He didn't come in high. He dropped low instead, and when Alice's returning blade swept for his head, he let it open a line clean across his own shoulder rather than dodge it — a trade, on purpose, blood for distance.
The pain didn't slow him down. If anything it seemed to focus him.
He got the axe under the wing joint Marcus had already broken and hauled up with everything both arms had.
The wing didn't tear off — it wasn't built to come apart that easily — but it folded. Wrong. All the way to a point it shouldn't have been able to bend to, and for the first time in the entire fight, Alice's whole balance shifted under her, one bare foot sliding a half-inch across bloodied marble to catch herself.
[ALICE — HP: 61,900/102,000 → 55,400/102,000]
