Ordin advanced.

Not firing—closing distance, his palms at his sides, the specific approach of someone who had decided that range was working against him. The web that Sarah was building was most effective at range—the distance gave the threads time to occupy space, gave Sarah time to react to gaps, gave the coverage pattern time to develop into something comprehensive.

At close range the threads still worked.

But close range changed the geometry—the space between them smaller, the web’s coverage requiring density in a compressed area rather than coverage across a wide field, and compressed density in a small area was harder to maintain than spread coverage across a large field because the thread formation rate was the same regardless of the area covered.

Close range was less favorable for the web.

Sarah stitched Ordin’s left foot to the floor.

The advance interrupted—Ordin’s foot refusing to lift for the fraction of a second the temporary connection held, the momentum of the approach stalling.

He broke through it.

She stitched his right foot.

Same result—interruption, breakthrough, the advance slower but continuing.

Six feet.

She stitched both feet simultaneously—both threads forming at the same moment, both connections holding both feet to the floor in the same instant.

Ordin pulled against both.

Both threads held for a full second—longer than the single-foot stitches, the double application requiring more of his body’s force to break through.

He broke through.

But the second he had spent breaking the double stitch was a second Sarah had used to form three new threads in the compressed space between them—connections between the floor at his feet and the air at hip height, connections between the space at his left side and a wall anchor, connections between his right hand’s likely extension path and a fixed point six feet behind him.

Not targeting him—occupying the space around him.

Marionette War beginning.

He felt the occupied space—not the threads themselves, the effects, the specific resistance when his arm moved toward a position that had a thread connecting that position to somewhere else. His left arm extending and finding a connection that attached it briefly to the wall anchor, the movement redirected for a fraction of a second before he pushed through.

He raised his palms to fire.

Sarah stitched the space directly in front of his palms—a dense cluster of threads, the specific coverage designed to intercept whatever emerged from the elastic tissue at close range.

He clapped.

The Arrow Burst traveled six feet of densely stitched space and stopped—three threads, each absorbing a portion of the burst’s force, the projectile spending itself against the accumulated coverage before reaching Sarah.

He clapped again—rapid succession, Thousand Arrows at close range, the barrage designed to overwhelm a web that had been built for single interceptions.

The first arrow hit a thread. Stopped.

The second found a gap. Hit Sarah’s shoulder.

The third hit a thread. Stopped.

The fourth found another gap. Hit her forearm.

The fifth, sixth, seventh—alternating, threads catching half and gaps delivering half, the rapid succession splitting its damage evenly between the web and Sarah’s body.

Sarah took four hits across the barrage.

Four real impacts—her body absorbing the force of four Arrow Bursts at close range, the accumulated force significant.

She had stopped six.

She looked at the occupied space around Ordin—at the Marionette War threads that had been accumulating since the advance began, at the connections between his limbs and fixed points that his movements had been activating and pushing through.

She activated Fate Seam.

The thread formed—connecting Ordin’s present position to where he had been three seconds ago, before the Thousand Arrows barrage, before the advance had reached six feet, back to the nine-foot distance where he had just started closing.

Ordin felt the conflict—his present self at six feet and his three-seconds-ago self at nine feet, both states imposed simultaneously, the two positions competing.

He pushed through it.

Not with the clean dominance of a fighter whose ability countered the Fate Seam, but with the specific quality of someone whose physical size and the elastic tissue’s properties gave him a different relationship with spatial conflict than most fighters had. The elastic tissue responded to his will across its full range—the pulling and compressing that the palms performed didn’t require the precision of a nerve strike or a stitch formation. It required gross motor control and strength.

He maintained gross motor control through the Fate Seam’s conflict.

His palms were still functional.

He pulled them apart—maximum stretch, the Sky Splitter compression building, both palms extending to their widest position while his position was still compromised by the Fate Seam’s two-state imposition.

The Sky Splitter building in the space between his maximally stretched palms while his body existed in two positions simultaneously.

Sarah felt the stretch’s air pressure change—the ambient drop, the atmosphere being pulled toward the compression, the same signature she had felt before the Vacuum Spear.

Larger.

