The fourth exchange was different from all the previous ones.

Lira stopped probing.

The blood currents didn’t come in calculated sequence — they came in layers, one over the other, the kind that doesn’t seek to impact but to saturate. Force Serah to use the ambient temperature field constantly, at a cost that accumulated.

Serah held it.

But it cost her.

Lira saw it in the silver markings — the glow was the same but the rhythm had changed, a fraction of a second slower between pulses. Enough for someone who had studied her for centuries to notice.

"Interesting," Lira said, dodging a wave of ice without stopping talking. "It used to last longer."

Serah didn’t answer.

"Is it the shoulder?" Lira materialized three simultaneous currents from different angles. "Or have you been thinking too much about how your little piece of trash is doing?"

The three currents arrived.

Serah froze two.

She dodged the third — but the dodge exposed her right flank for half a second.

Lira didn’t take advantage of it.

She filed it away.

---

Serah attacked.

Primordial ice concentrated in her right fist.

All the primordial cold compressed into the area of her fist.

Lira stepped back two paces from the pressure of the aura before the impact.

Involuntarily stepped back two paces.

"Good," she said, from those two steps away.

Serah went after her.

Combination of right fist to the center, left claw to the side —

Forcing Lira to commit her defense to two simultaneous points.

Lira defended the center.

Dodged the side.

Serah shifted — instead of following through with the left claw to impact, she pulled it back and used the inertia of the withdrawal to load her right elbow from below.

Lira didn’t anticipate it.

The elbow connected with her chin.

Lira went to the ground — not several meters, one meter. She got up in the same motion, already spinning, already positioning.

But she went to the ground.

---

Lira, back on her feet, wiped the corner of her mouth for the second time that night.

She looked at what was on her hand.

Then at Serah.

"You didn’t do that before."

"I told you already."

"Yes." A pause. "But seeing it is different from hearing it."

She used her blood magic once more to create a cloud. Dense, low, that spread across the chamber floor in all directions, covering the area around both their feet.

Serah froze it from below — the floor turned white, the cloud solidifying before it could rise.

Lira was already on the ceiling.

"How long have you gone without sleep?" she said from above. "Two days?"

"That’s not relevant."

"Your aura regeneration rhythm says otherwise."

Serah looked up.

"Come down."

"I’m still assessing."

"You finished assessing half an hour ago."

Lira looked at her from the ceiling with something that wasn’t exactly amusement but resembled it.

"True," she said, and came down.

---

Serah with the temperature field expanded, claws active, her right shoulder compensating for the damaged left.

Lira with currents in both hands, moving without the pattern of the earlier exchanges.

They’d been at it for two minutes when Lira spoke again.

"You’re more skilled than before," she said, blocking a wave of ice with a field of condensed blood. "I admit it."

Serah let out a smile and responded. She attacked. "You too, you surprised me for a moment..."

"But you’re still a thousand years short of my level."

Lira blocked. Counterattacked. "You decide that now?"

"Your markings decide it." Lira dodged the left claw by two centimeters. "They’ve been slow for twenty minutes now."

It was true.

Serah knew it.

Two days without sleep.

Hours of combat.

The shoulder.

"But you know, it was worth it... It was really good, and I would’ve continued today if you hadn’t shown up."

---

Serah found the angle in the sixth exchange.

Lira launched a concentrated current at the right flank, the one she’d been waiting for the right moment.

The right moment turned out to be the wrong one.

Because Serah was expecting it.

She had waited for Lira to use that filed-away information.

She had left the flank deliberately exposed in the last two exchanges, a little more, a little less, calibrating when Lira would consider it safe enough to use.

When the current arrived, Serah was no longer on the flank.

She was forward.

Inside Lira’s guard.

In the space where the currents had no angle of arrival because the target was too close to the source.

Her right fist with concentrated primordial ice — everything she had saved, all her weight going straight to the center of Lira’s chest.

---

And it stopped.

A centimeter away.

Not because Serah decided to stop.

Her body stopped on its own.

The silver markings stopped pulsing.

The ice on her fist remained — still, not expanding, not continuing — like something frozen at the exact moment it had decided to move.

