Every imperial guard and Horris soldier within sight let out a cheer at the sight of Garoda's fallen body, relief spreading fast through the ranks. But the SAT soldiers did not so much as slow down. Commander or no commander, they kept pressing the advance without hesitation.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, Kei arrived just in time to save Yejin from the dark shackles, a pair of daggers flashing out fast enough to sever the bindings before they could close fully around her.
Victorina's fury only sharpened at the sight of him.
"More pests, one after another!" She flung her hand out, and stakes tore up out of the ground in a widening ring. "Let me just end your suffering already!"
Both of them scattered clear before the stakes could land, Kei's eyes flaring blue as he took in the true shape of the power radiating off her — dense, corrupted, far uglier than it looked from a distance.
"She's really furious," Kei muttered, already flinging two daggers straight at her.
Victorina's body dissolved into darkness before either blade could touch her.
Kei's hand lit with a faint glow, and both daggers curved sharply midair, doubling back toward him — but they passed straight through Victorina's form on the return arc too, still finding nothing solid to strike.
"You've gotten sharper, Kei." Yejin rose to her feet, spinning her blade once in her grip as she fixed her eyes on Victorina. "But let me handle her. I'll take this ugly witch myself."
Kei studied her for a moment, saying nothing.
"What?" Yejin asked, a little thrown by the silence.
He shook his head slightly. "Nothing. Don't leave your eyes on her, Princess Yejin. She's weakened, but she can still turn her whole body to shadow, which makes most attacks pass right through her. That costs her prana every time, though, so she can't stay intangible forever. Speed's your best weapon here. The instant she solidifies, that's your window." He paused. "And unlike most enemies you've fought, her head isn't the weak point. It's her chest."
"You worked all that out in a matter of seconds?" Yejin blinked at him.
"I can see her prana — how it moves, how much she's got left." Kei said it simply, like it was nothing.
Before either of them could say more, Victorina lashed out again, stakes erupting beneath both their feet mid-conversation. They leaped clear in opposite directions.
"How dare either of you speak so casually in front of me?!" Victorina snarled.
"I've got this one, Kei. Go help the others." Yejin said, already settling into a fighting stance.
Kei nodded once and pulled back, leaving her to it.
Victorina's laughter cracked out across the space between them, thick with fury. "You think you can take me on alone, little girl? You're dreaming far too big! HAHAHA!"
She summoned another set of dark shackles, but this time Yejin was ready, cutting through them clean before they could close and dodging clear of the reaching latches. She blinked forward, closing on Victorina fast, blade driving in — only to pass straight through smoke where a body should have been.
A flock of black birds erupted from the same smoke instead, swarming her, pecking and clawing at exposed skin. Yejin swung to clear them, but there were too many, and she was forced back, retreating under the assault. More shackles came for her the moment she landed, but she sliced through them before they could latch.
"She spends prana every time she goes intangible, huh?" Yejin thought, mid-motion, dodging another stake. "But how much does she actually have left?" She blinked in behind Victorina and drove a three-point strike toward her back, aiming to puncture three separate spots at once — only one blade connected, and barely broke skin before Yejin retreated again.
"You pest!" Victorina lashed out with another volley of stakes, and Yejin dodged every one, weaving through the barrage.
She could hear it now — the faint hitch in Victorina's breathing every time she attacked, subtle but unmistakable. Yejin allowed herself a small smile.
"What are you smiling at?!" Victorina's voice cracked with rage. "I'll carve that look right off your face!"
This time the stakes didn't erupt from the ground at all — they shot straight from her shadowed hands instead, fast enough to catch Yejin's shoulder before she could react. Pain flared bright and sudden. "So the ground-stakes were a trap," Yejin realized, gritting through it. "It turns out, she can always throw them from her hands just as easily, just as fast. One clean hit and I'm done. Can't let my guard slip, not even once."
Victorina kept up the pressure, stake after stake, each one harder to dodge as Yejin's stamina began wearing thin, her breath coming shorter with every evasion.
"What's wrong? Running out of air already?" Victorina cackled, throwing even more.
Yejin pushed anima through her legs, forcing her speed higher despite the fatigue building in her chest. "I need to manage what I've got left." Her eyes landed on a bow and quiver lying beside a fallen imperial guard, and an idea sparked, fast and clear.
