She moved first.
Owen had expected it, had been reading her weight distribution, the coil in her tail, the almost imperceptible shift in her stance that preceded motion. He had fought enough opponents by now to recognize the moment before inaction collapsed into action.
What he had not expected was how fast.
Azmireth crossed fifteen meters in a blur that his eyes tracked as motion and his Mana Sense tracked as nothing. No displacement of mana. No readable signature cutting through air. Just the afterimage she left behind, a fading purple silhouette standing where she had been, and then her fist connecting with his chest.
The impact drove him back three steps. His Indestructible Scales absorbed the physical force, redistributing the kinetic energy across his body the way they always did. He felt it, but it didn't break anything.
Then her other hand came up, and her palm filled with fire.
