The troll roared.
Its wounded eye — where Lyra's arrow had found a gap — bled dark fluid down its face. The wound at its neck was still open, slower to close than everything else had been, but the troll's response to pain was not to slow down. It was to stop being patient.
The difference was immediate and significant.
It had been moving with deliberate inevitability before. Now it moved with anger — the same enormous strength but less controlled, more likely to swing at things that weren't there, more likely to create collateral damage in every direction. The ground shook with each impact. Students who had been managing the fight's edges now had to manage the edges of a fight that had gotten larger and louder and less predictable.
Taro skidded across the dirt from a shockwave. Bran barely stayed upright. Lyra dropped from her tree branch to avoid the trunk being shattered beneath her.
Lysander held his ground and watched.
The weak point was still there. The wound at the neck hadn't closed fully — the regeneration was working but slower, the accumulated damage from multiple strikes finally having some effect. If they could hit it again, the same point, with enough precision—
"The neck," he said to Taro. "Same spot. I need to go again."
Taro was already wiping dirt from his face. His ears came forward — focused, locked in. "You sure? It's moving faster now."
"That's why I need the launch."
Taro looked at the troll. Looked at Lysander. Then dropped into position without further argument.
The troll was occupied — Bran drawing its attention with the shield, Lyra firing at its face from a new position in the trees, two other students attacking its legs from opposite sides. The coordination had held. Barely. But it had held.
The troll swung at Bran. He took it on the shield and went down to one knee but stayed in position. The troll's momentum carried it slightly left — opening the right side, exposing the neck.
"Now," Lysander said.
He stepped onto Taro's hands.
Wind burst upward — harder than the first time, Taro putting everything into it. Lysander left the ground fast and high, the arc carrying him over the troll's shoulder before it had finished turning.
He landed.
The surface was moving now — the troll's muscles shifting with agitation, nothing stable. His footing was wrong from the first step. He adjusted, the bone forging compensating for the uneven surface the way it compensated for everything, and ran.
The troll's hand came up faster than before.
He had less time than the first attempt. Less margin. The weak point was there — the wound still present, the armor gap still open — but the hand was already descending and he was still two steps away.
One step.
He drew.
The blade was already moving when the hand came down. He released Kagekiri's hilt the instant the strike connected and let the momentum carry him sideways — the troll's hand smashing into its own shoulder a fraction of a second after he'd cleared the landing zone. He hit the ground rolling, came up on one knee, pain flaring through his side from the landing.
The blade had found the point.
He could tell before the troll's reaction confirmed it — the specific quality of a strike landing exactly right, the click of the sheath accepting the blade in the same motion.
The troll lurched.
This time the stumble was worse. It took three unsteady steps, its coordination breaking down, the wound at the neck opening wider than it had before. Dark fluid ran freely. The regeneration reached for it and — slowed. Not stopped. But slowed enough that the wound stayed open.
It wasn't finished. But something fundamental had changed.
"Everyone — now," Lysander said from the ground. "All at once. Same point."
What followed wasn't elegant. It was a group of exhausted first-year students and one fully spent second-year throwing everything they had left at a single target that was finally, genuinely struggling. Arrows. Ice. Wind. Fire from somewhere. The supervisor had gotten back to his feet — barely, one arm useless — and drove his blade into the neck wound from ground level.
The troll fell.
Not cleanly. Not dramatically. It went down the way very large things went down — in stages, first the knees, then sideways, the impact of its body hitting the forest floor shaking the trees around the clearing and sending birds scattering from the canopy.
Then stillness.
Nobody moved for a long moment.
Taro spoke first. "...Did we just kill that?"
Lysander was still on one knee. His side hurt. His hands were shaking slightly from the adrenaline leaving. He looked at the troll's body — the wound at the neck, the supervisor's blade still embedded in it, the accumulated damage from everyone who had contributed.
"We killed it," he said.
The system appeared.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — UPDATE
Major fate deviation confirmed.
Original outcome: Taro Stormfang — deceased.
Current outcome: Survived.
Reward pending.
He closed the window quietly.
Around him the clearing slowly came back to life — students checking each other, someone calling for the supervisor, Lyra dropping from her tree and looking at the troll with an expression that hadn't decided what it was yet.
Taro walked over and sat down beside Lysander in the dirt.
"That," he said, "was not a scouting mission."
"No," Lysander agreed.
Taro was quiet for a moment. Then: "You knew something was going to go wrong."
Lysander looked at him.
Taro's ears were relaxed now — the tension of the fight gone, leaving behind the specific expression of someone putting things together after the fact. "In the club room. When Garrick briefed us. You got quiet."
Lysander didn't answer.
Taro nodded slowly. Not pushing it. Just noting it.
"Okay," he said.
That was all.