The wind did not come.
It tore.
A short whistle — too thin to be just sound — cut across the field like an invisible blade. Dust lifted first. Then sand. Then the loose fragments of ground.
And the rain…
The rain lost the right to fall.
The drops stretched into oblique streaks, all pulled in the same direction, as if the sky were being forcibly combed.
And then the air gave way.
The pressure wave struck Telvaris head-on.
The armor snapped against his body.
Metal vibrated.
The ground beneath his feet sank a centimeter.
He did not retreat.
He bent the knee.
Lowered his center.
Braced.
The second pulse came already organized.
Zeph did not raise his voice.
"Listen."
"Song of the Wind: Revoada."
The wind closed in.
Not into a mass.
Into hundreds of thin lines, traced by the rain itself being pulled, bent, shattered in the air.
At first there were few.
Then more.
Then… the space between them turned white with streaks.
Small silhouettes appeared inside the current — not visible by shape, but by what the rain did around them.
Drops gathered, compressed, then spat backward, drawing curved wings in the air.
Dozens.
Maybe more.
Birds of wind.
Each carrying at its center a dense emptiness where the rain simply… did not enter.
They did not come in formation.
They came as a swarm.
Some high, cutting the rain in long fans.
Others low, sweeping the mud in shallow arcs.
Others almost invisible, betrayed only by the momentary silence of water around them.
Impossible to read.
They cut through the space all at once.
Telvaris raised his left hand.
The ground behind him split with a dull crack.
Black iron surged up like thick oil, rising into liquid blades that diverted the rain as they passed.
The first impact came high.
Compression detonated against the metal.
The blade folded backward like heavy rubber.
The explosion did not open fire — it opened vacuum.
The surrounding rain was sucked back in.
Air tore the iron into black petals that flew backward, dripping water and metal.
Telvaris turned his shoulder with the impact, letting the blade break apart so the force would not fully transfer to his body.
Two birds passed through the opening.
One detonated against the iron of his forearm.
Rain flattened against the metal before vanishing.
The other exploded against the ground.
Mud, water, and air rose together.
Telvaris stepped forward.
Liquid metal flowed up from the soaked ground and climbed his leg, thickening around the knee.
Three impacts came almost together.
One high.
One lateral.
One low.
Each marked by a dry instant where the rain vanished.
The birds closed in.
Telvaris rotated his torso with them.
Liquid metal tore free from the ground in wide strands, not to attack — to divert.
Curved blades formed in the air, following the wind's flow as if learning the dance in real time.
One silhouette was intercepted high.
Another scraped his flank and broke apart before detonating.
The third did not hit him.
It passed half a meter to the right.
Exploded in empty space.
The rain was ripped away there in a dry circle — and the ground gave under the lateral impact.
It was not force.
It was displacement.
His support foot slipped a palm's width in compressed mud.
Little.
Enough.
Telvaris lost his base for an instant — just one — corrected too late.
The leg slid half a meter across the ground. Friction tore black sparks from the metal, mixed with water.
Zeph advanced.
He did not run.
He was pulled by his own wind.
He crossed through his own Revoada, his body passing between vacuum explosions where the rain had not yet returned.
He twisted mid-impulse.
The left leg opened in an arc.
The kick came low.
Telvaris tried to drop the metal — too late.
Zeph's heel struck the inside of the knee.
The impact displaced the joint half a palm inward.
The leg failed.
Before fully touching the ground, liquid metal surged like a serpent from Telvaris's own arm and coiled around Zeph's torso.
It did not tighten.
It pulled.
Zeph was ripped off the ground mid-motion, body spinning in the air, rain spiraling with him.
Zeph twisted his wrist.
The wind closed around his own body in a spiral.
Rotation increased.
Pressure pushed the metal off his shoulders as if trying to spit the body out of a viscous mass.
Telvaris pulled harder.
The metal thickened.
Climbed from forearm to shoulder.
Added weight.
Zeph felt it.
The air was no longer pushing his body — it was pushing the metal wrapped around it.
The spin lost speed.
Zeph felt the compression point fail.
He released a burst of wind.
A dry crack — as if the air split from the inside.
The impact threw Telvaris backward in rotation, his right hand stabbing into the soaked ground to hold.
The support failed.
The body spun.
His back scraped the mud.
Zeph landed on his feet.
But the landing was heavier than it should have been.
The knee bent too far.
The ground sank.
A short breath escaped his lips.
Time.
Telvaris was already rising.
Metal flowed from the ground like a reverse wave and shaped into a short blade around his right forearm.
He advanced low.
The cut came horizontal, at rib height.
Zeph pulled the air sideways.
The wind shifted his body half a palm back — not enough.
The blade scraped the ribs. The impact did not cut deep, but it took something.
Zeph turned with the same motion.
The elbow came tight into the jaw.
Telvaris raised his shoulder at the last instant.
The blow struck the side of the face.
The crack was dry.
The head snapped aside.
Metal exploded outward from the arm like a spine.
Zeph jumped back as the air pulled his body out of range.
They both stopped.
Not because they needed to.
Because they were reading.
The wind around Zeph wavered more irregularly.
Telvaris's metal flowed more slowly.
Both were breathing deeper now.
The ground between them was scarred with grooves, black shards, and vacuum zones where air had not yet returned.
