They moved together like they'd rehearsed it a thousand times.
Kine left, Ley right, both of them accelerating in the same instant without a signal between them, footwork sharp and deliberate, no wasted motion this time.
The forest floor took the pressure of their steps and the flames came up as they closed the distance, coiling up their arms, tightening into their fists, and when they hit the convergence point they pivoted inward simultaneously, both strikes driving toward her from opposite sides with the coordinated intent of a trap snapping shut.
Sylvia's lightning answered before she decided to let it.
Blue energy burst from her body and spiraled outward into a veil, crackling and alive, and the two flaming fists hit it at almost exactly the same moment.
The collision was loud— sparks and embers scattering in every direction, fire pushing against lightning, the impact driving down through her stance and into the ground. The earth cracked under her boots. But the barrier held.
Kine and Ley pulled back, irritation crossing their faces in identical flashes.
Then they both smirked.
The smirk hit her warning instincts before her mind did.
Something flickered behind her.
'What?'
She turned— or tried to— and the thought that arrived with the motion was wrong because Talon had been ahead of her, she had tracked him, he had been several meters in front of her clearly visible and there had been no sound and no displacement of air and no trace of movement and now he was at her back like he had always been there and there was simply no time.
Her body moved without consulting her.
Lightning surged through her legs and she pushed off the ground in a violent burst, twisting midair to face him, the movement costing her everything she had in that single instant —
Talon's flaming fist tore through the space where her head had been.
The heat caught the edges of her hair. She felt it — the searing kiss of it, strands curling and burning before she cleared the strike fully. She came down several feet away, boots dragging hard across the ground, one hand dropping to the earth to kill her momentum.
Her breath came out uneven.
She straightened slowly and let the thought finish itself. 'If I had been a fraction slower. That wouldn't have been my hair.'
Talon rolled his wrist with the unhurried ease of someone who has just attempted something that should have worked and is mildly curious about why it didn't. His knuckles cracked in the quiet. The smirk had deepened into something that looked almost like genuine interest.
"Impressive," he said, his tone carrying the specific amusement of someone upgrading their assessment in real time. "Sharper than I expected, Miss Silvercrest." His eyes gleamed. "Though — a little disappointing. That should've landed."
Sylvia didn't respond.
Her eyes were already moving, scanning, recalculating, rebuilding her picture of the space around her and where each of them was and what the next.
Something flickered beside her.
Not in front. Not behind. Just beside, and close.
Her head turned just slightly and Ley was already there, right there, at her side with a proximity that made no sense because she had been tracking him, she had known where he was, and now he was close enough that she could feel the heat off his arm before the fist moved.
The thought arrived cold and fast. 'I didn't sense him. Not at all. How did I not—'
No time.
Her arms crossed in front of her, lightning condensing around her forearms in a split second, wrapping tight like coiled chains hardened into something solid.
Ley's flaming fist connected with her guard and the crack of it rang out through the clearing — force meeting force, neither of them pretending this was anything other than what it was. The impact shoved her back several steps, boots dragging furrows into the ground, sparks and embers scattering between them.
The heat grazed through her sleeves. She felt it as warmth rather than burn — the lightning holding, her skin untouched. But the scorch marks were there across the white fabric when she looked.
"Did you land something or was that another miss?" Kine called from his distance, impatience threading through his voice.
Ley shook his hand once, working out the recoil. "Not clean," he said, half-smirk back in place. "Clipped her guard. She's tougher than she looks."
Sylvia lowered her arms slightly and her right hand moved on instinct to her forearm, fingers brushing over the damaged sleeve. She paused.
Something tracked down from her temple.
She touched it.
"Sweat," she said quietly, to herself. Almost disbelieving it.
She stared at her fingers for a moment. The last time she had genuinely sweated in a fight she couldn't immediately remember. The acknowledgment sat in her chest not as fear but as something more useful — information.
'These three are more dangerous together than individually. Talon's movement has no signature. Ley is suppressing his presence somehow. And Kine, even as the weakest of them, creates enough pressure in combination that I cannot ignore him.'
'I've been managing this. I need to stop managing and finish it.'
The decision arrived and the lightning responded to it immediately.
The hum built from somewhere low and rose fast — not the controlled crackle of her earlier attacks but something rawer, the kind of energy that doesn't ask for direction but demands to be pointed somewhere.
It erupted outward in a surge that had no patience in it, arcs of blue lashing into the surrounding trees and scorching lines across the ground, the pressure spiking so hard that the earth beneath her feet fractured and dust lifted into the air in a ring.
Above them, through the canopy, the sky answered— faint flashes appearing in the clouds like something up there recognized what was happening down here and was paying attention.
Ley took a step back. He hadn't decided, his body had done it before his pride could stop it. "This just got significantly worse," he muttered, the earlier confidence thinning at the edges.
Kine's smirk had gone somewhere it wasn't coming back from quickly. The pressure in the air was physical now, pressing against his chest. His eyes cut to Talon. "Now what?" he asked.
Talon hadn't moved.
He stood with his arms at his sides and his eyes narrowed, watching the surge with the focused stillness of someone running calculations rather than feeling anything about what they were seeing.
The lightning roared around Sylvia and he watched it the way a person watches weather — assessing, not afraid.
"Both of you fall back," he said. His voice cut through the noise cleanly. "We change approach. Plan B."