The Extra's Rise

The Reef twitched.

Not the wards, not the meters—my skin. The Tranquil Reef we'd laid around Tycho Yard is a soft rule, like a held breath. When something heavy leans on it, the breath forgets how to finish. Luna's head lifted. Rachel went still. Reika's hand slid to her sword. We all felt it.

"South rim," Seraphina said, eyes half-closed. "Pressure… sweet, but wrong."

"Courtesy pings are out," Reika said into short-band. "South, North—both houses—West, East—both lines—Central, and the Seven. All acknowledged."

"Good," I said. "Keep it that way."

We stood on the Moon, Tycho's far rim, the yard lights throwing clean cones across gray rock. No air, but our suits carried voices fine. The Reef did the rest—Harmony from Luna told stray forces to behave. It wouldn't stop a high Radiant. It would make the ground honest while we fought.

"Arthur?" Rachel's voice in my ear was warm and steady. "Breathe on fours."

I did. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.

Shadows gathered past the lights. Not shadows—wants. A hundred small desires took shape at the Reef's edge: a bowl of hot soup, a bed that knew your name, a medal you never got, a hand you missed. Bait you reach for without thinking.

"Contain, not crush," I said. "No big plays. Don't feed it."

"Copy," Reika answered. She uncapped a marker and wrote along her own wrist in tight, ugly script that glowed a heartbeat and sank into skin. Remember yourself. Reject false sufficiency. She caught my left wrist and wrote the same. It stung, then eased, like a tired tendon settling.

Cecilia's grin touched the channel. "I'll tangle their stitching, not blow it up."

"Angles to one," Rose said. "If it throws ten lies, I make it pick one."

"Footing," Seraphina added. An ice rose opened on the regolith, perfect petals in vacuum. She set more, a small constellation to mark true pivot points for anyone who needed them.

"Bone screens up," Erebus said calmly. Low ridges of pale ossuary rose along the Reef's ring, quiet as snowfall.

Luna set her palm between my shoulder blades. Harmony thickened at the fence—no glare, no shove. Just rules written like a lullaby. The Reef's sentence locked in: finish the work, then rest.

"That's enough," I told them. "Containment only. Keep the yard clean. The thing in the dark is mine."

A beat of silence. The kind that holds disagreement.

"Arthur," Rachel said gently.

"I know," I said. "I want it one-on-one. Not to be stubborn. If we stack seven gifts on him, the Reef starts learning bad habits to keep up. We need it boring tomorrow."

Reika broke the pause with a dry chuckle. "Fine. You get your duel. We keep your corners clean."

"Don't overextend," Rachel said. "If I call stop—"

"I stop," I promised.

The dark at the rim condensed and stood up.

Tall. Humanoid because he felt like being polite. Skin black like cooled glass. Cloak of night silk with starlight caught in the weave. Where a face should be, a smooth plane and the hint of a smile not yet made.

His voice arrived in my head before it reached my ears, rich and easy. Not words at first—feelings arranged like speech. Relief. Fulfillment. The end of the last ten percent of effort no one thanks you for. You crave rest, he breathed. I can make it the rule.

"Finish," I said aloud, for me. "Then rest."

Luna's hand pressed a fraction harder. The Reef purred.

He inclined his head like a courtier. When he chose words, he let them show teeth. "A tidy field," he said. "Your world loves fences. We prefer rooms. You could sleep in ours."

"Name?" Reika asked on open band. She knew he didn't have to answer. Names matter.

He smiled I couldn't see. "Archduke Reverian of Velvet," he said. Male. Confident. The scent of Lust on the edges, not cloying—clean, practiced, dangerous. High Radiant by weight.

"Back up off my yard," I said, drawing Valeria. She warmed along my forearm like a cat stretching. No plates today, no Grey, no tricks. Just a sword that knows my hand.

Reverian's mantle shifted. Wants thickened, less generic now. A lunch with a mother from a life that wasn't mine but felt like it. A room where no one needed me. A laugh I missed—too close to a kitchen with tea.

"Containment," I said.

Cecilia snapped her fingers. Thin chaos threads slid between bait-images and tied their timing into a knot; three desires tripped each other and turned to smoke. Rose folded a cascade of lures into a single wrong angle that couldn't stand. Seraphina's frost flowers gave the warders places to look so their eyes didn't drift. Erebus's bone ridges drank a slow glamour that tried to crawl along the ground like fog, yellowed, shed their outer layer, and grew back clean.

Rachel's voice came like a palm on my shoulder. "In four. Out four."

I rolled my wrists. The old truths sat where I left them. First touch bites. Shortest line holds. Exit clean. No show. No rush. Keep the bubble small.

"Come take me," Reverian said, and the Velvet Dominion unfolded.

Not a wall. A mood given shape. Color dropped half a shade. The stars above looked closer. The regolith underfoot tried to decide it was a couch. The movement of my friends at the edges wanted to resolve into loops—start smiling, keep smiling, never stop because nothing changes.

