The Extra's Rise

Reverian lifted his hands and ten lances grew—dark silk drawn into spear-points, each one a promise shaped like mercy. They didn't whistle. They arrived early, sliding into the places I would be if I got greedy.

I wasn't. First touch bites. Shortest line holds. Exit clean.

Valeria nudged my palm. "Low, then rise."

I dipped the first, skimmed the second on a line thinner than pride, rose through a third that tried to herd me into a corner. No sound. No flare. The Reef held true under my Harmony; Luna's quiet support made the ground an honest floor in a lying room.

Reverian stepped with me, cloak moving like night shaken from a sleeve. His Lust Gift tightened, not like a wall—like curtains being drawn. Stars above came a finger closer. The regolith under my boots wanted to remember it was a couch.

"Finish, then rest," I told myself, and the Reef echoed the sentence back.

He smiled with the feeling of a smile. "I can help you finish," he said, and the ten lances bent mid-flight, curving around each other with the casual grace of habit. Two aimed at my hip where balance lives. Two kissed Valeria's edge to taste her name. Six wrote a cage in slow motion and let me see it closing so my mind would sprint to be inside it.

Cecilia laughed in my ear and tied three of the lance-times into a knot; they tripped over their own arrival and came late. Rose folded two more arcs into a single angle and moved the angle a thumb-width so it never matched me. Seraphina's frost bells chimed once: step here, not there. I obeyed the bell.

First touch bit. Second began before the first was done, carry-through clean. Third wanted to sing; I kept the song inside the work. Valeria hummed approval; she likes clean.

The nearest lance brushed my pauldron and turned the thought of steel into the thought of velvet. My shoulder didn't jolt. It sank. The force that should have traveled down bone and taught the arm a lesson went nowhere.

Gift two. Not a shield. A theft. He didn't block impact; he softened it until the world forgot what a hit was.

Reverian tasted the moment I understood. "Caress of Silence," he said, not boasting, not hiding. "Within my hand, everything lands softly. Even ends."

He walked in and let the Gift breathe. My next cut hit a seam in his mantle—perfect aim, perfect line—and sank like a blade into a pillow. The edge still bit, small truth intact, but the promise behind it bled away. The exit went clean because I made it, not because the world helped.

"Arthur," Rachel said, voice warm and close in the ear, that timbre that presses scattered things into order. "Hands soft. Breathe on fours."

In two, three, four. Out two, three, four. I let the breath carry past the frustration. His Gift didn't make me weak. It made the room refuse to admit strength existed.

Reverian's lances became threads and then cloth, a net that wanted to be a blanket. A hundred star-moths poured off his cloak, each a door into an easy minute I'd earned a hundred times over but had never taken—tea cooling on a counter, the weight of a book on my chest, laughter from a kitchen with white tile I had no right to remember.

"Containment," I said.

"On it," Reika answered. She wrote No Indulgence across her other wrist and the script sank into skin with a glow like old iron. Her next step slid through the edge of the Dominion, and the edge frayed where her letters touched it.

Cecilia tangled moth-doors together until they formed a knot that couldn't decide who opened first. "No dinner," she told them flatly.

Rose pinched a spill of glamour to a point. "One choice," she said, then broke that, too.

Seraphina set three new ice blossoms in a triangle. In vacuum they didn't melt; they marked true footing so eyes and body agreed.

Erebus's bone screens budded a second ridge, pale and patient, drinking a creeping sheen of want that tried to travel along the ground like spilled oil. The ridge yellowed, cracked, shed, and grew back clean.

Reverian watched all of it and smiled in the way of a man who likes a game with pieces that move. "Polite friends," he said. "I prefer rooms where lovers ask for different songs."

"Not your room," I said, and went in.

No Grey. No Domain. No cheats. Just the laws I paid for in chalk and breath. Arc Hook Spiral around a lance that pretended to be late and wasn't. Zero-Inch in vacuum, using Harmony anchors in my boots to give me a floor to push against. Flicker Palm to turn his lean into a slip without overcommitting. The edge kissed, carried through, left clean.

His Caress caught the shock and made it gentler than truth. My elbow hit something that refused to be bone and called itself velvet; power bled out like a sigh.

"Better," he said approvingly. "But tired."

He pressed Gift One harder—Lust not as hunger, but as ownership. Mine, the whisper said. My victory. My rest. My idea of you.