Serah looked at it.

She couldn’t move.

---

Lira smiled.

A small, genuine smile.

This time it didn’t disappear.

"So many years facing each other," Lira said.

"And now that so many have passed without seeing each other..."

She leaned slightly toward the frozen fist a centimeter from her chest.

"You forgot something very important."

Her red eyes met Serah’s silver ones.

"I don’t play fair."

---

The rank markings on Lira’s hands glowed differently.

Not the red of hunger or the dark of condensed blood.

Silver.

The blood cloud that had filled the chamber floor at the start of the exchange — the one Serah had frozen from below and forgotten because it was on the floor and the combat had continued upward, toward the ceiling, in all directions except down — wasn’t just blood.

It carried something mixed in.

Invisible.

Odorless.

No different in temperature from the rest of the magic.

Silver powder.

Spread across the floor from the very first moment.

Waiting.

Waiting for Serah to move enough, with enough intensity, for the powder to rise from the floor and disperse into the chamber air.

What had happened in the sixth exchange when Serah charged forward with all her weight.

She had breathed it without knowing.

---

Serah’s knees gave way.

The ice fist fell.

The ice dissolved on contact with the floor.

Serah was left on her knees, hands on the ground, her silver markings pulsing with the irregular rhythm of something being attacked from within.

Silver didn’t kill primordial wolves.

But it weakened them.

Destabilized them.

Her right shoulder no longer responded.

Neither did her left.

Her claws retracted on their own.

---

Lira walked toward her.

Slowly.

"I’m still faster than you at strategy," she said, looking down at Serah. "I always was."

Serah looked up at her from the floor.

Her eyes were still silver — the color hadn’t yielded even if her body had.

"The powder," Serah said.

"From the beginning."

"When."

"When I generated the floor cloud in the fifth exchange." Lira stopped in front of her. "I mixed it in before entering the catacombs. Just in case."

"You knew I’d come."

"I knew you’d come." The correction was minimal but specific. "That he would come." A pause. "I knew that since I arrived in Valdris and felt your aura in the territory."

---

Lira raised her foot.

The heel — narrow, metal, the kind that wasn’t decorative — positioned exactly in front of Serah’s face.

Not on it. In front.

The threat without contact.

Serah didn’t move.

Not because she didn’t want to — because she still couldn’t.

The silver powder was still in her system, interrupting the connection between aura and body, and until it dissipated completely, her arms would remain unresponsive.

Lira looked down at her.

She opened her mouth to say something.

---

"Hi."

The voice came from the hallway.

Calm.

Without urgency.

Lira looked up.

Kai was at the entrance of the hallway.

Split lip.

Side with the visible mark of hours of blows even through his clothes.

Right shoulder at an angle suggesting it had received and resolved something at some point along the way.

The knuckles of both hands red — the kind of red that comes from using them too much.

Standing.

Hands in his pockets.

Looking at Lira with the expression of someone who’s just arrived at a meeting and is assessing the state of the situation.

Lira looked at him. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Looked at the visible state of his body.

Then at the hallway behind him where Eris hadn’t appeared.

"Eris," Lira said, without taking her eyes off Kai.

"She’s fine," Kai said. "She just needs a while."

Lira looked at him for a second longer.

"The little piece of trash," she said.

"Lira," said Kai.

Pause.

"Nice catacombs."

---

[GarcíaFTW: KAI ARRIVED]

[NocheEterna99: "hi" / "nice catacombs" — KAI WALKING IN WITH THAT ENERGY]

[StreamerHunter: viewers: 6,800,000. ALMOST SEVEN MILLION.]

[xSorinx: Lira saw Kai’s state and looked at the hallway for Eris. She processed that Kai beat her right hand.]

[Pedro_Sierra: ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ KAI ARRIVED ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ WITH ALL THE VISIBLE DAMAGE ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ AND HANDS IN HIS POCKETS ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ]

[Deral_Bleattler: "nice catacombs" — this man has a split lip, damaged shoulder, bruised side, AND HE’S SIGHTSEEING]

[User_7741: ヽ(°〇°)ﾉ KAI ヽ(°〇°)ﾉ]