Luna whispered Harmony into the Reef and the Reef made the Dominion read first. Finish, then rest. The couch idea argued, lost half the argument, and sulked.

"Why fight tide?" Reverian asked. A ribbon of dark silk peeled from his mantle and lengthened into a lance. Not metal: promise. If it touched you, your reaching would be over forever, and you would thank it.

He flicked the lance. It wasn't quick so much as early; it arrived where I'd be if I got greedy.

Valeria brushed my palm with a thought like the edge of breath. "Low."

I dipped. First touch bit. The point glanced along a line that didn't care about hope or despair, just truth. Glitter, then nothing.

His head tilted. Amused. "Polite," he said. "But tired."

Star-moths poured from his cloak, each a tiny door into a room you thought about once and forgot. If you looked, they grew. If you reached, they came.

"Do not look," I told myself. "Do not reach."

"Eyes on me," Reika told the line. "Anchor on the work. No snacks for the devil."

Cecilia knotted three moth-doors into one snarl that couldn't open. Rose forced another cluster to pick a single door, then closed it by making it already used. Seraphina sketched a frost thread between two currents, a string of tiny bells in vacuum. The mind followed the bells instead of the bait.

Reverian noticed the teamwork and let the unseen smile widen. "You all want the same thing," he said. "That's rare. I prefer rooms where lovers ask for different songs."

A second lance grew, longer. His weight deepened. High Radiant fully awake now. The Dominion stopped trying to be kind and became heavy. Breath wanted to skip to we're done.

Rachel's tone shifted. Not louder. Closer. That musical timbre that slips past the stubborn parts and tells them to behave. "Arthur," she said. "Hands soft. Keep the bubble small."

Valeria hummed. "Two o'clock."

I stepped-in, cut, stepped again. No bounce. I didn't punish the air for lying. Let the first law do its job: first touch bites even in crosswind. The lance clanged on something that wasn't steel—my discipline—and skated. Shortest line: my edge moved between two marks only I could see, clean and straight. Exit clean: I didn't drag attention behind me like a rag.

Glamour shavings spun off and tried to hatch into comforts. Luna's Harmony rolled under them and smoothed the need to snatch. The Reef stayed a field, not a bed.

Reverian finally looked interested. "Better," he said. "Then take something of mine."

The mantle flared. He pressed a story into the half-second between heartbeats: a white-tile kitchen and a girl who never existed laughing at nothing important. It hit true. Want shut a door on my ribs.

I didn't try to be stronger than the feeling. I did what Rachel taught until it lived in my bones. In four. Out four. I heard her voice as if it sat inside my helmet. Breathe.

The pressure didn't vanish. It lost purchase.

"Arthur," Rose said, "three degrees left. The true line."

Valeria's edge agreed. "Now."

I cut where she showed. No speed games, no scream—just a carry-through that began before my mind finished saying first. The blade kissed the glamour core behind his smile—the hinge that made the room feel like a room. The kiss became a nick. Not deep. Enough to make the Dominion hiccup.

Reverian's head snapped a fraction. First true reaction. He didn't withdraw. He slid forward, cloak fanning, and changed flavor: ownership. Lust likes to claim. The next whisper wasn't rest. It was mine.

The script on my wrist warmed. Reject false sufficiency. Rachel's hymn drew a line along the floor of my mind. The word mine bounced and fell.

"Contain perimeter," I said. "Don't reach in."

"Copy," Reika said.

Cecilia's chuckle ticked in my ear. "I'm not that stupid, baby."

"Three lances," Seraphina warned. Frost bells chimed where they'd land.

He threw them in a fan to herd me into the worst place—overlap where his mood was strongest.

Valeria nudged my palm. "Do not chase."

"I won't," I said.

I went the other way. People forget the shortest line sometimes includes away when away is the true line between the only two marks that matter. The lances crossed where I had been. I was already a step outside their story, coming back in on the exit, not dragging the law, just finishing a messy sentence clean.

First real blood, if you could call it that. The mantle tore and night poured out, then stopped.

He laughed in my head like ice breaking on a river. "Finally," he said. "A man who refuses the free meal. Come. Starve with me."

He tightened the Dominion, focus narrowing to me alone. The perfume of Lust licked at the Reef and slid off, carrying a taste that wasn't for me at all—a signal going outward. Someone larger would notice later. I noted it and let it pass.

"Containment lines holding," Reika reported. "Warders steady. Bone screens regrowing. No leakage into the yard."

"Cecilia?" I asked.

"Tangling his timing, not his teeth," she said.

"Rose?"

"Angles clean."

"Seraphina?"

"Footing true."

"Rachel?"

"If I say stop—"

"I stop," I finished.

"Good."

Reverian raised both hands. Ten lances grew in an arc. Space between us folded into rooms I could live in forever if I was dumb.

I grinned inside the helmet. At last—someone on my level.

"Keep the yard clean," I told my people. "This is mine."

Valeria purred, edge hungry and polite. "We begin?"

"We begin," I said, and stepped into him.