The battle hadn't ended — it had just started to repeat.
Raal blinked and saw the same soldier die twice. The man's scream echoed before he opened his mouth, then again after he fell. The walls were pulsing with light that didn't match any rhythm Raal knew. For a second, the hallway looked alive — breathing, twitching, remembering.
Something was wrong with time.
"Move!" Lirra shouted, flipping over a half-collapsed beam. Her voice trailed behind her, then echoed ahead — like the air didn't care about order anymore.
Raal planted his foot and sent his Mirra threads flying. Thin silver lines snapped out, slicing through the corridor. One Seeker ducked too late; the thread brushed his helmet, and his head dropped clean off a second later — as if time had taken a moment to catch up to what Raal did.
The twins rushed ahead, perfectly in sync. They moved like two parts of a single thought — stabbing, spinning, vanishing between flashes of light. For every guard they cut down, another seemed to reappear in the same spot, shouting the same order.
"Didn't we just kill that one?" one twin shouted.
"Doesn't matter," the other growled. "Kill him again."
The corridor flickered — and suddenly, the man was back, just long enough to die twice.
At the back, the boy's humming spheres buzzed like angry insects. He threw one forward, and it detonated with a pulse that tore the air into jagged pieces. The walls rippled. For a second, everyone saw two versions of themselves — one moving, one frozen — then the world snapped together again.
The boy stared at his hands. "What did I just—"
"Don't stop!" Raal shouted. "It's the Kernel. It's bleeding into the Vault!"
He didn't get to finish. The floor tilted, like gravity forgot which way was down. One of the twins stumbled into a wall — only for that wall to vanish for half a second, replaced by pure white light. When it came back, he was missing an arm.
His brother caught him, blood splattering across his mask. There was no scream. Only a look — half anger, half disbelief.
Lirra's blade cut through another Seeker, but before the body could fall, it flickered back upright. "You have got to be kidding me!" she yelled, stabbing him again.
Behind her, the silver-haired woman caught a blast with her gauntlet and sent it back — a perfect mirror shot. It hit a Guild soldier, then repeated itself, hitting another right behind him. The explosion painted the walls red twice.
Through all the chaos, Mael didn't move. He stood near the archway, still as stone, his eyes following invisible patterns in the air. It was like he was listening to something no one else could hear.
The Guild soldiers saw him and froze — not out of strategy, but pure fear.
Time bent around him.
Raal saw the effect before he understood it — the way every flicker in the light seemed to bow toward Mael, the way his reflection appeared a second early in the corridor's metal wall.
Then he heard it — a voice, low and counting, echoing through the walls:
"Five... four... three..."
The numbers dragged like they were being pulled through mud. The world started to breathe with them.
The Guild officer near the front tried to rally his men. "Hold—"
He didn't get to finish. His own shot rebounded through a fold in air and hit him in the chest before he could speak. He dropped, dead, without ever finishing the word.
The Ninefold fell silent. Even Lirra stopped moving.
Everyone heard it now — that strange countdown crawling through the walls, over and over.
"Five... four... three..."
The light flickered once more. Raal turned to Mael — but Mael wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the floor, his hand twitching over the relic dial under his sleeve. His expression was calm, but not human.
The loop reset.
Raal blinked. The same soldier screamed again. The same spark hit the wall. The same broken arm bled.
Everything had started over — except the Ninefold, who were still standing, confused, breathing heavy, drenched in blood that had technically already fallen.
Lirra finally whispered, "We're not fighting soldiers anymore."
Raal looked up at the glowing ceiling. The air felt alive. The Vault was humming.
"No," he said. "We're fighting the city."
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