The first failure was not a scream.
It was the rhythm.
The Drakkoul advance line lost its cadence for an instant — too brief to be called a retreat, too long to be ignored.
One step sank where the ground should have resisted.
Another slipped where the water had previously held.
Nothing that could be explained as human error.
The field answered on its own.
The rain kept falling, heavy, constant, but now each drop seemed to carry a minimal delay, as if the world needed extra effort to obey its own rules.
Mud accumulated in irregular patterns.
Puddles formed where there was no slope.
The black advance was no longer continuous — it had become hesitant, fractured by invisible micro-failures.
Neriah remained with her eyes closed.
Not motionless — present.
Her feet adjusted to the terrain before it gave way.
Her arms traced slow trajectories, not as gestures of command, but as instinctive responses, her body following flows only she seemed able to feel.
There was no urgency in her movements.
No certainty.
Only continuity.
Then something different crossed the field.
It did not come through the water.
It came through weight.
The vibration did not spread — it concentrated.
A fixed, deep point, as if the world had decided to remember something too ancient to be ignored.
The rain around that point changed behavior, veering slightly, as if avoiding contact with whatever was waking.
Ghatotkacha felt it.
The colossal black body, until then immobile, reacted without haste.
The air around him compressed before he even moved.
The ground groaned in anticipation, opening short fissures, incapable of absorbing what was about to happen.
When he took the first step, it was not an advance — it was a declaration.
The distant wall trembled. Soldiers lost their balance without understanding why.
Some dropped to their knees, others simply stopped, unable to force their own bodies to continue.
The fear did not come from the creature's size, but from the brutal certainty that nothing ahead of it would remain as it was.
Iaso felt the impact in his chest before hearing the sound.
Skýra tightened her grip on the spear, but did not advance.
Rynne held her breath.
Lys did not move — she only watched, eyes narrowed, calculating something she did not want to name.
Kaelir realized too late that the field had changed hands.
Ghatotkacha advanced.
Not running. Not roaring.
Sweeping.
Whatever stood before him ceased to be an obstacle and became a detail.
The ground split under the weight of his displacement, the air was shoved out of the way, and the distance between him and Neriah ceased to exist step by step.
Still, she did not open her eyes.
Her body rotated slightly, as if following an invisible current.
The water around her tried to follow her movements — and, for the first time, failed to keep up.
From above, behind the observation line, the Black Fury tilted her head.
The smile was small. Calculated.
"All the pieces…" she murmured, with almost tender softness, "…are already in motion."
Her eyes shifted beyond the immediate field.
Toward the horizon.
There, shadows were beginning to form, long and slow, advancing without haste, like something that never had reason to run.
"Now…" she continued, her voice low, controlled, "…all that remains is to find out…"
A brief pause.
The smile deepened by an imperceptible degree.
"Which of the two kings will fall first."
The rain did not answer.
But the board did.
The impact came without warning.
Ghatotkacha swung his arm as one sweeps aside a minor obstruction — not a calculated strike, but the natural extension of movement.
The air yielded before matter.
The mass of the motion tore through the rain, compressing it into an invisible arc that preceded the colossal fist.
Neriah moved.
Not backward.
Inward.
Her foot pivoted in the mud at the exact instant the pressure reached the point where she had been a second before.
The water rose in delayed response — not as a wall, but as a flow that bends so it does not break.
The blow passed.
Not intact.
Where impact should have been, there was displacement.
The ground exploded behind her in an irregular radius, stones and mud hurled upward as if the earth had been torn from itself.
Neriah did not look.
Her body followed the initiated motion, spinning in a continuous arc, arms describing wide, almost graceful paths — and the water, now late, rushed to catch her.
A current formed around her torso, not to attack, but to stabilize.
She felt the weight before attempting to contain it.
It was different.
There was no rhythm there.
No reading.
Ghatotkacha's presence did not spread across the field — it erased space around it, turning every meter into a zone of immediate decision.
The water tried to wrap around the advancing colossal leg.
It was pushed out of its own course.
Not dispersed — rejected.
Neriah opened her eyes.
Crystalline blue met the black void ahead — not eyes, not expression, only the certainty of something advancing because advancing was its nature.
She breathed.
And, for the first time since closing her eyes on the field, she chose.
The water did not rise.
It sank.
The liquid sheet beneath her feet collapsed into a short vortex, dragging mud, blood, and rain downward, creating a momentary void — an interval where Ghatotkacha's weight lost reference.
Not for long.
But enough.
Ghatotkacha did not correct the error.
He nullified it.
The colossal arm came down in an open arc, not to strike Neriah — but the space where she existed.
The impact did not hit the ground.
It tore it out.
The entire layer of mud, stone, and bodies was flung upward in a devastating semicircle, as if the field had been violently stripped bare.
The shockwave traveled low and brutal, ripping through the air.
Neriah jumped.
Not away.
Up.
The water answered late — but answered whole.
