The air on the balcony was thick enough to taste, a cold soup of metallic fog and old concrete dust.
"Again," Senna wheezed.
She was in her chair today, too weak to stand, but her ferocity hadn't dimmed. She wielded the broom handle like a master spearman, the wood blurring in the grey light.
Vane was gasping for air. Sweat slicked his palms inside his gloves. They were running close-quarters drills again. This was the messy, brutal stuff meant for when the beautiful lines of the Argent Horizon collapsed into a brawl.
Senna lunged. She thrust the blunt end of the broom toward his throat. It was a feint. As Vane brought his spear shaft up in a high block, she dropped the broom tip and aimed a savage sweep at his ribs.
Vane's body was exhausted. His conscious mind was lagging behind the speed of the attack. He saw the sweep coming. He knew he was too slow to drop his guard in time. He braced for the impact.
But the impact didn't come.
Without a conscious thought, Vane's body took over. His hips snapped back, pulling his torso out of range by an inch. Simultaneously, his internal mana surged, initiating a high-speed Spiral Circulation through his lead arm.
His lead hand released the spear shaft. It slid down to the midpoint and twisted. The butt of his spear dropped. It caught the incoming broom handle with perfect fluid leverage. He didn't block it. He caught the force and guided it down, grounding it into the flagstones with a smooth, circular motion that hummed with rotational inertia.
It was a perfect execution of the Lunar Deflection.
It also wasn't his.
Vane froze in the finished stance. The spear was perfectly balanced, the mana in his arms still vibrating from the sudden, forced vortex. His breathing was suddenly loud in his own ears.
He hadn't drilled that specific counter. He hadn't even seen her do it slow. He had felt it once, days ago, when she collapsed on this balcony and he caught her and the Usurper grabbed the ghost of her structure.
The silence on the balcony became absolute.
Senna didn't move. She sat with the broom handle pressed against the flagstones where he had deflected it. Her chest heaved. Her dark eyes were locked on Vane's hands. She was staring at the impossibly perfect angle of his grip and the way his mana had instinctively coiled to anchor his weight.
"Do that again," she whispered. Her voice was a dangerous rasp.
Vane straightened up slowly. His heart hammered against his ribs. The paranoia of the slums screamed at him to lie—to say it was a fluke, to say he got lucky.
"I said," Senna raised her eyes to his face, "do that again. The Lunar Deflection. Show me you understand the mechanics."
"I can't," Vane said. His voice was rough.
"Why not? You just executed it better than most Rank 4 veterans."
"Because I don't know how I did it."
Senna slowly pulled the broom back into her lap. Her expression settled into something terrifyingly blank.
"You are a liar, Vane. You have lied about your training. You have lied about your background. Now you are lying to me about my own art."
She pointed a trembling finger at him.
"That wasn't a lucky guess. That was muscle memory. My muscle memory. I have watched you for weeks, boy. You are a mess of stolen reflexes held together by spite. Where are you getting them?"
Vane gripped the spear tight. His knuckles turned white. He was cornered. He could try to run, but after what he had said yesterday about wanting to be a wall, running felt like a worse failure than getting caught.
He looked at the dying woman who had spent the last month breaking him down and building him back up. She deserved the truth, even if it made her hate him.
"My Authority," Vane said. The words tasted like ash. "It is called Usurper."
Senna didn't blink. "Explain."
"I don't learn talents naturally," Vane said, forcing himself to hold her gaze. "I take them. If I can get past a person's defenses... if I can get inside their guard... I can copy what they know."
Senna's eyes narrowed. "You haven't fought anyone to the death here."
"I don't have to kill," Vane said. "There is a loophole. Intimacy."
He swallowed hard.
"Usually I have to sleep with them. Physical vulnerability lowers the soul's natural defenses. That is how I got my skills in the past. That is how I survived."
Senna looked at him with a mix of confusion and disgust. "We haven't slept together, boy."
"No," Vane admitted. "But when you had the seizure... when I held you... your defenses dropped. You were in pain. You were vulnerable. The Authority activated on its own. It stole the echo of your movement."
He gestured helplessly to the spear.
"That move just now... that was the echo firing because I was too tired to stop it. I didn't learn the Lunar Deflection. I stole the feeling of it from your nervous system. I stole the way your mana vortexes to strip the world's friction."
Senna stared at him for a long, agonizing minute. Her face was unreadable. It was a mask of pale skin and shadow.
"So," she finally said. Her voice was eerily calm. "The first day you came here. When I cut your face and told you to leave."
Vane flinched but didn't look away. "I analyzed you. I saw Critical Status."
"And?"
"I came back the next day because I was waiting for you to die. I thought if I was close enough when it happened... or if the barriers dropped completely at the end... I could loot the Silver Fang."
He waited for the explosion. He waited for her to use the last of her strength to drive that broom handle through his eye socket.
Instead, Senna threw her head back against the wheelchair headrest. She let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-choke.
"A parasite," she wheezed, staring up into the swirling fog. "A genuine, bottom-feeding opportunistic parasite."
She shook her head slowly. A grotesque smile touched her lips.
"Gods. I knew you were a rat, Vane. But I didn't realize you were such an efficient one. You were going to camp on my doorstep until I croaked and then pick my pockets for power."
"Yes," Vane whispered.
"At least you are honest about your ugliness now," she murmured. She wiped a fleck of black blood from the corner of her mouth.
She wheeled herself closer, inspecting the spear in his hand.
"You stole the reflex. Do you know what the Lunar Deflection actually is when you have the power to fill it?"
Vane looked at the spear. "It is a deflection trap. You ground the weapon using the Spiral Circulation."
"No," Senna corrected sharply. "Without the Authority, it is a shield. But with the Silver Fang, it is a shredder."
She tapped her chest.
"The Silver Mana is the absolute edge. If you coat the spear shaft in Silver Mana while performing the Lunar Deflection, you don't just catch the enemy weapon. As the shaft rotates against their blade, the liquid silver mana severs the material of their weapon instantly. You don't ground their weapon, Vane. You cut it in half while they are still trying to push through your guard."
She looked at him.
"You have the shape of the cut. You have the path. But you don't have the edge. If you tried that against a strong opponent right now without the Fang, they would just power through your leverage and smash your face in."
She leaned back, exhausted by the lesson.
"You're disgusting, Vane. You're everything wrong with this world wrapped up in a stolen uniform."
She paused, letting the judgment hang in the cold air.
"But at least you don't pretend to be flowers."
She waved a dismissive hand at the spear he was still holding.
"Put it down. You're useless to me today. Get out of my sight."
Vane carefully leaned the spear against the railing. He felt hollowed out and exposed.
"Come back tomorrow," Senna rasped as he turned to leave.
Vane stopped. He looked back at her, stunned. "Tomorrow?"
"Did I stutter?" Her eyes flashed with the old fire. "You are a parasite. Fine. Be a parasite. But if you are going to steal my life's work, you are going to do it right. I won't have my legacy wielded by an amateur who needs to steal reflexes to block a broom."
She turned her chair away from him, toward the empty grey void.
"Go away, rat. Before I change my mind and decide to see if you bounce when dropped from this height."