lightning Muti: Valkyrie Dash.
Ground to air to ground, the third angle appearing where the second should have ended.
She arrived behind his lead hand and snapped his elbow line with a wrist cut.
His guard broke for half a frame.
Lightning Muti: Flashpoint Strike.
Doorbell on the chin, louder.
Daylight cracked without breaking.
William's eyes sharpened.
Surprise, then respect.
He braced, calves humming with light.
Aria didn't wait.
Thunder Strings into Arc Burst — tap... delay... tap-tap — ELBOW BURST.
The stun stack held his frame just long enough for the burst to launch him off the tile's center.
Stone crazed under his boots.
One step off.
Then two.
Rin's fingers lifted off the bark.
She's pushing him.
Faster than he wants to go.
William committed, speed spiking to meet hers.
The air sheeted white.
Shadows vanished.
Aria stamped again — Static Grounding — killing his lingering glare-haze and locking her traction as they broke the sound of the courtyard.
Lightning became one drawn line.
She split the line.
Valkyrie Dash, feint — Flashpoint Strike, true.
Angle flashed high.
Fist arrived low.
The punch clipped the instant before his palm could harden.
His heel slid a clean yard.
Dust chased him.
He set to counter.
Aria layered the finisher.
Thunder Strings, nine beats — tap... tap... delay... tap-tap... delay... tap... tap — Arc Burst — and a last Flashpoint buried centerline.
Impact blew both into a cratered ring.
When the haze thinned, William stood three tiles off his start, chest rising, forearms hairline-scored with aura burn.
Aria stood square, steam peeling from her shoulders, eyes bright and unshaken.
From the tree, Rin exhaled, awed despite himself.
Aria... you're terrifying.
Lila's palm stayed firm on Kai.
"Anytime now," she murmured.
William rolled his neck, daylight tightening across his knuckles.
Aria lifted her hands, Spark Rush humming, feet anchored to charged earth.
They vanished — faster than anyone but Rin could see.
The courtyard thrummed.
Cratered stone.
White dust drifting.
William stopped moving.
Light gathered as though being pulled.
The air tightened, its felt like the world held its breathe for one minute.
Then he let it out.
Half his aura.
Sound thinned to a pressure hiss than roared like a vyratth.
Tiles spider-webbed in a wide ring than started lifting from the floor.
Petals froze mid-fall and drifted sideways like they'd forgotten how to land.
Aria's sprint died under her feet like someone pulled the floor out of time.
Spark Rush guttered, flickered, stuttered, dimmed against her will.
Breath hitched.
Her knees buckled under William's aura pressure and raw ŌI.
Instincts screamed to bow her head.
Her chest remembered the Black Forest.
Her bones told her this was worse.
Rin flinched behind the tree.
The Viatras faltered, then clawed back.
His fingers crushed bark to splinters before he noticed.
"Half?"
The thought didn't finish.
Lila's water aura trembled across Kai's ribs.
The pool she held flat rippled toward William and wouldn't calm.
"Hey—"
She swallowed the rest.
William did not step.
He didn't need to.
Everything stepped away.
Aria tried once to raise Spark Rush.
It crackled, met William's ŌI field, and folded.
Her body powered down on reflex — like a creature recognizing a storm too big to outrun.
Shoulders lowered.
Hands eased.
Her eyes stayed up because pride refused to drop them, but the fight had already left her muscles.
William's gaze didn't change.
Just pressure given shape.
A long second passed — the kind that stacks in the spine.
Then he closed his hand and pulled it all back.
The air softened.
Petals remembered how to fall.
The world breathed.
Aria's legs buckled.
She fell to her knees, chest heaving, sweat hissing into steam.
Spark Rush flickered out completely.
Pride burned her face, but the words came low, almost swallowed.
"...I can't fight this power, not like this. I admit I lost."
William lowered his hand, aura already pulled back into calm daylight.
His eyes softened by a hair.
"You did well. Better than—"
That was the moment.
A whisper cut the silence.
Shff.
Rin moved.
From behind the tree he launched, Viatras guiding each step like a metronome, speed cutting across the courtyard in a line most wouldn't even register.
What William saw was a flicker — Aria's shadow stretching wrong, splitting, rising into a human silhouette.
A shadow clone.
It darted in direct, throwing a punch at his chest.
William's eyes sharpened, forearm rising to check the strike.
His aura flared on the parry.
Which was exactly what Rin wanted.
Because the real Rin wasn't in front of him.
He was inside William's shadow.
Creeping upward, silent, hand stretching toward the rag tucked at William's waist.
Fingers almost brushing fabric.
Aura wrapped in shadow to hide the pulse.
Aria looked up through blurry vision, confused by the third figure.
"Rin...?"
William caught the feint with textbook precision, redirected the clone's strike, turning it back to shadow.
But the second aura signature from behind—
No.
From below.
He glanced down.
Too late.
Rin's fingers brushed the rag.
A cold thrill sliced through William's spine.
His body reacted faster than thought — daylight snapping outward to burn his own shadow bright with him saying.
"Light Muti: Solar Flare"
The flare forced Rin back.
But not before fabric shifted in his grip.
When the dust cleared, Rin stood crouched a few paces away, shadow clone gone, breathing steady.
The rag not taken.
But close.
Close enough to mean it wasn't luck.
William looked at him for the first time like a peer.
"From my own shadow."
His voice was low, amused.
"And I didn't feel it."
Rin's eyes didn't blink.
"That's the point, old man."
Aria, still kneeling, turned slowly, realizing what had just happened.
William let a breath out.
Then smirked.
Not mocking.
Genuine.
"Good tactics. Clean Mutiwork. If I hadn't flared, you'd have had it."
He adjusted his stance as the daylight dimmed, and there was something new in the set of his shoulders — a man who had just decided to take all four of them more seriously than he'd planned to this morning.
"Clever boy."