She scooped up the bow, nocking an arrow with practiced ease — her archery had always been strong, one of her sharpest skills. She loosed it straight at Victorina, then another, then a third. Each one sailed clean through the witch's intangible form without resistance. On the sixth arrow, though, Victorina had to actually shift aside to avoid it.
Yejin kept firing, one arrow after another, watching closely, hoping to wear down whatever reserves kept that intangibility running. It didn't work exactly as she'd hoped — Victorina's prana pool ran deeper than expected, or the shift itself simply cost less than Yejin had guessed. Either way, the arrows ran out before Victorina did.
When the next volley of stakes came, one finally caught Yejin's leg, drawing a sharp cry of pain.
"Princess Yejin!" an imperial guard shouted from somewhere behind the fighting.
Victorina's head tilted at the title, surprise flickering across her expression. "A princess? All this time, and I've been fighting royalty?" A slow, delighted grin spread across her face. "Getting bored sitting in that palace, Your Highness? MUAHAHAHA!"
Yejin's glare sharpened, but she said nothing.
"You're the Emperor's daughter, then? Sunhonghin's own?" Victorina pressed, circling slowly.
Still, Yejin held her tongue.
"You know, I terrorized your region once, so many decades ago." Victorina's voice softened into something almost wistful. "Until that fool Khael got himself killed. We'd promised each other we'd rule Iona together someday — but he broke that promise. So when the practitioner who beat him left him to die alone, I finished the job myself." She smiled, all the rage draining out of her expression for a moment. "You should be thanking me, really. I saved your country. Before Khael ever fought that practitioner, he cursed every woman across your empire — your own mother included. And the only way to lift a curse like that is for the one who cast it to die."
Yejin's mouth curled into something between a smirk and disgust as Victorina drifted closer. "Sounds like all that witchcraft's rattled something loose in your skull."
Fury snapped back across Victorina's face instantly. She drove a fresh wave of stakes up from the ground, impaling Yejin dead center — except the body dissolved into a burst of red mist and scattered rose petals the moment the stakes connected.
"What?!" Victorina spun, confused, watching the mist spread out fast around her, swallowing her field of view.
She tried to lift higher into the air to escape it, but the real Yejin was already there, striking fast, again and again, most of the blows glancing off harmlessly. Until, finally, Victorina's intangibility simply gave out — she couldn't hold the shift any longer, and Yejin's blade found solid flesh at last.
One strike landed across her back. Another to the shoulder. A third across her neck. And then, finally, a clean puncture straight through her chest.
Victorina couldn't process it fast enough — it had all happened too quickly, cut after cut landing before she even registered the first. Her core, already weakened from the Shogun's earlier blow, took the worst of it this time.
"How did you—?!" She stared at Yejin, disbelief written across her face — and then something shifted, understanding dawning slow and horrible as she caught the small, knowing smile on Yejin's lips.
Victorina collapsed, blood pouring freely now, and this time she could not recover from it.
Yejin spun her blade once more, watching her fall. "You looked awfully shocked there. I figured out your little trick testing its limits with those arrows. Thought you'd just let them all pass through — but you had to dodge or block some of them eventually. That's when I understood. Your intangibility only holds for so long before your body has to touch something real again."
Blood ran from Victorina's eyes and mouth both as she finally succumbed to her wounds, collapsing flat against the ground. Beneath her, a dark hole seemed to open up out of nothing, slowly swallowing her body whole until nothing remained.
Yejin's knees buckled the moment it was over, exhaustion catching up with her all at once. The imperial guards nearby broke into cheers at the sight of her victory, and despite everything, she managed a small, tired smile of her own.
Kei caught sight of it from a distance and allowed himself a matching smile — until something else caught his attention instead, a presence far stronger than anything he'd felt yet, closing in fast. A streak of light tore across the sky and slammed down near Yul and Vincent's position.
The imperial guards and Horris soldiers standing near Garoda's body were thrown clear off their feet by the force of the impact, eyes wide with sudden terror.
Standing where the light had landed was a tall man, bare-chested, muscle carved hard across his frame, his face twisted into a permanent snarl. Long black hair whipped wild around a crown-like metal headband, and in his hand he held a long, single-edged saber.
"T-That... that's..." one imperial guard stammered, backing away.
"Everyone, watch out!" another shouted, voice cracking with fear. "That's the First Commander of the Great Battalion!"