The Extra's Rise

He vanished. No glamour—just High Radiant speed and a subtraction of friction where he wanted it. He reappeared at my back with a palm full of Requiem pressed toward the base of my skull.

Valeria snarled in my hand. Down.

I dropped, angle collapsed, and stabbed backward with a stupid little reverse thrust that had no dignity and all the utility. It didn't have an ending for him to cancel. It was just metal in a place. He had to move.

Good.

He countered with something I hadn't felt before: a low thrum from the Ember that wasn't about cancelling my moves. It was about asserting his. A decree: This next flame will be the last decision in the space it touches.

Requiem flared. A line drew itself from his palm to my heart, the world between temporarily agreeing that nothing else got to edit that line.

I met decree with refusal.

Not Grey. That would have ended the lesson too early.

I used the oldest truth I own: This line ends where I say. I layered it on Valeria's body, not the world. Personal law, not universal one. The flame reached my rib, found that the last decision belonged to a sword, and blinked. It didn't die. It hesitated. I put the hesitation on the floor with the rest of our mistakes.

We reset again. Both breathing harder. He had more air left. High Radiant does that. His reserves could feed this for hours. My mid Radiant body would start to complain eventually. So I stopped being polite.

Nine-circle circuits, full run. Lightning chained to muscle, gravity tucked under the heel, wind braided through the next three steps. Space bent a thumb-width so his reads arrive late. I framed one edge with Deepdark whisper and lit the other with almost-Purelight—just enough to make the Ember pick a side and be wrong.

He answered with the thing he'd built, the power that belonged to him and not to his teachers. The Requiem Ember coiled around his shoulders and sank into his ribs. The air went very still.

"Requiem Mantle," he said. "Outcome Tax."

He lunged. Every exchange cost me something. A choice. A path. A tiny piece of what I meant to do skimmed off the top and turned into ash that fell at our feet. He was taxing my intent and turning the tax into weapon-fuel.

I cut smaller and faster and nearer. Taxes don't bite as deep when the economy is local. He grimaced and turned the mantle outward, letting it own a patch of the battlefield the size of a cartwheel. Inside the wheel, every choice wanted to end like he wrote it.

Fine.

I didn't go inside.

I made him come out.

I threw God Flash—no, not the big one; a thin sheet. A promise of what it could be. He tilted the mantle to eat the ending and leave the stare. He stepped through the holes he'd made in my move and almost took my ear.

I bled a little. It felt like a contract signing.

He smiled once, small and real. "Round two," he said.

"Round now," I answered.

We stopped talking.

He split the Ember into six neat threads and wove them around my ribs like a harp. Every time I thought angle left, a thread plucked no. I stopped thinking angles. I moved pressure. I let Valeria drag my hips where she wanted. She knows lines better than I do.

He tried to cancel my Lightning Step's destination again. I didn't give it a destination. I gave it a range. The step landed near somewhere good and became good on arrival. He frowned.

He tried to break my carry-through by taxing the second motion more than the first. I bent the rule: second motion begins before the first resolves. He tried to tax both. Taxes don't fit well when events overlap. He hissed in frustration.

I went for his left knee with a nothing cut—just a line in space. He wrote no on the intent inside it. I changed my mind mid-swing and hit his ankle instead. He snarled and wrote no across the floor. We both slipped.

We both laughed. It was awful.

Then we stopped laughing because the ground behind him turned to glass where the mantle leaked a mark I didn't want to see anywhere civilized.

Enough.

"Valeria," I said out loud.

Yes.

"Full plate."

Armor plates unfurled from the blade—light, clean, not ostentatious—locking over my forearms, shins, heart. Not to look big. To make truths easier to carry. The suit was a ritual you could walk in.

I let Harmony deepen until the air forgot how to lie. I tightened every small law until they were almost prayer. Then I moved, and the world kept up.

Jack met me with everything he had built to spite his own regret.

The Wastes rang.

His Ember wrote on my endings. My edge erased his handwriting. His mantle taxed my choices. I paid with small coins and kept my big plans in my pocket. He flooded the field with Nirvana/Abyssal helixes that weren't about heat at all; they were about finality. I answered with water that refused to reach equilibrium until I said it could, with space that wouldn't anchor where he wanted unless it had my signature. Steel spoke to bone. Bone spoke back.

A mile of glass spidered out from our feet.

He pressed. High Radiant reserves let him press forever.

I felt the edge of the place where talent becomes stubbornness and stubbornness becomes need.

Valeria's voice was very soft. You've learned everything you can learn at this speed.

I nodded once, and Jack saw the nod, and some part of him flinched because he remembered a garden of myths and butterflies.

"No," he said, voice hoarse.

I didn't answer.

I opened a page.

Not the garden. Not the whole book. Just two flat sheets of Grey overlapping the air between us, thin as rice paper, ordinary as a table. The Wastes turned quiet in a way that made even the wind remember it used to be a story someone chose to tell.

Jack's next thread of Requiem reached for the ending of my cut and found there were two places the ending could be, both true, both touching. His Ember couldn't write no on both. It stuttered.

I stepped through the point where the two pages met and put my edge under his mantle, not on it.

He saw it. He screamed and poured Requiem until the sky shook.

We moved.