He slid two steps, boots carving shallow crescents in the black glass. Breath steady. Focus tight. The siphon pulsed—a faint tug at his team ring, like a vein being drawn.
"It's pulling Earth," Zhen hissed.
Lenia didn't blink. "Spell it out."
Zhen jabbed a finger toward the ash runes circling the fight. "When we captured the Earth Banner, the Colosseum stamped a law-mark into our team ring—an ownership thread. Veyra's Ashlock formation has three layers—anchor, bind, siphon. The siphon just hooked that Earth thread and is reassigning it to their handler."
"Can you pin it?" Lenia pressed.
"I can slow it," Zhen said, jaw tight, hands already weaving talisman ash. "Not stop it. Her glyphwork is… clean. If I hard-break the siphon, power backfeeds the bind and the Ashlock will clamp down on Aeros."
Toba's eyes tracked the circle. "Whose design?"
Zhen swallowed. "Veyra's. You can feel the handwriting."
Inside the ring, Aeros sank his weight, then lifted it a finger's breadth—just enough to make the formation argue with itself about whose rhythm to obey. Veyra didn't bite. She took the shortest true line and kept him too busy to rip at the glyphs with anything crude.
"Why do this yourself?" he asked between strikes. "You could've let your team take our legs and walk."
"Because others would have," Veyra said. "And then you'd confuse me with them."
A laugh escaped him even as his palm kissed her pauldron and drew nothing. "Valiant, huh?"
"Integrity," she corrected—and came in like true midnight.
He met her and found himself smiling despite the ache along his arm. Under his sternum, the Moonseal warmed—his mother's throttle on his body-refiner strength. It bled off impacts, let healing run free, and kept the rest of his physique sealed for this rite. He could endure; he just couldn't lean on brute power to win.
The siphon flickered.
Everyone saw it then: a near-invisible filament—the Earth seal-thread—unspooling from Aeros's ring across open air, humming with dull ochre light. It stretched toward the ash where the blade-man's sigils pulsed in a neat triad: ⟨anchor⟩ ⟨bind⟩ ⟨siphon⟩.
Zhen thrust both hands, talisman ash spiraling. "Hold. Remember. Mine." The sigils landed true—slowed the filament, thickened it—but the Ashlock had rules and Veyra had written them. His counter-runed hold would only feed the bind if he forced it.
The thread tugged free with a painless, gut-sick snap.
The man in sable caught it on a hooked ring and wrapped it around his wrist. The imprint soaked into his skin the way rain vanishes into dry earth—banner credit moved.
"Major setback," Korra said—too calm.
"Due," Lenia said, mouth thinning.
Toba exhaled. "We still have Wind. One to win; one lost to learn."
Huo hissed, sympathetic and offended in the same sound.
Inside the ring, Veyra felt the transfer the instant Aeros did. She didn't gloat. She didn't slow.
"Yield," she said.
He shook his head once. "No."
"Point proved," she said—neither cruel nor kind. "Then move."
They did. No perfect finish..no flourish. It ended when Veyra stepped back first and let the ring's hum die.
She held his gaze a heartbeat, eyes not unkind. "You're not from here."
"No."
"Don't use that as an excuse."
He nodded. "Wouldn't dream of it."
The Ashlock unwound. Sound returned. Heat stepped over the line to see what had happened.
Veyra turned, cape catching no ash. "Leave them a path," she told her two. "We didn't come to cull."
The spearwoman looked faintly disappointed but obeyed, lifting her tip off a key rune so a wedge of the array guttered out. The blade-man flexed his hand, testing the new Earth seal, and smiled a little too much. Veyra didn't look at him.
"We're not done," Korra said—half promise, half threat.
"You're not," Veyra agreed.
She walked past Lenia without a glance, paused one breath by Zhen. "Your binds are neat. Make them clearer. Earth likes honest handwriting."
Zhen flushed to his ears. "Yes—thank you—I mean, yes."
Toba planted his guandao and met her eyes without flinching. "You spared blood. That's remembered."
"Good," Veyra said. "Tell the others."
She looked at Aeros one last time, as if placing him on a ledger he hadn't asked to join. Whatever number she gave, it wasn't last. She lifted her hand; the glyphs dimmed; a path opened down to origin, not safe, not easy, but open.
Her helm slid on in one smooth motion. It didn't hide her beauty; it made it a rumor. She and her two turned away. A fourth—who must have been there all along—unspooled from the overhang's shadow and fell into step.
"Her whole team was here," Zhen whispered. "We just didn't see them."
"Scheming," Lenia said again, this time with respect.
They watched Veyra's back until the ash reclaimed it.
Only then did Aeros let his shoulders loosen.
Korra rounded on him—then stopped, seeing the dark bloom under his sternum already fading. "Hey."
"I'm fine," he said, fingers brushing the spot. The Moonseal drank the ache and spread it thin. "She's precise."
"No kidding." Korra blew out a breath—it was easier to be sharp than scared. "Next time, dodge more."
"I'll write that down," he said, mouth twitching.
Lenia took his wrist, checked the pulse, and let go. "We lost Earth. Two hours, maybe less. We need one more banner. We need to keep ours. And we need to avoid dying in someone else's trap."
"Origin first," Toba said, eyes on the opened wedge. "If they breach home while we hunt, we're done."
"We're close," Zhen added.
Aeros glanced at the slope, then at the place Veyra had stood, then at the path she'd left. Pride wanted to refuse the gift. Wisdom didn't.
"We take it," he said. "We get home. Then we hunt Water, Void, or whatever comes."
"Preferably not Void," Zhen murmured.
"Preferably fewer geniuses in black armor," Korra said.
"Unlikely," Lenia deadpanned.
They moved, quicker now. The wolves at the base had seen enough to want no part; they peeled off, growling and pretending they had somewhere better to be. Zhen set two neat wards behind—Close. Forget.—and the ridge forgot their steps.
At origin, the stone bore their sigil like a thumbprint in old wax. It flared as they crossed, bright as a struck bell, and the Wind Banner in Aeros's ring answered with a clean, cool tone.
"One to home," Zhen breathed—relief braided with frustration.
"Then back out," Lenia said. "We still need another."
Toba knelt and fed Huo a dried fruit. The fox crunched, pleased, ember tail flicking. "Water," Toba decided. "Fire and Earth made enemies. Water makes answers."
"Or holes," Korra muttered.
Aeros rolled a shoulder and let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. The ache under the Moonseal pulsed once and went quiet. Above, the sun's rhythm hummed steady; behind his eyes, Veyra's eclipse line sat like a puzzle asking to be solved. Time bled away like sand.
"Water," he agreed. "Then we see how far ahead number one really is."
Lenia's mouth curved by a hair. "Jealous?"
"Motivated."
They stepped off the sigil together, and the Fire Zone exhaled. Far off, ash trembled on a higher ridge—the way air moves when someone of weight steps through it. Vaen's gaze pressed against their backs for a heartbeat and lifted.
"Move," Lenia said.
They moved.
Between one step and the next, the wind tasted like river stone and rain.
Water waited. And in the cool underplaces of the world, the memory of an eclipse lingered—an elegant, implacable line he meant to learn to cut across someday.