The Extra's Rise

Elara's name on the marble was the last human thing between us.

"Not here," I said.

Jack didn't look away from the stone. "Never here."

We both turned. I opened a clean lane through Ouroboros—short hop, no witnesses—and stepped through first. Courtesy pings went out as my feet left Avalon: North, West, East, Central, South. One line each—training area request, no approach. Two answers came back almost on top of each other:

North: Corridor clear.West: Don't die without me watching. —J.

I dropped onto powder-gray rock and old wind. No towns. No shrines. Just the Skeld Wastes—flat shelves of basalt and broken glass, a sky the color of cold iron, the kind of place the world forgot to name.

Jack stepped out after me and the world got heavier.

High Radiant wasn't just more mana. It was presence—the imprint of a Gate that had opened and left a shape behind. His aura settled like a second horizon, iron-chalk edges sketched in the air. The heat around him didn't glow; it decided.

He flexed his left hand, and the air above his palm bent. Not flame. Not light. Something that made decisions change their mind.

"Requiem Ember," he said quietly, like a confession. A twist of color bloomed—wrong and beautiful—and every drifting fleck of dust that meant to fall near his palm simply didn't. They landed already finished, as if the falling had happened somewhere I wasn't invited.

It wasn't Grey. My Grey writes which places touch. His Ember writes which outcomes survive.

"You're stronger than Reverian," I said. No point lying to myself.

"Good," Jack said. "I trained for you, not him."

Valeria warmed at my hip. No stages, she murmured. This ground is honest. Do your work.

I lifted my left hand and called the quiet I share with Luna. "Lucent Harmony."

Tranquility spread like cool cloth on a fever. The Skeld air stopped being petty. The ground agreed to be steady. That was for the world, not for him.

For me, I turned on everything I could carry without breaking the floor: sword laws I'd written this month until they lived in muscle, nine-circle circuits humming under skin, breath on fours, Valeria's line as simple as it gets.

No Grey. Not yet.

"Ready?" I asked.

Jack's eyes were raw and steady at once. "I have been for three years."

He moved first.

The Requiem Ember wasn't a fireball. It was a ribbon—thin, perfect, coiling for my ankle like a trip line laid by a god. I stepped and cut—first truth, no-bounce, bite clean—and the edge should have met the ribbon and ended it.

It didn't.

The ember wrote no on the outcome where my edge bit first. My cut slipped a hair, like the world pretended my decision had never existed. Seraphina's pencil would've chirped drift.

I didn't force it. I shrunk the truth. Hand bubble tighter than a fist, law thinner than a breath. Valeria adjusted her balance on my palm like a cat picking a new perch. The second bite took. The ribbon split with a sound like a string snapping in another room.

Jack was already on me, faster than before, weight and timing both singing High Radiant. His footwork was clean. His hands carried both Nihility and Nirvana heat, white and violet, braided, with Requiem inked into the braid like black handwriting on silk.

He threw a cross-cut. I met it and felt my counter try to become something gentler. His Ember had reached for the decision inside my swing—deflect and return—and tried to turn it into deflect and stop.

I let the return die. Changed my mind mid-nerve. Pivoted instead into shortest-line—chalk to chalk—no flourish, no second act. He expected the end I'd planned. I gave him a new start. My edge kissed his wrist. No blood—Ember-skin, thin as glass—but he felt it.

"Good," he said. It wasn't a taunt. It was grief and approval mixed together.

He spread his fingers and wrote a circle of Requiem around us. Flames that weren't flames bloomed—petals of a color that your eyes want to call purple until your head hurts. Not heat. Edits. A ring that said: Certain things don't happen here.

Wind didn't pick up where it should. Pebbles didn't bounce when they landed. The world stopped doing little chores.

I put Harmony under my own feet. If his Ember eats outcomes, then I don't promise any. No fancy steps that end at a named spot. Just movement that keeps deciding while it's happening. Valeria hummed in agreement and shifted the weight of her blade a fraction closer to the guard.

We traded six, then twelve, then thirty touches that weren't quite hits and weren't quite misses. Every time I started a technique, his Ember dipped a hand into the ending and tried to spill it. Every time he started a cage, I refused to acknowledge it as inevitable and cut the part that declared itself first. My sword laws—first bite, shortest line, carry-through, exit clean—didn't break. They adjusted mid-syllable.

Then he showed me why High Radiant mattered.

He didn't throw power. He sustained it. Where my circuits sang at their comfortable peak, his shouldered more and asked for seconds. A double-layer spiral—Nirvana outside, Abyssal inside—wrapped in Requiem ink, came down from above like a collar meant to claim my neck.

I lifted Valeria to guard and reached for my most reliable cheat—lightning in the muscles, a step that turns distance into a suggestion. The Ember touched the destination and wrote not there. My Lightning Step landed two feet short.

He was already there to meet me.

His fist came like a piston. I rocked with it, took the energy into my hips, and dumped it into the ground, then brought the ground back up as a counter. Earth didn't quite want to rise—his ring had written against small chores—but Harmony convinced it that we were still doing honest work. Stone answered. His boot skidded, just enough.

"Lucent Harmony," he said, eyes flicking once at my feet. "Cute."

"It's not for you," I said.

We separated a breath and then collapsed the space between us again.

He threw a Requiem net—thin, wide, made of threads that didn't want me so much as they wanted to break all follow-through inside them. A little story: Everything inside here is incomplete. He meant to starve my carry-through law and make every cut chatter.

I didn't argue with the net. I walked smaller truths inside it. First bite becomes first touch, becomes first grain. The law shrank to a point under my skin. The blade bit anyway because I told it one tiny thing, not three proud ones. The net hissed as if disappointed.

"Of course," Jack said, and caught my elbow with a Requiem flare. He didn't stop my swing. He stopped the decision to angle it for his shoulder. My cut arrived harmless across his mantle. The Ember wrote: no angle.

I swore once and made my next cut shape angle last.

He smiled and let me have the point. "Learning."