She rose with the impulse of the blow, using the pressure as leverage, her body spinning in the air as liquid blades formed around her forearms.
Not fluid.
Compressed.
Ghatotkacha took another step.
The foot came down like a hammer.
The ground gave way to the knees.
The liquid wall Neriah would once have raised did not come.
Instead, the water concentrated into thin, cutting lines, fired at multiple angles against the black torso.
The impacts sounded dry.
Short cracks.
There was no blood.
But there was resistance.
Ghatotkacha reacted as a force of nature learns to react: by increasing.
Both arms rose.
They came down together.
The strike did not seek precision — it sought erasure.
Neriah fell in controlled descent, her feet touching a column of water that rose at the last instant, hurling her sideways as the impact opened a crater where she should have been.
The shock made the rain stop for a second.
Not in the sky.
In the air.
The water around her reconfigured.
No longer dance.
Execution.
Neriah advanced.
Running on her own water, each step creating ephemeral platforms that dissolved behind her.
She twisted her body in the air, arms crossing into a tight X.
The liquid blades extended, denser, shorter.
Aimed.
She struck.
Not the center.
The joints.
The water did not try to pierce.
It tried to yield and cut at the same time.
Ghatotkacha stepped back half a pace.
Not from pain.
From adjustment.
The entire field felt it.
The next blow came in immediate response — a wide, lateral punch, sweeping everything ahead, raising a wall of debris and wind.
Neriah was thrown.
Spun in the air.
Dropped to her knees.
The water took an instant to reach her.
One instant longer than before.
She drew a deep breath.
The blue of her eyes did not waver.
The style had changed.
Now it was no longer about following the flow.
It was about imposing direction.
And Ghatotkacha, for the first time since advancing, stopped.
Not to observe.
To decide how much of the world would need to break to crush her.
The next impact did not choose a target.
It chose space.
When Ghatotkacha's fist came down again, there was no distinction between enemy line and human formation.
The ground simply gave way.
Drakkouls were flung alongside soldiers, black bodies and human armor spinning through the air before crashing into the mud with the same useless weight.
Screams mixed with the sound of bones breaking.
The human line wavered.
Not from fear of the Drakkouls — but from the certainty that they were trapped between two forces that did not play by the same rules.
"He's not aiming," Iaso said, voice clipped, incredulous, as he sheltered behind a cracked shield. "He's… erasing everything."
Lys pulled her body aside at the last instant, the wire slicing the neck of a Drakkoul advancing without coordination after the impact.
"I know," she replied, without taking her eyes off the field ahead.
Another blow came.
The shockwave tore through the formation like an invisible animal.
Soldiers fell.
Others stood back up without understanding how they were still alive.
Among them, the water moved.
Not as attack.
As living barrier.
A liquid wall rose at the exact instant debris and bodies would have been hurled into the line, cushioning the impact, deflecting fragments, pushing Drakkouls off their axis of advance.
Neriah was there.
Not among the soldiers.
But in front of them.
Each movement she made created seconds.
Each second was life.
"She's fighting…" Iaso began, breath short, "and still—"
"And still protecting us," Lys finished.
The wire vibrated in her fingers.
"Even now."
A Drakkoul broke through the flank of the formation, staggering, but still advancing.
Before anyone could react, a compacted blade of water cut through its leg, dropping it, followed by a current that dragged it away from the line.
"This isn't containment," Iaso murmured. "It's calculated delay."
Lys nodded.
Her gaze returned to Ghatotkacha, who advanced again, crushing Drakkouls beneath his own feet without noticing.
"He doesn't distinguish allies from enemies," she said coldly. "To him, everything there is terrain."
Another strike was forming.
The air compressed again.
"And yet…" Iaso swallowed hard. "She's still putting herself between him and us."
The water rose again.
Not tall.
Precise.
Lys closed her hand.
"Then we cannot hesitate," she said now to the soldiers around them. "As long as she's standing…"
A new impact shook the field.
The liquid wall shattered, reformed, advanced.
"…so will we."
The water reached her again.
Not whole. Not obedient. But enough.
Neriah felt the weight of her own body before she felt the enemy's.
Her muscles burned.
Her breathing no longer found the same rhythm as before.
Each movement cost more.
Each second demanded choice.
Ghatotkacha advanced again.
Not hurried.
Not enraged.
Constant.
Like something that does not tire because it does not need to win — only to continue.
The water rose around her, low, compact, trembling under the incoming pressure.
Not to stop him.
To buy time.
Neriah felt the vibrations of the field pass through her feet, climb her legs, echo in her chest.
Soldiers behind her.
Bodies still standing.
Breaths not yet cut short.
Yet.
She set her stance. Did not close her eyes. Not this time.
The world before her did not need to be read.
It needed to be faced.
If Ghatotkacha was the weight that crushed everything…
She would be the force that decided where he stepped.
The water answered — late, imperfect, but alive.
And Neriah advanced to meet him.