Reyna struck the moment they reached the inner barricades.
She had been watching. Cataloging. Planning.
A single shadow detached from the smoke above a half-collapsed tower. She dropped like a blade — matte-black armor drinking in the firelight, crimson eyes locked on Vesna with cold, surgical focus.
The host was always the vulnerability.
Separate the woman from the living weapon and the contract became simple arithmetic.
Reyna moved before Zzyzx could fully register the threat. A chaos-laced blade flashed out, aimed not to kill but to sever — a precise cut meant to drive Vesna away from the ribbons, to isolate the fragile human core.
Zzyzx felt it first.
Not as a tactical warning. Not as data.
Something hotter. Deeper. A surge of pure, protective rage that tasted like fire in her veins — rage on behalf of someone else.
Not her.
The thought wasn't strategic. It was personal in a way the cosmic symbiote had never experienced before.
Tendrils exploded outward in a storm of pink and azure. Zzyzx met Reyna mid-air, ribbons lashing like whips, slamming the huntress sideways into a burning barricade. The impact shook the stone.
Reyna rolled to her feet instantly, smiling like she had expected exactly this.
She didn't fight like a demon.
She fought like someone who had already studied them.
Every strike anticipated Vesna's next step. Every feint drew Zzyzx's tendrils exactly where she wanted them. She whispered soft, precise taunts between blows — words calculated to fracture focus, to make the ribbons hesitate for half a heartbeat.
"You protect her so fiercely," Reyna purred, blade singing past Vesna's shoulder. "How long until she becomes the chain around your throat?"
Zzyzx's rage flared hotter. A new feeling. Raw. Unfamiliar. Protective in a way that made her want to tear the entire city apart just to keep Vesna safe.
Leshwai swelled into hulk form, thorns exploding as he charged, trying to flank. Vesna fought with dagger and grit, refusing to be separated.
They drove Reyna back.
Not defeated her — she was too precise, too prepared for that — but they forced her to retreat step by step, ribbons and thorns and steel pushing her toward the outer smoke.
Reyna's eyes never left Vesna.
She cataloged every movement. Every flicker of the ribbons. Every new protective surge from the symbiote.
Then she smiled once more — sharp, satisfied — and vanished into a swirl of rift-smoke, gone as cleanly as she had arrived.
The street fell quiet except for the crackle of flames and three ragged breaths.
Zzyzx stayed fully extended, tendrils still vibrating with that unfamiliar rage. She didn't pull back immediately. She couldn't. The feeling was still burning inside her chest, new and bright and terrifying in how much it mattered.
She tried to take you from me, Zzyzx whispered inside Vesna's head, voice raw with something she had no name for yet.
Vesna reached up and gently touched one of the glowing tendrils.
"I'm still here," she said quietly.
Leshwai deflated slowly, pressing himself against Vesna's side, eyes still scanning the smoke for any sign of the huntress's return.
Reyna had retreated with new data.
And Zzyzx had discovered she was capable of feelings she had never been built to feel.