The wind whistled again.
Weaker.
Denser.
Zeph adjusted his stance, chest rising and falling a little faster than before.
Telvaris tilted his neck one degree.
Both understood the same thing at the same time.
The mistake would not come from strength.
It would come from fatigue.
Zeph felt it first.
Not as pain.
As desynchronization.
A short vibration ran through his body — not in the air, but inside. Through bones. Through joints. As if something that had been holding everything up had just lost tension.
He pulled in air.
The air came… late.
One second.
Maybe less.
But it no longer came together.
"One minute…" he murmured. Not as warning. As assessment. "That's all."
Telvaris felt it first.
Not in the iron.
In the brief silence where continuity used to be.
"Time does not fight on your side."
He did not move.
But the iron around him slowed as well.
Like a predator that senses the limp before the blood.
"You're counting minutes," Telvaris said. "I'm not."
Zeph smiled sideways.
Not humor.
Acceptance.
"Then I'll make every second count."
The wind around him rippled.
No longer stable.
But deeper.
Like something that stopped being maintained… and started being spent.
Zeph raised his gaze.
"Song of the Wind: Mobbing."
The rain hesitated.
In the central courtyard, the wind above crossed into curved currents — not spinning as columns, but interweaving, tearing the air into layers.
Silhouettes began to form inside the rain curtain.
First a few.Then dozens.
Drops fused with wind, outlining wings, feathers, translucent tails.
Birds of compressed air descended together, cutting through the rain in a flock, each impact leaving dry trails in the air behind them.
The sound arrived late.
When they struck the courtyard, the air was torn from its place.
The wall groaned.
And the entire territory felt it.
On the plains beyond the outer wall, Brígida advanced against Pixy — or against the Pixys.
Three now.
Maybe four.
Laughter echoed.
And then the air vanished.
The ground trembled beneath her feet.
Brígida stopped.
Felt it.
Raised her eyes to the torn sky.
"Ah."
She looked back at the copies.
"I underestimated this place."
A gesture.
Two Pixys dissolved into blue dust.
The third retreated.
Before the Golden Wall, Neriah advanced when the world pulled upward.
Pressure changed.Sound thinned.
She raised her face.
The silhouettes were visible even from there.
"This is—" she began.
Too late.
Ghatotkacha's fist was already coming.
"Neriah!" Lys shouted.
Kaelir opened the fissure.
Rynne pulled Neriah.
The fissure closed with an air crack.
The blow passed through where she had been.
Halfway to the Eastern Kingdom's castle, Éon felt it before he saw it.
Pressure changed.
Air became too thin.
He stopped.
Raised his gaze toward the distant courtyard.
Saw the sky tearing into wind funnels.
Assessed.
Turned his body back toward the castle.
And kept walking.
In the courtyard… the wind was gone.
Not all at once.
It withdrew.
As if something enormous had just passed through — leaving only the vacuum of what was too large to remain.
Dust settled.
Not like rain.
Like surrender.
Sound returned in fragments: stones rolling, metal ticking as it cooled, something distant collapsing for the last time.
At the center of the courtyard, the air still trembled.
And within it…
Zeph fell.
Not like someone struck down.
Like someone no longer supported.
The impossible lightness left his body.
Gravity returned whole.
He took two wrong steps.
The knee touched the ground.
The hand followed.
He spat blood.
Dark.
Thick.
The wind around him no longer obeyed.
It only passed.
The cuts on his body were real now.
Ribs.
Flank.
Shoulder.
Nothing closed anymore.
Nothing deflected anymore.
It just hurt.
Dust still covered almost everything when a silhouette moved within it.
Heavy.
Straight.
Inevitable.
Liquid iron streamed off Telvaris's body like black paint washed by rain.
Dripping from shoulders.
From forearm.
From leg.
Each drop that touched the ground hardened — dead.
The armor was broken.
Open fissures across the chest, too wide to ignore. Beneath, dark flesh exposed in irregular lines, burned by the friction of compressed wind.
Blood ran mixed with rain.
Little.
Thick.
Real.
The mask was cracked, half gone.
One eye visible.
Cold.
But the eyelid blinked more slowly now.
The jaw was misaligned.
A thread of blood slipped from the corner of the mouth.
Breathing came deep.
Controlled.
But not clean.
The right hand still shaped what remained of the metal.
The fingers trembled — not from fear, but accumulated effort.
A blade formed.
Not perfect.
Not smooth.
Irregular.
Full of microscopic faults where the metal had been forced beyond its limit.
Something too sharp to be called a sword.
But enough.
The dust fell a little more.
And then it was visible.
The tower behind Telvaris… no longer existed.
Only an uneven base.
Stone torn away.
Structures reduced to powder.
The pit, at the courtyard's center, intact.
An island of normality inside the end.
Telvaris stopped a few meters from Zeph.
Looked at him.
Not with hatred.
Not with rage.
With recognition.
"It seems… I wasn't alone at this limit."
Zeph raised his face.
Blood at the corner of his mouth.
The crooked smile still there.
Not irony.
Habit.
"I guess that makes us… honest."
Telvaris did not react.
He only raised the black blade.
The metal still trembled.
The arm too.
But the intention was whole.
"Stay here."
The blade fell.
Not as a strike.
As a sentence.