The script on my wrist warmed. Reject false sufficiency. Rachel's voice slipped past stubbornness to set a hand on the right part of my mind. "Finish," she said softly. "Then rest."

I didn't try to be stronger than the whisper. I let the next in-breath fill the bubble around my hand where law lives. First touch bit because I said it would. Second began before the first ended because I'd written that sentence small and honest over three long days. Third wanted to sing. I let it hum.

Reverian shifted flavor. The lances became hands; the hands became invitations; the invitations became assumptions. He placed a soft rule on the half-second where a choice starts: it will end here, with him.

"Valeria?" I asked without moving my mouth.

Her reply brushed my skin like the edge of a ribbon. "He steals the sharp. We can make a sharper."

"Without Grey?"

A tiny, amused note. "You paid for small, clean truths. Use them."

I did. The next cut went not for the shoulder, not for the heart—those were rooms he'd prepared—but for the hinge where his Gift translated impact into forgiveness. The Caress lived on curves and couldn't quite reach corners. I drew a corner where a curve wanted to be.

The edge bit. The carry-through scratched the hinge. A whisper of pressure leaked out and went where it should have gone. Reverian's posture stuttered a breath. Not pain. Surprise.

He moved differently—cleaner. High Radiant weight opened its eyes. Ten lances became five and then one. He held that single promise like a king holds a scepter and, for a moment, there was no room, no couch, no moth—just a line aiming at my throat with no lie on it at all.

I smiled inside my helmet. "Finally."

He didn't answer. He arrived. I met him. First touch bit. The rest did not. The Caress drank again, and my cut landed as a polite handshake with no opinion attached.

I slid away on the shortest line. Exit clean. He followed, cloak flicking starlight. The Dominion breathed with us, press and relief, tide and slack. If I made a big play, if I tried to match weight with weight, the room would eat it and burp.

"Arthur," Rose said calmly. "His center is drifting three degrees right with each honest strike. He's adjusting Caress coverage to you."

"So stop being where he thinks I am," I answered, and let the next step be ugly on purpose. He bit—just a little—lance arriving where the pretty footwork said I'd go. My ugly line bought a thumb-width. I spent it scratching the hinge again.

"Mm," Valeria purred. "Good."

Reverian's unseen smile sharpened. "I enjoy you," he said, and I felt it as a pressure along the back of my neck, the way a hand settles before it becomes a grip. "You refuse comfort with… taste."

He raised his left hand and changed the fight.

Sound died.

Not in the yard—Luna's Harmony kept our voices clear—but in the space between our edges. The little cues you don't know you listen for—the scrape of foot on grit, the soft hiss of cloth, the tick of a lance point nudging dust—went to sleep. The Caress of Silence wasn't just for impact. It pressed pillows into the spaces where men time their lives.

I missed a cue, late by a quarter heartbeat, and his lance kissed my ribs with a promise. The suit hardened; the Harmony anchor held; still, something in me wanted to let the cut become a touch and the touch become an end.

"Arthur." Rachel's voice arrived like a metronome. "One. Two. Three. Four."

I put my feet on her counts. The world woke up enough to be true again.

"Containment?" I asked.

"Clean," Reika said. "No leaks."

"Bone screens holding," Erebus added.

"Then I'm changing rules," I said.

Silence on the line. The kind that holds disagreement and care.

"Grey?" Rachel asked.

"Yes."

"Keep it tight," Luna said. "Don't teach the Reef bad habits."

"Small and sharp," Valeria murmured, hungry and polite.

Reverian cocked his head, the hint of his smile returning. "More rooms?" he asked. "Bring yours."

I had wanted the duel this way. Sword only. Paid-for truths. But his second Gift stole endings and made them land soft; if I kept pretending the room was mine, I would spend the night cutting pillows.

"Thank you," I told him, and meant it. "For the lesson."

Then I opened a page.

Not a blaze. A fold. The Wings of Eclipse slid from my back like two flat ideas made visible, and the Grey crown above my brow spun once. The Reef did not shiver; it sighed, as if relieved that the work it had been asked to hold would be finished soon.

The Dominion tried to be a room and found itself inside a sentence.

Valeria's edge brightened the way a smile brightens a face. "Now," she said, delighted.

I stepped, and the places I wanted to touch decided they touched. Reverian's lance arrived exactly where it should have mattered, and the world learned—politely, without drama—that it did not.