Malric’s grin spreads slow and mean, hands rubbing together like he’s already planned how this ends. Renn swallows hard. The colour drains from his face, but he holds his ground, barely.
“Begin.”
The word has barely left Talen’s mouth when Malric moves—fast and brutal, closing the gap between him and Renn in a blink, muscles twitching as his Threads surge forward from his fingertips, invisible butcharged.
Stone groans underfoot as his magic digs in, anchoring to cracks like hungry roots. Grit and dust answer him, rising in the air—small particles pulled loose, twitching as he shapes them into razor-thin shards.
A collective gasp cuts through the theatre, tight and breathless.
Renn jerks back. Fingers clawing at the air, scrambling for moisture, any trace he can gather. From breath. From sweat. From the air itself. Beads shimmer around him, thin and unsteady.
But he’s too slow.
Malric throws and the first shard hisses as it tears free, cutting the silence like a scream. It slices straight through the watery shield, exploding it on impact. The fragments scatter like rain.
Renn grunts, raw and broken, as he stumbles back, water dripping off him.
Malric doesn’t pause. Doesn’t flinch.
He just pivots, jaw clenched, sweat already tracking down his temple. Threads surge again.
Another shard. Then another. Each one rips from the wall with a sickening shriek of splitting stone and whips through the air.
Renn cries out. A choked sound, more shock than pain, but it turns real fast. He tries again, arms dragging wide as he strains to condense the air, to pull more water. His whole body’s shaking now. The shield forms, but shatters again under Malric’s next throw.
Crack.
One shard slices into his shoulder.
Crack.
Another punches into his thigh.
He screams this time, short and hoarse, then drops to a knee, gasping.
Malric steps in closer.
His fingers twitch, and more needle-thin splinters of dust and wood rip free from the cracks in the wall behind him.
They whistle through the air like broken glass hurled from a slingshot.
Renn lifts one arm, trying to block?—
Too late.
CRACK.
He crumples. Gasping, soaked, blood running in thin lines from a dozen small cuts. One arm curled around his ribs, the other twitching uselessly at his side, breath coming in shallow, broken pulls.
Malric finally drops his arms. His Threads snap back into him with an audiblewhipof force. He staggers, just a step, chest heaving. Face pale, but his eyes gleam, cold, quiet and satisfied.
The theatre stays silent, waiting—and something inside me twists tight.
Someone should move. Someonehasto. Help him, do something, anything.
Then Talen steps forward, unhurried and precise, stopping beside the body. No flicker of concern. No interest. Just a flat, impassive stare, like he’s looking at something broken and mildly inconvenient. A flick of his hand, and the air shifts. Talen’s Threads slide into motion lifting Renn’s limp form from the ground like it weighs nothing. His fingers curl and the air obeys without question.
Renn’s neck snaps with a wet, brittle crack.