She stitched the Sky Splitter’s path—the same technique she had used against the Vacuum Spear, connecting the trajectory to a fixed point in the floor.

But the Sky Splitter’s full-power clap at maximum stretch produced a projectile wider than the Vacuum Spear had been—the path-stitch that had held the Vacuum Spear was anchored at a single point, and a single point couldn’t redirect a projectile twice as wide as the point itself.

The Sky Splitter hit the path-stitch.

The stitch held the center—the portion of the projectile that passed through the stitched point was redirected into the floor. The portions of the projectile on either side of the stitch’s point passed around it, continuing forward along the original trajectory.

The center was redirected.

The flanks weren’t.

The Sky Splitter’s full force arrived at Sarah from two directions simultaneously—the center having gone into the floor, the two flanking sections continuing forward, the split projectile hitting her from the left side and the right side at the same moment.

She went down.

Both legs, both hands, the four-point position—the dual flank impact from opposite directions simultaneously overwhelming the balance that a single-direction hit would have challenged but not necessarily removed.

The Fate Seam on Ordin dissolved—the duration having run while he was building the Sky Splitter, his two-state imposition returning to his single present-self position now that the thread’s duration was complete.

He stood at six feet from Sarah on the floor.

His palms at their lowest position of the fight—the Sky Splitter’s maximum stretch having spent the most the elastic tissue had spent in a single technique since the fight began, the recovery debt significant.

Sarah pushed up from the floor.

Both hands, both knees, the recovery sequence—real effort, the dual flank impacts having carried significant force even divided across two directions, the combined effect real and present in how the recovery was taking.

She got to her knees.

The Marionette War threads were still present in the space around Ordin—the accumulated connections from everything his movements had activated during the advance, the web that had been building since he entered close range.

She pulled every thread simultaneously. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Not a new formation—the existing threads, already present and anchored, their connections already established. She pulled the ends toward her, the threads tightening against whatever they were connected to on Ordin’s side.

His left arm was connected to a wall anchor—the thread tightening, the arm drawing toward the anchor’s direction, the pull real.

His right leg was connected to the floor behind him—the thread tightening, the leg being drawn backward, his stance destabilized.

His right palm—extended in the Sky Splitter’s recovery position—was connected to a point directly in front of Sarah’s kneeling position, the thread having formed when his palm had been in that position during the barrage phase.

The palm drew toward Sarah.

All three threads pulling simultaneously—his arm toward the wall, his leg backward, his palm toward her.

He resisted.

The threads were temporary—each one’s duration limited, the simultaneous pull requiring all of them to hold at once. Ordin’s resistance against three simultaneous pulls was real, the elastic tissue’s properties giving him a different feel for force than most opponents, his body accustomed to producing and absorbing significant force through the palms and arms.

He held.

The threads’ duration ran.

Two of the three dissolved—the wall-anchor thread and the floor-behind thread releasing, Ordin’s arm and leg returning to his control.

The palm thread held one more second.

His right palm was still connected to the point in front of Sarah.

She stitched his left palm to his right palm.

Both palms connected to each other—the specific connection, the two things that needed to stay apart for the compression to build now forced to behave as if they were one thing at the location the thread defined.

She defined the location as the space directly in front of her face.

Both palms drawing toward the same point—toward each other, toward her.

The compression between them building involuntarily—not from Ordin’s deliberate pull, from the thread forcing both palms toward the same defined location, the elastic tissue compressing between them as they were drawn together.

Involuntary compression.

The clap happened without Ordin choosing it—both palms meeting at the defined location, the compression releasing as the tissue made contact, the Arrow Burst firing from the point directly in front of Sarah’s face.

Into Sarah’s face.

At point-blank range.

The burst hit her—real, full-force, the involuntary clap having produced a standard-strength Arrow Burst at zero distance. The flash and force at zero distance.

She went back.

From her knees to flat—the point-blank burst putting her on the floor fully, the involuntary-clap technique having backfired in a direction Sarah hadn’t fully accounted for when she stitched the palms together at her own face’s location.

She lay on the stone.

Both palms dark—not the generation points, her eyes, the point-blank burst having produced a flash at her own face level at zero distance, the visual disruption severe.