Kine's face twisted the moment the words landed.
"What did you just say." His voice came out low and shaking, the kind of low that isn't controlled but is trying to sound like it is. "Are you looking down on us?"
Talon's hand moved sharply. "Don't," he said, quiet and firm. "She's pulling you. Don't."
Kine either didn't hear it or had already decided it didn't apply to him.
The flames came first. Red and violent, erupting from his body without buildup, roaring up his arms in an instant and growing denser by the second, feeding on the fury underneath them. The air around him bent and shimmered from the heat. The ground beneath his feet blackened. Embers scattered outward like warnings nobody was listening to.
His breathing had stopped being breathing and started being something else entirely.
"Kine." Talon stepped forward. "Wait—"
Too late.
Kine launched himself forward like something that had been held back too long and finally wasn't. Pure aggression, pure speed, flames trailing behind him in a violent arc as he crossed the distance toward Sylvia in a blink, the ground cracking under each step.
He blinked.
She wasn't there.
His eyes went wide mid-motion. 'What—where did she—'
Something came from above.
It didn't feel like a hit. It felt like a verdict. Force slamming down onto him with a weight that had no interest in being argued with, driving him straight into the ground so fast his vision went white. The earth cracked and sank beneath him. A shockwave rolled outward and dust exploded in every direction.
When it settled Sylvia was standing above him, one foot pressed firmly between his shoulder blades, pinning him into the shattered ground. Lightning danced quietly around her. Her posture hadn't changed. Her breathing hadn't changed.
She looked like she had stepped on something mildly inconvenient.
"One down," she said.
A thin line of sweat traced down Talon's temple. His eyes moved from Kine's crumpled form back to Sylvia, and the composed expression he'd been wearing tightened at the edges.
"That idiot," he muttered. Then, quieter, almost to himself, "No wonder he got humiliated before."
Ley appeared at his shoulder, the earlier arrogance in his voice replaced with something more careful. "What now?" he asked, keeping his eyes on Sylvia. "The setup's gone."
Talon exhaled slowly through his nose. Steadied himself. "We fight smart," he said, his voice finding its edge again. "That fool rushed in and collapsed the formation. It's on us now. We coordinate. Properly this time."
Ley nodded once. Something passed between them without words — the kind of understanding that comes from years of training together, of knowing how the other one moves without needing to ask.
They split.
Both of them burst into motion in opposite directions, flames trailing behind them in red streaks as they began circling her — fast and erratic, forcing her to track two points simultaneously, her attention splitting whether she wanted it to or not. Lightning flickered at Sylvia's fingertips as her eyes moved between them, steady and alert, waiting.
For a moment the clearing held its breath.
Then a sharp whistle cut from her left.
A flaming arrow, precise and fast, heat distorting the air around it as it sliced toward her. Sylvia turned her body and sidestepped it clean.
"Surprise."
The voice came from directly behind her.
Her eyes widened a fraction. She'd tracked Ley left. She'd dodged the arrow. She had not tracked Talon closing from behind, and now his fist was already moving — engulfed in roaring flame, driving toward her back with the full force of someone who had been waiting for exactly this opening.
She pushed off the ground.
Upward, body lifting in the fraction of a second between the fist and the impact. The flaming strike tore through the space she'd occupied a heartbeat earlier, close enough that she felt the heat across her back.
Suspended in the air, no ground beneath her, she had maybe one second to stabilize herself.
The second arrow didn't give her that.
It came faster than the first — she caught it early, hand moving on instinct, lightning bursting outward in a concentrated flash that met it head on. The collision detonated between them, the explosion pushing her backward through the air, force and heat rolling over her as she twisted and came down, boots scraping hard across the ground before she found her footing and stopped.
She straightened.
Let out a single quiet breath.
Her fingers tightened, residual sparks tracing along her skin as her eyes locked onto Talon across the clearing. 'That was close.' The admission sat in her chest without comfort. 'I let my focus slip for a second. He manufactured that opening deliberately.' She looked at him properly for the first time — not as a threat to be managed but as something that required real attention. 'This one is different from the other two.'
Talon had already turned away from her.
He walked toward Kine's sprawled form, reached down, grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright with the casual efficiency of someone collecting something they left on the floor. Kine blinked several times, head wobbling, one hand going to the back of his skull. "Huh? What happened? Where—"
Talon kicked him.
Clean and sharp, foot driving into Kine's side with the focused frustration of someone who has been holding this in for approximately thirty seconds and is done holding it.
"OW—what was that—"
Another kick.
"You IDIOT." Talon's composure cracked just enough for the irritation underneath to come through fully. "Did you not hear me telling you to stop? I said wait. I said coordinate. What did you do?"
Ley stepped in from the other side, adding his own contribution to Kine's situation. "The entire formation collapsed because of you," he said, delivering a pointed kick to Kine's leg with the energy of someone filing a formal complaint through physical means. "Do you think before you move or do you just pick a direction and commit?"
"OW — hey — BOTH of you — okay, OKAY." Kine stumbled under the combined assault, arms coming up defensively, voice somewhere between pain and desperation. "I get it! I messed up! I'm sorry, I'll listen this time, I swear on everything—"
Several meters away, Sylvia watched all of this happen.
Her expression had gone very still in the specific way that means someone is processing something they were not prepared for. The three Ironhart brothers had just gone from coordinated ambush to sibling punishment session in under ten seconds and the whiplash of it was genuinely difficult to categorize.
'What exactly is happening right now,' she thought.
The beating stopped as abruptly as it started.
Talon rolled his shoulders once, releasing the last of it, and extended a hand toward Kine with an expression that had returned to something almost pleasant. "Good," he said simply. "Now get up. Chaotic little Brother."
Kine stared at the hand for a second like he was checking for a trap. Then he took it and let himself be pulled upright, muttering something under his breath and rubbing the places where he'd been kicked.
All three of them turned toward her at the same time.
The shift was immediate and total. Whatever had just happened between them was done. Finished. Filed away somewhere.
Their attention consolidated onto her as one, and the heat that rose from their bodies began as something subtle and became something else quickly — flames igniting along their arms in vivid streaks of red and orange, mana surging together and pushing against the air in a way that made the clearing feel smaller.
The ground beneath them darkened.
Talon stepped forward one measured pace. The smirk that came to his face was not the performed one from earlier. This one was quieter. More settled. The expression of someone who has stopped underestimating something and adjusted accordingly.
"Now then," he said, his voice carrying the particular calm of something genuinely dangerous. "Let's see how you perform against all three of us."
The flames surged higher behind him.
Sylvia looked at the three of them — Talon at the center, Kine to his left finally focused, Ley to his right with calculation replacing arrogance — and felt the weight of the situation settle onto her properly for the first time.
Three against one. Deep in the forest. No academy walls close enough to matter.
Her lightning answered without being asked, rising around her in a quiet fierce glow.
She had one thought before it started.
'Lucas. Where are you.... I hope they didn't take you hostage.'