They moved, two blooms in step, light singing to meet them.
Light Muti: Halo Stake.
William nailed daylight into the floor.
Space firmed.
Their feet landed heavily.
Crown Line narrowed the middle to a rail, Rin split the rail with Kairo No Kuro: Hollow Line.
Kai took the seam with Hanuman Step, Agni Mudra hot in his chest, Bodhi Palm hammering through the hinge before it could harden.
William absorbed and flowed straight back in, eyes bright, playful tone gone.
Light Muti: Strobe Step.
White ticks at contact.
He was inside their guard before the sound finished.
The Lumen Blade drew a daylight straight —
Light Muti: Daybreak —
across the center.
Kai's Enlightened Senses caught the tell.
Surya Spiral bled the cut along his frame while Rin's Shadow Arts: Darkpoint kissed the wrist — tap... delay... tap — nerve pings stacking.
At the courtyard's edge, Lila slid to Aria and set both hands just under the ribs.
Water aura spread like cool silk.
"Don't move," she whispered.
"You're benched."
Aria's jaw flexed, pride fighting her bruises.
"How bad?"
"Manageable if you let me work."
The pool formed beneath Lila's palms, drawing heat, stitching micro-tears in muscle and aura channels.
Each shock ring from the fight sent tremors across the pool.
Lila stilled them with a thought, eyes flicking up despite herself as light and shadow carved lines through dust.
Awe slipped out before she could catch it.
"They're actually hanging with him."
Aria exhaled, a thin grin despite the ache.
"Good."
"Better than good."
Lila pressed.
"In... out."
The water brightened and held.
Aria stayed down.
Back in the ring, William stacked a second Light Muti: Halo Stake.
Their timing dragged a half breath late.
His felt early.
Photic pressure organized the air.
Rin cut with Kairo No Kuro: Silence Break, severing the rhythm inside William's step.
The strobe stopped.
Kai arrived first on Hanuman Step, Agni Mudra primed, Bodhi Palm thudding through the brief opening.
Tiles crazed.
William parried across Crown Line anyway, center never ceded, and answered with a short Daybreak meant to punish any wobble.
No wobble.
Kai slipped the line by a grain.
Kairo No Kuro: Phantom Thread nicked space at William's face but drifted a hair wide.
Shadow Arts: Darkpoint String — tap... delay... tap-tap — aiming for the forearm.
Kai stepped through with a second Bodhi Palm that moved him a full tile.
William laughed, delighted.
"Good."
His Ōi climbed, clean, controlled.
Light skimmed his blade arm in a thin outline.
Parries clicked a fraction sharper, reach feeling just a breath longer.
He erased his own shadow to kill lanes and cut low inside.
Rin made lanes.
Two Kagebana vyratth heads opened where no shade should have been.
Shadow Arts: Shadow Dash put him past the low line.
Kairo No Kuro: Moon Draw cutting 20 slices in a second.
Steel met light at rapid fire slices.
Surya Spiral caught the rebound and planted Kai for another short Bodhi Palm that met light square.
Daylight rang.
"Their teamwork is not half that bad especially just meeting each other," William said, thrilled.
Kairo No Kuro: Hollow Line through pressure, Kai took the strike that mattered Bodhi Palm, straight, no flourish.
William accepted both, shaved one, turned the other, tried to flip the moment with Strobe Step
and Rin's Silence Break clipped his footwork while Enlightened Senses dropped Kai into the true center before glare could steal it.
They worked the lesson from the Black Forest without a word.
Rin finds the seam.
Kai makes it matter.
Three beats:
One.
Kairo No Kuro: Petal Draw shows at the hip the guard dips a hair.
Two.
Shadow Arts: Darkpoint tags the wrist.
Surya Spiral opens the rib.
Three.
Bodhi Palm lands.
Compressed aura thuds through the plate.
William absorbed it.
Then pushed harder.
His aura brightened the space — not with fireworks, but with pressure.
Angles stayed razor clean.
Afterimage strobes made his approach feel a blink early.
Kairo No Kuro: Hollow Line found the empty inside the parry, Kai met the cut with an Agni-primed Bodhi Palm, teeth bared, feet honest.
Light, shadow, lotus, on the exact grain of time.
The blast bowed pillars.
Dust peeled off the world.
Rin wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his wrist and angled Tetsuba.
"Ready."
Kai rolled his shoulders, lotus steady.
"Always."
By the tree, Lila's pool deepened from pale to river blue as Aria's breath evened.
A welt cooled.
A spiderweb crack across one rib smoothed like glass.
Lila kept a firm hand on her shoulder.
"Don't even think about it."
Aria stared at the ring, eyes bright, and didn't argue.
Another shock ring kissed the basin.
Water rippled and calmed at Lila's touch.
She looked at the boys, reverent.
"Go," she says to them both.
"Show him."
William exhaled.
"If they can keep up."
Light tightened — no flare, just pressure — and he became a line.
He moved at light speed.
Sound arrived late.
Petals jerked in his wake.
Dust hung confused.
Hair-fine sunlines vanished as you noticed them.
Kai fired Hanuman Step again and again —
one,
two,
three...
ten —
each landing on air.
Enlightened Senses read angles that were gone before they finished being angles.
Surya Spiral had nothing to borrow.
Rin tore the Viatras wide to see it.
Threads blew out in a starburst.
Stage Two bled down both cheeks.
He barely can track William.
He activates Genmugan seeing if William will take the bait as he uses the last of his Muti in a few attacks.
Even if he read right, his body wouldn't arrive in time.
Three polite touches bloomed after the fact —
Rin's forehead, Kai's back and his chest.
Flat and measured stopping short of hurt them seriously leaving them shocked on how fast he was.
William started to press—
"Enough."
The voice wasn't loud but it carried weight.
A tall man stood in the archway, weathered seeker field coat open, travel satchel at his side, a few vials clicking against each other inside it.
His eyes were clear as cut stone.
Captain Darius "Boze Master" King.
"I am too sober for this," he said, dry as dust.
Kai's grin broke like sunrise.
"Captain!"
William let the light ease from line back to man.
The blade winked out.
He tipped his chin.
"Captain King."
Darius mirrored him.
"Captain Lockhart."
William's mouth quirked.
"What are you doing here?"
"In the city," Darius said.
"Came to see Kai before he heads to the last trial."
A beat of old steel passed between them.
Trenches and sun glare.
Janoah and Britannia shoulder to shoulder against Germania.
The day two strangers became allies.
Rin dragged a thumb under his bleeding eye and opened his hand.
A frayed strip of William's rag lay across his palm.
William's brows climbed.
Then he laughed, bright and honest.
"Technical, huh?"
Rin nodded once.
"Then the squad wins," William said, amused.
Darius's mouth twitched.
"Good boys."
Kai stood taller at that.
Lila's water settled deeper into Aria.
And the courtyard finally exhaled.
Petals fell.
Dust settled.